Chapter 5
Ellie
The first note says MONSTER WHORE in block letters, black marker on lined paper ripped from a spiral notebook. The second says ORC LOVER with an exclamation point, like the person got excited halfway through the hate.
I find them on the floor inside the mail slot when I open the library Friday morning, mixed in with a seed catalog and three overdue notices that the system auto-prints.
Somebody pushed them through the slot between when I locked up yesterday and six-fifteen this morning, which means somebody stood on the front steps of my library in the dark and fed handwritten slurs through the brass plate I polished last week.
My hands don't shake. They stay steady while I read each note twice and fold them into squares and put them in the bottom drawer of my desk under a box of spare date stamps. I don't call the police. I don't tell anyone. I slide the drawer shut. I can deal with paper.
Except my hands start shaking ten minutes later, at my desk, with my coffee going cold.
Not fear. Anger. White-hot and sudden, the kind that makes my jaw ache from clenching.
Someone stood on the steps of my library.
They watched me and picked up a marker, the fact that I can picture it—the steps, the brass slot, a hand pushing paper through—makes my skin crawl.
Someone saw me at Colt's house last night. Someone watched me walk up his porch steps, or watched me drive away at nine, and that person went home and tore pages out of a notebook and picked up a marker.
I close the drawer. I open the library. I run story hour at ten, check in fourteen returns, help Mrs. Desmond find the large-print mysteries, and eat lunch at my desk with the drawer six inches from my knee.
Nobody comes back. The notes sit where I put them. By three o'clock I've almost convinced myself it's nothing.
By five I've locked the front door and turned off the overhead lights and I'm pulling the returns cart through the reading room with the desk lamp on and rain tapping the windows.
Spring break means no after-school kids, no Lily arguing about Le Guin, no Colt standing at the counter at four o'clock pretending he isn't watching me.
The building creaks and I flinch. Four years I've closed this library alone and the sounds never bothered me, the pipes, the rain and the old wood settling. Tonight every noise has an edge to it. Tonight someone knows I'm here.
No Colt at all. He hasn't texted since I left his house last night.
I sat at his kitchen table and ate his dinner and laughed at his stories and he walked me to the door and I drove home with my hands shaking on the wheel.
Twenty-two hours ago. My phone has stayed quiet since.
I'm not too sure why I expect him to text, but I felt something change between us last night.
I keep shelving. Nonfiction, top shelf. The routine is all I've got.
I'm on the stepladder reaching for the 800s when somebody knocks on the front door.
My whole body locks. The knock echoes through the empty building and my mind goes straight to the notes, to someone standing on my steps in the dark.
I come down the ladder, cross the reading room and look through the glass.
Colt stands on the front steps. Damp from the rain, glasses fogged, messenger bag over one shoulder. He sees me through the door and doesn't wave, doesn't smile. Just stands there.
I unlock the door. My hands are shaking again and I hope he doesn't notice.
He steps inside, the cold air follows him along with the smell of rain and leather and underneath, sharp and alive, something that's not human.
"Lily's at Rex and Holly's tonight," he says. "Holly volunteered for a sleepover." He wipes his glasses on his top. Without them his face changes, broader, the green-grey of his skin darker in the low light. He opens his mouth. Closes it. Puts the glasses back on.
"I don't—" He stops. Runs his hand over the back of his neck. "I've been sitting in my truck in the parking lot for forty minutes trying to talk myself out of knocking on the door."
I'm not sure what to do with that.
"Your scent." He says it like it hurts him.
"It's still in the house, from last night, and I can't—" He stops again.
Shakes his head. "I mowed the lawn in the rain today, Ellie.
I reorganized the club's entire accounts receivable.
I read a monograph on Victorian property law.
And the whole time I' was breathing through my mouth because when I breathe through my nose, all I smell is you in my house. "
"I don't understand, I don't wear perfume."
"I know." He closes his eyes.
I lock the door behind him. My fingers are steadier than they should be.
He takes a step into the library and stops.
He looks at the floor, then at me. "I don't have a speech.
I didn't plan this. I just—you sat at my kitchen table last night and fit there.
