Chapter 15 Rare Editions #2
“I can ask him,” Levi says, refolding the paper and tucking it into his shirt pocket. “There’s also a curiosity shop on Pier Fifty-Four that might know something about it. I’m acquainted with the owner. This is precisely their kind of thing. Okay if I keep this?”
“Please,” I agree, grateful he’ll investigate further for me. “I think there may be more to it than meets the eye. It’s just a hunch,” I explain when he gives me a questioning look.
“Funny,” he says, facing me and stepping very close. “I have the same hunch about you.”
I’m suddenly and fiercely shaken by nerves I didn’t expect.
Levi’s windswept charm and warm countenance have reduced me to a lovesick teenager with a single line.
I have half a mind to turn around and never return, to cut this off like a gangrenous limb before it has time to infect me further.
Because this, I can tell, will be nothing like Roger.
This thing growing between us will lack all the ambivalent, invisible energy that kept me safe, detached, impartial.
This will ask everything of me. But I may have come too far to turn back.
He’s already under my skin. Like Arla. Like the Fathom.
My life has been invaded. I’m under a new regime.
“So,” he says, “back to the matter at hand. Did we just have our first date and our first fight in the same night?”
I can’t hold back my smile. “I think so.”
“That must be some kind of record,” he says.
I can’t deny that we seem to be moving at an advanced pace.
“There’s another first I think we owe it to ourselves to get out of the way.
” His fingers wrap around the collar of my trench coat, and he pulls me gently up and toward him.
“I’m going to kiss you now, Judeth,” he says softly, like it’s more of a wish than a statement.
“It’s something I’ve been wanting to do since the moment you stepped in here looking for ‘something familiar.’”
“Okay,” I whisper. I’m not sure anyone’s ever told me they were going to kiss me before. Roger certainly didn’t. He just leaned across the charcuterie board and groped my lips with his, tasting of hard cheese. This ought to be infinitely sweeter.
Levi nods as if he’s questioning my consent, and I nod back, tingling with anticipation.
But he is not brusque and stingy like Roger.
His lips brush mine delicately and then linger, passing over my mouth again and again until neither of us can bear to pull away for air.
He stiffens against me and his hands hold my face as if it is something precious, the smell of old leather and paper circling us like an aphrodisiac.
My hands snake hungrily beneath the hem of his shirt, over the waistband of his well-fitting jeans and the plane of his abdomen, and into the coils of hair that cloak his chest. He groans into my mouth and drops a hand to my waist and then lower, squeezing with relish as he pulls me closer.
Reluctant, I break away, head nodding and eyes flashing to the wall of storefront windows that face the street. “We’ll have an audience,” I tell him. Medusa’s curvy stage comes to mind, Arla tucked comfortably in her dark booth, everyone there a voyeur in someone else’s game.
With a final peck, he steps away, thinking I’m telling him to stop. But I’m just getting started.
I brush past him, tugging on his waistband to drag him along. “Surely there’s a shelf we can hide behind,” I say suggestively. “The History and Biography section is looking rather secluded.”
Levi’s face lights up and he grabs my wrist, leading me to the far back corner of the store where a dark and narrow door is squeezed between shelves, a beautiful brass mezuzah affixed to the jamb. “In here,” he says, cocking a brow.
“After you.”
He fumbles for a key in his pocket and quickly unlocks the door, flipping on the lights as we enter.
The cellar at Medusa swims before me, but the room we step into is nothing like Arla’s basement.
Smaller and more square, its walls are lined with immaculate, ebony bookshelves, two mahogany tables taking up most of the floor with a couple of antique pressback chairs between them.
Soft lamps glow down from sconces high in the corners of the room, and a banker’s lamp is waiting on the far table for someone to sit and crack a book open beneath it.
Overhead, a ceiling light with a glass shade is dimmed.
Book spines of every color crowd the shelves, while cabinets, cases, and boxes of varying size can be seen tucked among them, some with their own lock and keyhole.
