I swallowed. “Were you… waiting for me?” Damn it, where was my spine? Where was the easily flared temper that had gotten me in trouble so often over the past year? I sounded like an idiot, one with no backbone and a sorely lacking vocabulary. He clearly had been, and it should make me angry, not nervous like a girl with a crush. This guy was beyond pushy and suspicious; frankly, he was downright obnoxious.
“Yes,” he said simply, as if that weren’t deeply weird and also, somehow, deeply flattering. The word implied far more patience than his greeting shot had indicated. It made me think he’d have stood there waiting for another hour if that was what it took.
“Oh,” I murmured, eyes flicking to the glass panes of his store next door. The lights were off, but early morning light streamed in, enough for me to see the rather eclectic goods on offer. From artisan breads and craft beer to construction supplies and animal feed, he appeared to have it all, packed into the narrow, neat aisles. Somehow, the store seemed to offer an abundance while appearing uncluttered, but my brain was telling me there was far too much in there to fit onto all the shelves.
We were standing on the library steps together, the front door looming—dark, unyielding, and marked with cracked paint. The sun didn’t touch this part of the library yet, most of the lightblocked by a giant oak that lined the quaint street. He was as dark as the oak, and he loomed the same way. My breathing hitched when he stepped closer, quiet, controlled, impossibly graceful. “Shall we begin?” he asked.
My heart thumped once, hard. “Y-yes,” I said, clutching my bag. “Let’s… begin.” Damn it, why did he make me feel so flustered? He was too close, too… threatening, and too polished. Every move he made reminded me of the threats he’d uttered yesterday, and the way he’d cornered me against the building. It made me think I was in mortal peril, about to be pounced on by a deadly predator, but that was just silly.
Still, as he turned to unlock the heavy doors, every hair on my arms rose, because I had the strangest feeling he had been standing there for a very long time—waiting, watching—and something in his glacial eyes had warmed the slightest bit when he saw me, like the lion might actually like the lamb.
Chapter 7
Luther
Jade stepped out of the B&B like dawn breaking, brighter, warmer, and far more dangerous to my equilibrium than any rising sun. The morning light caught her at an angle that made something in my chest twist. Her green skirt swayed around her knees, soft and inviting, and her blouse—cream-colored today—hugged her lightly, modestly, yet with the kind of gentle emphasis that made my imagination far too aware of her shape.
Utterly, catastrophically inconvenient; that was what she was. I had not expected her to be so… luminous. Nor to feel my pulse jump like an inexperienced fledgling at the mere sight of her shouldering a messenger bag and locking the B&B’s front gate behind her. She spotted me, and her expression shifted into that flustered confusion I pretended I didn’t find endearing.
We exchanged the necessary morning pleasantries, or the closest I was capable of. She frowned at my comment about her tardiness, and I found myself too distracted by the delicate flush rising on her cheeks to properly justify why I had been standing at the library door far earlier than any reasonable man should have been.
The memory was irritating, and the reaction even more so. She distracts me; there was no use denying it. Once I unlocked the heavy front doors, damp air greeted us, thick with mold and age. I followed her inside and felt the familiar weight of disappointment crash over me. The library looked worse in daylight: water-damaged floorboards, rot creeping up thebeams, and the stink of mold in the air. Stacks of boxed books were piled beside the central table, all once housed on the second-floor walkway that now sat barren and stripped due to the leaks I’d identified twenty-three years ago.
It shamed me to realize that I’d been so blasé about things, that all I’d done was move the books out of the danger zone and nothing else. Sure, I’d sent Jackson up onto the roof to fix the broken tiles, but that had only slowed the decay, not halted it entirely.
Relics and oddities sat dust-covered in forgotten corners, items I’d allowed to linger too long, assuming I’d have centuries yet to address them. I had been remiss. I was far too accustomed to time stretching endlessly ahead, and too used to decay happening so slowly, it barely seemed to move. Jade, however, didn’t hesitate.
She stepped ahead of me with brisk determination, primly navigating fallen plaster and broken debris. I hadn’t yet gathered my thoughts when she already had her notebook out, head bowed, one hand brushing dust from a shelf as she scribbled something. She did not seem to care that it left dirty smudges on her fingers, smudges she then carelessly wiped on her skirt.
Her focus was razor-sharp; it was impressive, annoyingly so. She did not look at me; in fact, she behaved as though I had ceased to exist entirely. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I definitely wasn’t used to it. Perhaps it was a little refreshing. After all, it had been with good reason that I’d left the busy crowds and its anonymity in the city. Everything had turned dull, empty, too easy. Jade? She was definitely not easy, she was a puzzle, bright and new.
