“Great.” I suck my teeth. “Well, have a nice night, I’ll be—”
I try to step around Elethior.
He matches me, blocking my path. “We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t.” I wave at my ears. “Can’t hear you in here anyway. So—”
I step to the other side.
He matches me again.
“Why?” I stop fighting to get past him, breathing hard.“We could show up tomorrow and get back to work. That’s all we have to do.Work. We don’t have to talk about it.Ever.”
“But what if I want to talk about it?” He’s breathing hard, too. Chest heaving with the beat of the music, drums plummeting lower as the same lyric is repeated in a skittering stop-and-start,Move with me, move—move with me, move—move with—
I don’t respond. Can’t. My jaw deadbolts.
“What if I want to talk about it,” he repeats, “because I can’t stop thinking about it?”
A flash of orange light cuts across my vision, followed by a sharp flare of blue.
I shake my head. Shake it again, and hold up a hand to push against his chest, get some space.
Gods, he’s wearing a black mesh short-sleeve button-up. It letsme feel the skin beneath, the rough abrasion of his chest hair, the heat of his body. And I can see his tattoos through the fabric, swirling across his shoulders, down his pecs.
The light shifts, a wash of magenta, andkill me now,his nipples are hard.
My head won’t stop shaking, negating everything. “We don’t like each other.”
He doesn’t respond for a beat. I manage to tear my eyes away from his chest to look up at him, and he’s studying me like I’m one of his research books.
Then that analysis is gone, and he’s smirking, the cutting, self-important cockiness I hate.
“I don’t think liking each other is a prerequisite for that,” he says.
For some reason, that sets my entire body on fire. An instantaneous frisson that scours my muscles, my nerves, the part of my face where I can feel his breath bathing down on me.
“You’re unable to see beyond me being a Tourael?” he asks. He’s so, so close to me.
I nod.
“Well, good,” he tells me. “I’m unable to see you beyond a smartass, low-level evocation wannabe who would rather bother real wizards with childish antics than apply himself.”
There’s something wrong with me. Which is not a new revelation. But I’ve drilled down into a previously untapped vein of wrongness. My fingers tighten where they’re still on his chest, tugging the fabric of his sheer shirt, pulling him closer, justpulling.
The music rises, and the lyrics roll,Move with me, move—move with me, move—
The beat drops. A cry goes up in the fall and bodies thrash harder on the dance floor.
My lips part and I’m sucking in his exhales, my eyes wide and unblinking on his.
It’s the pixie magic. The slightly off-kilter sway of being in a club. It’s the stress of this semester and the impending threat ofgraduation and all the hatred I let have space in my body finally breaking me.
I hold Elethior’s gaze, giving my grip on his shirt one firm tug, before I let go and step past him.
This time, he allows it.
I cut around the remaining tables and push onto the dance floor, wiggling between people who are lost in the music and lights and effervescence of the night. We’re all free here, equalized in the fantasy of escape, and my emotions crank to only simple extremes.
