“There are lots of things I can teach you—”
“What? You don’t knock when you enter a house you’ve never been in before?”
Two steps into her kitchen and Cal was already amused. He wanted to smile but didn’t. And no, he hadn’t knocked, because tonight he planned on making himself at home.
First, she gave him her backside, then her profile while busying herself with a cluster of red grapes she’d pulled from the fridge — arranging them in a glass bowl. Cal had a pretty good idea why she avoided his eyes, but he had no trouble taking in the view. She looked the same as when he’d seen her hours before:
Red dress, tanned legs, caramel-colored hair cascading across her backside, brown eyes still pretending not to notice him. Still … she pitched herself a certain way, angling her body toward his — and tells often spoke louder than words.
“Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?” she teased when he gave no reply.
But Cal always had answers. He just chose his words carefully. And Calvin Warner Prescott did have manners. If his mother had taught him anything ... it was manners.
“You lowered the garage door?”
“Yes.”
“But you left the light on,” she said after opening the door leading to the garage anyway.
He had shut the automatic one. He wasn’t a liar. Nor had he driven all the way across town to be doubted … or checked up on. He didn’t play fucking games. “Didn’t you hear it close?”
“Do you always drive that thing?” she asked instead, referring to the roadster now parked in her two-car garage, the space otherwise full of art supplies, empty frames, boxes.
“When she runs.”
Flicking the light off, she closed the door and faced him, head-on, a hand on her hip, a wide smile on her face. “Your car has a sex?”
“Yes.”
Inches apart, they stared at one another, both grinning, a lush hue brightening her cheeks. Making the few seconds suddenly feel like days. But she broke gaze first, heading back to the boomerang-decorated countertop where she proceeded to make a drink.
A precise number of ice cubes, alcohol poured without a shot glass, and a few splashes of orange juice were all added to an iced tea glass — a ritual she could probably perform in her sleep. Or perhaps the motions were a diversion, allowing her the pretext of keeping the evening superficial.
Or maybe she was nervous.
Cal smirked, stepped closer to the Formica, and reached a hand into the bowl, breaking off several grapes. Without asking. Because, as he’d mused to himself earlier: tonight, he planned on making himself at home.
He would take his time.
Not rush.
The best was yet to come.
Starting with her scent...
Lemon zest, a flower that bloomed in spring, and sex. Maybe she’d been touching hers—
“What year is it?” Her question broke into his thoughts, her brown eyes studying what he hoped was confidence plastered across his chiseled face. “Your car?”
“A ’32.”
“You’re not worried your board will get stolen … hanging out of the back like that?”
“You worry about too many things.” His eyes drifted from her girly, motherly, sensual gaze — a trifecta — to the glass in her palm.
“Do you want a drink, Cal?” She dipped the tip of a finger into her freshly made one.
“No.” He leaned against the counter, crossed his ankles, and popped a couple more grapes into his mouth.
“You don’t drink?”
“I don’t want a drink tonight.”
“What about water?” She retrieved a glass from the cabinet anyway. “You might get thirsty.”
“You haven’t changed your clothes.”
Grinning, she fingered the top two buttons of her red dress. “No, I’ve been working.”
“Still?” He glanced at the clock on the wall.
“Yes, still.” The maternal tone he’d heard many times in the classroom made itself known, but her eyes twinkled less like a mother’s and more like those of a girl in line for a Ferris wheel. “Do you have a job?”
Cal surveyed more of the modest house — the staircase, the adjoining living area with its open windows and their curtains blowing in the wind — then he pinned his gaze on her again. “Yes.”
She cleared her throat, then offered him the glass of water, but Cal refused. “Well … what do you do?”
“I work on cars, old cars, antiques.”
“Really?” Her hips swayed, the gentle motion like a sudden breeze over the ocean — something one felt but might not bother to notice. Cal noticed. “Like the one in my garage?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t seem like the type.” She smirked, her cheeks still appearing flushed. “You don’t seem like the type of guy who likes to get his hands dirty.”
“Mmm, you don’t know me, Ms. Ryan. There are lots of things I can teach you—”
Her laughter interrupted what he thought had been a cunning attempt at acting like a grown-up. “You think you’re going to teach me things?”
