Chapter Eighteen
Chapter
Eighteen
Dani
As Dani climbed the back stairwell to the third floor of the library, the only thing she could think about was whether her ass looked good or not.
Theo followed her, at eye level with her behind.
After the morning in bed and all their talk of getting railed in the stacks at the library, the only thing on her mind was fucking.
The library had so many places to fuck. The reading tables.
The shelves. The ladders. Bend her over a card catalog and file it away under “best places to fuck in the library.” There was also something about the forbiddenness of it all.
Keep quiet. Don’t talk above a whisper. Don’t make any noise.
Life as a straitlaced librarian was never something she had on her bingo card.
But getting fucked in the library? Now, that was definitely a box Dani wanted to check off her sexual bucket list.
And she’d told Theo that she wanted that.
Given the circumstances, she was almost a little embarrassed at how horny she was for Theo. Prior to this…trip…she and Theo had never talked about sex before. Ever. But now it was at the forefront of her mind.
Dani glanced behind her, catching Theo staring at her ass, as suspected.
“Stop looking at my ass,” she said with a smirk.
“Juicy, if you don’t want me looking at your ass, don’t walk in front of me.”
“Fine, then you go first.” She paused on the stairs and stepped to the side for him to pass her.
“Uh-uh,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want you looking at my ass.”
She playfully rolled her eyes and then resumed climbing up the stairs. But this time she sashayed her hips, taking each step slowly.
“Okay, now you’re fucking with me,” he said. She could hear the playfulness in his voice. Man, this was fun.
“Why, whatever do you mean, Dr. Galanis?” she said, turning her head ever so slightly and placing her index finger on her bottom lip, using her silliest sexy voice like she was Marilyn Monroe climbing out of a birthday cake.
She turned around to face him, but Theo wasn’t laughing at her silly voice like she’d anticipated.
Instead, there was a fire burning in his eyes. Tension that he was holding back.
“Don’t call me that,” he said, his voice hoarse as he took the last stair and stood facing her. He towered over her as she sank back against the wall. “Not unless you want me to turn your library fantasy into reality right here.”
Holy fuck. Heat spread over Dani’s entire body. She didn’t know nerdy, good boy Theo had such ferocity in him.
She liked it.
“I didn’t realize you had a name kink, Dr…. Galanis,” she exaggerated.
“I didn’t either…Daniela.”
He stared at her with hooded eyes, and for a moment she thought he might legitimately hoist her against his waist and plop her down on a table in the research hall.
“You are making it very hard to focus,” he said, leaning into her ear. He grabbed her by the hips and pressed his groin into her.
“Seems your focus isn’t the only thing of yours I’m making hard,” she said, pressing back to satisfy her own tension building in her core.
“You have no idea.”
“I dunno…I think I have a pretty good idea,” she said, allowing her lips to graze his ear and then pulling it into her mouth, sucking on his tender lobe like she wished she could do to his cock.
She grabbed him by his belt loops, pulling him closer to her, when a child came jumping down the stairs onto the landing right above them.
They quickly broke apart and straightened themselves up before the child’s parents rounded the corner.
Dani tossed the mom a bashful smile, and then Theo took her by the hand and guided her the rest of the way up the stairs.
“We should probably be a little more discreet,” Theo whispered. “I don’t want to get arrested for public indecency.”
“Hey, that’s an option to get us out of here without having to worry about Pierre intervening with the police. Your face would probably be plastered all over if you got arrested,” she joked.
“Perhaps. Though I’m not sure I want the very first photo for my mom to see of me alive to be a mugshot because I got caught with a hard-on in the library,” Theo said, smiling.
“Then perhaps we’d better behave,” she said. “I don’t think I can handle having to explain that situation to your mom.”
To be honest, Mrs. Galanis semi-terrified her. Not that she didn’t love her, but she had high expectations for her son, and Dani was pretty sure getting Theo arrested wouldn’t exactly help her “reckless” image no matter the circumstances.
They finally made it to the rare collections room and swiped their badges.
It was like Candy Land for librarians. One-of-a-kind texts that only a limited number of people could get their hands on.
She walked around the roughly five-hundred-square-foot room bordered on two sides by shelves and shelves of books in all shapes and sizes, scanning the bindings of the various titles while Theo went over the list of instructions and handed her a pair of gloves.
