Chapter 18: Scholarly Devotion
The air in the library’s main hall smelled of dust, lemon polish, and quiet desperation. It was a Thursday afternoon, the silence a thick, palpable thing broken only by the distant squeak of a trolley wheel and the hushed rustle of a page turning three aisles over. Erica’s world had narrowed to the faint glow of her laptop screen and the dense block of text swimming before her eyes: “Post-Colonial Ontologies in the Works of…”
A shadow fell across her notes.
She didn’t need to look up. She knew the particular heft of it, the way it displaced the sterile air around her carrel. A familiar, clean scent of soap and faint sandalwood cut through the smell of old paper. Her pulse, dormant a moment before, gave a single, hard knock against her ribs.
Blake didn’t say a word. His hand, palm up, appeared in her peripheral vision on the edge of the desk. An invitation. A command.
She stared at it. At the long, clever fingers, the calluses on the fingertips from guitar strings, a faint smudge of charcoal near the thumb. Her own hand tingled. Around them, the library slept on.
She placed her hand in his. His fingers closed over hers, warm and definite. He pulled her up from her chair with a gentle, inexorable pressure. Her knee bumped the desk, a soft thud that sounded canon-loud in the hush. She winced, shooting a glance down the row of carrels. Empty. For now.
He was already moving, leading her, their hands linked low between them like a secret. He walked with purpose, past the Philosophy stacks, past the hushed cluster of students at a long table, their heads bent like monks in a scriptorium. She followed, her flats making soft, sticking sounds on the polished linoleum. Her mind raced, a frantic committee meeting: He can’t. We can’t. Not here. The cameras. Mrs. Henley at the circulation desk. My thesis. Yet her body, wired from their last encounter, thrummed with a treacherous electricity. The memory of his whispered confessions in the lamplit dark was a live wire inside her.
He turned a corner into a dimmer, narrower corridor lined with bound periodicals. At the very end was a single, isolated study carrel, tucked into an alcove like an afterthought. It was deeper than the others, shrouded in shadow from a flickering fluorescent light two bays over. The ‘Quiet Study’ sign on the wall seemed like a joke.
He pulled her into the carrel’s mouth and then spun her, her back pressing against the cool oak of the bookshelf behind her. The space was barely wider than his shoulders. He loomed, blocking the light, his face in shadow. She could hear his breath, see the intent glitter of his eyes.
“You’ve been ignoring my texts,” he whispered. His voice was low, a sandpaper rumble that vibrated in the enclosed space.
“I was working,” she breathed back, her own voice sounding thin. “You’re a distraction.”
“Good.” He braced one hand on the shelf above her head, leaning in. The world outside the alcove ceased to exist. It was just this: the scent of him, the old-book smell of the leather-bound volumes, the frantic drum of her heart. “You left in a hurry the other morning.”
She had. She’d woken at dawn tangled in his sheets, his arm a heavy weight across her stomach, and a panic had seized her—a fear of the daylight, of seeing what they’d done in the clear, unforgiving sun. She’d dressed silently and slipped out, her mind a riot of conflicting poetry and the phantom feel of his hands.
“I had a seminar,” she lied.
He knew it. A slow, knowing smile touched his lips. He leaned closer, his mouth near her ear. “You took my sweater.”
She had. It was balled up at the bottom of her bag right now, smelling of him. A trophy. A piece of evidence.
“I was cold,” she whispered.
“Liar.” The word was a warm puff against her skin. His free hand came to rest on her waist, his thumb stroking the fabric of her blouse just above the waistband of her skirt. “I think you like having a piece of me. Something to smell when you’re reading your dense books. A reminder.”
She shuddered. He was right, and him naming it felt more invasive than his touch.
His hand slid down, over the curve of her hip, under the hem of her sensible, knee-length skirt. His fingers traced the lace top of her stocking. A different lace from yesterday. Black, not ivory. A conscious choice she’d made that morning, a private provocation.
“What’s this?” he murmured, his fingers dipping beneath the elastic, finding bare skin. “A new variable in the experiment?”
Before she could answer, before she could even form a coherent thought, he dropped to his knees.
The motion was so sudden, so utterly shocking in the context of the silent library, that she gasped. Her hand flew out, smacking against the bookshelf. A hollow boom echoed in the carrel.
“Shhh,” he said, looking up at her from his position on the worn carpet. His eyes were dark, unreadable pools. His hands were already on her thighs, pushing her skirt up in a bunch around her hips. The cool, still air of the library kissed her exposed skin, raising goosebumps.
