Chapter Twenty-Eight
Arthur pulled the condom off his softening cock and marveled at the woman in the bed before him.
She was all soft edges, swells, and curves, like a goddess in a painting.
Her still-damp auburn hair fanned behind her on the pillow, and she had a sleepy, satisfied look on her face that he had given her. Fuck.
He hated to leave her, even for a second, but they both needed something to eat. It had been so long since they ate leftovers at the campsite that morning. He filled a glass with water and then looked for something that wouldn’t make too much of a mess, deciding on a bag of grapes.
When he returned to the bedroom, Maggie half opened her eyes. “I see you’ve gone foraging.”
“You need to eat.” He arranged the grapes and water on her nightstand, gently pushing a stack of books to the side. “But I’m not very interested in getting out of this bed.”
She opened her eyes completely, and her gaze turned sharp with lust. “Me neither.”
He slid alongside Maggie beneath her thin quilt, and she tucked herself in next to him, resting her head on his chest as he leaned back against the stacked pillows.
For a moment, he thought they might fall asleep like this, even though it was still the afternoon, based on the light coming through Maggie’s windows.
They lay in silence, Maggie lazily eating one and then two grapes, but Arthur found he wasn’t hungry.
He kept being sidetracked by Maggie. Neither of them had bothered putting clothes back on, and it was very distracting—the brush of Maggie’s thigh against his hip, her breasts pressed into his torso as she leaned over him to grab another pillow, the lavender scent of her soap mingling with the smell of their bodies.
A thought kept coming to Arthur that he couldn’t shake, but it wasn’t one he should be having.
Not now. Not when he knew that Maggie was terrified of their relationship turning into something more.
But he couldn’t believe how comfortable this was.
How easy. Even the friction between them, their disagreements, their jabs, were like a well-worn sweater.
And he didn’t know what that would mean if Maggie decided to run from it like she had on Beltane.
After a while, Maggie said in a small, quiet voice, “We should talk about the rules.”
“Rules?” Arthur asked, his stomach sinking slightly. She rested her head on his chest and turned to look up at him, her dark brown eyes impossibly large.
She hesitated, biting her lip. “You are still my colleague,” she said. “My office mate! Not to mention, there are a lot of people counting on us…on you, to remove the pall. Things need to stay professional.”
“Of course,” he said, a little relieved.
He knew how Maggie’s methodical mind worked.
All Diadhan linguists had a streak of wanting to make the unquantifiable quantified, the unknowable known, and Maggie was no different.
Alchemists had the same predisposition, but even Arthur knew there were some things in this world that still defied logic.
“We’ve been nothing but professional so far,” he added.
She snorted. “I’m serious,” she pleaded.
“Okay, okay. Tell me your rules.”
“I don’t date other professors,” she began, and he cocked an eyebrow. “Before you say ‘we’re not dating’ ”—even through his uncertainty he smiled because she had read him like a book—“let me just add that I don’t sleep with other professors either.”
“Oh, so you’re a rebel. Already breaking your own rules.”
“Technically, neither of us are teaching classes right now.”
“Nothing like succeeding on a technicality,” he teased. If this was how she needed to justify it to herself, Arthur would let her. He didn’t mind. At least that was what he kept telling himself.
But Arthur’s gut twisted when she continued. “That means this has to be over when classes start again.” She said it so firmly, like there was no room to discuss it. No chance to change her mind.
Even Arthur had to admit that dating Maggie outside of this summer would be complicated.
He understood where she was coming from, he did, but he hated the idea of ending whatever was sparking between them before it had a chance to catch fire.
Seven more weeks—that’s how long he would have to convince her that whatever this was, it was worth breaking her rules for.
Arthur’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, and his jaw tensed for the first time since she’d told him about Evan at the campsite. She looked at him expectantly, but he couldn’t make himself say yes out loud, so he just nodded. “What else?” he managed to ask.
“We can’t let this distract us from dissipating the pall.
