Chapter 31
31
Scott surges into the kiss, clinging to me while I straddle his lap. He moans into my mouth like he’s dreamed of this moment for days.
Or longer, maybe. I feel his hunger, his release, in every explosion of his lips against mine now. With each rush of heat, he’s rewriting everything I thought I knew about enemies becoming lovers. I know how the story works—every fight, every prickle of enmity, every disagreement alchemized into hot, ruthless foreplay.
This is…more. He’s not just rewriting our enmity in the passages of passion he lays on my mouth. He’s showing me the real him.
And it’s more than any character or trope has ever made me feel. He’s not my enemy, not my fae lord, not my book boyfriend. He’s himself. Scott Daniels. He’s giving me his entire self. Letting himself feel the hope of us fully.
From the way he kisses me, I know it’s exhilarating.
It makes me want him more. Knowing I’m getting all of him, without reservation, without fear, I want everything.
I need everything. I need him.
I withdraw, my lips stinging pleasantly. Scott’s eyes lock with mine from inches away. He knows what’s on my mind. “Here?” I whisper.
“Anywhere you want,” he replies without hesitation.
I know he’s entirely serious. He’s not holding anything back, even in his enchantingly indecent proposal. Glancing up and down the dark stacks, I feel a thrill shoot through me. Scott kisses my neck, waiting and urging in one press of lips. “It would fulfill a certain fantasy…” I admit.
Then my eyes catch on the cold stone floor, the staircases leading up to the main library…the long aisles of shelves where anyone could enter, innocently working on research projects. Noticing my hesitation, Scott smiles gently. He releases his grip on my waist, studying my fraught expression adoringly.
“Sometimes fantasies don’t translate well in reality. Let’s walk back,” he suggests. “I have a luxurious twin bed waiting for us.”
I laugh, more relieved than disappointed. When I’ve climbed to my feet, reluctantly leaving his lap, I reach down to help him up. He stands—close to me, a few inches taller, his ebullient hair mussed and yet perfect, and I’m having some serious second thoughts on the subject of location. I level him a look of coy challenge, knowing I need to distract myself. “Race you?” I say.
“If you thought I was motivated by the chance to have dinner with a guy with goat horns, you have no idea what I’m capable of now,” he promises with urgency in every word.
In reply I lean closer, lifting my lips.
He’s lowering his kiss to me when, right at the last second, I spin away.
“Oh, you’ll pay for that,” Scott vows despite the delight playing over his face while I reach down for my copies of Shattered and Risen.
“I hope so,” I say.
We hurry to return our copies of the Elytheum volumes. Of course, we’re neck and neck replacing our copies in the fiction section. However, once we’ve returned our reading materials, Scott has to collect his plastic candles and put them in the bag I guess he left behind the shelves earlier, when he planned the loveliest date of my life.
In the meantime, I hit the stairs. I sprint up the flights and through the library, adrenaline and anticipation fueling me. When I reach the lobby, I don’t stop as I draw curious looks from the students in their carrels. The way Scott and I have carried on recently, I’m pretty used to drawing the perplexed interest of graduate students.
I burst out the wide front doors into the deep blue night. It’s no less dreamlike out here. Fireflies spark over the grass. The chill on my cheeks cools the heat of our makeout in the stacks.
I’d stop to immerse myself in the wonder of the scene if I were on an ordinary date.
I’m not, though. This date is real and extraordinary.
Breathless, I don’t pause. I rush down the library steps, sprinting into the night. I don’t know how much of a lead I have on Scott.
I run—only to see him emerge in the corner of my vision, leaving the library. He chases after me, looking like he’s racing for me instead of racing against me, and my heart skips.
We dash across the grass, the joyous reprise of our chase for the first clue. I love the happy determination I glimpsed on Scott’s face. Of course—once again—his runner’s legs defeat my ordinary Jennifer legs. He reaches me quickly and pulls me in, catching me in a kiss.
It’s heart pounding and spontaneous and unrestrained and everything. We part, chests heaving, and Scott looks right into my eyes—
“You’re running the wrong way, baby,” he says.
Releasing me, he starts off sprinting across the library lawn. In, unfortunately, the opposite direction.
I laugh, realizing my mistake. I still feel joyously dizzy from his first use of one little word. Baby . Giving chase, I notice his stamina flagging, or possibly excitement has me overcoming my own exertion, because I’m actually gaining on him. We fly over paved quad pathways and grass lawns under the impassive golden gaze of the campus lights. He maintains his lead as we reach our dorm.