“Yes,” he assured her once the laughter died down. Because no one teased him. No one. Except for perhaps Michelle, his cousin — and she didn’t count.
“There’s more to it than knowing where it goes.”
“I know.” Cal stepped closer, then ran an index finger down her arm.
“You’re so cocky.”
“You’re so cocky.”
“I’m not cocky.”
“Why did you even pick me, then?” He stood tall, straight as his surfboard. Their eyes locked. “Is this your thing? Selecting young men in your class to fuck?”
She coughed.
“Don’t tell me you’re not cocky.”
“I’m not cocky.” She mirrored his stance, not bending or backing down. “And I don’t prey on my students. I’ve never invited a student here before.” Her voice didn’t match her body language, though. “I’ve never done anything like this.”
“What exactly are we doing?” His palms met the counter, one, then the other, boxing her in at the waist. He glanced up.
“I thought you didn’t need a teacher.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Your peers haven’t been teaching you anything?”
“I learn on my own.”
“Oh.” She laughed.
Tilting his face toward the floor, Cal grinned and shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.” Her chest rose and fell as he made her wait an eternity for an explanation.
“I watch. I listen,” he finally said, each word tumbling out with the skill and intention of a much older man. “I learn what a girl likes and doesn’t. I’m very perceptive.”
“Well,” she began after slinking beneath his bicep, “I’m not a girl.” Once several feet away, she peered over her shoulder. That same fucking smirk lit her beautiful face. “I’m a woman.”
Cal folded his arms across his chest, relaxing against the counter she’d vacated. But he didn’t smile or give anything away.
“You don’t intimidate me, you know.” Her ass met the edge of the breakfast table. “With that arrogant posture”—she rattled the ice in her glass—“those green eyes … with that voice and your choice of words.”
“Then why?”
“Why what?”
“Why me, then?” Puffing up his chest, he glanced around the room. “If this isn’t your thing? Boy chasing.”
“Go to hell, Cal.”
There wasn’t a piece of the floor he didn’t own as he stalked toward her now. His nostrils practically flaring. His brow crinkled.
“Why me, then, Professor?” he asked the moment he reached her.
“Don’t call me that.”
“I’ll call you what I like.” Barefoot, she was maybe five or six inches shorter than his six-foot stature. And he liked the way her head tilted back when she looked up at him. “We’re not in the classroom.”
For a moment, neither of them moved. Or blinked. Only their lungs laboring to breathe. Their hearts beating erratically.
“Where’s the painting?” Cal asked as he wiped perspiration from his forehead using a wrist.
But she made no reply.
The two of them only continued peering at one another, Cal thinking of the note she’d slipped him earlier in the day, at the end of class. Hiding precise instructions, her address, and the following invitation beneath another paper she’d distributed to all the students.
I have a piece of art I want you to see. It hangs on a wall in my home.
Cal began to wonder if there was an actual painting.
There were paintings, of course.
She was an art history teacher, an enthusiast, a misplaced dreamer. There were lots of paintings and drawings and sketches in her charming house stationed near the ocean in Santa Cruz. Covering the walls, lining the staircase, canvases on shelves. But he also noticed, by her prior inflection and still-flushed complexion — by the way she’d been eyeing him for the past several weeks — that what she’d invited him to her home to see was far more than a painting.
The professor swallowed — not her vodka with the bits of ice and the splash of juice, but saliva. And when it passed her throat, Cal noticed that too.
“Where is it?” he repeated, his throat thick with something he couldn’t name. Nor did he care to.
“In my room.”
“Show me.”
“No.”
“You expected a different kind of college boy?” Cal began to play with the skirt of her dress, dancing the hem toward her thighs.
“Yes,” she choked out.
“I’m not like other guys.” The tips of his fingers met her supple skin, then his eyes met hers. His mouth went dry. “You’re not wearing any underwear…”
She pushed his hands away, and the material fell. Cal stepped back, eyes wide. But he quickly gained control of himself.
“Then why?” His Zen-like voice went up an octave. “Why did you ask me here? To show me an actual painting?”
“Yes,” she replied, and her eyes glossed.
