Continuum (The South Beach Connection Trilogy Book 3)

by A. R. Hadley

  But for the time being, he had to settle for a slower seduction — the caverns of her light-brown, almost-green eyes, the sight of her California-tanned legs, and the intoxicating smell of her body.

  Except … nothing about her meant settling.

  "What about water? You might get thirsty." She retrieved a glass from the cabinet anyway. Women could never help themselves. This one was no exception.

  "You haven't changed your clothes."

  She grinned and fingered her neckline. "No, I've been working." The sound of what he hoped was to come filled her voice.

  "Still?"

  "Yes, still.” The maternal tone was present, 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?"

  "Yes." He looked about the house — the kitchen they stood in, the adjoining living area, the staircase — and then he pinned his gaze on her again.

  She cleared her throat, then asked, "Well, what do you do?" as she offered him the glass of water, but Cal refused, so she set it down and replaced her empty palm with her own drink — the vodka and the ice and the splash of juice, almost half of it already gone.

  "I work on cars, old cars, antiques."

  "Really?" Her hips swayed at an ebb against the counter. "Like the one in my garage?"

  "Yes."

  "You didn't seem like the type.” She smirked, then crunched ice between her teeth. “You didn'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 his cunning attempt at being a grown-up.

  It was a great laugh, though, on par with her fabulous smile.

  He’d heard it before in class — the art history class she taught — an elective he could not remember why he’d chosen. He’d heard the laugh but not often, not as often as he would’ve liked to because in hearing it there was a freedom — a perfect, exuberant freedom — and it was wild without being boisterous or annoying. He was moved by the sound of it … the way music affected him … the way he was moved by the sway of her hips.

  Hypnotized, Cal couldn’t peel his eyes from her frame, studying each pore and tic and tell as she leaned against the counter, rubbing her bare feet together, her cleavage peeking out of the top of the V-neck dress, the top two buttons undone — the ones she’d obviously unbuttoned since he’d seen her last. Each significant thing she’d done and said had brought him one step closer to knowing things about her she probably wanted to keep hidden.

  "You think you're going to teach me things?" Sarcasm filled her eyes as her laughter finally trailed off.

  "Yes.” He smirked.

  "There's more to it than just knowing where it goes."

  "I know.” He brushed a single finger down her arm, watching goose pimples pop.

  "You're so cocky."

  "You're so cocky.” He stared her down, holding his ground.

  "I'm not cocky."

  "Why did you even pick me then? Is this your thing?" he asked, pressing her with his eyes. "Do you go around selecting young men in your class to fuck? Don't tell me you're not cocky."

  "I'm not cocky.” She matched his gaze. "And I don't prey on my students. I've never invited a student here before. I've never done anything like this."

  "What exactly are we doing?" He extended an arm on each side of her, hemming her in against the counter.

  "I thought you didn't need a teacher."

  "Maybe I do.” His tone implied emphatically he did not.

  "Your peers haven't been teaching you anything?"

  "I learn on my own."

  "Oh," she said and began to laugh.

  Cal tilted his face down, grinned, and shook his head. "That's not what I mean."

  Placing her index finger under his chin, she lifted it and stared into his eyes, asking for an explanation with her own.

  "I watch. I listen," he began, using each word with the skill and purpose of a much older man. "I learn what a girl likes and doesn't like. I'm very perceptive.”

  She slinked underneath his bicep, escaping his physical hold, and said, "I'm not a girl.” She smirked. "I'm a woman."

  He folded his toned arms across his chest and relaxed against the counter she’d vacated, plastering a devilish smirk across his face, eyes full of a confidence only a man twice his age should’ve possessed.

  "You don't intimidate me, you know.” She leaned against the breakfast table a few feet away. The ice in her glass shook.

  "Then why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why me? If this”—he glanced around—"is not 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.

  “Why me then, Professor?" He occupied her space, stood inches from her face and her smell and her desire.

  "Don't call me that.” Barefoot, she was maybe five or six inches shorter than his six-foot stature, and he liked the way she glared up at him.

  "I can call you what I like.” He used his weight to nudge her backside against the table. “We’re not in the classroom.” He paused. The look in her eyes belied her stubborn stance. "Where’s the painting?"

  They stared into one another’s eyes, making a pact — an unspoken agreement — as Cal recalled the note she’d secretly slipped him in class earlier the same day — discreetly under another paper she’d distributed to all the students. It played over and over in his mind…

  I have a painting 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 sort of misplaced dreamer. There were lots of paintings and drawings and sketches in her charming house stationed along the outskirts of Santa Cruz. He’d noticed plenty of art scattered about the two rooms he could see. Frames lined the staircase. But he also noticed by her inflection and complexion — and by her experienced innocence — that what she’d invited him to her home to see was far more than a painting.

  He didn't want to play games.

  And so, he held her there against the table, pressing his body against hers, silently asking her to submit to their wishes.

  The professor swallowed, not her vodka with the bits of ice and the splash of juice, but she swallowed saliva — only saliva — and the sound it made passing her throat was loud.

  "Where is it?" he repeated, an unexpected gruffness and ambition in his tone.

