Sex in the Stacks
Authors: D. B. Shuster
Sneak Peek of Neurotica #8 Woman on Top
Kings of Brighton Beach Series
SEX IN THE STACKS
A Neurotica Short Story
D. B. SHUSTER
NAUGHTY BYTES
An Imprint of Crime Bytes Media
New York
To Ani for not sneezing at any of my work, no matter the genre, and her fearless willingness to read it all.
And to Gene, as always.
MELANIE MADE A hasty escape to the campus library, a place where she’d always been able to clear her head and focus on her research … until now.
Now she noticed the silver block letters over the entrance. Vanderhoff Library. Hunter’s family had donated the building and collections. She’d left him behind near her office with a brusque dismissal. Even though he’d grudgingly obliged, there was still no relief from the throbbing … fantasies of him.
Forbidden fantasies of sex with a student. In the lecture hall. Where they could be caught.
Her skin felt prickly and hot. She peeled off her sweater and then pulled at her blouse and fanned herself as if it were the height of summer. The effort did nothing to alleviate her internal heat. She was her own internal combustion engine.
Inside the library, she hurried through the grand rotunda and over the lavish mosaic tile. She didn’t take the time to appreciate or enjoy them, the way she usually did. This library, built like a Gothic church with its stained glass windows and soaring ceilings, used to make her feel at one with her higher purpose. She had escaped her past, had left all that nastiness behind her, and had earned entry to this special place of knowledge and learning.
But the only ideas in her head right now concerned Hunter: a gorgeous, naked, shameful-to-waste specimen of a man dusted in gold, spread out for her to lick and tease and taste.
Her feverish fantasy threw off enough heat to warm the entire library on a winter’s day. What was wrong with her?
She had passed out during her class after giving a purportedly excellent lecture employing sex toys. She had no memory of the lecture. She had lost the better part of an hour. And what an hour it had been, filled with all-too-real dreams of Hunter.
When she’d awakened, she had been relieved that they were only dreams. She would never cross professional boundaries with such behavior.
At least she hoped she wouldn’t.
The guard sitting by the metal detectors recognized her and waved her through without checking her campus i.d., a good thing since in her haste to escape she’d left her wallet in her office.
The rows of shelves of books, the quiet hum of the computers, the welcoming glow of reading lights over cushy chairs and long wooden tables—none of them tempted her out of her daydreams. None of them protected her from her own lust, which growled and demanded with the force of a starving belly, indiscriminate in its hunger.
“Hey, Melanie. Stop!” Violet called to her from across the rotunda.
She picked up her pace and ducked into the stairwell, then raced down three flights of stairs to the library’s basement. The last thing she needed was an encounter with her twin, who would undoubtedly gloat at the way she was becoming undone. Violet was supposed to be the bad one, the wild one, the slutty one, the one with her finger over her own “self-destruct” button.
At this moment, Melanie couldn’t keep a firm grip on the smug superiority that had distanced her from her twin. She would rather hide in the dim library basement with old, dusty books than face Violet or the terrifying realization that they might not be that different, despite her doctorate and years of education.
Doubts flooded her about the kind of woman she thought she really was—the upstanding scholar, who until last night had been in what she’d hoped was a stable and committed relationship, or the orgasm-crazed lustbucket overcome by inappropriate urges every time Hunter or Simon looked at her with desire in their eyes.
She paused in the stairwell. She didn’t hear Violet’s footsteps, or anyone else’s, for that matter. Hardly anyone ever came down here, whether by stairs or elevator. She had discovered that she could find refuge down here for hours without being disturbed by another soul.
This neglected area of the library sacrificed the poshness of the upper levels for the bliss of quiet. She imagined the library basement had been intended for other purposes but had been called into service when the university’s book collection overflowed the rest of the building.
The floors were uncarpeted cement, and there were no oil paintings or modern prints adorning the walls. The industrial metal shelves were the same as those used in the rest of the library, but the lights hanging above each row were naked bulbs controlled by switches at the end of the row. Most of them were off.
She leaned her head against the cool metal side of one of the shelves. With everything going digital, students and faculty alike hardly felt the need anymore to venture to the library and comb through the books. Melanie didn’t usually come here to read, either. Instead, she came for the solitude and the sense of connection to the scholars who had gone before her.
She lost even that small luxury when the elevator doors slid open. She glanced over her shoulder expecting to see Violet and thinking of where to run and hide, but Simon, her department chair, strolled out instead.
“Professor Stevenson, I asked you to come see me after your lecture, did I not?” He addressed her before she could move. Simon had directed her to come to his office after her class, likely hoping she’d show up with the box full of sex toys in hand. The reprimand in his tone sent a fresh wave of heat rolling through her. “I might need to punish you.”
After her hot and heavy fantasies of Hunter, her body was primed for a…reality check. She could have Simon if she wanted him.
Who wouldn’t want him? He was devastatingly handsome, with classic features and smoldering eyes. The silver streaks at his temples gave him an air of worldly sophistication, heightened by the confidence in his decisive movements, and his devilish smile suggested he knew secrets. Her secrets.
He knew how to unlock her inhibitions, how to make her nerves sing with pleasure, how to make her desperate with wanting.
That was the problem; the other reason she had sought shelter in the library. Wanting her boss was wrong.
