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CHAPTER 1

Gorgeous green eyes. Blond curls. A perfectly trimmed golden goatee that highlighted a square jaw and delicious cheekbones. Thick, full lips just right for kissing.

It was the kind of face a girl could fall in love with.

Every girl but me, that is.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I had the lust part down. Kyle’s face was so perfectly made, so sexy, that even when he was asleep, eyes closed tight to the world, just looking at him sent little flutters of want through me. And that was with most of his long, lean body hidden away beneath the covers. Sometimes I wanted Kyle with a fierceness that made me ache, even when he wasn’t in the room.

Lust? Yes. But love? No.

We’d been having sex for about six months and our relationship was fun, hot and absolutely casual. Just like we wanted it. Which is why I found it weird that he was now asleep in my bed, conked out with my arm trapped beneath his head. In six months’ worth of delicious sex, this was the first time we’d actually slept together.

While it was weird, I wasn’t sure I minded all that much. We’d had a nice night –dinner on the back porch followed by giggling, groping, delicious sex on the living-room floor – despite the fact that Kyle had seemed preoccupied by something. He wasn’t the kind of guy to keep things in, but he also wasn’t the kind of guy to stay over. I wasn’t sure what it all meant, but I figured he’d tell me when he was ready.

In the meantime, I needed a shower, something functional to wear to work and at least two cups of coffee. I’d let him find his way out of the apartment whenever he woke. He worked as a tat artist, which meant a lot of late nights inking customers. Something told me that mornings weren’t his speciality.

I tugged my arm quietly out from under Kyle’s head, trying not to wake him. He shifted, but didn’t open his eyes.

Showering as quick as my own sleep-slowed body would let me, I padded back to the bedroom in my bare feet and opened drawers in the half-dark, trying to be as quiet as I could. Unfortunately, I’m a klutz in general and even more so before I’ve had my coffee. When I slid the closet open, it bumped against something with a bang. Kyle made a cute dreaming noise, and I stopped to look down at him half-buried under the covers. All I could see were strands of his dark-blond hair and one hand thrown over his face. He stirred, opening one green eye blearily. Even half-asleep and in the dim light of the bedroom, he was so very fuckable. It nearly made my mouth water.

‘Mmm, you left me,’ he said.

‘I have to go to work,’ I said. Unable to resist, I reached out to touch the soft curls that fell across his cheek.

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Come back. We have warmth. And cock.’

‘Cock, huh?’ I was tempted. I was always tempted around him.

The bedside clock told me I wasn’t late for work. Yet. I needed to open the bookstore, but since we showed up early to prep things, a few minutes wouldn’t make too much of a difference.

‘How much can you do in fifteen minutes?’ I asked.

‘I only need eleven to really blow your mind.’ He was all grin and dancing eyes from his cocoon beneath the covers.

‘Really? Eleven?’ I said. ‘I think I’m disappointed.’

‘Get in here,’ Kyle said, clearly more awake now, lifting the blankets to beckon me in.

I slid in beside him, scooting myself beneath the covers. He really was warm, his lean frame radiating heat. He ran a couple of times a week and his long muscles flexed beneath his skin as I settled against him. Running my hands over his body was a visceral pleasure. It was easy to get lost in the feel of him.

He touched his mouth to mine, sleep-soft lips parting with a quiet laugh. His morning stubble scratched my cheeks. He smelled like sweet chai, cloves and cinnamon, and I inhaled him deeply, lost for a moment in the sensations of touch and scent.

‘I brought you a gift,’ he said, whispering against my mouth, his hips moving forward to grind slowly against me. His bare cock nudged my thighs.

‘Mmm … what is it?’ I couldn’t help but giggle. He was always saying dorky but adorable things in bed.

‘You’ll have to see,’ he said.

‘A gift, huh,’ I teased. ‘Did you wrap it?’

‘Not yet. It’s like a reverse gift. First you get it, then you wrap it.’

‘Funny man,’ I said as I reached between us to stroke him. ‘Oh, you did sleep well. That’s some lovely morning wood.’

I loved the way he curved upward slightly when he was fully hard, how he pulsed lightly against my palm. He had a beautiful cock, a smooth length that bowed into an impossibly soft head.

‘Maybe I should stay over more often,’ he said.

