“I need you to be you.”
“Stop staring at my ass and answer my question.” She grinned, faced him, then took a sip of her freshly made diversion. “Why are you taking my class?”
Cal crossed the room, leaned against the counter, and folded his arms across his chest. Leaving thoughts of the word mistake behind but unable to ignore the change in temperature. The window in the kitchen was still closed, withholding the cooler breeze, the heat burning up what remained of his even temper. His manners.
“Why does anyone take your class?” He glared at her. “Why are you asking me so many fucking questions?"
“I’m not.” She eyeballed him, her head tilting up a little — the way he preferred. “And I’m not asking anyone. I’m asking you. You don’t seem interested—”
“I’m interested.”
“In art?”
“Not the way you are.”
“Then why take the class?”
“I like history.” Stepping closer, he placed his hands on her waist and met her eyes. “I study people.” His fingers slid toward her navel, causing the ice in her glass to rattle. Cal set the drink on the counter, then he began to remove her belt.
“Lift your dress,” he whispered, lips near her ear. “I want to see you.”
Cal kissed her cheeks tenderly and repeatedly, leaving imprints across her jaw and neck, nose and eyelids as she bunched the material near her waist. Sounds of sweet cries filled the room as he slid the belt back and forth, between her legs, over bare skin, their bodies beginning to move in an exquisite rhythm.
Observing her reactions felt … odd.
The way her back arched and chest rose, how her palms gripped the countertop, her eyes opening and closing. Strange ... because she wasn’t merely making him hard, she caused him to feel things he refused to articulate.
Emotional things. Shit he’d come to despise and disdain.
As though she sensed his thoughts, felt what he feared, her eyes popped open. She stopped riding the belt. The hem of the dress fell past her knees. She sucked in a breath.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t do this.”
Cal inched back, his stomach beginning to churn, and pushed several fingers through his blond hair.
“I’ve waited my whole life to get to this point.” She turned and gestured. “This is my life. My career.”
Cal took a couple more steps. However, he wasn’t tripping over his goddamn feet. He found his bearings, swallowed his own misgivings, and readied himself to speak some fucking bullshit — despite knowing there might not be any right words to say.
“We’ve already done enough.” His eyes were flat. His throat tight. “You calculated the risk before writing that note.”
“You’ll say whatever you want now. To get laid. Men talk. And you’re a kid. Oh my God.” She started to shake. “You’ll brag to all your friends.”
“Don’t call me a kid. I’m mature enough to—”
“To what?” She placed a hand on her hip, looking more like his professor, less an equal. “At twenty-two?”
“I’m twenty-one.”
“God, that’s even better. Good job, Jocelyn,” she said aloud to herself. “Great decision-making.” She peered at Cal. “You think you’re mature enough, huh? That’s the cocky in you. You think you can handle anything, right?”
“I can handle you. And don’t pretend you haven’t studied my every move and thought for ages about—”
“God, you are cocky.”
“You’ve thought about this,” he said, pointing a finger. “Now, you have to trust me.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t have to trust you.”
“When was the last time—?”
“Since what?” she snapped.
“That’s not what I was implying.”
“Oh, no?”
“No.” He took her hand and started to lead her away from the sweltering kitchen. “Come...” He stepped forward, but she stopped in her tracks. “Not upstairs.”
Cal brought her to the couch. For being older, and supposedly wiser, she appeared to be ignoring his own risk — the one swimming through his eyes, his throat, the one lodged in his heart.
Here he was…
Twenty-one, perched on a threshold of possibilities, the fresh Santa Cruz winds blowing through the open windows, the breeze hitting his face like a welcome gust when he was over his surfboard … and he felt this nagging familiar thing.
Like something was missing.
The same indescribable sensation he’d chased since he’d been a small child. More so as a teenager. He wouldn’t be happy until he caught the wave and rode it.
But then, he would need to catch another and another and another…
Being here reminded him he lacked what he needed. Because Jocelyn felt it too. Its absence pulsed between them like a living, breathing entity.
Cal had named this feeling. One of the few he would label and identify:
The Lonely.
Tonight, it would be silenced.
Placing her on the sofa, he dropped to his knees on the floor and rested his head in her lap. They didn’t speak for several minutes. Cal feasted on the sounds of their breath while securing his arms around her waist.
“I want you,” he finally said, turning his head side to side against her thighs, waiting for her touch to come. When her warm hands met his hair, he sighed.
“When do you graduate?” she asked, and Cal looked up, loving the sudden appearance of her beautiful smile, knowing his professor was well aware he’d begun his senior year. “You’re not at all what I thought you would be.”
“I’m what you need me to be.”
“I need you to be you.” Her brown eyes grew mysteriously darker, piercing him with something he couldn’t name — the same unique sensation he’d experienced twice earlier. Some childish emotion. “Just as you are, Cal. Don’t be someone else.”
First, he looked away. Then, he stood. He wanted to pace but didn’t.
Those were new words. Be you. Just as you are. And they would teach him far more than anything he might learn in the classroom.
She reached for his hand. “Sit down, Prescott.”
“I want to kiss you.” Cal picked up a few wisps of her hair and rubbed them between his fingers.
“You have.”
“No.” His eyes ticked back and forth like the swinging weight of an old clock. “I want to kiss your lips.” He stared at them. “These.” His index finger slid over the lush contours of her mouth before dipping into the V. “Today isn’t the first time I’ve thought about kissing you.”
“Is that all you’ve thought about?”
“No,” he said with a shake of his head.
