Checking Out Love (6 page)

Sullied
. Jeremy let his bag hit the floor. “Oh my God,” he exhaled in wonder. Benj had thought about him, had
hopes
about him. He needed more. “It’s a great library, but it’s not the Library of Alexandria, dude.”

“Dude,” Benj repeated, nose wrinkled in disgust. His fierce glare fixed Jeremy to the spot, not that Jeremy was going anywhere. “He could have damaged the journal. Who knows what else he might have done if I hadn’t been there, all for the sake of his terrible airport fiction.”

He was such a fucking beast. Jeremy lost his breath. “I bet his book isn’t that bad,” he tried anyway. He’d never had to work to piss someone off before. This was new. A good new.

Benj gave him a stare of total disbelief and then came forward. He held up his fingers to illustrate his points. “His mysteries are easily solvable if you pay attention. He uses historical facts to add depth to his shallow plots, and to make his readers feel smarter. It’s a cheap trick worthy of a Nicholas Cage movie. His characters are all boring, mediocre, middle-aged white men, who turn out to be the only ones in the whole world who can solve the mysteries. The women resemble no women I know. He overuses the word “nape” and for some reason it drives me up a wall.” Jeremy almost smiled at that one, but Benj wasn’t done. “And once you know the twist at the end, the mystery itself is meretricious.”

“Dude.” Jeremy licked his mouth when Benj stopped a foot or two from him. “Did you use ‘meretricious’ in a sentence? Is this Sherlock Holmes?”

“You keep calling me
dude
.” Benj leveled an even more displeased stare at him.

Jeremy leaned against the stacks. “Guess I missed the part where you introduced yourself as Leland Barrett, IV.” He tilted his head up and waited.

That stopped him. Benj went still, which was not what Jeremy wanted.

Benjamin, or Leland, dropped his gaze to the floor, then raised his head. “My name is Leland Benjamin Barrett. With so many Lelands in one family, everyone has called me Benjamin, or Benj, since I was a kid.” He darted a look at Jeremy that Jeremy didn’t understand. “You didn’t know the first time. You kept referring to me as a monster.” He talked over the small, stupid noise Jeremy made in a not-quite apology. “Then I thought you’d figured it out. I thought you didn’t mind. You bought me coffee.”

He wasn’t pleading, exactly, but his hush was no longer angry.

Jeremy answered him, just as softly. “This place is amazing, you know. I meant that.”

Benj gave him a more direct stare. “You said—”

“I said it wasn’t an ancient famed library.” Jeremy waved his hands. “It’s not. But it’s still amazing. I would have come back here even if I hadn’t been fascinated by the librarian.”

Benj huffed a breath, then crossed his arms. “I don’t understand you,” he declared at last, sounding disgruntled about it.

“That happens a lot with me,” Jeremy agreed sympathetically.

Benj lifted his head and narrowed his eyes. He seemed angry again. “This isn’t a joke.”

Jeremy lifted both of his eyebrows. “I never said it was. I can relay our whole conversation back to you though, if you want.”

“Why are you so smart?” Benj startled him by dragging his hands through his hair. He seemed genuinely upset about how quick Jeremy was, and Jeremy felt his heart sink a little.

He tried to keep his tone light anyway. “Don’t ask me. It’s the bane of my existence.”

When he shrugged, Benj grew louder. “Don’t say that. It’s a gift!” he insisted, almost growling. Jeremy watched him, bemused and aroused and generally hungry in a way that had nothing to do with food. Benjamin was kind of strangely hilarious and incredibly sexy at the same time.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Jeremy got out at last, wondering when his mouth had gone dry. It sounded like Benj liked how smart he was, but then it didn’t.

Benj gave him a hard look. “The smart ones are the worst offenders. They’re arrogant and rude and careless, every single one of them. A PhD turns them into assholes who deign to come down here from their ivory towers and don’t like it when rules get in their way. They always think they are the special exception.” He crossed his arms again, defensively this time. “You aren’t like them. You’re not showing off; you’re excited about sharing what you know, and learning more. If I hadn’t let you read the diary, you would have spent the afternoon in the reading room anyway, wouldn’t you? Studying everything.” His attitude of implacable anger faded away. “You just want to learn. You aren’t like them. I wasn’t sure what you were, but you were different.”

