There’s about four feet between us and I feel every bit of it broken down into inches, centimeters, millimeters, atoms.
Elethior wings up an eyebrow and holds his hands in surrender.
“We need to talk,” I say.
“I agree.”
“This—this could be messy.”
“Yes.”
I glare at him. “Really?Thisis how we come to nonconfrontational understanding in our lab partnership? Our first check-in with Davyeras and our advisors is this week. What are we gonna tell them? ‘Hey, turns out the secret to rectifying interdepartmental differences is horniness.’”
Elethior’s grin widens.
I scratch my hands through my hair in agitation, my coat still on, the heat of the apartment making me too warm, butfuckif I’m going to be standing here in a crop top with him yet.
“Is that what you wanted to talk about?” he asks. “Our check-in meeting?”
“Yes. No. Kind of? It’s a factor.” Gods, I can’t swallow, saliva filling my mouth. “We should, uh, come up with some ground rules. Addendums to our truce.”
Elethior sticks his thumbs in his pockets. “What ground rules?” He’s talking cautiously. Scientific, almost.
Makes this easier.
We’re lab partners, adding a new dynamic to what is, at its core, a professional arrangement.
“We don’t let it interfere with our projects,” I say. “They take precedence.”
“Agreed.”
“If either of us decides we want to stop, we stop, no questions, amicably. We’ll be mature about this.”
Elethior’s eyes light up, and I expect him to go,Canyoube mature? About anything?
But he says, “Agreed. Can I add one?”
I grunt.
“Not in the lab. We both have full apartments off campus. We don’t need to screw around at school.”
I’m hit with the image of Elethior pressed up against me while I stand at the whiteboard.
It’s not a bad image.
At all.
“Agreed. Not at school. Nope.”
His smirk returns. Crawls back across his face like it never left.
He eats up some of the distance between us, stepping a foot closer.
I don’t snap at him to stay back.
“What else?” he asks.
“Um—” My mind goes to mist which is quite a feat in and of itself. It’s usuallyso loud in here.“What else what?”
