Page 58 of Teach Me Your Ways

“So,” I said, popping a strawberry in my mouth, “on a scale of one to ten, how badly did we just fuck up our professional relationship?”

She nearly choked on her chips, laughing. “Oh, we’re somewhere around a fifteen. Maybe twenty.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” I grinned, offering her a strawberry. “Good thing I never liked following rules anyway.”

“I noticed.” She bit into the fruit, juice running down her chin. Without thinking, I leaned over and licked it off. Her breath hitched at the contact.

“What? I was being helpful.”

“Helpful,” she repeated, shaking her head but smiling. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

I stretched out on the tilted couch, pulling her against my side. She fit perfectly, her head on my chest, one leg thrown over mine. “We could call it a lot of things. Educational. Research. Field work.”

“Field work?” She snorted. “That’s terrible, even for you.”

“Hey, we’re exploring uncharted territory here. Seems like legitimate research to me.”

“Tell me about Guatemala.”

I blinked awake. “The pyramid clean-up?”

She propped herself up on her elbow. “Yeah. What’s it like working out there?”

And that was another reason why she was so perfect. She cared about my work and I could talk about it without having to explain terms or try to dumb it down so she could understand. I knew she loved it and was just as passionate about human history as I was.

“It was intense. We climbed up—hundreds of feet—through vines and roots. I didn’t know half the pyramid was hidden. Turns out there are thousands more just like it, buried in jungle. LIDAR revealed them only recently. You would never believe the structures were even there. It requires a thousand-mile view to get the total picture. They’ve been there the whole time—hiding in plain sight.”

She nodded, eyes bright. “I know. It’s crazy to think about all that history hidden, just waiting—like a warship at the bottom of the ocean.”

I chuckled. “Exactly. Stuff from a thousand years ago. People lived, loved, died there. Then the forest grew back. We’re just cutting vines off now.”

Her hand moved up my chest. “That’s… beautiful.”

I tightened my arm around her, thumb rubbing the curve of her cheek. “It means everything isn’t lost. Sometimes I think we archeologists are just memory-grabbers.”

She shrugged lightly. “I like that. Memory-grabbers.” Her voice was soft, close. “I don’t mind being a voyeur.”

“Come again?” I asked with a laugh.

“Not watching people have sex.” She laughed. “I want to peek into the lives of people that lived before us.”

“Bummer,” I teased. “About not being a voyeur.”

She slapped at my chest. “Perv.”

I grabbed her and rolled her under me. I blindly reached out to pull another condom from the end table.

“I’m not even going to ask why you have condoms strategically placed around your house,” she said.

I grinned down at her, rolling the condom on. “I scatter them around just in case.”

“Just in case what?” she asked, but her voice was already breathless as I settled between her thighs.

“Just in case I got lucky enough to have a beautiful graduate student break my furniture,” I murmured against her throat.

She wrapped her legs around my waist, pulling me closer. “You’re terrible.”

“You love it.” I pushed into her slowly this time, savoring the way her eyes fluttered closed and her lips parted on a soft gasp. “God, Cece. I could do this all night.”