The last few words had so much heat in them themselves, and something close enough to a whimper, that Karl had to spend a few seconds trying to convince himself that Emmy’s whimpers were not a short circuit to a massive erection. Then he gave up, because they clearlywere, even if they’d—well, gone at it like rabbits—often enough over the course of the afternoon and evening that he probably shouldn’t even beableto get it up again. He wasn’t seventeen anymore.
Apparently no one had notified his groin of that, though. “Dinner,” he said hoarsely. “Dinner before you start being so sexy at me again that I can’t control myself.”
“Am I really?” Emmy dimpled and wiggled at his side, which didn’t help atall.
Karl groaned, tempted to slide her palm over his crotch again, but they were in public. “Do you really have to ask?”
She pursed her lips, looking dreamily thoughtful, then smiled. “Maybe not. All right. I’ll be as prim and proper as I can be. I’ll channel my inner librarian.” She straightened up and minced along, taking tiny, in-line steps that had the side effect of giving her hips an incredible swing.
Karl actually bit his knuckle, like he’d wanted to the first time he’d seen her. “I can work with the whole librarian thing.”
Emmy looked over her shoulder, catching him gnawing his knuckle. Her eyebrows shot up and she gave him a long slow come-hither sort of smile. “Garters and librarians, huh? I feel like my sex life with you is going to bewaymore adventuresome than it’s ever been before.”
“You don’t have to indulge my fascination with lingerie or,” and Karl’s voice deepened enough that he coughed to clear it, “or librarians. You’ll still be the most incredibly sexy woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
She came back to him, putting a palm against his chest and looking up with a soft, but more serious gaze than before. “First, I think lingerie ismeantto be indulged in. Second, I’ve had boyfriends before, but if any of them thought ‘librarian fantasy’ when they looked at me, none of them ever mentioned it. I really like that you do.”
Karl felt a stupid grin developing across his face. “Boyfriend? Not that the rest of that wasn’t important, but…boyfriend?”
“Oh.” Emmy turned deliciously pink, even in the dusky evening. “Too much escalation?”
“Exactly the right amount of escalation. I would take you into the trees and have my wicked way with you, except…” Karl gestured around them, and Emmy, still flushed, followed the gesture, then drooped with disappointment.
“Except we’re in the middle of a neighborhood?”
“Right. Except for that.” Thereweretrees in many of the yards, but there was more open greenery, and a lot of big rambling colonial-style houses with wraparound porches and, depressingly, peopleonthose porches, watching kids in the yards or just watching the sidewalks, keeping an eye on the neighborhood. It was not the right location for a sexy rendezvous. “How much farther is it to the restaurant? Because we could go back to the B&B…”
Emmy laughed. “No, I’m starving, and it’s closer to the restaurant than the B&B. Come on.” She took his hand and they walked another half block and around a corner to an unexpected business square with the restaurant, a small grocery store, and a few other amenities. At his expression, Emmy smiled. “I know, right? The town square is so big it seems like all the businessintown must be around it, but there are these little pockets of business all around. You don’t really have to drive anywhere in Virtue if you don’t want to, although in the winter that might mean not really getting out of your own neighborhood.”
“That’s pretty cool. Not like the suburbs I grew up in. There are malls with everything you need there, but you drive to them. Oh, wow, it smells great.”
“It’s good,” Emmy promised.
They went inside to a bustlingly busy restaurant with a wait time of about fifteen minutes, which served them right for not calling to make reservations. People sidled over to chat with Emmy and meet Karl, then sidled off again, clearly to gossip about the new guy in town. After the fourth or fifth person had done that, Karl murmured, “Is this how it works here? All information is transmitted through the gossip mill?”
“Oh, you have no idea. You should meet the actual librarian. She’s got the whole town on different groups and rallies the troops at the drop of a hat. The truth is, she’s basically in charge of Virtue, but she won’t run for Mayor because if she does, who would run the library?”
Karl ventured, “Another librarian?” and Emmy laughed.
“You’d think, but she’s set such a high standard that nobody’s brave enough to try to meet it. Ooh, they’ve got seats for us.” Emmy waved back as a waitress flagged them, and they made their way through the crowded restaurant to a window seat that overlooked the little park that the neighborhood businesses sat around.
“This town is amazing,” Karl said, gazing out the window. “There’s so much green space. Oh, crap, is that because of…you know?” He lowered his voice significantly even though he wasn’t mentioning shifters aloud, and Emmy smiled.
“It is, yeah. They’re actually going to rewild a lot of the town square. Better for the environment, and in the old days it was literally intended as a safe space for certain townsfolk. But as Virtue grew beyond its original settlers and not everybody knew that was why there was a whole forest in the middle of town, it changed.
“I can hardly imagine all that lawn grown over with trees,” Karl said, impressed. “That would be a really different vibe. I think I’d like to see it.”
Something hopeful happened in Emmy’s eyes. “Me too. I’d like to see it with you.” She sounded a little wistful, and Karl knew why. He wasn’t from Virtue. He had somewhere else to go, somewhere to be.
But he didn’t have a plan for after that. He’d gone on this country-wide trek in search of some kind of guidance or inspiration as to what to do with himself, in a world where he was all alone. Now, completely unexpectedly, he thought he knew. He offered Emmy his hand, folding his fingers around hers and lifting her knuckles to his lips for a kiss. “Then we should see it together. I don’t know why we couldn’t.”
“Really?” Her voice lifted and fell again in the single word. “I know you have to finish your hike, Karl…”
“That’s a few more weeks. There’s a whole lifetime after that. We’ll talk about it,” Karl promised as the waitress came to take orders they hadn’t yet decided on. Emmy squeaked, sounding a lot like her rabbit had when it had been trapped and worried, and after a quick consultation with the menu, they ordered.
Dinner passed in a blur of chatting, most of it careful to not dwell too much on the future, but Karl’s thoughts kept drifting there. Not to the far future, but the next few weeks. An idea was forming, but he didn’t want to push it too far or too fast. It would work or it wouldn’t. They’d figure it out.
It was after nine before they headed back to the bed and breakfast, with Emmy still avoiding her phone and her family’s group chat. “I can come down to work the desk from your room,” she said with a toss of her gorgeous dark hair, and Karl laughed.