I only hesitated a second before he gave a teasing nip at my ear. ‘Maybe you should,’ I said. ‘Especially if it means I get to do this before coffee…’

I was still speaking when he slipped a hand between my legs, parting them with the spread of his fingers. With a firming touch, he stroked me, wrapping his fingers lightly to tug at my dark curls. I felt myself open under his touch, already growing wet. It never took much around Kyle.

Kyle leaned in to kiss my neck, letting his mouth linger in the hollows, his tongue moving in time to his fingers. I couldn’t help but buck my hips up toward his fingers. His touch was too soft. I wanted, needed more.

‘It’s almost like you want me or something,’ he said, teasing with his tone as much as with his fingers.

‘Kyle…’

Still he teased with soft strokes, refusing to give in to my low whimpers of want.

‘Cruel,’ I said. My voice stuttered with the sweet pleasures of his touch. ‘So cruel.’

His grin was sharply wicked. His touch even more so, as he brought his hand back and then thrust forward, two fingers sliding deep inside me. I brought my hips up into the movement, letting my body welcome him. He curled his fingers against my g-spot, tugging forward until I felt small bursts of pleasure coil up through me.

So close. I loved that sweet moment when you can feel orgasm just over the horizon, can see it from the corner of your eye but can’t quite reach it.

‘More?’ he asked.

‘More, please,’ I said.

He pulled away again, a gesture that left me emptied of pleasure and breath. With another thrust, he entered me again, more fingers, stretching me wider. I bucked against him, taking the lead to angle myself where his touch gave me the most pleasure.

His mouth found my nipple, tongue looping it lightly before he closed his lips to tug against the sensitive skin. I loved having my nipples sucked – sometimes I thought I could get off on that alone – and I arched into the pull of his mouth. He took more of me in, the pressure and release matching the movement of his fingers inside me. I groaned softly, unable to resist making the noises my body wanted me to make.

Kyle pulled away to look at me.

‘How much time?’ he asked.

‘Five minutes,’ I breathed.

‘How do you know?’

‘Internal clock?’

‘I think you’re full of it…’

‘Listen,’ I said, panting. ‘I can use my mouth to argue about it or I can use my mouth to kiss you while you fuck me.’

He snapped his fingers in the air as if signalling someone. ‘I need this gift-wrapped.’

Laughing, I reached out and grabbed a condom from the dresser. In the dark, I couldn’t tell which side of the condom was up. Of course, I got it wrong the first time, trying to roll it down the wrong way over his head. I flipped it, got it wrong again, and then flipped it one last time. This time it worked perfectly.

‘They should paint glow-in-the-dark arrows on these things,’ I groused, even as I slid the rubber down over his erection. Condoms were a necessary evil, but there was something I liked about rolling them down, stroking the length of him in the process. There was something he liked about it too; I could tell by the way he arched his hips, pressing his cock upward against my touch.

‘It’s like a USB plug,’ I said, when I had it on.

‘What?’ He put his hand over mine, urging me to stroke him.

‘Um. Hot man with beautiful cock, about to fuck me,’ I said. ‘Will explain technology later.’

‘Geek,’ he said.

‘A geek you’d like to fuck,’ I said.

‘Isn’t that a song?’ he said.

‘Don’t know, don’t care. Why are we talking about this when I could be riding you?’

I rose over him, letting my legs rest on either side of his hips. I loved being on top, loved that moment when I first started to lower myself down over his cock, that moment of connection, when I knew what was to come. He sighed beneath me, eyes meeting mine, his hands settling on my hips. He didn’t pull me towards him, just let me ride myself slowly down on his cock, feeling it fill me, displacing the emptiness inside me with the lovely fullness of pleasure.

For all our playful banter beforehand, our actual sex was quiet. The only sounds we made were a lot of signs and groans, underwritten by the soft slap of our bodies coming together.

I leaned down and pressed my mouth to his, our hips rising and falling in unison, the strokes between us starting slow, a grind that left both of us groaning each time we came apart.

From this position, I could feel the way his cock curved against the hollows of me. Every time I rose off him, his head slid against that sensitive bulb of my g-spot, making me gasp.

His fingers curved tighter around my hips, lifting me higher with each stroke, setting me down harder on him with each return.

