Free Break the Sky (Spiral of Bliss Spin Off) by Nina Lane Page A

closer…
    Oh, lord. My heart thumped harder with every step he took in my direction. I felt like I was in the school cafeteria with the object of my heartbreaking crush walking toward me. I even held my breath as I waited to see if he would notice me, and if he did, if he’d ignore me and keep walking or…
    “Professor March.”
    Never in all my years of teaching had anyone—
anyone
—said my name and title like that. Like he wanted to eat it.
    “Archer.” I lifted my head, shading my eyes from the sun as I looked at him and putting on my professor voice out of both habit and a twinge of desperation. “I thought you’d be out of town by now.”
    “Not yet.”
    He moved to the right, in front of the sun, and I realized he was blocking the glare for me. I lowered my hand. He was in shadow now, a halo of light around him. Dark angel.
    He took off his sunglasses, his gaze like a hot caress over my skin.
    “Your shirt is unbuttoned again,” he remarked.
    Oh, crap. While I secretly appreciated that Archer liked my choice of lingerie, I didn’t want to get a reputation around the university for showing off my cleavage. I glanced down to fasten the wayward buttons—which were firmly locked into the buttonholes.
    “Made you look,” Archer said.
    I smiled, temporarily disarmed. I looked up again to find him watching me with amusement and a touch of heat. The combination had a devastating effect on my senses.
    And even though my reason was still at war with my instinctive attraction to him, I pushed the opposite chair away from the table with my foot.
    “Have a seat,” I said.
    He put the notebook and his coffee down before sinking into the chair.
    “What’s that?” I asked, nodding toward the five-subject notebook.
    “My little black book.”
    He grinned when my mouth dropped open slightly. I flushed. Apparently I was gullible as all hell where he was concerned.
    “What are you doing here?” he asked. “No classes today?”
    “No, I just wanted to get some air. My office is pretty stuffy.”
    “What do you do in your office?”
    “Research. Write proposals. Grade exams. Help my students.”
    “You like the work?”
    I’d told him I was a straight shooter. I certainly couldn’t lie now.
    “I like the forecasting,” I said. “I love it, actually. Tracking storms, finding new methods of prediction. I like working with my grad students. I don’t like the bureaucracy or the headaches. I don’t like writing proposals or having to publish tons of research papers. I don’t like being stuck in a classroom or that other people get to tell me what to do.”
    “So why did you take a professor job?”
    I shrugged, reaching for my coffee. That wasn’t a question I could easily answer.
    “Stability,” I finally said. “And if I get tenure, my position is permanent. I’m set for life.”
    He didn’t respond. I sensed he didn’t think being “set for life” was necessarily a good thing. There had once been a time when I didn’t, either. When I’d wanted freedom and spontaneity.
    “And if you don’t get tenure?” Archer asked.
    “Then I’m fired from King’s.”
    And the Spiral Project is dead.
    An ache prodded at me. I looked at my laptop. The sun made it hard to see the screen.
    Then I felt his fingers on my knee. My heart leapt. I jerked my gaze to Archer, who smiled faintly as he reached to cup his hand around my ankle and lift my foot to rest on the chair beside him.
    “What…” I swallowed hard. “What are you doing?”
    “Touching your leg.” He skimmed his fingers over the arch of my foot and a few inches up underneath the hem of my pants. His touch rocketed heat through my entire body, so powerful that I almost gasped.
    But I didn’t pull away.
    “Um… why?” I stammered.
    “Because I’ve wanted to touch you since I first turned around and saw you staring at me,” he replied, stroking his hand farther up my pant leg. “Then again when you stormed into Dean’s office and