“Blake, no—” The protest was automatic, her eyes darting towards the opening of the carrel. The corridor was empty, a tunnel of silent, bound knowledge.
“Yes.” It was not a request. He hooked one of her legs over his shoulder, the gesture both intimate and shockingly possessive. The position opened her to him, left her utterly vulnerable. Her stomach tightened in a knot of fear and dizzying anticipation.
He leaned in, his breath hot through her thin cotton panties. She could feel the press of his forehead against her lower belly. Her fingers tangled in his dark hair, not to push him away, but to hold on as the floor seemed to tilt.
“Prove your thesis,” he growled, the vibration against her core making her knees buckle. He nuzzled the damp fabric. “Show me how well you can compartmentalize when my tongue’s buried inside you.”
He didn’t wait for her to answer. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of her panties and pulled them down her thighs, just enough. Then his mouth was on her, not tentative, but knowing and voracious.
Erica’s head thumped back against the books. A choked sound, half-sob, half-moan, clawed its way up her throat. She clamped her other hand over her own mouth, the taste of ink and paper on her skin. Her eyes screwed shut, but the darkness behind her lids was alive with sparks.
His tongue was a relentless, precise instrument. He licked into her with a focus that shattered thought. He mapped her, learned her anew in this illicit space. The wet, soft sounds were obscenely loud in the quiet. She could hear the faint, rhythmic shift of his jeans against the carpet, the ragged intake of her own breath through her nose.
Compartmentalize. The word echoed in the shattering landscape of her mind. She tried. She focused on the feel of the oak against her skull. On the distant, tinny sound of elevator music from the library’s PA system. On the title of the book level with her eyes: “A Treatise on Medieval Epistemology.” The words blurred.
He hummed against her, a low, appreciative vibration that sent a jolt straight to the base of her spine. His hands held her hips, keeping her leg anchored over his shoulder, his grip firm. She was panting now, silent, frantic little breaths that fogged the air in front of her. Pleasure coiled, tight and burning, in her core. It was different from the intense, shared climax on his couch. This was a unilateral gift. An assault on her senses and her sanity. He was serving her pleasure on a platter of absolute risk, and her body was accepting it greedily.
A noise—a cough—echoed from somewhere in the main hall. Her eyes flew open, wide with terror. She froze, every muscle locking. Blake went perfectly still beneath her, his mouth still warm and wet against her.
They waited, two statues in a niche of sin.
The cough didn’t come again. Footsteps receded.
The moment of fear had sharpened everything. The sensation, the danger, the sheer wrongness of it. A new, darker heat flooded her. Blake felt it. He let out a soft, dark chuckle against her skin. Then he redoubled his efforts. His tongue found her clit and circled it with a ruthless, rhythmic pressure. His fingers dug into the flesh of her hips, sure to leave bruises.
It was too much. The “Quiet Study” sign swam in her vision. The world outside this oak-and-leather confessional ceased to have any meaning. Her climax ripped through her with a silent, violent intensity. Her body bowed, rigid, her throat aching with a scream she dared not release. Stars exploded behind her eyes, white and gold, washing out the titles of all the forgotten books.
He held her through it, his mouth gentle now, soothing, drinking her in as she shuddered and shook against the bookshelf. When the last tremor subsided, he slowly lowered her leg from his shoulder. He rested his forehead against her thigh for a long moment, his own breathing heavy.
Then he stood. He looked rumpled, triumphant, his lips slick and his eyes blazing. He plucked a few tissues from the box on the desk and cleaned himself up, then handed one to her. She took it with trembling fingers, her mind a perfect, blissful blank.
He righted her clothing with a practical, tender efficiency, smoothing her skirt down. He tucked a strand of sweat-damp hair behind her ear. His thumb traced the shell of her ear, then trailed down to her lips, which were parted, still trying to drag in air.
“Compartmentalized?” he asked, his voice rough.
She could only stare at him. Her thesis, her seminar, her carefully ordered world—it was all ash. All that remained was the smell of old paper, the phantom thrumming between her legs, and the dangerous, beautiful man watching her with a possessive pride.
She found her voice, a raw whisper. “The data,” she managed, “is… conclusively skewed.”
He grinned, that flash of white in the dim light. He leaned in, kissed her once, deeply, letting her taste herself on his lips. It was a claiming more profound than anything that had come before.
“Good,” he murmured against her mouth. He pulled back, his expression shifting into something more neutral, though his eyes still burned. He adjusted his own shirt, ran a hand through his hair. To anyone passing by, he would look like a mildly dishevelled student.
