“Cookie, I just want to have fun, but if you were a library book, I’d just keep checking you out til I hit my renewal limit,” I say.
“A library pun,” she says, her lips curling into a smile.
“Too soon?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No, I’d say it was long overdue.”
“Well, all I have to say is that it would be a Crime and Punishment if you don’t go out with me again,” I say. I know we’ve flown past corny several puns ago, but she’s laughing, and in the end I get what I want: she says yes.
“When?”
“Tonight,” I tell her. And the truth is that even though we just met, I don’t think I can survive much longer than that without her.
“Okay,” she says. “Pick me up at six.”
I give her a kiss—and steal a quick pinch of that supple ass in an irresistible pencil skirt—and as I’m walking out of the library, I notice Brooklyn and another twenty-something librarian standing in the stacks, spying on the whole thing and grinning their heads off.
The next few weeks are a blur of delicious food, nerdily literary conversations, and so damn much nakedness.
I can barely keep my hands off Cassidy, and I can also hardly concentrate on my work when she’s not around. I even read the senior book club’s selection with her because Cookie’s got to read it for work and I can’t tear myself away from her long enough to let her curl up with it alone.
I’d much rather she curl up with me.
So we sit in my hot tub together and take turns reading aloud. We pretty much never make it longer than a chapter or two without pouncing on each other, but miraculously, we make it to the end in time for the next book club meeting.
Other highlights from an entire month of being wildly, unreasonably obsessed with each other: watching Cassidy’s full, bare breasts bounce in front of my eyes as she rides me frantically in the back seat of my car, like we’re horny teenagers who can’t get enough of each other.
Hell, actually feeling like horny teenagers who can’t get enough of each other.
The sight of her body, plump and curvy, in the moonlight when we go skinny dipping in Golden Creek late one evening.
The way she gets all bashful and shy every time I drop her off at home after one of our adventures, when she has to pretend she didn’t just deepthroat my cock with that pretty mouth of hers.
The way I can’t ever stop thinking about her, no matter how many times we reassure each other that we’re just having fun…
9
Cassidy
The night before book club, I’m in my parents’ kitchen with a whole island full of ingredients spread out in front of me and a cocoa-powder-coated apron tied around my waist.
It’s pretty much the first night I haven’t spent with Chuck in the last three weeks, and both Nora and Brooklyn have taken the opportunity to descend on me, seeking juicy gossip and details.
“You know, you two could help bake since you’re standing there,” I point out as I stir heavy cream into a bowl of honey and rich chocolate chips.
“We are helping,” Brooklyn says. “We offered to taste-test.”
I smirk. “Yeah, and I already had to cut you off before you ate all my ingredients.”
“Enough about the truffles,” Nora says, exasperated. “You know why we’re really here!”
Nora’s got a place of her own across town and she and Brooklyn are damn near inseparable roommates. She comes home once a week for Sunday dinner, usually with Brooks in tow, but they made a special trip as soon as they found out Chuck was working late tonight on closing a particularly big real estate deal.
“There’s nothing to tell,” I say, being purposely coy because I’m sure they can see in my eyes that that’s not the case. These last three weeks have been the most unreal, perfect, unbelievable ones of my life—three weeks of melt-in-my-mouth, holy hotness dates with a man I’ve taken to unironically calling my Prince Charming. Even if only between the two of us.
Honestly, it’s all been a bit too good to be true—and that’s part of the reason I don’t want to tell my sister and my bestie about it.
The other part is that they would never, ever shut up about it.
“I was beginning to think we’d never see you outside the library again,” Brooklyn said while I stirred some butter into my chocolate-cream mixture and then put the bowl in the refrigerator to thicken.
I pull out a sparkling water and turn back to them.
“Seriously,” Nora said. “When are you two getting engaged?”
I nearly choke on my water. “Engaged? Please. We’re just having fun… keeping it casual.”
“Right,” Brooklyn says with a roll of her eyes. “You’re at least gonna move in with him, right? Get out of your parents’ house? Since you’re practically living with him as it is?”