On the second floor, I pass him. With footsteps pounding up the final flight of stairs, I reach our floor—where, victorious, I turn to wait for him in our hallway.
He joins me moments later. His whole face is glowing with joy despite his unlikely defeat. “I was going to let you win anyway,” he repeats my own words.
“And why’s that?” I reply in kind.
“Because I’ll follow you anywhere,” he says.
He walks closer. I wait for him, wanting him to reach me. He embraces me instantly, wrapping me in his arms, gentle and firm, loving and never letting go. With my elbows in front of me, forearms resting on his chest, I gaze into his slate-gray eyes.
“Anywhere?” I ask him.
I mean the word deep in my stomach, where desire pounds, and in my contented heart. I kiss Scott in the perfect stillness of our hallway, meanwhile sliding my hand into his front pocket.
I feel his smile against my lips, and then reluctantly he withdraws to speak. “If you’re looking for the clue—” he starts.
He hushes when I pull out his room’s key card.
Slowly, I reach past him to unlock his room.
Without a word and without hesitation, he follows me inside. He flips on the lights, and I spare a moment for my first look at his room. The quiet, inconspicuous place where the rival I know only from work returns to when we’re not fighting or flirting. The Elytheum decorations look like my suite’s—the candelabra, the accoutrements—although the art print is a different richly rendered landscape.
Otherwise, signs of Scott are sparse. His suitcase stands on the floor, against the wall. His laptop on his desk. I notice the sticker on his computer alongside the one for the New York Graduate Symposium for Lectures in the Literary Arts, the decal I clocked in departmental meetings immediately—I figured he attended. I never thought to ask whether he lectured or planned it or whatever else. They’re details that aren’t new to me, but I didn’t know their significance before. Like understanding deeper meanings on a second read.
The feeling pulls my heart to him even more. I want to know everything about him. I want everything. I want him.
I sit down on the bed. It’s difficult to keep still with the excitement humming in me. But like I’m opening the very first page of a story I know I’m going to love, there’s pleasure in the expectation.
Scott closes his door deliberately, the lock clicking loud in the quiet room.
He approaches in fast, even strides. In one perfect, poised movement, he bends down to capture my face in his hands. I hardly even notice the moment he starts kissing me again—he just does, and I disappear into the rush of feeling, the perfect, intuitive continuation of the prologue of insinuated promises we made in the library.
He starts unbuttoning my dress, and I, on irresistible impulse, pull his shirt from his waistband and unbuckle his belt.
In synchrony, we stop. We stare at each other breathlessly for a moment.
And then it’s like we can’t turn the pages fast enough. We’re flying, racing, pushing each other to make every fairy tale and fantasy real. Scott’s hands find me, sliding up my thighs while I kick my shoes off. Then he’s kicking off his, and he’s half climbing onto the bed, one knee on the comforter, positioning himself over me. Closer, ever closer.
We kiss like we’ve spent the past year dreaming of this moment instead of feuding at every turn, parting only to remove more and more clothing. It’s frantic, clumsy with desperate need—until nothing remains. Nothing but skin on skin.
Scott stands. He waits, next to the bed, very hard. Very, very ready for me.
I exhale, captivated. I reach for him, gripping him while he falls, in ecstasy and uncontrollable intention, onto one hand over me, caging me on the coverlet.
I could hold him here forever. The night has left the room pleasantly cool—not cold, only temperate enough for the air to remind me of my nakedness exposed to him. I could hold him, caressing him just like this, lost in the gentle rhythm I’m finding.
Scott has other plans. He pushes me lightly down until I’m lying flat, my legs still hanging off the bed. Then he sinks to his knees on the floor.
“Let me know how good the notes I took were,” he says.
He doesn’t hesitate. He puts his mouth on me, utterly in control of the heat ripping through my core. I gasp, and, oh, fuck , yes, I understand exactly how Scott got his Master’s—with attention in lectures, followed by very diligent homework.
He recites his lessons on me with passion and precision, and I do nothing except let him drink me in while cascades of pleasure overwhelm me. When his fingers find me, gently thrusting with every intent stroke of his tongue, I go over the edge. Under the urging of Scott’s mouth, the feeling lasts and lasts. Heat rushes over me in pummeling crests of light. My head feels full of the fireflies we saw dancing outside in the night.