Lily stopped calling you Miss Frost halfway through dinner and I didn't correct her.
And when I walked you to the door you looked at me and I almost—"
He doesn't finish. His hands open and close at his sides.
"I haven't wanted someone in eight years," he says. "I don't know how to do this."
The library is so quiet I can hear the rain on the skylight above the reference section. I'm standing four feet from him with my hand still on the lock and my pulse hammering in my ears.
"Tell me about her," I say. "Maren. Tell me the real version." I don't know why I say it, but I want to know everything about Colt.
His hands go still at his sides. "Why?"
"Because you told me Maren loved books. That she read the way Lily reads. And then you walked me to the door and said what you said and I think the reason you're standing in my library right now is because you need to say her name to someone who'll listen."
He looks at the floor, then the stacks, then me.
"She laughed at my lectures," he says. "I'd practice them at the kitchen table and she'd sit across from me eating Cheerios and laughing.
She said my reading glasses made me look like a sexy accountant.
" He pushes the glasses up. "She had opinions about everything.
Parking meters. School board elections. Whether oregano belongs in chili.
She'd argue with anyone about anything and she won every time because she didn't care about winning, she just cared about being right. "
I step forward and take his hand. His fingers close around mine and I hold on.
"She would have liked you," he says. Quieter now. "She'd have sat down right here and joined in on every argument you and Lily have about Le Guin."
He doesn't say anything else. His thumb traces across my knuckles, slowly as the library settles into silence.
The rain on the skylight. His breathing.
Mine. He's close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him, his hand tightens around mine, I look up at him and he's already looking at me and the four feet between us has become nothing.
I don't decide to kiss him. The distance just closes and my mouth finds his and my hand is still in his hand.
Five years of waiting for men to choose me. Derek served me divorce papers between bites of pasta and I sat there and took it. I'm done waiting. Colt drove here in the rain after forty minutes of arguing with himself, and I'm done standing feet away from the thing I want.
His hands land on my waist. He pulls me into him and his mouth opens against mine.
The sound I make against his mouth surprises me.
His thumbs trace my jaw. A growl builds in his chest, low enough that I feel the vibration through my whole body, the sound goes straight between my legs.
I press closer, grip the front of his top, pull him down to me. The growl gets louder.
He lifts me. One arm around my waist, the other under my thigh, and my feet leave the ground.
A hundred and forty pounds picked up with one arm like it's nothing to him.
I wrap my legs around his waist, his face drops to my neck and he breathes in, long and deep, scenting me, the rumble in his chest vibrates against my skin.
My back hits the stacks. A paperback falls behind me.
His mouth drags down my throat, slow, and I feel his tusks scrape the curve of my shoulder, my hips rock against him.
I pull his glasses off with both hands and tuck them onto the shelf behind me, his mouth finds the hollow above the collar of my dress.
He kisses across my collarbone. His teeth catch the neckline of my dress and tug it lower and his mouth finds the top of my breast. I gasp loud enough to hear it bounce off the ceiling.
His hands slide up my ribs, thumbs dragging over the fabric across my nipples, my spine arches off the shelves.
I can feel him hard against the inside of my thigh, even through his jeans.
I've read enough monster romances to know what orc men are built like.
The reality pressed against my thigh makes my mouth go dry.
"I can smell how wet you are." His voice against my ear, so low the words press into my skin.
"I've been able to smell it for months. Every Saturday at four o'clock you'd stand behind that desk, get wet for me and pretend you didn't, and I pretended I didn't notice, but I noticed every fucking time. "
His hand slides under the hem of my dress, up the outside of my thigh, and I stop breathing. His fingers hook into my underwear and pull them to the side and the first touch against my pussy drags a sound out of me I don't recognize.
He groans, his forehead dropping to my shoulder. "Fuck, Ellie. You're soaked."
His fingers slide through me, parting me open, and the wet sound of it fills the quiet library. His thumb finds my clit and presses and my whole body jerks against him. He holds me pinned to the shelves with one arm, my weight nothing to him, while his other hand works between my thighs.