Awakening Desires (Nights of Ecstasy #1)
1. The Librarians Quiet Life
Chapter one
The Librarian's Quiet Life
Lauren
T he repetition soothed me. Every morning, before the library doors unlocked, I walked the shelves with a cart of stray books, returning each one to its proper home like a practiced priestess restoring relics to their shrine.
The Dewey Decimal System was not just a code but a doctrine, and my adherence to it bordered on fetishistic.
I favored the early hours, when even the custodial staff had finished their rounds and the reading rooms held only the dense hush of paper and dust. Light, filtered through the century-old windows, laid latticed patterns on the institutional carpet.
In the unpeopled silence, I could hear the faintest creak from the bindings, the soft crackle as I smoothed a mylar jacket over a hardcover's battered slip.
There was a gravity to the stillness, an expectation that something important was about to occur, even though it rarely did.
I made my way down the history aisle, spines brushing the underside of my palm as I scanned for outliers.
My reflection warped along the glass door of a display case showing me as tall, narrow, and perpetually slouching as if apologizing for my height.
My blouse, buttoned to the collar, pulled slightly across my chest, and I tugged at it, discreetly trying to minimize the obvious.
If I hunched my shoulders just so, the strain faded, at least until I reached for something on a high shelf.
Then the fabric would catch, and I would have to pretend I didn’t hear the faint rip.
The cart's wheels squeaked with every third rotation.
I told myself I would fix it during my lunch break, but in three years of full-time employment, I never had.
The squeak was comforting. Predictable. Like the mild irritation of my glasses slipping down my nose, or the need to periodically smooth my hair back into its bun.
Rituals that bracketed the less manageable aspects of the day.
At precisely 8:55 a.m., I heard the soft shuffle of loafers on the marble entryway.
The reference desk would open in five minutes, but already a patron had arrived, hopeful or perhaps desperate.
I did not rush. I was not paid to display eagerness.
Instead, I placed a misfiled volume, Chronicles of the Plantagenets, in its correct slot, then guided my cart to the open floor, pushing with deliberate slowness.
The man waiting by the counter was the sort who habitually overdressed for civilian life: suit, vest, starched pocket square, the effect somewhat blunted by his blue-and-silver tie, printed with what appeared to be tiny cellos.
He was perhaps mid-fifties, silver at the temples and in the whiskers just beginning to breach his clean-shaven cheeks.
"Excuse me," he said, setting a leather messenger bag on the counter. His gaze hovered at my chin before settling on the battered name tag pinned to my breast. "Miss Prescott?"
He pronounced the second 't' so softly it nearly vanished. I had encountered him before. He was one of the regulars, the sort who spent more hours in these rooms than in his own home, a breed with whom I felt a certain kinship and corresponding dread.
"Good morning," I replied, keeping my voice measured. "How can I help you today?"
"I'm searching for a particular edition. Medieval architecture, specifically the Hargrove collection on Gothic structures. I believe the library holds the 1887 print, but it doesn’t appear in the public catalog."
He said this as if challenging me, as if I might have personally hidden the text out of spite.
I knew the book. I remembered its precise shade of navy cloth and the gold-stamped cross on its spine.
I also recalled the circulation desk's last notation: Special Collections – staff access only.
For preservation, I supposed, or possibly due to the inexplicable power librarians have to withhold anything they deem too precious for the unwashed.
"One moment," I said, already pivoting the screen of the ancient library computer so he could not see my login. "The Hargrove is technically part of our rare books collection. For preservation. I can retrieve it if you fill out a slip."
He produced a pen before I finished the sentence. "Of course."
I watched as he filled in his name with fastidious cursive, then capped the pen and folded his hands behind his back, standing at what he must have calculated to be an optimal, non-threatening distance. I hated the way he waited for me to speak first.
"The volume is in section 428.3, though the 1887 edition you’re referencing is kept in our special collections area.
" I could hear myself falling into the script, my syllables polished by habit.
"It may take a few minutes to locate, as those stacks are not in the public area. You’re welcome to wait here, or in the reading room. "
He smiled in the careful way people do when trying to make a good impression on a recalcitrant cat. "Thank you, Miss Prescott. Truly."
There it was, the microsecond after a compliment when I felt my face betray me.
Blood rising from my neck to my cheeks in a flush so predictable it might as well have been mapped in my DNA.
I ducked my head and made for the staff hallway, cursing the involuntary color that now burned at my hairline.
The special collections room was kept under lock and ancient key, a concession to both security and the curator’s love of old-world ceremony.
I fished the key from its chain around my neck and let myself in, inhaling the musk of aged linen and dust. There were some who found this smell nostalgic; to me, it was simply correct, the way air ought to taste if it was worth breathing.
The Hargrove occupied a glass-fronted case with a brass lock so worn the key turned with barely a suggestion of resistance.
I ran a finger along the spines until I found it.
Navy blue, gold cross, thin as a hymnal.
I lifted it with both hands, as if the object might break, though its binding was in better shape than most. Before leaving, I allowed myself a quick glance at the book’s dedication, the calligraphy inside a time capsule of pre-war optimism and religious certainty.
Back at the reference desk, the man waited exactly where I’d left him, reading an out-of-date periodical with the intense focus of one attempting to memorize the news.
"Here it is," I said, holding out the Hargrove.
His eyes widened. "May I…?"
"Of course. If you’ll just sign the register." I indicated the clipboard, watching as his hand, steadier than my own, added his name beneath a neat, spidery line of signatures. There was a formality to the transaction, as if the book were a relic and I its reluctant acolyte.
He took the volume and opened to a random page, running his fingertip down an illustration of flying buttresses. "You have a remarkable memory, Miss Prescott. Have you worked here long?"
"Eight years." The admission felt both boastful and pathetic.
He looked at me, properly this time, as if searching for something in my face.
I knew what he saw: wire-rimmed glasses perched on a nose a fraction too long, dark hair yanked into a no-nonsense bun, jaw set in a way that discouraged further inquiry.
If he noticed the residual flush in my cheeks, he was too polite to mention it.
"You must know this place better than anyone," he said.
I shrugged. "I just try to keep things in order."
He nodded, then returned to the book as if our exchange had already exhausted its potential.
I retreated behind the computer, pretending to update a database entry while, in fact, I simply watched him from the corner of my eye.
The reverence with which he handled the pages, hands clean, touch light, was oddly intimate, as though the book were a person he feared to offend.
A student approached the counter, wrestling a stack of textbooks nearly as tall as herself.
I checked them out, stamped each return date with mechanical precision, and sent her off with a whispered admonition to handle the economics compendium more gently this time.
Between patrons, I found my mind drifting.
Not to the man with the book, but to the involuntary blush that had crept up my neck, and how desperately I wished I could control it.
My skin was a traitor. It gave away my thoughts long before I could marshal them into appropriate shape, exposing me like a page turned too soon.
The morning passed in increments, measured by the rhythm of incoming patrons and the steady migration of books from cart to shelf.
The man in the suit read for almost an hour, sometimes pausing to jot notes in a small black notebook, always closing the volume with care, never letting the spine bend too far.
When he returned the Hargrove, he slid it gently across the counter, as if returning a child from a weekend visitation.
"I appreciate your help," he said, meeting my eyes with unexpected warmth. "Most people would have pointed me to the microfiche."
"Most people," I replied, not quite smiling, "don’t have to inventory the entire collection by hand every fiscal quarter."
He laughed, a sound more genuine than I expected. For a moment, the library felt less like a fortress and more like a shared domain, if only slightly.