‘Touch yourself,’ he said. ‘Please. I want to watch.’

‘I’ll fall.’

‘I’ve got you,’ he said. He shifted his hands slightly, moving them down to cup my curves more fully, holding me up.

Leaning back slightly, I pressed two fingers to the sensitive tip of my clit. He watched me as I touched myself, green eyes lidded with desire. He lifted me in time to the circles of my fingers, matching stroke to stroke.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said. ‘I love watching you.’

His fingers tightened, nails digging into my skin, his breath as fast and ragged as mine. I couldn’t stop looking at him looking at me. Getting myself off was hot. Getting myself off while getting fucked and watched by a beautiful man was so far off the scale of hot I had no words for it.

I tried to wait, to keep breathing through the pleasure that rose up through me, to stretch out that delightful moment before I came, but at the sound of Kyle’s broken groan of my name, I couldn’t hold off any more. He arched up under me, nails biting my skin, eyes closing. The pulse and clench of him brought my own orgasm, a quiet rippling sweetness that spread outward on threads of pleasure, until I could feel them all the way to the tips of my fingers.

We stayed like that for a moment, me still on top of him, our breaths catching and releasing, kissing softly. He felt different after sex, his lips softer and fuller, his touch gentler, and I relished the changes in him for a moment, knowing they’d been brought about by a pleasure similar to my own.

‘You’re awesome,’ he said with a sigh.

‘You’re awesome too,’ I said. ‘But I have to run. Have a bookstore to run and all that.’

‘We can’t do this again? I’ll be quick.’

‘I wish,’ I said, with a true sense of wistfulness. Maybe it was the fact that I was quickly approaching thirty or maybe it was just that my life had slowed down to a steady routine lately so I had more time to think about sex, but it seemed like my lust clock was always in overtime these days. My uterus didn’t want kids, but my clit wanted sex. Pretty much all the time. Even with Kyle around a couple of times of week, I’d made pretty good friends with a whole community of vibrators in the last year. Turning down sex these days was akin to turning down coffee – something I only did with a great deal of reluctance.

I kissed Kyle’s nose, with a sigh of regret.

‘Sadly, if I stay I really will be late, which Lily will certainly hold over my head all day long if she can. Maybe longer.’

‘You’re afraid of Lily? Just threaten to mess up her hair.’

That made me laugh, as Kyle often did. My best friend did have perfectly coiffed hair. The kind that’s so perfect you have to hate her, just a little, for having it.

‘No go,’ I said, as I pulled myself from the bed.

Getting dressed was me rushing and tumbling while Kyle watched me from his sprawl under the covers. Too late to do more than pull on whatever was closest, I grabbed a simple black dress from the closet and threw my dark hair into a messy ponytail. My store key on its red ribbon around my neck for pseudo-jewellery, my little librarian glasses, and I was calling it good.

When I sat on the bed to pull on a pair of knee-high boots, I caught Kyle’s glance. He looked oddly serious for post-sex reverie, his usual grin replaced with something far more contemplative.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

He reached out and touched my arm. ‘I just got fucked by a beautiful woman. How can I not be good?’

‘Good.’ I grinned at him before I kissed him, letting my lips linger against his for a long moment. ‘You know how to get out, right?’

He nodded, reaching out to run his hand along my arm as I turned away.

I was at the bedroom door, mind already turning to work and the bookstore, before he spoke again.

From the depths of my bed, he said in that sexy, post-orgasm voice that never failed to turn me on, ‘Janine. Marry me.’

The heel of my boot caught on the area rug, sending me sprawling against the doorjamb.

‘Funny man.’ Laughing, I turned to shake my head at him, at his impossible joke.

And in that moment, standing there in the doorway, I saw that he was serious. That he was, really and truly, asking me to marry him.

Shit.

* * *

Shit. Shit. Shit.

That was my refrain the entire fifteen-minute walk from my house to Leather Bound. What the hell was Kyle talking about, marry him? We had a perfect, lovely, sexy thing. Get together a couple of times a week, have dinner, get hot and heavy. Good fun sex on the kitchen floor. Or the couch. Or behind the couch. Then he went home and I curled up with a cup of coffee and a couple of books.

Lust. Not love.

