Page 81 of Research with Rivals
I wanted to grant him that, even when we severed the blood magic connecting us.
In the darkness of the woods, I saw him so clearly. His lips skated down my jaw, my neck, and I freed a hand to reach for him, slipping it inside his trousers.
“Evelyn,” he hissed as his hips jerked. “We’re in the woods.”
My hand found his length and stroked him. His hips jolted forward with my movement. “Does that bother you?”
He canted his head in consideration. Then he buried his face in the crook of my neck. “You know, I don’t think it does.”
I continued to stroke him as he nipped and licked his way down my body. With his progress, his hips slipped from me. I reached for him again, but he held me in place.
“I’ve wanted to taste you for so long.” His teeth were at the waistband of my leggings. My hips lifted automatically to help him achieve his goal.
With the first lick of his tongue across my center, my back arched from the forest floor. A desperate moan accompanied the movement. Ambrose’s free hand slid toward my mouth. He paused for a chuckle as he offered it to me. “We’re not that far from the inn, Evelyn. Bite down if you can’t control yourself.”
I sucked two of his fingers into my mouth in an attempt to toy with him as he did me, but at the next stroke of his tongue, I bit down—hard.
He didn’t yelp; instead, his lips curled into a satisfied smile, and he continued his work.
“Better than I imagined,” he said, pausing for a moment as the fingers of his other hand pressed into my center. He pumped them in rhythm with his tongue. Then he feasted.
Flame built within me, and my pulse raced like he chased me again.
But Ambrose caught me. He wanted to find me, no matter where I ran. With the thought, I shattered beneath him.
Desperate for more, I quickly freed him from his trousers. Lined up and ready, a single thrust granted my desire. My hips lifted to meet his, eager for a deeper connection. We moved together, challenge and response, a perfect synchronization to chase our shared pleasure.
My body heated, sensation built, and flames curled forth like a roaring inferno. Ambrose wasn’t far behind. His forehead touched mine, and his eyes flashed gold when he found his release. We collapsed together, sharing panting breaths on the forest floor.
He studied me, scanning my features slowly as if he had something he wanted to say. Then, in the next instant, his face turned playful. “Do you want to bet they have two rooms tonight?”
I huffed out a laugh. “Don’t even think about it.”
He kissed me deeply before pushing backward, straightening himself, and helping me up. “It’s like the law of nature. They will absolutely have two rooms at the inn this time.”
33
Evelyn
As Ambrose predicted, when we greeted the innkeeper, she immediately provided two keys. I smiled as I felt the heat in Ambrose’s attention. He let me lead, and I told her we’d only need one this time and slipped my hand in Ambrose’s. Her brow arched as she glanced again between us. A knowing smile curled her lip as she handed me a key and told me that now she owed the Vesten God a favor. She didn’t look too upset about whatever bet she had lost. And I was unsurprised to hear more of Lord Arctos’s meddling, even now.
I’d never considered myself masochistic, but the way I soaked up every hour cocooned in a bubble of intimacy with Ambrose had me second-guessing. It was as if I had no fear of the future. I didn’t focus on all that might happen next, or on what it could mean for us. I focused only on what existed between us now. In some unspoken agreement, Ambrose did the same.
With the sunrise, our responsibilities returned. We needed to break the blood magic that connected us, and we both seemed confident we knew how. That answer would inevitably lead to the solution to Lord Arctos and Carter’s problem, which would conclude with one of us named Vesten historian.
We would cross that bridge when we got there. In the meantime, our relationship wouldn’t inhibit our research.
Ambrose might be cautious, and I might appear rash. He might know every fact about Vesten history, and I might understand blood magic, but beneath these surface-level differences, we held core similarities. The puzzle pieces had to be put together; neither of us would stop until the final picture made sense.
We left the inn early. With another shift, a final sprint west to Sandrin, Ambrose and I returned to the library. I was the first to reach the Great Room. An outside observer might have thought that we weren’t racing, but they would be wrong. Ambrose and I couldn’tnotcompete.
My favorite study carrel called to me across the room. It had only been a few days, but I immediately inspected my experiment. The rose and morning glory in the window were most certainly growing together.
Usually, the morning glory bloomed bright and big and beautifully, and completely overshadowed the rose. When I’d left, the stems had started to twine together. Part of me had worried this was a new way for the morning glory to strangle the rose. I was happy to see that I’d been wrong. The flowers didn’t simply share space—their stems had intertwined to create a single, sturdier stem. The flowers had both bloomed. The red rose blossom and white morning glory petals were equally tipped toward the sun outside the window.
Anything is possible with blood magic.
If the flowers’ connection was a mirror to mine and Ambrose’s, I shouldn’t be surprised that it had worked so well. I was glad that the Vesten Point said the anchor for their particular magic was no longer available because, in this moment, I knew the flowers were an anchor for mine and Ambrose’s bond, and Ireallydidn’t want to destroy them. Since Lord Arctos and Carter said that path was unavailable to solve their problem, I saw no reason to explore it with ours. Another part of me hoped that breaking the connection with Ambrose wouldn’t disrupt the flowers’ newfound peace.