  "It's in my room."

  "Show me," he whispered.

  "No.” The way she said the word told him everything he needed to know.

  "You expected a different kind of college boy?" He began to play with the skirt of her dress, dancing the material between his fingers, inching it up her thighs.

  "Yes,” she choked out.

  "You're not wearing underwear," he said in a voice of aching discovery, but she pushed his hands off her waist.

  "Then why?" he demanded, stepping away, refusing to let it go. "Why did you ask me here? To show me an actual painting?"

  "Yes.” Now she looked as though she may weep.

  And for the first time, Cal empathized with all she could lose and what she’d already chosen to give up for this moment, this one fleeting moment, and he accepted her hesitation. It mixed with the spirit of a young woman's soul, wanting something the way the others wanted it, but she was barred from having it, asking for it, taking a chance on it.

  He’d seen the dangerous, choking line she walked in the classroom, and each day he knew she wanted to walk it, becoming braver and feeling freer, wanting hands on her that were hungry, his hands, hands that would take her for who she was, hands that wouldn't ask anything of her, hands that wouldn't make societal demands.

  He’d always been perceptive.

  "Your eyes.” Her soft words broke the mounting tension. The
y were an answer to his previous question. The reason. She spoke them like an affirmation. "And your mouth," she continued after a parched pause, looking now at his amorous lips, "and because ... because you saw me."

  But she looked away with that confession, not wanting him to see her right now, he assumed, but it was too late. Because the way he’d seen her in the classroom was the way he saw her now.

  He knew something about her no other person cared to notice: secret things … dreams.

  Cal saw her.

  And as he stood, gazing into her brown eyes — seeing her — he was nearly unable to deny what he saw and felt.

  The things staring back at him almost frightened him.

  But he wouldn’t lose control.

  He wouldn’t drop his guard.

  Taking a few strands of her hair — the color of which looked like rich nuts roasting over a golden fire, dripping with caramel and dark, golden honey — he began to twirl them around his finger.

  "Maybe this is a mistake,” she blurted, and their eyes locked.

  Her honey hair fell from his grasp. Draping a palm over his mouth, Cal went toward the living area. It blended into the dining room. Windows open, curtains blowing. It was cooler now where he stood, 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?" she asked as she strode toward the bottle of vodka, seeming to be intent on prying information from the young man with the tight lips and astute mind, intent on making another drink.

  Cal's thoughts were not on her question, though. They were on her last statement. His mind was falling gently over the word mistake like a pebble skipping across a lake. It skipped and skipped until it sank. And then, as he turned around to face her, watching her pour another drink … he knew it was no mistake.

  Nothing in life was a mistake.

  Life meant choices.

  Cold, hard choices.

  He was young by her standards, sure, but he had learned that. He had at least learned that. And he knew, in that moment, standing in her house, the breeze drifting across his firm, damp body while looking at the backside of her beautiful form — he knew this was no mistake.

  Nothing about this woman was a mistake.

  Nothing she did or said was trivial or terribly whimsical. She had thought and thought and thought this over. That he knew. Of that he was sure.

  Cal thought he was sure, just as he had thought all afternoon about coming to her house, about what it would mean, what it would entail. It was no haphazard decision.

  His choice hadn’t been ruled by his ego or his cock — well, maybe a little by his cock. Because now, as he studied her, his mind shifted radically — although that word mistake still rang in his ears like the faint bell of a butler — as he became solely fixated on the discovery he’d made earlier: she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

  But there was no mistake in the choice she’d made in asking him here. There was no mistake in her removing her underwear.

  The mistake — as she’d called it — was no mistake.

  There was simply doing or not doing.

  There was only now.

  And now, he needed to put his hands on her waist again.

  He needed to inch her dress up her legs.

  He needed to make her feel all of his motherfucking need.

  And he needed her to know without a doubt that whatever this was or would be — it was no fucking mistake.

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  Playlist

  Listen to the songs Annie and Cal shared,

  and more, on Spotify.

  Landslide

  Wanderlust

  Continuum

  Continuum’s Playlist

  “Love is the Thing” Nat King Cole

  “I’ve Got Rhythm” Charlie Parker

  “Glycerine” Bush

  “Everlong (Acoustic)” Foo Fighters.

  “Canon in D” Johann Pachelbel

  “Crash into Me” Dave Matthews Band

  “La Vie En Rose” Louis Armstrong

  “Clarinet Concerto” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  “Never Tear Us Apart” INXS

  “Still Remains” Stone Temple Pilots

  About the Author

  A.R. Hadley writes imperfectly perfect sentences by the light of her iPhone.

  She loves her husband.

  Chocolate.

  Her children.

  And Cary Grant.

  She annoys those darling little children by quoting lines from Back to the Future, but despite her knowledge of eighties and nineties pop culture, she was actually meant to live alongside the Lost Generation after the Great War and write a mediocre novel while drinking absinthe with Hemingway. Instead, find her sipping sweet tea with extra lemons on her porch as she weaves fictional tales of love and angst amid reality.

  www.arhadley.com/