Jocelyn moved to her knees, rising up until they were face-to-face, eye to eye. She cupped his jaw, brushed knuckles along his cheek, and stared at him.
Cal swallowed, trying to maintain eye contact. But he suddenly felt shy, unearthed, exposed. Like he’d never done this before.
He knew what it was like to kiss a girl. To touch a girl. To be with a girl. But Jocelyn had been right: she wasn’t a girl; she was a woman.
All ten of her fingers pushed through his hair, over his forehead, tracing his eyelids, his lips while Cal’s hands remained near his thighs, fingers twitching. Deep in concentration, he closed his eyes, his breathing becoming erratic as one singular thought paraded through his mind:
This kiss would erase all others.
Every part of his body told him so. Even his toes tingled as she began to nuzzle her nose to his, her cheeks to his cheeks, her lips crossing nearly every inch of his face.
Then their mouths met like a slow dance.
And Cal fucking hated slow dancing — any dancing.
Jocelyn made it exquisite.
Coming together, then parting, tasting a little, then breaking for air. The moment her tongue slipped deeper inside his mouth, he caught fire. His hands skirted up her backside, grabbing at her hair, pulling and lunging.
He danced.
Her breasts heaved against his chest. His pants became the most uncomfortable intrusion. His tongue had things to say his mouth couldn’t accomplish with words.
“How do I know you’ll keep our secret?” she whispered against his lips while pinching the skin on the back of his neck. Their foreheads touched.
“You don’t, Jocelyn,” he said with the same quiet, passionate inflection. It was the first time he’d said her name — her first name — aloud. “And I don’t talk about my conquests.”
“Oh, is that what this is?” she teased, inching from his grasp. “A conquest?”
“Yes.” Cal thought only of tasting her lips again and again and again, wanting to bury his tongue inside the warmth of her mouth and never come out. To tell her all the things he’d been taught to hold back.
“Did you bring protection?”
Cal straightened his spine and scrubbed a few knuckles against his cheek. “Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. They’re in my pocket.”
“Let me see.”
“Don’t you believe anything I say? Fuck… I shut the garage door. I don’t kiss and tell. I have condoms.”
“I should believe a twenty-one-year-old?”
“Yeah, you should.”
“Who wants to get laid? I know fifty-year-old men who don’t give a damn about being careful.”
“Then you should have your own fucking condoms.” He reached into the pocket of his khaki pants, pulled out a string of three, and put them on the coffee table.
Jocelyn glanced down and smirked.
“What?”
“You have high hopes.” Her eyebrows arched, and her damn trifecta of a smile increased in size and intensity. “You plan on coming that many times?”
Then...
Cal smiled.
In fact, he felt a rather smug satisfaction spread through his entire fucking body, certain he could give her something other men — older men — couldn’t.
But at twenty-one and cocky, Cal Prescott wasn’t fully conscious of everything he could give Jocelyn Ryan. It was far more than the erection threatening to demolish his zipper.
“I take it these fifty-year-old men have not satisfied—”
Her palm muffled the remaining sarcastic words he longed to spit out. A second later, she removed it, then ran a finger over the edges of his mouth. “Your lips tasted the way I imagined.”
“Kiss them again, Joc.”
Instead, she scooted away and began to open the tiny black buttons of her red dress. The moment the garment slinked off her shoulders and down her spine, Cal looked up and met Jocelyn’s eyes. He swallowed, glanced at her bra, at the beating of her heart.
The thumping filled his ears, taking over his entire person.
He’d never conceived he would want so much of her, so urgently. He couldn’t breathe. Never had he reacted like this with anyone. He’d always been able to breathe, maintain his composure, keep his emotions in check. Even the first fucking time he’d sunk himself inside a girl’s pussy, he’d been able to fucking breathe — to move, take charge, lead.
Joc unclasped her bra.
Cal swallowed. Actually held his breath.
He wasn’t a virgin.
But he felt like one.
Here.
Now.
With Jocelyn Ryan on the couch in the middle of her living room, surrounded by paintings and drawings and risk, wind blowing, Cal inhaling the breeze and lemon zest and marigolds. The sex.
“Taste me.” She fell against the cushions, and he followed, his lips landing centimeters from her mouth. “No.” She placed a palm lower. “Taste me here, Cal.” The fingers of her other hand combed through his hair. “You have pleasured a girl?”
Cal smiled, then planted his mouth on hers anyway, kissing her for what felt like hours, eventually making his way down the front of her body, giving attention to her nipples and breasts. Pausing at her belly button, his head popped up, his eyebrows rose. “I thought you said you weren’t a girl.”
“I’m not a girl. I’m a flower.”
He cleared his throat, stifling a laugh.
“You said you listen… Well, I’m going to teach you.” She scooted lower.
“I’ve eaten girls out.”
“Mmm…” She grinned, wrinkling her nose. “Don’t say it like that.” She tugged on his hair. “And you haven’t pleasured me.”
Cal beheld Jocelyn’s face perfectly through the space between her knees.
“Pretend my pussy is a flower.”
“W-what?” he said, failing to avoid the laughter lacing his tone this time. “What … is the painting upstairs, a fucking Georgia O’Keeffe?”
“Stop,” she teased, nudging him with her knees. “I’m going to teach you things ... about women.” The brown of her eyes lit up like a chocolate sun melting over the horizon. “You said you listen.”
Grinning a mile wide, Cal yanked her closer. “I’m all ears.”
“Not all ears, Cal,” she purred. “You will need your tongue.”