Chapter 42: Chapter 42

There. Finally. Thank fucking god.”

Gina’s parking skills were tested to the maximum in

order to force her Karmann Ghia into the tight space between two SUVs across from the restaurant. She was visibly trembling when she exited the little citron- hued car and started to walk to the café. This was a big deal—a meeting she’d been prepping for all month. Unfortunately for her, lunch was scheduled for one of those high-end, chichi restaurants that made her tense simply looking at the menu. She’d hoped to arrive early enough to stake her place at a table and get comfortable, but the restaurant wasn’t opened yet.

She dug into her purse for her datebook to make sure she had the time right. Most of her friends used iPhones or BlackBerries to track their daily lives, but

Gina preferred paper. Nothing beeped in her purse to let her know she’d missed an appointment. She had to grab the leather-bound calendar and flip the pages to find out where she was supposed to be. Her calendar was filled with words in red. Jesus, she was booked. She couldn’t see an inch of free time for the next month.

But at this moment, for once, she was early.

Next to the restaurant stood a used bookstore, a throwback to a simpler era. On a whim, Gina pushed open the glass door, thinking she’d be able to peruse the shelves for half an hour and calm her nerves. Maybe she’d grab a novel to keep her company, something she’d read before that would feel familiar and safe. The man behind the counter hardly looked up at her as she walked in. She caught the fact that he was youngish and cute with a pair of ’50s-style black glasses and curly dark hair. He put his finger on his page to mark his spot when she paused to breathe in the smell. Used books. She sighed, feeling more relaxed from the moment the scent surrounded her.

“Vanillin,” he said. “Excuse me?”

“The aroma of old books. It’s actually lignin—related to vanillin. It’s why used bookstores have that fragrance they do. I read about it”—he motioned to a book on a shelf to his left—“in a book.” He grinned.

She looked him over—maybe a little older than she’d original thought, slightly scruffy, T-shirt with something about obscenities on the chest.

“What sort of books do you like?” he asked.

She thought for a second. “Ones that have happy endings.”

“A romantic?” he asked.

She never considered herself one. “I like noir—but the stories where the boy gets the girl in the end. Or vice versa.”

“Top shelf,” he told her, indicating the back room. She went there and waited. What if he followed? What would that mean? She’d been out of the dating loop since she’d landed her current job, the one that had sucked up all her time, her mind, her soul, her life. Her fingers trailed over the broken spines of misused paperbacks, and she hoped he would follow her. But what would she say? What would she do?

She went to a corner of the room and sat on the edge of a short wooden ladder that must have been there for stocking purposes. For just a moment, Gina closed her eyes and breathed in that used-book scent once more. Then she heard the man say, “I locked the front door.”

“Why?”

He lifted her to her feet and kissed her rather than responding verbally, and she felt a flood of emotions all at once. She had to go to lunch. She had an important meeting. She had to remain professional, un-mussed; oh, fucking god, his hand was in her hair, his lips tasted so good, sweet, dreamy. Her back was up against the wall of books. She stepped out of her spectator heels and he picked her up in his arms and held her to the stacks. He

was hard. She could feel his erection against her. It had been so long, too long. When had she last let her fingers wander over a favorite book? When had she last let her fingers slip under her waistband and into her panties?

He roughly pushed her neat gray skirt to her hips, groaned when he felt she was wearing stockings and suspenders. “Noir,” he smiled at her. “Femme fatale.” No, she wasn’t. She was the good girl. The secretary in the pale pink sweater. The gal Friday the detective always treated like one of the guys, never seeing the sex appeal beneath the prim, petal twin set. Why did the good girls always have to finish last?

She wasn’t going to finish last this time. Gina groaned when the man probed beneath her bikinis to find how wet she was. Suddenly, undeniably wet. His fingers circled her clit, the rough pads of his fingertips brushing against her most sensitive spot, creating a delicious type of fric- tion. He undid his jeans and let the head of his cock find her slit, and entered her with one forceful thrust. Gina felt her body tighten around his. She hadn’t been fucked in so long. She couldn’t even remember how sweet the pleasure felt. When he tripped his fingers over her clit as he worked her, she moaned out loud.

The sound surprised her and Gina opened her eyes. She was by herself in the back room, pressed up against the bookshelf, hand in her knickers, lost in an unex- pected fantasy. Oh, god. What if someone had seen her? She took a few steps so that she could peek through the doorway and down the aisle. The clerk was still reading

his book at the front as if he hadn’t heard a whisper. What had caused her to daydream like that? Too much stress. Clearly. She was losing her cool.

She grabbed High Window in her slightly sticky fingers and carried the novel to the front desk. Her cheeks felt hot.

When the clerk rang her up, Gina was still slightly breathless. She couldn’t find her wallet in her satchel. The clerk patiently watched her take out her datebook as she rummaged for her billfold. He peeked into the gaping mouth of her purse with obvious interest. “No cell phone?”

“Can’t stand them.”

“Then how will I call you?”

“Call me?” She was too shaken to follow his conver- sation.

“Slow down.” He put his hand on top of hers. Warmth flooded through her whole body. “I saw what you were doing back there.” He indicated the round silver mirror at the top of the doorway, one angled to see everything going on in the back room. “It’s supposed to catch a thief,” he explained matter-of-factly, “but it caught you.”

Her heart raced. She flipped her datebook open, already knowing. “I’m booked,” she said helplessly. “This month is insane.” Besides, how could she go out with someone who’d caught her touching herself? She felt more embarrassed than if he’d caught her shop- lifting.

He reached for a bookmark from a small stack at the counter.

She started to wave him away. “I always bend the corners,” she said.

Undaunted, he wrote his name and number on the back of a bookmark and slipped it between her pages. The action made her think of the way he’d fucked her in her fantasy, his cock sliding easily inside of her. What he said next changed everything in Gina’s world.

“Girls who bend corners should be punished,” he said, and she sucked in her breath before she could stop herself. Her visible discomfort seemed to please him. He didn’t rush to put her at ease. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Nothing like this had ever happened to Gina before. She didn’t know what to say, how to respond. “Yes,” she managed to whisper. “God, yes.”

“I’d like that, too. I’d like to put you over my lap and give you a good, hard spanking for what you did back there. Touching yourself in my store…” He let the sentence linger between them, so that they could both imagine what she’d looked like back there—untamed, out of control. “What were you thinking about?”

“You,” she said, the truth tumbling forward unbidden. “You fucking me.”

“You can find the time,” he said, “if you want to.”

She slid the book into her purse and hurried to her meeting.