Now, Cal could no longer deny what she’d chosen to risk. For this moment. This fleeting piece of symmetry. Raindrops on skin. One second, refreshing, cool, necessary. The next, gone and forgotten.
His mind wandered to the start of the semester, recalling the first few times he’d ever seen her face. Ms. Ryan loved to show her students how contrast enhanced art, but perhaps in life, coloring outside the lines bothered her. The last several weeks, he’d sensed not only her interest in him, but other things as well. Contradictions.
“Look at the way she uses—”
Cal interrupted her lesson on Frida Kahlo, his third class with Professor Ryan. The first time he’d been—
“You’re late, Mr. Prescott.”
“Cal.”
“Cal,” she repeated, mostly to herself, then she quickly stuffed her stare aside with her smile. He loved the way his first name sounded on her lips. “It’s Mr. Prescott in my class. Don’t be tardy again.”
But he was never late. Today, it had been a test, to see how she would react.
“Haven’t you read my syllabus?” she continued while fumbling for something on her desk.
Cal found a seat.
“Turn to page fifty-four, please,” she instructed the class, walking to the middle of the room, stopping at Cal’s desk. As she handed him a copy of the syllabus, her fingers brushed his thumb, lingering a beat or two. But her eyes still avoided his, bouncing around his hands, his arms, his skin.
“What page did you say, Professor Ryan?” someone asked.
Cal’s gaze climbed to her other hand. A palm rested over her chest, its fingers massaging the material there.
She cleared her throat. “What?”
“The page,” Cal replied, sure to flash a grin as their eyes met for a brief moment.
“Right.” She strode to the front of the room, confidence in her hips, sass in her step.
“Your eyes…” Her soft voice infiltrated his imagination, bringing him back to the warmth of the kitchen, those two words sounding like an affirmation. A hymn. The reason she’d asked him here.
“What color green is that anyway?” She smiled, dropping her gaze.
“And your mouth,” she continued after a parched pause, looking at his lips. “And because... Because you saw me.”
Then she looked away.
But it was too late.
Because Cal did see her.
What he’d seen in the classroom was the way he saw her now: bare, vulnerable, beautiful — far more than a professor of art history.
The reflection he’d witnessed in her eyes frightened him.
But he wouldn’t lose control.
Or drop his guard.
“Maybe this is a mistake,” she uttered before he could formulate words.
Draping a palm over his mouth, Cal went toward the living area, closer to the open windows and lace curtains. The temperature felt cooler in this room, but the California wind couldn’t stop the prickling he felt on the back of his neck, the heat rising in his veins.
“Why are you taking my class?”
Cal barely registered her question; his mind remained fixated on her previous statement. “Maybe this is a mistake.” His thoughts falling gently over the word mistake like a pebble skipping across the surface of a lake, skipping and skipping until it sank.
This was no mistake.
Nothing in life was a mistake.
Life meant choices.
Cold, hard choices.
Sure, he might be young by her standards, but he’d at least learned that.
Standing in her home, the cool breeze drifting across his damp skin, his eyes finding and cataloging every part of her beautiful body — Cal knew this was no mistake.
Nothing about this woman was a mistake.
Nothing she said or did seemed trivial or terribly whimsical. Her teaching style had shown him that. Stories she sometimes shared with the class, an apprehension she exhibited, her way with words. No, she’d thought and thought this over … long before she’d ever slipped him the invitation.
Cal had too.
He’d gone over scenarios, possible outcomes, consequences. Everything in life eventually met with consequence. He’d thought all afternoon about what it might mean, what it would entail.
His decision hadn’t been ruled by his ego or by his cock. Well, maybe a little by his cock. Because now, even though the word mistake sounded between his ears — a humming like that of being underwater in the ocean — his focus shifted to the discovery he’d made earlier: his art history professor wasn’t wearing underwear.
There had been no mistake in her invitation. No mistake when she’d removed her panties.
The mistake, as she’d called it, was no mistake.
There was simply doing or not doing.
There was only now.
And right now he needed to put his hands on her body.
He needed to inch her dress up her legs.
He needed to make her feel all of this strange fucking strangling need.
And he needed her to know without a doubt whatever this was or would be — it was no fucking mistake.