“Come on,” he said, his voice now a normal volume, still hushed for the library but no longer a secret. “Let’s get a coffee. You look like you could use one.”
He offered his hand again. After a heartbeat’s hesitation, her own still trembling slightly, she took it. Her legs felt like water. As he led her out of the carrel, she cast one last look back at the alcove—a crime scene of her own undoing. Then she followed him, the echo of their quiet footsteps on the linoleum the only sound marking their passage back into the world of rules, and order, and light.
Then she followed him, the echo of their quiet footsteps on the linoleum the only sound marking their passage back into the world of rules, and order, and light. The main library felt jarringly bright, its vast silence now a fragile shell around the secret humming in her veins. She concentrated on the solid pressure of his hand around hers, an anchor as they passed the circulation desk. Mrs. Henley, the ancient librarian, glanced up over her rhinestone-studded glasses. Her gaze flicked from Erica’s undoubtedly flushed face to their clasped hands, then back to her computer screen with a soft, knowing sniff. Heat bloomed across Erica’s cheeks. Blake just squeezed her fingers, a private signal, and pushed through the heavy brass-trimmed doors into the afternoon sun.
Outside, the world assaulted her senses. City sounds—honking cars, the shriek of a distant bus braking, snippets of student laughter—flooded in, replacing the library’s sacred hush. The sudden normalcy was a shock. She blinked in the glare, her body still humming from his touch, her skin feeling too thin, too exposed. Blake released her hand to dig in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes. The loss of contact made her feel untethered.
“You okay?” he asked, tapping a cigarette loose. His voice was back to its usual casual timbre, but his eyes on her were sharp, assessing.
“I feel… dismantled,” she admitted. The honesty surprised her. She watched his lips close around the filter, the flick of his lighter, the first exhale of smoke that fragmented in the breeze. “In a good way. I think.”
He smiled, a real one that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “That’s the idea.” He offered her the cigarette. She shook her head, but took his hand instead, threading her fingers through his. The simple act felt more daring than what they’d just done in the dark. He looked down at their joined hands, then back at her face, his expression softening. “Coffee?”
The shop, ‘Perk’, was a block away, all scuffed wood and industrial piping. The air inside was thick with the rich, burnt scent of roasting beans and the hiss of a steam wand. It was crowded, buzzing with the low murmur of a dozen conversations and the clatter of ceramic. Erica instinctively shrank a little, the public space feeling like an imposition. Blake, conversely, seemed to expand into it, his shoulders relaxing as he scanned the room.
“Hey! Over here!”
A man waved from a corner table near the front window. He had a friendly, open face, shaggy brown hair escaping from a beanie, and a practical wool jacket. Blake’s face lit up. “Daniel.”
Daniel’s observant eyes swept over them as they approached, noting their joined hands, the slight dishevelment of Blake’s shirt, the high color still lingering on Erica’s throat. A slow, easy grin spread across his face.
“You must be Erica,” Daniel said, standing up. He didn’t offer a hand, just nodded. “I’ve heard a lot. Mainly that you’re single-handedly responsible for Blake actually reading books with words in them now.” His tone was warm, teasing.
Blake gave a mock scowl. “Don’t believe him. He’s jealous my new muse isn’t a Fender Stratocaster.”
“She probably smells better,” Daniel said, gesturing for them to sit. “Can I get you guys a coffee? I was just settling in.”
“I’ll get them,” Blake said. “The usual for you?” he asked Daniel, then turned to Erica. “Latte?”
She nodded, grateful for the moment to collect herself. As Blake walked to the counter, his easy confidence cutting through the crowd, she was left facing Daniel. His smile was still kind, but his gaze was analytical in a different way than Blake’s. This was appraisal, not possession.
“So,” Daniel said, leaning back in his chair. “You’re the thesis.” His voice held no malice, only a gentle curiosity.
Erica felt a fresh flutter of nerves. “I… I guess? In a manner of speaking.”
“He talks about your… research,” Daniel continued, choosing the word carefully, his eyes sparkling. “A lot. It’s all ‘ontological framework’ this and ‘data collection’ that.” He took a sip of his own drink, a large black coffee. “Honestly, it’s a nice change from hearing about amp feedback for three hours straight.”
She laughed, the sound loosening the knot in her chest. “Well, I’m sure his analysis of amp feedback is very rigorous.”
