Chapter 25
MILES
I really, really didn’t mind being kissed awake by Booker, or the way his weight felt on top of me first thing in the morning, shielding me from the world and giving me a chance to wake up.
I didn’t mind morning breath, or the crick in my neck from the way I’d used him as a pillow, or the bone-deep ache in places I hadn’t even realized I had before this morning.
I loved it. I loved the way it felt when Booker smiled against my mouth, I loved his thighs bracketing mine, I loved running my hands over his skin and pulling him closer and laughing.
I loved knowing that I could do all that and he liked it.
I loved feeling sore and used and knowing it was because of Booker.
Because someone as good and kind as him wanted me and had spent the whole night making me feel good.
He’d warned me I’d feel it in the morning and I couldn’t have been more thrilled that I did. I hoped it’d linger. I hoped I could spend the day shifting just a little to feel all the delicious aches he’d left me with and remember all over again how happy it’d made me to earn them.
“How’re you feeling?” Booker asked between kisses, stroking his thumb over the shell of my ear. “Sleep okay?”
“Better than ever.” I grinned up at him.
“Sore?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
I bit my lip and nodded. I was so sore.
It was such a turn-on.
“Would it be weird if I kinda love it?” I asked aloud.
Booker chuckled. “No, I don’t think that’s weird.”
“It’s a reminder,” I said. “A persistent reminder,” I added, laughing.
Booker hummed, running the tip of his nose along mine, catching my mouth for a kiss then working his way along my jaw until his nose brushed my ear. I hummed, arching against him as he pressed a kiss to the hinge of my jaw, a prickle of need curling up the back of my neck.
“Trust me?” he asked.
“Always,” I said. Of course I trusted him. Trusting him had always worked out before now.
“Roll over,” he said. “And let me know the second this is too much.”
I let him help me roll over, trying and failing to stifle a pathetic little groan as I moved. None of my muscles, if I could be said to have those, wanted to cooperate this morning.
“That bad?” Booker asked, hands framing my lower back, which was one of many areas that hated me.
I figured the best way to solve that was to do this again. And again. And, ideally, again. With perhaps a little recovery break between times. I half-remembered Evie explaining to me about starting new activities and building up the necessary stamina for them.
Now that I knew what being with Booker could be like, now that I’d had him inside me and I could still feel it and my dick was already getting hard just thinking about it, I didn’t plan to stop anytime soon.
Booker started at the back of my neck, brushing soft kisses over my skin, nuzzling his way down. He kissed the lines of my shoulders, ran his hands along my sides, licked a stripe up my spine.
“Bet you’ll have more freckles in the summer,” Booker murmured, kissing his way down my back again.
“If you can wrestle me out of my shirt,” I said, relaxing into the mattress.
“That a challenge?” Booker asked, lips moving ticklishly against my skin.
I chuckled. “You might convince me to go swimming without all my clothes on.”
“Might convince you to do a lot of things without all your clothes on,” Booker murmured, pressing a kiss to the base of my spine. “Might even convince you to do a few things with none of your clothes on.”
I’d probably intended to answer him, but then he spread my ass cheeks open one-handed and a jolt of arousal made me gasp.
“Tell me if it’s too much,” Booker repeated, breath ghosting over sensitive skin.
I took a breath to ask if what was too much, but then Booker’s mouth was on me and I forgot how to use my tongue.
He had not forgotten how to use his, though.
I definitely intended to swear into the pillow, but none of what came out qualified as language, let alone swearing.
More a garbled moan that faded to a rumble deep in my chest as my back arched, body demanding more.
My thighs parted without my permission, and Booker chuckled against me, scruff scraping against sensitive skin and holy fuck.
Who put the whole room on a turntable and why were they spinning it around me?
“Book,” I choked out. I strained against his hands where he had me pinned to the mattress without meaning to, too overwhelmed for conscious decisions. My brain was unwilling to deal with anything but wanting more right now.
“Okay?” Booker asked, pausing for an agonizing second.
I nodded, and then his mouth was on me again, hot and wet and gentle, lips and tongue soothing as I gripped the pillow and sobbed into it. Fuck, if I’d known about this before…
Booker’s warm laughter vibrated against my skin and I wasn’t sure it was fair of him to torture me like this but I also didn’t want him to stop. Maybe not ever.
“Book,” I gasped, hips rocking back against him the tiny amount they could. All he did was laugh again, warm and wet against my skin. I sobbed into the pillow, hips straining, cock leaking into the sheets under me, head spinning all over again as I gasped for breath.
There was no way I could take much more of this. How did anyone?
“Book,” I tried again, voice breaking. All I could think about was Booker’s mouth, the way he was using it, for me, and how good it felt, and how incredible he was, and—
“I got you,” he murmured, hand sliding under me. “I got you.”
I sobbed as his fingers grazed my cock, hips jerking as he put his mouth to me again. Pressure welled up in my hips, between my thighs in a clear line from Booker’s tongue to my balls, rising and rising with every touch, every breath, every heartbeat.
I cried out into the pillow as a blinding rush of pleasure washed over me, my teeth biting hard into my lower lip, a sound I’d never heard before scraping the back of my throat.
Even with my eyes screwed shut, my vision whited out as I came in wave after wave.
The relief was so overwhelming I felt as though my brains were leaking out my ears.
If it’d been anyone but Booker with me, I might’ve felt ridiculous.
As it was, Booker pressed a kiss to my left buttcheek, and rolled out of bed.
“Back in a second, gotta brush my teeth,” he said, padding away.
I lay face down on the bed, becoming one with the mattress, unsure I’d ever be able to stand again.
As if to answer my question, my phone went off just as Booked slipped into the bathroom. I groaned, shuffling over to the side of the bed to grab my pants and fish it out of the pocket to answer. If someone was calling me at this hour, it’d probably be important.
