Page 21 of Enemies in Earnest

“What kind of research?”

He pulled the covers over our legs with his free arm while he continued to hold me against his side with the other.

“Sorry, Sweet Acacia. Witnessing me geek out on maritime folklore and the history of seaborn travels isn’t first date material. You have to earn the right to get a peek inside my head.”

My brain whizzed at a million miles a second trying to suss out where his passions laid. I needed to know. Wanted desperately to unpeel that layer of Edwin and discover what other things lay buried.

“I believe, in your own words, I showed you mine. Therefore, this better be quite the show, Ms. Ashley.”

He leaned back, putting his hands behind his head, waggling his eyebrows at me.

“And if you want to share, while you’re riding my cock—it’s a hundred percent ready for round two.”

ChapterFifteen

I’d been hard eversince I watched her lick ice cream from her spoon. Now every time she opened her mouth, used her tongue, or played with her lips, the only thing I could think about was cradling her head in my hands while she sucked me dry.

“My mom is from Spain,” she told me, pulling her hair out from behind her and absentmindedly braiding it while she continued. “Pamplona, to be exact. When she was a young girl her mom, my grandmother, worked at the Gran Hotel La Perla, where Hemingway would stay when he was in town. She was fascinated by him. So much so, she studied hard, got good grades, went to Oxford to study the greats. Hemingway among them. She met my dad on a ghost tour around campus. She learned he was from Florida where the great Hemingway had retired to and the rest was history.”

No wonder Acacia was such a rare beauty. She had the most intoxicating combination of genes. Her Catalan mom had a combination of French and Spanish genes, which would be how Acacia would have such arresting eyes and that luscious hair I wanted to rub up against like a kitten. She’d given me a peek into her life, and I wanted to bust down the door and make her a case study. To learn everything that had influenced Acacia in her life.

“That tells me about them. Not about you. And it definitely still doesn’t answer my question about your bar.”

I loved the delight in her laugh. Being the one who got her to throw her head back with genuine entertainment made me feel invincible. I wanted to ensure she laughed like that every single day.

“Patience, young Padawan. I’m getting there.”

Fuck. And she could quoteStar Warsright alongside all her big brained books? Every second she spent in my bed was another stroke of the tattoo gun ensuring I’d never be able to get her out from underneath my skin.

“My parents are both professors. Dad studies bugs, my mom prose. He is a research scientist, she teaches. Being the daughter of theDoctorsAshley set a high standard early on. Naturally, I went to Oxford and followed in their footsteps. Thanks to my mom, I loved Hemingway as much as she did. Maybe even more so. Eventually, I got a professorship at your alma mater.”

Color me surprised.

“Have you ever taught college kids?” she asked me.

“Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”

She huffed and rolled her eyes, her arms crossed beneath her chest, the blanket that had been covering her breasts shifted downward, so it barely covered the tips of her areola. I refused to allow my cock to take ownership of my thoughts. I finally had a peek into the inner workings of Ms. Acacia Ashley, and a little nipple and her perfectly rounded breasts presented for my perusal would not sideline me. But I would absolutely slide my tongue between them later. Round two was just on the horizon.

“Most of them don’t want to be there. Maybe you get one or two that are willing to engage in some form of discourse but nowadays, most of the discussions about Hemingway surround his rampant alcoholism, whether or not he was a womanizer and a cad, and if his male privilege was the only reason for his success.”

That still did not explain why she named her bar Temperance. I had to remind myself Acacia was never one for finding the shortest distance between any two points. Even if my cock throbbed with a host of tawdry thoughts of things I still wanted to do to her.

“Do you still teach?” I asked.

I couldn’t imagine that she did. Her bar was seemingly her whole life. I wouldn’t even know when she’d have time.

“Oh no. My teaching days are long behind me. After all that drama with Mason, I have zero desire to be within ten feet of an academic institution.”

She said his name as if I had any idea who he was. Or what he was to her. I made a mental note to ask my mom in the morning. If anyone would know it was her.

“And when he caught wind I’d moved down here to open abar, you would have thought I’d told him I decided to strip for a living. But he hated my study of Hemingway anyway. Hated that I had such a deep love for, in his words, a plebeian excuse for literary greatness. Coming from a man who worshipped D.H. Lawrence.”

“Sweets, ya lost me.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder as if it was the period at the end of the discussion. “The meaning of temperance is to find a middle road. To not diverge into extremes. To strike balance or find restraint.

“In my bar, I can choose to appreciate Hemingway, his career, the accessible way by which he told his stories, and their simplistic but poignant messages without being called plebeian, getting summoned before educational boards, or having to have my syllabi checked, cross checked, and triple checked before I could teach it.

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