“Oh.” Jeremy liked that, Benjamin Barrett not having any category for him either. Jeremy considered it, then shook his head. “No, no I am. I’m totally rude. I ate candy, remember?” He had a strong memory of sucking on licorice in here.

He felt Benj’s gaze on him, on his mouth specifically, as if he also remembered that. Jeremy’s face went hot. His body too. “Fuck,” he added, out loud.

“There might be other patrons in here,” Benj commented immediately. “Watch your language.” He was stern, although, unless they were hiding, there were absolutely no other patrons on the second floor with them. “See?” Benj complained a moment later when Jeremy stayed quiet. “You listen,” he exhaled in frustration, as if Jeremy was killing him. “You respect the important rules. You
understand
them.”

“God.” Jeremy made an unintelligible noise. “Freaking kiss me already.” He wasn’t sure if he made a greedy grab for the lavender cardigan first or Benj moved forward, but soft, so soft, wool was at his fingertips and he liked it. “You want to, right? No special permission needed. Except from me, and—yeah—granted.” He had no idea what he was saying, but whatever, Benj slid his hands along his jaw and leaned down and urged Jeremy up, and then, and then….

His mouth: soft. His kiss: hot. His hands were sure and yeah, oh yeah, Jeremy had been right. Benj felt firm and solid under that cardigan. He dragged their mouths together with slow heat and care and then pushed forward when Jeremy made a weak noise and tugged at his sweater. Jeremy’s brain shorted. He didn’t hear wedding bells; he heard heavy breathing and the faint whirr of air conditioning and his own pounding heart.

He was going to be picking cat fur out of his clothes for days. He didn’t care. Benj transferred his kisses from Jeremy’s mouth to his neck, and behind his ear, and then to his jaw and then finally, finally back to his waiting mouth. He shivered for how slow it was. Slow wasn’t supposed to be overwhelming any more than gentle was, or caution and care, but was rendering him weak and quiet anyway.

Benj kissed like he was savoring Jeremy’s mouth, like he’d thought about it, and his hands made their way down the length of his body with a thoroughness Jeremy couldn’t protest. He rocked against the bookshelves behind him, kind of thought about what they were doing and where they were doing it. But his glasses were fogged up and then pushed up at a weird angle from all the kissing and he still couldn’t manage a word.

He remembered thinking about primal noises and briefly closed his eyes to moan when Benj slipped one big hand under his shirt and into his jeans. His stubble burned the skin of Jeremy’s neck but it only made him harder.

Jeremy should have been doing more than kissing him back. He should have been touching him, trying to make him come, offering to blow him. But Benj planted a soft—how the fuck could he kiss so soft with his body so hard—and questioning kiss on his mouth and stopped with his fingers dipping into Jeremy’s underwear, and Jeremy just sort of nodded at him in stunned amazement. A moment later, Benj popped Jeremy’s jeans open and was stroking his dick through his boxers.

Jeremy clung to that cardigan to stay on his feet. He’d wanted the Beast, but this was… this was good too. This was great. He stared up with all the hearts in the world in his eyes while Benjamin, Leland, Benj, watched himself thumb the head of Jeremy’s dick. He’d thought about it all right. Jeremy shut his eyes and pushed his hands up into Benj’s hair, and didn’t do much to swallow his hiccoughing sighs. He wasn’t that loud, not even for a library. And if Benj objected, it wasn’t in the scrape of his stubble at Jeremy’s cheek, or the hand beneath his thigh, holding Jeremy steady as he got lost in a rhythmic slide, and heat, and tandem breaths. Benjamin kissed him and hushed him while telling him yes,
yes, Jeremy, but softer, that’s it, quiet, you’re wonderful
, until Jeremy would have done anything he said.