Marriage. Was that why he’d been so quiet all night? Who the hell asked a girl to marry him from bed anyway? From her bed, no less. And, more importantly, why?

I was still turning a million questions over in my brain when I reached the bookstore. The door was locked – we didn’t open for fifteen minutes or so – but the back lights were on, letting me know that Lily was already inside. Webster, the store cat, was snoozing in the big front window display, his grey striped tail tick-tocking, probably in time to some mouse-hunting dream.

I fished my skeleton key from where it hung on the long ribbon around my neck. Lily and I’d had them custom made when we opened the store, and I loved the heft of mine, the curled metal J of the bow.

Even when I was in a rush, even on a morning where I felt my world had just been turned upside down and carelessly shaken, unlocking the front door to Leather Bound felt like entering a far-away universe. Or someone else’s story, right at that point where it all comes together and you know the ending is going to be fine. Everything dropped away in the seconds it took to slip the long metal key into the ancient lock and turn it.

As I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, I closed my eyes, inhaling the scent of paper and leather with a pleasure that I reserved just for this place. Yes, the bookstore was work, and sometimes it was hard and thankless work at that, but it was also a sanctuary. A little corner of bookworm heaven, made just for me.

‘You, Miss Janine, are late,’ Lily said.

I opened my eyes. From where I stood, Lily had her back to me so I couldn’t see her customary smirk, but I could see the back of her legs, the black tattoo of the word read curled up the back of one calf, the red curlicues of the word lips scrawled up the other. She had lots of tattoos – most of them words – but I bet none of them got as many questions as that missing my. I’d seen it, of course. Kyle had done it for her. But I’d promised never to tell anyone just where that particular piece of lettering was situated.

‘I’m sorry, Lil,’ I said. I meant it. My co-owner worked her ass off at Leather Bound, maybe even more than I did, and we were supposed to share everything half and half.

Lil stretched to tuck a book into the upper shelf, tsking her tongue teasingly. As her black pumps lifted off the ladder, I caught a glimpse of one tan sole covered with hand-written book titles. Being book geeks was one of the few things Lily and I had in common, but it was a big enough thing that it had kept our friendship thriving for nearly ten years. Not to mention convince us to go into business together. It was a decision I’d never regretted.

While she finished shelving the books in her hand, I tugged at my buttons with cold fingers. My coat and scarf were collaborating to kill me, getting caught in my hair and glasses while I tried to get them off. ‘I got stuck –’ I started.

‘Not stuck. Fucked. You got fucked, Janine.’ Lily’s laughter floated down at me. ‘Don’t lie. I don’t even have to turn around and look at you to know.’

My cheeks burned hot all the way to my ears, the way they always did when I got busted trying to fib. I’ve always been horrible at even little white lies. I don’t even know why I try. Especially not around Lily. She’s like a genetically enhanced bloodhound when it comes to lies and falsities.

Still laughing, Lily made her way backwards down the ladder. Her cherry-red hair bounced against her shoulders in perfect ringlets. The one problem with Lily was that she was always picture perfect. Make-up. Outfit. Hair.

I touched my scarf- and sex-mussed ponytail, not even bothering to try and smooth it into something presentable. I’d had enough experience to know that, in some cases, attempting to fix things only made them worse, and gave you gigantic tangles in the process.

‘How do you always know when I have sex?’ I asked. ‘I never know when you have sex.’ Of course, Lily seemed to have a lot more sex than I did, so maybe that’s why I couldn’t tell. Or maybe I was just oblivious.

‘I can smell it on you,’ she said.

I sniffed myself. I smelled like cold wind and conditioner. Maybe a little like Kyle – he always smelled like chai and sometimes like those cinnamon candy hearts – but that didn’t mean sex. And what did marriage proposal smell like? Would she be able to tell that too?

‘You can not,’ I said. I hoped.

Lily was still snickering when she hugged me, completely ignoring the fact that her gesture made it even more impossible to get my coat off or to keep my scarf from strangling me. ‘You’re right. It’s just that you’re never late for any other reason. Also,’ she pointed out, ‘you didn’t bring coffee. And you always bring coffee.’

‘Jerk,’ I said, laughing.

‘You love me.’

‘It’s true,’ I said, as I managed to untangle myself finally from coat and scarf and stuff them under the front counter.