” That, at least, he agreed with. As much as he hated the idea of eventually leaving this bed and Maggie’s apartment, he was itching to get back into the lab to start the gloaming creeper decoction.
After all, their idea that the plant could amplify their spellwork and cancel out the confluence was just a theory. What if it didn’t work?
Maggie went on. “And we can’t tell anyone.”
He tilted his head and smirked at her. “You’re telling me you didn’t already text Dahlia when I was in the kitchen?”
Her face turned red, her skin hot against his chest. “Are you snooping on my phone?”
He chuckled. “You’re just predictable, Maggie.”
She pretended to be shocked, dropping her perfect lips in a round O. “That might be the most offensive thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Give me a few weeks,” he said. “I can think of a few particularly filthy things I’d like to say to you that some might call offensive.”
His words had the desired effect. Her narrowed eyes softened with lust, and she leaned up to kiss him.
The kiss was slow and smooth as they grew more acquainted with the topography of each other’s lips, with the way they liked to move together.
He knew he would never tire of her sweet taste on his mouth or her skin against his.
When she finally broke the kiss, she leaned back on his chest, and he held her close to him. “Fine. I did tell Dahlia. But she doesn’t count.”
“Then I’ll tell Rory and we’ll be even.” He sighed. “So I get you for seven weeks?”
“Seven weeks,” she said, her gaze distant as she began tracing looping whorls on his stomach with her finger, sending a pleasurable chill through him that was much better than the worry that had returned with a force.
—
Arthur didn’t leave Maggie’s apartment until the next morning.
It had taken them both significant willpower to admit that Arthur needed to return to the bungalow in Atlantia to change his clothes and then return to campus so they could meet up again at their reserved lab space, but eventually they had pulled themselves apart.
Arthur had left Maggie with a long, languid kiss at her front door.
The roads to Atlantia were winding, crisscrossing over the marshlands and estuaries that marked this part of the coast, and he had plenty of time to think.
Images of their night in the Wilds, of the day they had spent locked in Maggie’s apartment, struck him again and again, and his cock hardened as he thought of his tongue inside her, of the way she had worked him with her hands and mouth.
He needed to get this out of his system, or it was going to be impossible to work together side by side in the quiet, empty lab.
The bungalow was, thank the gods below, empty.
His father and Rory were both in the field today and had gotten early starts, leaving the remnants of their hurried breakfast on the table.
Arthur would clean it up before he went back to Hawthorn, but first he walked into his bedroom and lay on the bed.
He slid his hands beneath the waistband of his pants and began stroking himself, thinking of the way Maggie had opened for him, had come for him, had made him lose himself completely with her touch, her smell, her taste.
It was seconds before he was coming. He leaned back, cursing, staring up at the same ceiling he’d stared at many times after doing this exact same thing on sticky, hot summer nights.
Seven weeks. Seven. It was going to go too fast; he knew that without a doubt.
Time was speeding past, and he would do what he could to spend every minute of it with Maggie, but it would never be enough.
He had lied to Maggie in the Wilds. She had asked him if he was afraid of the force of what he felt between them and he had said no, but the truth was that it terrified him.
Not how fast and how hard he was falling, but how uncertain he was that she would ever get to the point of letting this turn into something real.
He would have to be satisfied with seven weeks.
Or he would have to try to change her mind.
Arthur showered and changed, hesitating only a moment before throwing a backpack with spare clothes into the back seat of his car.
There was nothing wrong with being prepared and avoiding another trek out to Atlantia when he didn’t need to.
Before he left, he cleaned up his brother and father’s breakfast mess and left a good-luck note for Simon.
He had only a couple more practices before his big, final baseball game.
Arthur wondered idly if Maggie would think it was weird if he invited her to go with him to a five-year-old’s baseball game.
They had a seven-week expiration date…should they go to family functions together?
Probably not, but Arthur had no idea what he was doing.
Not with any of it. Unfortunately, the drive back to Galloway gave him plenty of time to think.