Chapter 8
Flint
The last customer left at six, and I locked the door behind them with a satisfying click. I was only minutes away from being alone with Avery… something I’d spent all day waiting for.
“Early close for inventory,” I announced to Shelly, who was straightening the children’s section. “You can head out.”
Avery appeared from behind a shelf, her lavender cardigan slightly rumpled from a long day.
Shelly asked, “Are you sure? I don’t mind staying.”
“Go on.” I waved her toward the door. “We’ve got this.”
The bell chimed as she left, and then it was just the two of us.
The change in mood hit me immediately.
For days now, Bookish had been buzzing with customers and new energy.
The tourist traffic had picked up, Shelly was learning the ropes, and there was always someone around needing something. I’d barely had a moment alone with Avery since that first day when I arrived.
I missed it. The intimacy of working side by side without an audience. We both did best in quiet, even if we were surrounded by a busy bookstore.
“So,” Avery said, pulling a clipboard from behind the counter, “inventory.”
She was wearing a swishy blue skirt today, one that caught my eye every time she moved.
It swirled around her calves when she walked.
And her cardigan was buttoned up properly today, but I could still see the soft curve of her breasts outlined underneath it.
And for some inexplicable reason, she’d paired it all with pink flats.
She looked like a rainbow. She always did. All those colors looked perfect against her pale skin and blonde hair.
All I ever wore were blue jeans and a red flannel. In fact, I had a whole wardrobe of them. It made getting dressed in the morning easy.
But Avery was creative with her clothes; a beautiful butterfly.
“Show me how inventory works,” I rumbled, following her to the back of the store.
She grabbed a rolling ladder and positioned it against the tall shelves in the romance section. “We start at the top and work our way down. Every book gets scanned and counted.”
Then she climbed up.
And I got a perfect view of her ass.
The skirt swayed as she reached for the highest shelf, and I could see the outline of her thighs through the fabric. Soft. Round. The kind of curves a man could grab onto.
I forced myself to look at the clipboard in my hands as my cock rose from its resting place.
“You scan the barcode,” she called down, “and I’ll count. Then we compare what the system says we should have.”
We fell into a rhythm. She counted and handed me books, I scanned, and we moved through the shelves section by section. The store was quiet except for the beep of the scanner.
When the numbers didn’t match what she expected in the science fiction section, a little furrow landed between her brows.
Then, later, she bit down on her soft pink lips when the scanning gun malfunctioned.
“Maybe it’s time for a new gun.”
Avery’s head was bent over the scanning gun as she muttered, “Marlene says she can’t afford one. It only takes a few minutes to reprogram it. Hopefully, we didn’t lose our work.”
She had a freckle on the back of her neck, right where her hair parted, and I wanted to press my mouth to it.
I felt like the big bad wolf wanting to eat little red riding hood right up.
Maybe sending Shelly home had been a mistake.
By the time we finished the last section, I wasn’t focused on Avery’s gorgeous ass anymore. A hole had settled in my chest.
The numbers on the clipboard were about ten thousand dollars lower than what they should have been based on the purchase records and sales figures.
Ten thousand dollars.
That was either a theft problem, a damages problem, or shoddy bookkeeping. None of those options were good.
“Avery.” I kept my voice steady even though my gut was churning. “Does Marlene do a tight inventory every month?”
She bit her lip, and I could see the guilt flash across her face before she answered. “Not exactly.”
“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?”
“She guestimates certain sections.” Avery climbed down the ladder. “We count the books but not the costs, and then we average them out, estimating the whole costs at a flat rate.”
I stared at her. “That’s not inventory. That’s creative accounting.”
“I know,” her voice was small. “That’s why I made us do a full count tonight. I wanted to see the real numbers.”
I glanced at my watch. It was after midnight.
Avery’s face crumpled. “I’m sorry I kept you out so late. I know you probably have things to do tomorrow, and I should have warned you it would take this long, but I needed you to understand how bad it really is, and now you’re probably mad at me for—”
“Avery,” I cut her off gently. “I’m not mad.”
She blinked. “You’re not?”
“No,” I sat down right there on the floor of the romance section, and leaned back against a bookshelf. Then I pulled my backpack over and unzipped it, dragging out two beers packed in a bag of melting ice. “I’m appreciative.”
I twisted both caps off and held one out to her.
She stared at it for a moment, then slowly lowered herself to the floor nearby. She took the beer from my hand with a shy smile.
“You brought beer to inventory?”
“I bring beer everywhere.” I took a long pull from mine. “Never know when you’re gonna need one.”
She laughed softly, and the sound did something to my chest. Made it feel lighter despite the weight of those numbers.
“So,” I stretched my legs out and crossed my ankles. “What are your ideas?”
“My ideas?” she squeaked.
“For the bookstore,” I gestured around with my beer. “You’ve been here six years. You know this place better than anyone. What would you do to fix it?”
She looked at me like I’d just asked her to solve world hunger. “Marlene’s never asked me that.”
“I’m asking.”
For a moment she just sat there, her fingers wrapped around the bottle. Then she started talking.
“The local author events could be bigger. And we should have a kids’ reading hour on Saturday mornings because that’s when all the families are out running errands.
The mystery section needs to be closer to the front because those readers are loyal and they buy in bulk, but they’re hidden in the back corner where no one can find them. ”
She paused to take a breath, and I nodded for her to keep going.
Avery squinted at me, like she was trying to decide if I really wanted to hear her ideas.
Then she continued, “We could do book subscription boxes for locals. Curated picks based on their taste, delivered monthly. It would give us steady income and build loyalty. And the romance section needs its own display near the register because impulse buys are huge in romance, but Marlene always hides them in the back because she thinks they’re embarrassing.