“Mr. Evans?” the voice on the other end asked when I managed to mumble a hello. “My name is Angela Golding, and I’m calling from UChicago. Do you have a minute to talk?”
“I didn’t expect it to be so adorable!”
Angela Golding turned out to be a pretty brunette around my age. We’d bonded over matching glasses—she wore them for distance, I only needed mine for reading, but our frames were identical.
She seemed smart, put together, and professional.
She was also obviously charmed by Otter Bay in a way I definitely hadn’t been when I arrived.
Not until Booker, anyway.
Now...
“Mr. Miles!”
I looked down to see Maddie—my erstwhile tormentor—and saw her holding out a piece of paper.
“I made this for Book,” she said with the kind of seriousness only people under ten can manage. “For his birthday. Can you give it to him?”
I offered Angela an apologetic smile and took the paper from Maddie—a drawing, it turned out.
Two figures, lovingly rendered in library crayons.
One with a shock of red hair wearing brown, the other towering over him, dark haired, broad shouldered, wearing jeans and what I assumed was an approximation of a plaid shirt.
The two of them were holding hands. There was a heart between them.
I crouched down beside Maddie.
“So, that’s Booker,” I said, pointing to the towering figure. He might have been imposing, drawn as he was, enormous and sketched dramatically with spiky lines, but he somehow wasn’t. The drawing captured the essence of Booker, strong and warm and radiating love and care.
Maddie nodded eagerly.
“And that’s me? Next to him?” I asked.
Maddie shrugged. “You’re supposed to give people things they like for their birthdays,” she explained. “So I gave him you.”
I flushed all the way from my collarbones to the roots of my hair. I’d already accepted that the whole town would know about us within days, but it seemed like Maddie had figured the two of us out on our own, without having to see me kiss Booker last night.
It was just possible we’d been more obvious than I thought.
Or, at least, that Maddie had seen something in the way Booker was with me that gave him away. Despite the embarrassment, I liked the thought of that.
“I’ll make sure he gets it,” I promised.
“This, too,” Maddie said, and before I could wonder what this was, she wrapped her arms around my neck and squeezed tight. “From me.”
“That, too,” I agreed, unable to help a smile. When she wasn’t chasing me with a sword, Maddie was okay.
Maddie grinned at me and raced back to the children’s section before I could remind her not to run.
I was still blushing when I stood up and straightened out my clothes.
“Sorry about the interruption,” I said. “I’m still not sure I’m cut out for kids.”
Angela’s lips barely twitched, but I could see the laughter in her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said. “She seemed to like you.”
I chose not to mention that a handful of days ago she’d been chasing me around with a cardboard sword.
Being Booker’s friend clearly had more advantages than I’d thought.
“I’m learning,” I said, remembering this was a job interview and not just a tour of my library. “I like to think I’m adaptable.”
“Sure seems that way,” Angela said. “Tell me more about this recording studio you’re setting up?”
I got the tour back on track, stopping to help a few patrons along the way.
I found books and helped people log in to their email accounts on the library computers and wrangled the self-checkout machine for a teenager who seemed a little embarrassed to be borrowing romance novels until I noticed one I’d read myself in the pile and told him I thought it was great.
All the while, I had to keep reminding myself that this was a job interview. For the dream job I’d begged a friend to throw my hat into the ring for.
Maybe it was because Angela seemed so impressed by the library itself that I just felt like I was showing it off to a new patron, or someone who’d have some say in its future.
I supposed she would, if I was about to be offered a new job.
Where was Seth going to find someone else to do this?
“I just want to say, candidly, that I’m really impressed with what you’ve accomplished here,” Angela said as I led her to the door.
“Yeah?” I asked, looking back at my library.
My library?
When did that happen?
“Absolutely. It’s obvious this was a nearly impossible job when you got here, underfunded and understaffed, and look what you’ve accomplished!
Improvements, a whole host of community programs, a real understanding of the dialogue between the library and the needs of the patrons. You’re a born librarian,” she said.
And I was blushing again. I couldn’t imagine a higher compliment than that.
“Well, I did always want to be one,” I said. “But I was just... doing what anyone would’ve done,” I went on, forgetting again that I was meant to be emphasizing my achievements here if I wanted that job offer.
Did I want it?
It was my dream job. Back in academia, where I knew what I was doing. Better pay. More responsibility. More prestige, whatever that was worth.
“And I’ve had so much help,” I continued. There was no way I could take all the credit for myself, even in a job interview. “Everyone’s been so kind. We just secured funding and an increase for the next quarter and I really couldn’t have done it if the whole community wasn’t behind me.”
“See, that’s exactly what we’re looking for,” Angela said.
“Someone who can get the community behind them. Someone who cares enough to do it. In a world of increasing book bans and censorship and ideology wars happening in libraries everywhere, we need someone like you to, you know, guide the ship. We want our library to be one of the best in the world and it’s going to take a lot of good people to do it. ”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. The thought of being part of it welled up under my ribs, pushing the air out of my lungs.
“Listen, I’m not really supposed to say this, but... look for an email from me by close of business,” she said. “I have a family thing to get to, which is why I had a chance to meet you in person at all, but I’ll be coming back this way on Friday. We could get coffee? And talk about it?”
Oh wow. Oh wow.
“I, umm. Yeah, Friday sounds… Great,” I said. “I normally take my lunch break at noon?”
“Noon in the cute little coffee shop with the plants,” Angela said. “Grinding? With the puppy?”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling at the thought of Theo. He was a good dog. “Yeah, umm. I’d love that.”
I waved goodbye to Angela with my heart pounding in my ears, unsure whether to laugh or cry or scream about what had just happened.
It wasn’t until I went back inside that I realized I’d been carrying Booker’s birthday picture around the whole time.