“What is this room?” I ask as Levi burrows into my neck and hair from behind, his tongue tracing the muscles there.
“Rare editions,” he says. “Antiquities.” The last word comes out like a breath, and then his hands are peeling the coat from my shoulders, lifting my shirt over my head, spinning me around and pulling me against him as his hands slide past my waistband.
I want him everywhere at once and our mouths find each other, tasting long and hard.
He turns me again as his hands cover my breasts, and I press back, anchored against the solidness of him.
His hands are smooth as they unbutton my pants and then his own, gliding over me like I am silk, like I am parchment, like I am made of exquisite things.
His fingers are deft when they slide between my legs, teasing out pleasure until I shudder and cry for more.
He bends me over one of the tables, my chest flush with the wood as he sheathes a condom and enters me.
A thick, hot pulse of energy fills me up again and again as he kisses the nape of my neck and whispers how I am the most intoxicating woman he has ever known.
When we climax, it is like two refrains of music laid over each other, an unexpected harmony forming between the notes that is so bright, even the tomes around us ripple with ecstasy.
Afterward, we lie on the floor side by side, deflated and buzzing, our vitality spent.
“I’ve never done that,” I finally say.
Levi rolls on his side to look at me, curious. “You certainly don’t act like a beginner.”
I snicker. “I mean I’ve never seduced a man before,” I tell him. It’s always been men who come on to me, who wear me down or catch me at the right moment. But with Levi, I felt empowered.
“Well, congratulations,” he says, a finger winding its way along my breastbone. “You’ve gone from novice to master in one session.”
I laugh.
“Although, I hope you’ll continue to practice your talents on me for a while. I’m, uh, happy to be in your service,” he says, leaning down to give me an easy kiss.
“Oh, I will,” I reply with mock seriousness. “Exclusively on you, in fact. I like a willing captive.”
“Consider me your prisoner of love,” he says. “Helping you develop your erotic gifts is a very worthy cause.”
Laughing, I reach up to stroke his face, running my fingers through the shining lengths of his hair, finally freed of its neat bun. I barely recognize myself. I never flirted, even with Roger. I like this version of me, the woman Levi brings out. I like who I am with him.
Even this close, it’s like I suddenly can’t get enough of him—touching him, smelling him, watching him.
I can feel the place where this began, that same night I found the invitation from the Fathom, but something has shifted dramatically over our weekend apart.
As if an energy booster were applied to our connection.
For the first time, I feel the burning my mother spoke of.
Arla was right: There is a fire glowing in my belly, and something is feeding it.
I should be afraid it will consume us like it has other Cole women.
But fear seems unthinkable with him this close. All I feel is ravenous.
“What are all of these?” I ask him.
He looks around, shrugs. “First editions, collectible manuscripts, ephemera, niche antiques. Anything from literature to poetry to philosophy to history. The occult. Old letters. Photographs. Maps. All kinds of things, really. But we specialize in religious and occult texts and artifacts. This is where the real money is made in the booksellers’ industry. ”
“All these years I’ve shopped this store, and I never even knew this room was here,” I tell him.
“My grandfather’s best-kept secret. This room is by appointment only,” he explains. “For real collectors.”
I nod. “Orman’s inner sanctum.”
Levi gives me a sly smile. “It sounds dirty when you say it.”
I kiss him lightly. “That’s because now it is.”
He throws his head back and laughs, and when he’s collected himself, he says, “It took us months to connect, and now it seems to have arrived all at once.”
“What?” I know what he means, but I want to hear him say it.
“Us.” He pauses when I don’t respond. “Is that okay for me to say? Is a relationship something you’re even looking for?”
“No,” I tell him frankly, and his smile dips. “I wasn’t. But now that it’s here, that it’s you, I’m glad.”
He perks up.
“You’re not married or anything, right?” I ask belatedly.
He looks grave. “No. Not anymore.”
I push myself up with my hands. “But you were?”
“It was a decade ago,” he says.
