She immediately starts climbing down, then seems to realize she obeyed without thinking about it first. Interesting. When she bends to pick up another book that fell, that pencil skirt stretches dangerously across her ass. Made for grabbing, for spanking, for worship.
"I'm Marshall. Here for the book blind date thing."
"Oh! Yes! Of course! I'm Charlotte. Charlie. Either is fine, really, whatever you prefer. Or Miss Book, which is unfortunately my actual legal name and yes, I know, a librarian named Book, it's very on the nose and people joke about it constantly but I promise I didn't go into this profession just because of my surname even though it does seem—"
"Charlie." She stops rambling mid-sentence, her mouth snapping shut. "Where do I sign up?"
She leads me to a table covered with cards and wrapped books, her movements quick and efficient despite her obvious nervousness. "You fill out your preferences on this card, then I match you with a book based on the algorithm I developed. It's supposed to be fun and promote literacy and bring the community together for Valentine's Day and hopefully get people interested in reading more romance because it's such an underappreciated genre and—"
"Do you always talk this much when you're nervous?"
She blinks up at me, those brown eyes enormous behind her glasses. "How did you know I'm nervous?"
"You're fidgeting with your glasses. Adjusting them every three seconds even though they're not crooked."
"Well, that's very observant of you."
"Military training. Notice everything, trust nothing, survive everything."
"That sounds incredibly lonely," she says quietly, and something in her voice makes it sound less like an observation and more like genuine sympathy.
The comment catches me completely off guard. Most people say "thank you for your service" or some other hollow patriotic bullshit that doesn't mean anything. Not this little librarian with her romance novels and soft voice and apparently genuine concern for a stranger's emotional wellbeing.
I fill out the card, checking random preferences because I don't actually give a shit about any of this. Charlie takes it from me with both hands, studies it with adorable seriousness, her brow furrowed in concentration like she's decoding some kind of ancient text.
"Based on your answers, you should match with..." She sorts through the wrapped books. "This one. Definitely this one."
I unwrap it slowly, already knowing this is going to be ridiculous. It's another romance novel - "Her Daddy's Rules" by someone called Scarlett Flame. The title alone tells me exactly what kind of book this is.
"There's been a mistake."
"The algorithm doesn't lie!" She's immediately defensive of her system, which is actually kind of endearing in a nerdy, passionate way. "And your human match is..." She goes pale as she reads the card in her hand, her eyes widening. "Oh. Oh no."
"What's wrong?"
"It's... me. But that's wrong. That can't be right. I'm running the event, not participating in it. I shouldn't even be in the system. I don't know how—"
I look at the card she's holding with white-knuckled intensity. Look at the romance novel in my hand with "Daddy" right there in the goddamn title. Look at the way she's biting her lower lip nervously, worrying it between her teeth.
"Seems like the algorithm knows exactly what it's doing."
"This is really inappropriate and I should probably re-run the matching because there's clearly been some kind of error with the database and—"
"Seven PM tomorrow? We can read our matched books together. Isn't that the point of this thing?"
"I don't think that's a good idea because of the professional boundaries and—"
"Charlie." Command voice again, firm and brooking no argument. "Seven PM tomorrow."
She nods automatically, then looks annoyed at herself for nodding without thinking. "Fine. But it's just reading. Just books. Nothing else."
"Whatever you say, Miss Book."
I leave her there, flustered and adjusting her glasses unnecessarily. John's going to laugh his ass off when he hears about this.
I've got a date with a librarian who reads daddy dom romance and responds to authority like she's been waiting her whole life for someone to give her orders.
This should be very interesting.