The pounding ecstasy gives way to the softest pleasure weakening my limbs. Scott kisses his way up my stomach.
“Well?” he finally has the obliviousness to ask.
Well? Well, that orgasm changed my world forever? Well, how is it possible you’ve left me completely satisfied and completely insatiable at once?
I don’t say those things.
“Pretty good for a guy without goat horns,” I reply instead.
Scott laughs. His breath, hot on my ribs, is joyously spontaneous. It’s so utterly real , in the midst of the impossibly dreamlike night. A laugh interrupting this fragile wonder. The kind of unexpected imperfections that make reality more. Like fights covered in mud while losing races, banter on horseback to distract from thunderstorms.
It pushes my desire ever further, my heart venturing into realms it didn’t even know to explore until now. I remember every love scene I’ve ever read all at once, their pronouncements and poetics, metaphors and magic wrapping around one another in a chaos of feeling. I’m a girl made of spilled ink, a pure embodiment of the greatest passions I’ve ever read. It’s not hyperbole—it’s me. It’s us.
Like he’s similarly pulled, Scott climbs onto the bed while I slide up, my movement matching his on instinct, until my head is on the pillow. With his closeness, I’m immediately awash in the scent of him. Scott.
My Scott.
“Spread your legs for me,” he says.
The command sends a throb of desire through me. Slowly, I do as he wants, unfurling myself, watching him watch me.
He stares, transfixed.
I’m impatient—needing him—and yet pinned in place, overwhelmed by the power of his hungry, adoring eyes. The power I have, to make him gaze at me, all of me, the way he is. “No need to spend all night looking,” I finally say.
Scott looks slowly up, finding my face. His expression says he heard the sound of my breath struggling over my hurtling heartbeat, says he knows how difficult it was for me even to speak in such a situation.
I don’t move. I keep my legs exactly where I have them.
“Jennifer, I thought you knew this better than anyone,” he replies. His voice is gravel wrapped in silk. “When something is your favorite, you never get sick of it.”
Heat floods my cheeks. It’s one thing to study flirtation in the pages of a Moleskine notebook. It’s another to have the creativity and confidence to spin material like this out of nothing. I can’t help being impressed.
“You’re far too smooth,” I say.
He moves forward, fast and graceful, and positions himself over me. “You like it.”
The wanting is unbearable now. I’m close to unraveling. “Since you’re the expert on what I like,” I say, “why don’t you give it to me already?”
He does. Or rather, first, he grins. His face is close to mine, close enough to kiss. His hand glides down my body, pausing to linger exactly where I want.
He doesn’t make me wait long. Quickly he reaches into his luggage, and in moments he’s deftly unwrapped a condom and rolled it on. With the same hand, he guides himself into me. I go weak and ravenous at once, feeling him inside me, wanting ceaselessly while having everything I want.
How , I wonder, is it possible ? How is it possible for a first time to feel so wonderfully familiar? How does every moment and movement, every paradox of passion, feel like recognizing what I never knew to imagine?
Magic, I suppose.
I cling to him, my legs rising to give him deeper access. He moves in me, finding our rhythm in desirous, purposeful strokes. I close my eyes, focusing myself entirely on the place where we meet. I want to miss none of this. I want the way Scott holds me—the way he rocks deep inside me, the kiss he presses to my neck while he does—inscribed on my heart in permanent ink.
It’s a rebound and a fresh start in one. Desperate yet tender. An ending and a new beginning.
Of what, I don’t yet know. It doesn’t matter. I’ve never flipped to the ending pages of a book first, either. I don’t need to know where something is going to enjoy it.
And enjoy is a woeful understatement. Enjoy is for four-star reads. Scott is on his way to shattering me with pleasure. Sweat slicks our bodies, our momentum mounting. I feel frissons of ecstasy shimmering in my hips, my legs, my stomach. I clasp Scott, wanting ever more.
When his breathing goes uneven, I lean up to whisper in his ear.
“Tell me your fantasy, Scott.”
He stills, still sheathed inside me. His hand rises to sweep my hair from my face.
“You,” he whispers. “Just you.”
It undoes me completely. I kiss him, holding him close as he finds his release and the pure pleasure consumes me. There’s nowhere I would rather be, nowhere. No magical world, no favorite pages.
Just here.