I wrap my arms around my knees, almost afraid to ask. I can’t imagine anyone letting Levi get away. “What happened?”
“I was young,” he says simply. “She was dishonest.”
I swallow. No secrets. No drama. It’s starting to make sense.
“I struggled through three years of lies and manipulation before I found out she was cheating on me, and I ended it. That was that.” He reaches out and tugs at one of my fingers. “Does that change things for you, that I’m divorced?”
I shake my head. “No. Not at all. Just curious.”
He nods, clearly relieved. “What about you?”
“Not married, no,” I say, but the memory of curling around my cramping midsection as Roger paced saying I don’t understand; what happened?
over and over flits through my mind. The almost angry way his brows came together, the unabashed disappointment.
Not just in the miscarriage … In me. As if I were faulty, a perfect diamond harboring an inclusion he’d missed.
He promised we’d try again, but when the grief lingered, he seemed unable to reconcile this new swell of emotion in my near featureless performance heretofore.
Then came the nightmares, the flashbacks of the fire, the dark.
It was too much for him. I, the real me, was simply too much.
“But?”
“There was someone … recently.”
Levi grows serious, his brows straightening, a curious light in his eyes that encourages me to say more.
“I was pregnant,” I blurt. “I had a miscarriage.”
He pulls me into him. “Judeth, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s over now,” I tell him. “My relationship with the father. He left me after.”
Levi pulls back, shock lining his mouth and eyes. “He left you after you lost a baby?”
The way he says it cracks me open inside, and the ugly reality gushes out. “I was really emotional, grieving. It was something he wasn’t used to from me.”
“Of course you were.” Levi is quick to come to my defense. “What did he expect?”
The validation in his words gives me the strength to admit the rest. “And I think … I think he blamed me for the miscarriage. He didn’t say it was my fault, but he didn’t have to.”
“Oh, Judeth.” Levi wraps his arms around me. “I’m sorry anyone made you feel that way, but I’m glad he’s gone. You deserve more. Better.”
When Levi says it with such conviction, he makes me believe it’s true.
“Can I ask you something?” he prods gently.
I nod.
“Did you love him?”
It’s a fair question. And the automatic response would be yes. But I’m not automatic with Levi. I’m more myself than I’ve been with anyone since Dara. So, I give him the answer that burbles up from my breast, honest and present. “No, I didn’t. And that’s what made him safe.”
He doesn’t act surprised. He simply drinks it in along with the rest of me. “Thank you for trusting me with all of this,” he says. His eyes are full of gratitude. He means it, I think, and my heart squeezes with pleasure.
I nod. “I wanted the baby, though,” I tell him softly.
“We weren’t trying. But once it was there, I wanted it.
For so many years, I couldn’t see a future for myself.
But when I found out I was pregnant, this whole path opened up before me, an automatic destiny.
I wanted that, a way forward, a reason for being, for carrying on each day. Even if it wasn’t really mine.”
“You sound surprised by that,” he says calmly.
“Yes,” I agree. “It was, is surprising to me still.”
“Why?”
I meet his gaze, so earnest and unfettered.
So open. “My family history is complicated,” I confess, catching flashes of my mother’s eyes full of words she could never bring herself to say, my grandfather’s arm across her shoulders, pulling her into him.
“You should know something about me,” I add in a whisper.
For a second, I think I might let it all spill out, a fraught and desperate story growing between us like a puddle of sins. The shame. The power. The fire. The portrait of my grandmother over Solidago’s haunted mantel. The sea and the night. The years after. The loneliness. Even the Fathom.
How will he react—no secrets, no drama—when he realizes that’s all I am?
I say, “Clark isn’t my real name.”
He’s quiet for a moment, digesting. “Okay.”
I sit up and he follows, his eyes careful as if cupping a baby bird. “Aren’t you going to ask what my real name is? Where I come from?”
He smiles slowly, as if he has all the time in the world. “I could. But I have a feeling you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”