The wall of windows on the other two sides of the room looked out into the library atrium.
Another area had books in protective cases, and in the center sat two large wooden tables with felt tops to review the materials.
“I wish I could read these,” she said, running her white-gloved finger along the spines.
“I feel like I’m not going to be much help other than watching you read.
” Which was sexy and all, and, honestly, it was one of her favorite things to do when he’d come over and they’d literally spend an afternoon reading in silence, but not a great use of time under the current circumstances.
“Then, here,” he said, grabbing a piece of scrap paper and a pen on the table and scribbling a few words.
“Why don’t you go through the books, check the indexes, and look for this.
” He held out the paper, which said “Παπατ?νη?, Δημητρ?ου.” “This is Demetrios’s name in Greek.
If it’s there, then find that spot in the text and I’ll take a look. ”
“This is going to take forever.”
“Do you have other plans?”
“Well, no, but aren’t you getting hungry?”
“Let’s go through this shelf and once we’re done, we’ll find Andreas so we can get something to eat.”
“Oh!” she said, grabbing his arm. “There’s this place I wanted to check out in Athens. It’s supposed to have the best kebabs…”
Dani’s voice trailed off as Theo tipped his head at her and raised his brows.
“No time for Fodor’s best-of list?” she said, scrunching her face.
Theo laughed. “Look, once we make it out of this mess, I promise you, I’ll bring you back for a real vacation and we’ll go see all the sights, eat all the kebabs, and drink all the ouzo. But for now, let’s figure out whatever we can about the eye of the Minotaur, and then get the hell home.”
“You actually want to come back here after this?” she asked, wrinkling her forehead.
“I mean, I assumed I would eventually. I love it here. You don’t?”
“I…I don’t know. I love being here with you,” she said, almost surprised by her honesty.
And judging by the way he smiled at her tenderly, it seemed her honesty surprised him, as well.
“But,” she continued, “I’m worried I might have PTSD.
And that makes a big assumption that there even will be an ‘after this.’ ”
He took a step closer and placed his hands on her shoulders. “There will be an after, I promise. One way or another, we will get home, okay?”
She stared up at him, wanting to believe him, but she couldn’t help the doubt creeping in. “What if Pierre finds us before we can get out of here?” she asked.
“Then, my sweetie pie babycakes,” he said, taking a step back and grabbing a book from the shelf, placing it in her hands, “you’d better start reading.”
He winked and smiled, trying his damnedest not to let her spiral into despair.
“Sweetie pie babycakes?” she asked, casting him a skeptical look.
“Too much?”
She laughed and rolled her eyes before nudging him out of the way and grabbing a stack of books that she promptly set on the table before plopping down beside them.
Hours. They spent hours reading through various texts. Flipping through pages. Reshelving books that had nothing to do with Papantonis other than a brief mention of his existence. Every now and then, Andreas would come to check on them to see if they’d made any progress. But progress was fleeting.
Reading beside Theo was usually one of Dani’s favorite activities.
Other guys would prefer not to waste their time together fingering pages of a book rather than fingering her.
But with Theo, she’d never been more content than when they were sitting next to each other on her couch, engrossed in books.
She’d never felt more…connected to someone.
But not now. He’d written out the words she was supposed to be looking for—Παπατ?νη?, Δημητρ?ου—but it didn’t matter. She’d never get the hang of Greek. She really should have spent more time trying to learn the language before her trip.
She laughed to herself at the thought of this still being a trip. Figures that her first international excursion would turn out to be a disaster. It was like the universe telling her she belonged in Grand Rapids and nowhere else.
Why had she even bothered leaving?
“What’s that face for?” Theo asked.
Dani looked up and blinked. “Face? What face?”
“You look annoyed.”
“Oh, that’s me thinking about how I’m never leaving Grand Rapids ever again.”
She closed another book and placed it on the stack to return to the shelf, making sure to keep things orderly to make it as easy as possible for the librarians. People who pulled dozens of library books and jumbled them out of order were the bane of her existence.
“See, I leave Grand Rapids and bad things happen,” she said, taking another book and flipping straight to the back. Παπατ?νη?, Δημητρ?ου? Παπατ?νη?, Δημητρ?ου? Nothing.
Slam.