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“I was born long before shaving the bits was considered en vogue.” He laughed. “I’m fine with it. It’s natural.”

“Still…”

“Shape it up if you want to. Clear-cut the brush if you need. A little wilderness exploration never hurt me.” He slid a hand down my side and rested it comfortably on my hip before kissing my forehead. “Besides, you got like what, fifty pubes down there?”

“No.”

“Oh, yeah, forty-eight. Got a few in my teeth last night…” He licked at his teeth, teasing me as I pawed at his chest in protest.

“Dude!”

“Sleep, and you won’t have to worry about your gooseberry bush.” He pulled me into his chest and sighed that single, long breath of someone releasing everything they’d held onto for the day.

“Gooseberry bush?”

“Twig. Berries. Nice little hedge of foliage.” He chuckled, the deep laugh rumbling in his chest. So, I just inhaled his old-book smell, underlying sweet cherry pipe tobacco, old and familiar.

“Alright. Enough. Sleep.” I pulled the covers up over my shoulder and nestled in as I turned over to face away from him so I’d quit staring like a creepy little stalker.

His hand returned to my hip; warm breath danced on my neck and raw heat from his chest against my back lured me into deep sleep.

Chapter Eighteen

Zeke

I’d never been in love before. So, I wasn’t sure what was happening between us.

Lex in a little T-shirt walking around his apartment…and mine. Lex lying on my bed in his underwear reading his phone. Cuddling on the couch. Home-cooked meals. The guy made some spectacular salads—and that was it. I’d have to cook for him eventually, but I didn’t know much about what he ate or could eat. Still, I was discovering it more by the day.

Vegetarian good. Anything else, ask questions. Right. A good spaghetti with eggplant and red sauce wasn’t much of a miss, I figured. I could chicken fry anything, so that would be an experience.

I wanted to feed him, to sleep with him, to always have him. I wanted him more than anything, even though we’d not had sex since that night in the book. He hadn’t initiated, neither had I, and over the course of a week, I’d let my own desires go untended.

So that morning, I took a long shower in my apartment, living through that bookish memory, hand on my cock as I stroked to my heart’s content. Just thinking about him made my dick feel bigger than it ever had.

The steam surrounded me, his scent still lightly on my chest from our night of sleep. I stroked faster, thumb rolling over my tip. I leaked precum like a faucet, dripping steadily as I groaned and squeezed.

My mind flared, senses whiting out as I leaned against the shower wall and rocked my hips back into the memory of pounding into Lex’s soft ass.

As the fire burned in my belly and rose up my spine, my toes curled, and I flinched as I came in thick, hot ropes onto the shower wall, dripping down, wasted and needless. And as that burning intensity of an orgasm fired through me, my nuts throbbing in time with it, my hand slid to the base of my cock where I found something that I shouldn’t have.

My heart skipped a beat or ten.

I’d not come out of his dive unchanged.

I’d come out with an accessory.

I couldn’t decide if I liked the addition or knot. I chuckled to myself and let my fingers trace it. Lex had seemed to love it then, so I’d need to find a way to casually tell him that if he wasn’t into it—we should probably find a different novel to dive.

I finished my shower, dressed, and returned to my work downstairs, flitting by a half-smiling Lex as he perused a book at the counter, face twisted. Some Betty homemaker cookbook from the eighties or seventies where they came with clip binders to add new recipe pages.

I’d purposefully avoided that one, because there were only so many trash recipes I could stand to witness—especially when most of it involved gelatin-based dinners. Whoever invented aspics needed to be court-martialed.

The door to the library creaked open as I circled back with an armload of things from one of the bins for correction, and I glanced up to see if it was anyone I knew.

In the doorway stood a younger woman, eyes lacking the jaded, insular wariness of someone who had forsaken people in favor of books. Her brown hair had been tied up in a neat bun, blue eyes accented by circle-lens tortoise-shell glasses. Her small, pointed nose pointed up as she met my gaze. “Zeke.”

“Jess. Hey.” I waved at her, and she stepped in, footfalls purposeful and firm. Her long maroon cardigan flitted behind her as she approached the desk and slapped her hands onto the counter. And from the fact she’d come straight through the doors, meant she hadn’t used any of our other travel methods. So, it was safe to say she had driven. Perhaps she needed to bring things with her?