“Are you still good to release our work for free after we graduate?” I try not to let my own desire mar the question. “I’m not sure we should encourage people to detach conjurers from items, but we can cherry-pick what we share—if that’s still something you want?”
Thio draws a circle on my lower back, his smile soft. “Yeah. That could do a lot of good.”
“You wouldn’t want to patent your research and take it towhatever enemy company you go to? It could be an attractive bonus for them.”
“I won’t need anything to sweeten the deal with a rival company. The mere fact of me being a Tourael will be enough. Plus, I don’t think we’ll get very far in my project, inherproject, not enough to patent anything. Whatever we do end up presenting will be mostlyyourproject, and something tells me you wouldn’t like me to hand your project over to a Tourael competitor, no matter how much it’d piss off my family.”
His eyes sparkle, but the reality is sinking in slowly, what the enormity of his project means: it will be me sharing credit for my project with him at the end of the semester, unless we make massive leaps in his project. I hope we don’t; it’s way too dangerous.
But the measuring cup theory was his idea. At this point, my projectislargely his project, too.
Which should, hopefully, appease Davyeras and our advisors.
I’ll still get to release it for free like I wanted. Nothing about my planned future is changing. And yet, possessiveness churns in my stomach, and I shift restlessly on his lap.
“Yeah. Let’s not give it to any big corporations,” I manage.
“It’s bad enough you have to share it with me at all.” He finishes the part I don’t say aloud.
My jaw bobbles open, but he pushes it shut with his knuckle.
“I get it,” he says. “I do. Hell, I’ve been dragging my feet telling you about my project because I don’t want to share it. The fact that yours might come to something, and mine will probably be a dead end, but I’ll get credit for yours? I’d be livid at me, too.” He inhales sharply, his eyelids pulsing. “You have a lot of very valid reasons to hate me.”
I do. Even more now.
He’s only in this grant, in this program, because of his family, not because hewantsany of it. Weeks ago, that would’ve been enough to have me screaming at him until my throat bled.
But now?
My lips press to Thio’s forehead.
I hold there, second-guessing this reaction.
He exhales. With the warm gush of his breath comes a susurrating whimper.
I kiss his temple. His eyelids, tissue-thin skin. His cheekbones, his jaw; getting hungrier, frantic.
His whimper blasts open in a greedy snarl.
He catches my mouth and our kiss is an attack, bodies rocking in the chair, hands in hair and a bomb goes off, emotional detonation.
We fucked after my dad brought up all my stuff and now we’re barreling toward another go-around because of Thio’s shit, and this was supposed to be mature and healthy, wasn’t it? We laidboundaries.
I peel back, panting, my hand on his neck this time so I can push him away. “Your rule,” I gasp out. “In the lab. Can’t.”
Draw a line. See it there? We can’t cross it.
I can be rational. I can be mature. Ihatemyself for it, but I can be, Ihaveto be—
Why do I want him so much? This level of need shouldn’t be possible. It’s eating up my insides in the same napalm-laced firestorm he always used to trigger in anger, and there’s nothing too different about the consumption of these flames, except Iwantthem so badly now, and that wanting is fuel, too.
Thio’s breath shudders and his gaze is on my swollen lips. “Yeah. I—you’re right.”
“Be easier to believe if you’d stop looking at my mouth.”
His eyes zip up to mine and he smiles. “It’s a nice mouth.”
I’m still on his lap, his arms around me. It hits me, what this is. Why I keep shying away from moments like this.