Unsure of my place, and equally unsure why that mattered, I took stock of what she would need: fresh gloves, proper masks, humidity gauges, lights, and materials for temporary stabilization. Supplies I could acquire within the day, if I closed the store for an hour.
I also mentally listed the repairs required. Gregory and Drew would have to conduct a full structural assessment. They could be trusted with this—they were discreet, and they were very capable. Gregory, because as a Minotaur, to build and to protect was in his bones, and frankly, that was the same for Drew, though he was a Gargoyle. He’d taken to slumbering on the roof of the town hall across the street; he’d have had a bird’s-eye view of the library’s roof.
I was halfway through planning the order of operations when Jade murmured something to herself and bent closer to the shelf, the movement drawing my attention unfairly to the delicate curve of her neck—to the sweet throb of the pulse beneath her pale skin. I moved before thinking, my steps silent and instinctive. Suddenly, I stood too near her, leaning over her shoulder to read the neat list forming in her notebook. That was just a pretext for drawing her scent deep into my lungs, to sift through the notes of her soap and perfume to the elements that were uniquely hers. The soft susurration of the blood in her veins awakened a hunger in me I could not reverse.
“You’re standing in my personal space,” she said without looking up. Ah, there it was, the sass and boldness from the day before. She was not looking at me, her back still turned and her eyes still on her papers. Even her pen had not lifted, scratching softly at the cheap bond paper of her notebook.
“Personal space is a fluid concept,” I murmured, simply because I could not resist taunting her. Something thrummed through my body that bordered on excitement; I felt alive in a very human way. My feet took me a few inches closer, and the warmth of her skin filled the small space between us, tempting me, deliciously soft and sweet.
“It isn’t, actually,” she responded sharply. Her pen scratched out a new word in simple block letters, with a definite feminine curve. It would not have surprised me if she dotted her I’s with a little heart. I would have thought a librarian wrote in cursive, but then again, she was not like any librarian I’d ever met. If a keeper of books had looked like her, I would have devoted myself to reading much sooner than I had. Alas, my teacher had been a fat friar, wielding a willow switch if I did not pay attention.
Her sharp tone and unfrazzled response to my closeness filled me with humor. No, she was no friar, thank God. I felt my mouth twitch, the tilt of my lips feeling foreign and strange. “Then, perhaps you should define the parameters more clearly.”
Her pen froze, then clicked abruptly as she pressed the button. Her book slammed shut, but still, she did not turn to look at me. I was viciously aware of the goosebumps rising along her bare upper arm. “Three feet,” she said firmly, decisively.
“Arbitrary,” I replied. Three feet? That would put me across the aisle. It wasn’t even that far, but I did not want to take that step. She still wasn’t acknowledging my presence fully, ignoring that I was right behind her, just the breadth of a hand between us. If I inched just a little closer, our bodies would glide together, and I ached to find out what that would feel like.
“Three feet minimum,” she almost hissed, and goosebumps spread across her fair skin. She was not immune to me, good. She wasn’t scared either, unlike yesterday, when fiery passion had masked the sharp scent beneath my posturing. I felt only a hint of guilt for trying to scare her into leaving, bullying her in that overgrown backyard like I had every right.
“And if I need to see what you’re cataloging?” I asked, deflecting my thoughts away from yesterday’s charged moment to this one. She smelled so good, and she was a perfect height, the crown of her head reaching to my chin. Delicate but not tiny, and curved in all the right places. I needed her to acknowledge me, to admit that I was there not just invading her space like I was a nuisance, but as a flesh-and-blood man.
She finally turned her head, and we were suddenly far closer than either of us had expected. Her breath caught, quiet, but unmistakable. Mine did too, damn it. “Then,” she whispered, “you could try using your words.” Her brown eyes narrowed in warning, but widened in shock, our mouths so close that her breath skated warmly across my face.
I stepped back immediately, more sharply than intended. I didn’t trust myself with closeness, not with her. Not when the scent of her shampoo had curled around my senses like some kind of enchantment. “I must attend to my store,” I said, my tone tighter than I wished. “If you need anything, do not hesitate to ask.”
Her brow creased slightly, as if she didn’t quite believe me. “Thank you,” she said, painfully polite and excruciatingly distant. She did not want or need me here, and she had no plan to call upon my services for anything. Her tone said it all.I deserved that, and now I wanted nothing more than to prove her wrong. Fix the impression I’d made on her with a better one, one that would end with us tangled in my silk sheets. The tight line of her spine and the twist of disapproval that knotted her mouth told me such sentiments would not be welcome. Was that a challenge I was willing to accept?