Then I took a minute to get my bearings. From the front counter, you could look out of the picture windows at the world going by. But the worlds in here were what interested me most. Ancient books all shelved and labelled in their perfect little rows, just waiting for someone to adopt them.

Leather Bound was a lot of things to me, but mostly it was my second home. Sometimes it felt more like my first home. There were few things I loved more than being surrounded by books, especially old books. The scent of leather and paper and glue, the edges roughened by unknown fingers riffling the pages, the stories told black on white, permanent and yet ever changing. Different every time you read the words.

There were a lot of people who wouldn’t understand that, who had moved on to video games, ebooks, videos, and argued that they were the same thing. Or, at the very least, that you could get the same enjoyment from them.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like new technologies. I did. I read ebooks almost as often as I read paper books. It was that it felt like the difference between masturbating and having sex. Masturbation was fun, but it was certainly not the same as having another warm, aroused body pressed against you.

Just the thought made me think of Kyle, and I shivered a little.

‘Aha,’ Lily said, pointing one ring-laden finger my way. Her bright-blue, perfectly kohled eyes flashed at me. ‘You were having sex.’

‘I said I was sorry.’

‘You didn’t,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘It’s fine. I’m only a little jealous.’ Lily handed me the change bag from the bank. I started counting bills into the register while she leaned on her elbows on the counter. ‘Really,’ she said. ‘I mean … who wouldn’t want to be here opening the store we own together while you’re off getting pinned to the bed? Me, I’ve run through every vibrator in my toy box at least twice in the last week, and I’m still bored out of my mind.’

‘What happened to that –?’ I gestured with my stack of bills. Apparently I couldn’t think of names and count fives at the same time. ‘The girl with the motorcycle. She was –’

‘No,’ she said, tugging one shiny red curl between her fingers. It sproinged back up perfectly when she let go. ‘Just no. Don’t even go there.’

Lily had the worst taste in women. Not physically. They were always hot as hell. But emotionally they were always just shy of bat-shit crazy. Some of them weren’t even shy of it. I’d hoped the new girl would be different. She’d had a motorcycle, sure, which hadn’t boded well for Lily in the past, but she’d also seemed nice enough. And she’d clearly been into Lily. She’d even come into the store and bought a book, some ancient tome on early motorcycles.

‘Women suck, but I’m fine,’ Lily said.

Despite her brave words, she was hurting. Lily believed in true love and happy ever after more than anyone I’d ever known. It sucked that she had such a hard time finding it. I wanted to offer her something. Condolences. Dating advice. The number of a totally hot girl who would be just perfect for her. But considering how screwed up my own relationship was at the moment – even the fact that I was suddenly thinking about Kyle in terms of something as serious as a relationship was a sign of things being way, way off-kilter – I wasn’t in any position to offer her anything beside a heartfelt ‘I’m sorry’.

She waved a hand at me, her nails perfectly polished in a blue-black hue that somehow matched her shirt exactly. Some days I dreamed I would wake up and have the kind of put-togetherness that Lily did. The horrible thing was I’d seen her get ready for things. What took her five minutes would have taken me five hours and turned me into a wailing mess with nail polish all over my bathroom and mascara smeared across both cheeks. She just had those skills somehow. I swear women like Lily are born knowing how to get their hair to behave perfectly just by looking at it sternly in the mirror.

An old boyfriend once asked me if I kept my face natural because I wanted to show off how I looked without make-up or because I was lazy. I didn’t have the courage to admit that I kept my face ‘natural’ because I didn’t know how to do anything else with it.

Lily raised her hand again and flipped off what I imagined to be a whole wall of former exes. The blonde biker chick. The beautiful volleyball player who’d had a penchant for threesomes. The teacher who’d shown up at Leather Bound in her glasses and her button-up cardigans, but who Lily said fucked like a wildcat in heat. And those were just the ones I could remember recently.

‘Fuck love,’ Lily said.

‘Fuck love,’ I said. Right now, I couldn’t agree more. Love, or maybe the lack of love, seemed to screw everything up.

‘Maybe you just need a quickie,’ I said. ‘A loving fuck to say fuck love?’