Especially the man chest covers. But sex sells. We all know that.”
Her cheeks flushed at that last part, and I remembered the book club ladies teasing her about mountain men.
“These are good ideas,” I said, and I meant it.
“Really?” She looked up at me, hope flickering in her eyes.
“Really. Maybe we’ll even rent a mountain man to strut around out front without a shirt on during town festivals. The bookstore has a perfect location right here next to the town center.”
She giggled at that and patted my knee, her eyes drifting down to my chest. “We don’t need to rent a mountain man. We just need you to do it for free.”
The best part about that? She kept her hand on my knee, sending rocket flares straight up my leg to my cock.
We kept talking as we finished our beers, our conversation drifting from the bookstore to our personal lives.
I found out she lived at the Treetop Apartments by herself, her lease was coming due, and she hadn’t found a roommate.
Gwen was supposed to move in with her, but then she went and got married instead.
I told her all about my life, a quiet existence in my own world surrounded by woods and forest critters. Told her that town life was hard for me after some gossip went around a few years back.
Avery’s voice got softer, more relaxed, and she leaned back against the shelf beside me until our shoulders were almost touching. She told me town gossip had hurt her, too, but didn’t get into details.
Which was fair. Neither had I.
I don’t know when I decided to move closer.
One moment there was space between us, and the next I was closing the gap until my thigh pressed against hers.
I slung my arm around her and traced idle circles against her shoulder, slow, absentminded, like I was already used to touching her.
“Avery, I’m glad we met,” I rumbled comfortably.
She looked up at me, her blue eyes wide in the dim light. I could see the pulse pounding in her neck, quick and fluttering. Her lips were parted slightly, and she had such a look of hope on her face it softened my heart.
And nothing softened that chunk of rock.
I shouldn’t kiss her.
She worked for me. Technically. Temporarily.
It was inappropriate and unprofessional and about a dozen other words that meant I should keep my fucking hands to myself.
But I’d been wanting her since the moment I walked into this bookstore and found her flustered behind the register.
And right now, with her soft body pressed against mine and her eyes looking up at me like I was something worth wanting, I lost my final bit of self-control.
My hand came up to cup her jaw, and then it wasn’t much of a leap to dip my mouth towards hers.
I kissed her.
Avery gasped, tilting her head back so I could deepen the kiss, and then she melted into me like she’d been waiting for this just as long as I had.
Her fingers curled into my shirt, pulling me closer, and a groan rumbled up from my chest. I shifted until I was facing her fully, one hand still on her cheek and the other sliding down to grip her hip through that swishy blue skirt.
“Flint,” she breathed against my lips.
“Yeah?” I pulled back just long enough to look at her, to make sure this was okay.
Her answer was to grab my shoulders and pull me down on top of her.
We settled onto the hardwood floor, with me on top as I let my primitive instincts take over.
She was soft everywhere I was hard, her curves pressing up against me in all the right places, and when I settled my hips between her thighs she let out a whimper that went straight to my cock.
I was hard. Had been since she climbed that ladder hours ago. Now I was straining against my jeans, and I knew she could feel it because her hips rolled up to meet mine.
“Fuck,” I growled against her throat.
Then I kissed down her neck, tasting the salt of her skin, as she arched beneath me. Her fingers tangled in my hair, pulling me closer, and her thighs fell open wider to cradle me.
I ground down against her, and she moaned.
The sound echoed through the empty store, bouncing off the bookshelves and the high ceiling, and something primal surged through me. I wanted to hear that sound again. Wanted to make her moan and whimper and scream until everyone in Red Oak Mountain knew she was mine.
All of the want and need that had been rolling through me for days, no, make that years, rose to the surface.
I rolled my hips again, harder this time, and she cried out.
“That’s it,” I murmured against her ear. “Let me hear you.”
Her skirt had ridden up around her hips, and I could feel the heat of her through the thin cotton of her panties. I thrust against her, the rough denim of my jeans creating friction that made her gasp and clutch at my shoulders.
“Flint, please—”
“Please what?” I nipped at her earlobe, then soothed it with my tongue. “Tell me what you want.”
“More,” she panted. “I want more.”
I gave her more. I set a rhythm, grinding down against her core with each thrust.
She matched me. Her hips rose to meet mine, her body moving instinctively, seeking the pressure she needed.
Holy fuck, she felt good. I paused us for a moment, unzipping my jeans before continuing. I could feel her getting wetter through her panties, the heat building between us until the air itself felt thick. The romance section of the bookstore would never be the same again.
Her hands slid down my back and grabbed my ass, pulling me harder against her, and I groaned into her neck. She was so eager, her whole body arching up into mine like she couldn’t get close enough.
“You feel so fucking good,” I rasped. “Been thinking about this since the first day I met you.”
“I thought about you too.” Her voice was breathy and broken. “I dreamed about you.”
That confession nearly undid me.
I kissed her again, hard and deep, swallowing her moans as I thrust against her.
Books toppled off the closest bookshelf when I thrust a little too hard, but neither of us could stop. We just let the books rain down.
The friction was almost unbearable, pleasure building at the base of my spine. I wanted to feel her come apart. Now.
“Come on, baby,” I angled my hips so my cock pressed right against her clit through our underwear. “Let go for me.”
And then she shattered.
Her whole body tensed beneath me, her back arching off the floor, and she cried out my name as she came. I watched her face, pleasure washing over her features, and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
I kept moving, working her through it, until she went limp beneath me with a shuddering sigh.
Then I buried my face in her neck and thrust twice more before my own release hit me like a freight train.
I had never in all my life clothes-fucked a woman to completion. But that’s how crazy I was over Avery Fisher.