She might not have acted on her impulses with Hunter, but she had indulged in all kinds of inappropriate behavior with her sexy department chair. Her very married department chair. She still couldn’t believe she’d let him finger her under the dining room table while she sat across from her then-boyfriend and his mother.
“Simon, you’re married,” she blurted.
“Shh,” he said. He laid his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “I told you I’m getting a divorce.”
“For real?” He was so experienced. Was this merely a line he gave reluctant conquests, a myth like the Tooth Fairy?
“Would I lie to you?” His fingers danced along the column of her neck.
“I don’t know. Would you?”
He crushed his mouth over hers to quiet her or to try to prove his veracity,—she wasn’t sure—and his expert kiss persuaded her she was exactly where she should be, even before he employed his silver tongue. “You don’t know what you do to me,” he said. “I can’t get enough of you.”
She dared to believe he had told her the truth, that he was leaving his wife, that he wanted her with a great and undeniable passion, that his kisses meant…something. The surrender soothed her tattered nerves. She could lay down her burden of worry, hand over control, and let herself indulge fully in his hands, safe from the fear that she was self-destructing.
Simon was a professor, like her, only more accomplished and successful, more experienced. He understood the academic world and what it took to gain and maintain membership. He wouldn’t lead her down a path that would destroy what she’d built or put her future in jeopardy.
He took her by the arm and steered her deeper into the stacks, pulled her with him into the shadows, down a row with the lights off. He backed her up against the shelves and dove into another kiss. In the darkness, he took command of her mouth and her senses. His kiss banished the worry and doubts that had chased her here. Their passioned burned brightly, the only illumination she needed.
His hand slid over her ribs and down to her hips. The teasing touches only made her desperate for more. She grabbed his head and pulled him to her. She pressed her body against his as if she could climb inside him. She wanted his touch, his care.
He brought his hands between them and unbuckled his belt. Her mind jumped ahead, new fantasies fueling her lust. He would lift her in his hands. She would wrap her legs around him, and he would press her against the wall. Then he would thrust into her with wild abandon, satiating the gnawing emptiness at her core.
He did none of those things.
He freed his belt from the loops with a smooth slide of leather against cloth, and then he caught her hands in one of his. Before she could register the change in direction, he bound her hands tightly behind her back with his belt.
The leather squeezed her wrists with a tightness bordering on pain. She tested the bindings, pulling against them, but she couldn’t wrest free.
Not that she wanted to.
Simon had taken control, and not merely metaphorically. He spun her around and pressed her front up against the book case. “You’re my prisoner,” he whispered.
He gathered her abundant hair over one of her shoulders. Alternating nips and soft kisses, he nuzzled her neck while he unbuttoned a few of the buttons on her blouse until he created an opening large enough for his hands to slip inside and fondle her. His long fingers played over the lace of her bra and then under it, inside the cups, until the pleasure swamped her. When he drew a soft moan from her, he promised, “I’m going to make you scream down here in the dark, and no one will hear you.”
This naughty game in this inner sanctum of learning made her blood thrum. She was his prisoner, his to torture sweetly, his to command as he wished—in this library dungeon, surrounded by old books and knowledge.
She laid her cheek against the cool metal of the shelves, near a row of books that likely hadn’t been touched or discovered in years. With one hand, he unhooked the front clasp of her bra and pushed aside the lace until she was bare and exposed under the strafing of her cotton blouse. She was like one of these old books, newly opened under his touch, the brilliance hiding between the covers open to him, her careful reader.
She was surrounded by books, by thousands or perhaps millions of pages covered with words, but there was only one single word in her mind.
More.
More. More. More.
Simon spun her around to face him. Her shirt was open to just below her ribs, her bra undone. The bindings at her wrists thrust her bounty forward. Simon lowered his head and trailed kisses along her neck, inside the collar of her shirt, and then lower still. His tongue trailed over her round, quivering flesh, until she gasped at the tug of his mouth, the pinch of his teeth. His white smile flashed in the dark.
He touched her as if learning her. His caresses were slow and studious as he diligently studied her reactions—the quickening of her breath, the trembles and squirms. He bothered to learn her as if she held the most profound knowledge, labored to make himself an expert on the sensitive points of her anatomy.
He was a very quick study.
In only a few stolen moments, he managed to pull responses from her—moans, uninhibited hitches in her breath, a soft pleading for more—that no one had before.
She closed her eyes, lost herself in the pleasure and pain of needing, craving, wanting still more than he gave her. He seemed to know this, seemed to enjoy her powerlessness to move him where she wanted or to pull away from the most intense of his explorations. He obviously enjoyed controlling her pleasure—how much, how fast.
A ragged sound, more desperate than a moan, breached her lips. She tried to clamp her mouth shut. Despite Simon’s avid interest in making her scream, she knew she should be silent. The library basement might usually be uninhabited, but it was still a public place. There was no lock on the stairwell or the elevator. Someone could appear at any moment and discover them here.
Still, she trusted Simon to look after her and keep them from getting caught. He knew what the boundaries were, how far they could go, how naughty they could be and get away with it. Despite the rumors swirling around him of the scores of female students and colleagues he had supposedly seduced at other universities, he’d never yet been caught.
She leaned her head back against the bookshelf. Behind her head, she felt the books shift. She thought she had shifted them, until Violet crashed the party. Violet’s voice hissed from the other side of the shelf. “Psst. Who’s the naughty twin now?”