This time she flipped me off, her throaty laugh filling the front half of the store with sound. ‘Seriously? Last time I did that, I almost ended up in Vegas saying “I do” to a vegan wiccan in front of a guy who didn’t look in the least like Elvis. Worst. Quickie. Ever.’

I laughed with her, even though I felt my own throat close up a little as she went on.

‘I mean, can you seriously ever see me getting married? Little white dresses for both of us? House with a picket fence? Adopting kids or fighting over who gets to be the biological mom? Jesus.’

Can you see me getting married? I thought. Because I certainly can’t. And, oh, Lily, my life is a little fucked up right now.

I’d never wanted to get married. I could easily give my entire life to a bookstore that was barely making ends meet, but couldn’t seem to handle a relationship that required anything more than delicious sex and maybe dinner a couple of times a week.

I used to think I just hadn’t met the right person, but now I wondered if something was wrong with me. Maybe I should think about getting married. Everything in my life was good, even if it was sometimes a little staid. Leather Bound was almost making enough money to keep us afloat. Lily and I worked well together. Kyle’s work as a tattoo artist was getting recognition. Our sex was great.

‘Actually,’ Lily said quietly after a moment. ‘Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.’

For a second I thought I’d been speaking out loud. My hands shook as they slipped the bills into their proper places in the register.

‘OK, stop talking,’ I said. ‘Or I’ll have to start the count over again.’

It wasn’t entirely true, but I needed her to be quiet because my heart was thumping too hard in the hollow of my chest and, every time Lily said one more thing, I wanted to cry. Uncertainty and confusion do that to me sometimes. It’s the little things that get me. When things are big and bad, I’m all strong and stoic on the outside. But when they’re small and confusing and complicated, well, just bring on the tears.

When our friend Conrad died a couple months back, I didn’t cry when he announced that he was sick, I didn’t cry at his hospice bed and I didn’t cry at the funeral. But when he shipped us a box of all the books he’d bought from Leather Bound over the years with a note thanking us for all the beautiful stories we’d given him, I fell down on my knees and wept until I’d ruined the letter with my tears.

Unwilling to think about that, I decided I’d tell Lily about my morning. Maybe she’d have more insight into the situation than I did.

‘Hey, Lil,’ I started. ‘Kyle asked me to –’

At just that moment, the front door opened, and Lily and I both looked up in surprise.

My first thought was a very articulate ‘I thought I locked that.’

My second thought was simply, ‘Yum.’

* * *

Despite the fact that Leather Bound is a brick-and-mortar store, we don’t get a lot of early-morning walk-ins. Probably because we only stock rare and old books. Obscure first editions and things signed by dead people are our speciality. So, things that people don’t typically browse for. They call ahead, see if we have what they want and, if we do, they come by and pick it up. If we don’t have what they want, I do my best to get it for them. It’s something I’m known for, finding the obscure.

When we do get walk-ins, they’re one of two kinds. The first is older men – book dealers, collectors, professors, the generation that still likes to fondle the books and eschew all technology, including the phone if they can. Lily calls them our Grounders, because she’s afraid to get up on a ladder in her short skirts, in case she gives one of them a heart attack.

The other kind are the Velvets. Also Lily’s name. They come in, usually looking either all sheepish or all professorial, and then they make their way, casual-like, towards the back of the store, like they’re invisible lions sneaking up on prey.

We’ve got velvet curtains hung floor to ceiling back there. And behind them? A little room, not much bigger than a closet, the shelves stuffed full of delicious naughtiness. Not new stuff, though. Old stuff. Ancient versions of the Kama Sutra and Victorian-era sketchbooks and Sappho and Anon. You’d be surprised how much less repressed they were in years gone by.

So, Grounders and Velvets. Those are the kinds of walk-ins we get, on the rare occasions when we do get walk-ins.

What we most certainly never get are walk-ins who show up before we’re open, sporting chocolate-caramel eyes and a lazy, dimpled smile that gave me a nearly irresistible urge to lick the corners of his mouth.

The guy in our doorway was beautiful, in that rugged, strong-jawed, day-old-stubble kind of way. Dark shiny hair that looked like it would tousle into perfect waves with a pair of hands in it. White T-shirt and grey button-down that brought out hints of gold flecks in his light-brown eyes.

I took hold of the counter while the air did that thing it does where it gets all thin and makes you dizzy for no reason at all.