“Oh, incredibly. Mostly involves turning it up to eleven and seeing what happens.” Daniel watched Blake at the counter, chatting easily with the barista. His expression grew more thoughtful. “He seems good. Different. In a solid way.”
Erica followed his gaze. Blake was laughing at something, the lines of his body relaxed. The memory of that same body coiled and intent in the library carrel flashed through her, a secret heat in her belly. She looked back at Daniel, wondering how much he intuited. “He’s… intense.”
Daniel snorted. “Yeah. That’s the polite word for it.” He set his mug down. “Just… you know. He feels things. Deeply. Sometimes before he thinks about them. It’s his best and worst quality.” He said it not as a warning, but as a statement of fact, like noting the weather.
Blake returned with the drinks, setting Erica’s latte before her with a deliberate touch of his fingers against hers. He slid into the chair next to her, his thigh pressing against hers under the small table. The contact was electric, a continuation of their library conversation in this bright, public space.
“What’d I miss?” Blake asked, wrapping an arm around the back of Erica’s chair.
“Just giving Erica the Blake Foster primer,” Daniel said dryly. “The abridged, PG-13 version.”
“Terrific.” Blake rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. He took a sip of his espresso, watching Erica over the rim of the tiny cup. “Daniel’s the band’s voice of reason. Keeps me from selling all our gear to fund ill-advised road trips to Memphis.”
“Someone has to,” Daniel said. He looked between them again, at the way Erica unconsciously leaned into Blake’s side, at the proprietary curl of Blake’s hand on her shoulder. His smile softened, becoming genuinely affectionate. “It’s good to finally put a face to the influence. Seriously.”
They talked for twenty minutes about nothing consequential—the band’s upcoming gig, a professor Erica disliked, the horrible price of strings. It was normal, achingly so. Erica found herself relaxing into the rhythm of it, the caffeine and the casual conversation stitching her back into a semblance of her usual self. Yet underneath it all, a constant thread of awareness pulsed. The weight of Blake’s arm. The occasional brush of his knee against hers. The secret, slick truth of her underwear beneath her skirt, a hidden proof of the person she had been an hour ago.
Finally, Daniel checked his phone and stood. “Gotta run. Sound check at seven.” He pulled on his jacket. “Erica, really good to meet you.” He looked at Blake, a silent communication passing between them. “Don’t be a stranger, man. And maybe bring her to the show on Saturday?”
“Maybe,” Blake said, noncommittal.
After Daniel left, the noise of the café seemed to recede, folding back around just the two of them. Blake’s thumb began to trace slow circles on her shoulder through her blouse. “So?” he murmured, his voice dropping back into that private register. “What’s your analysis of him?”
“He’s nice,” Erica said, watching Daniel disappear into the street. “He cares about you.”
“He’s a pain in my ass,” Blake corrected, but there was fondness there. He shifted in his chair, turning to face her more fully. The playful mask from the conversation with Daniel was gone, replaced by a focused intensity. “You’re still trembling.”
She hadn’t even realized it until he said it—a fine, constant vibration deep in her muscles. She looked down at her hands wrapped around the warm latte mug. They were steady.
“Not on the outside,” he said, as if reading her thought. His hand left her shoulder and came to rest on her knee under the table, his palm searing through the wool of her skirt. “Inside. I can feel it.”
She met his gaze, her green eyes wide. The public space felt suddenly porous, insubstantial. The chatter of the coffee shop melted into a dull roar. All she could feel was the heat of his hand, the memory of his mouth, the approving look in Daniel’s eyes. She was a collection of competing truths: the diligent student, the obedient daughter, the woman who came apart in a library carrel.
Blake leaned in close, his lips nearly brushing her ear. His words were a low, intimate rumble meant for her alone. “Do you want to go back to my place?” he asked. “Or…” He paused, letting the alternative hang. “I have band practice in an hour. You could come. Watch. See what I do when I’m not…” He let the sentence fade, but his meaning was clear. When I’m not devouring you in dark places.
It was a choice between two worlds. The private, consuming one of his apartment, or the public sphere of his creativity, his other life. Her bag, slumped at her feet, still held his sweater and her notes on post-colonial theory. The phantom scent of cinnamon and old books from his apartment warred with the reality of coffee and steam.
She took a slow, deep breath. The trembling inside her hadn’t stopped. It was changing, settling into a new, steady frequency. “Practice,” she said, her voice firmer than she expected. “I’d like to watch.”
A slow smile spread across Blake’s face, one of genuine pleasure and something else—respect. He squeezed her knee once, a firm, grounding pressure.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”