Jeremy gasped roughly once, in warning, but Benj stepped in and swallowed the sound with a kiss, and then Jeremy was coming, spilling hot over his stomach and shirt and probably Benj’s hand. He shuddered in exhausted pleasure, his thoughts sparking with no direction, and curled closer until he was hiked up to straddle Benj’s thigh and Benj thrust against him, hard from getting Jeremy off. Maybe he liked turning Jeremy to mush. Jeremy couldn’t make himself mind.

He did get a hand down at last, working Benj’s fly until he got his cock free, and then squeezing until Benj slid both hands behind him to the bookshelves to hold himself up. He came with a low groan that made Jeremy turn his head to find his mouth again. Jeremy gave him his soft kisses back while he jerked and spent himself all over Jeremy’s stomach. He could shoot his load anywhere but that cardigan; Jeremy wouldn’t allow it.

He kissed until Benj dropped his head and panted against his shoulder. Jeremy put his weight against the bookshelf and contemplated the long walk to the bathroom to clean up. Not that he could move yet. Not that he wanted to. He’d give himself a few more minutes of warm breath and fluffy wool and then he would get on with the awkward farewells.

Benj pulled away before Jeremy could think of how to communicate how quietly earth-shattering that had been without sounding pathetic. He straightened up a few inches without leaving Jeremy’s personal space, and studied him. His unfocused stare was no less intense for the stars in it. He was an intense sort of person. Possibly when he loved something, he loved it, and that was that.

Or not, Jeremy reminded himself. Jeremy was difficult at best. He bent the rules. He’d just annoyed Benj on purpose for no other reason than to see his famous temper in action. He was already planning their wedding. He was kind of a mess.

Literally. His stomach was thick with come.

Benj reached up and used one finger to push Jeremy’s glasses down to where they were supposed to be.

The words tripped off Jeremy’s tongue. “Do I have to make an appointment to see you again, or can I steal you?” he asked, and could
feel
Benj’s stillness. “Ah.” Jeremy angled his gaze away, safely over Benj’s shoulder. “I did it again, didn’t I? Sex is one thing, but then you have to put up with me the rest of the time. I should know by now, but in this one area my brain refuses to learn the pattern. Yeah,” he summed up breathlessly, and made his hands release Benj. He pushed himself from the wall and Benj stepped back.

But then Benj gestured behind them, toward the special collections library. “That didn’t scare you off?” he demanded in husky-voiced confusion. His skin was still flushed, his ears a vibrant crimson. “This?” he added, passing a hand over himself, or perhaps his cardigan.

“Why, did you knit it yourself?” Jeremy wondered blithely, but then paused at the guilty expression on Benj’s face. He
had
made it himself. Holy crap.

Jeremy pictured those hands, those final graceful sweeps as he signed things. His palms tingled at the memory of wool. Benj had
chosen
that shade of purple for himself. Jeremy really must be sick of boring, if smart, jerks. He wanted this gentle, domineering nerd.

He found himself nodding. “Did you really?” he asked weakly. “Because that could work for me. Even more than your scary beast librarian persona. I wasn’t kidding. I’d spirit you away right now and keep you if I didn’t know you loved this library so much.”

The idea that Jeremy had been turned on by Benj enforcing—heck, creating—the library’s rules, seemed to be a new one for Benjamin. He took a moment, then narrowed his eyes, deliberately. “I don’t scare everyone away. Just the miscreants.”

“
Miscreants,
oh my God.” Jeremy clutched at the shelves behind him to stay on his feet. “Yeah. I’m stealing you. Get coffee with me, outside, or I don’t know. Let’s go for a walk. Recite poetry to each other. Whatever it is people do in this situation.”

Benj smiled, a wide, startled smile as if the last thing he had expected Jeremy to say was also the best thing he could have said.

“Wh… really?” Jeremy was still in shock at this development. “Because now that I think about it, the looks people have been giving me… wait… your family? That’s your sister downstairs, isn’t it? The one with the eyebrows and the eyes. Another Barrett. Were you avoiding me that first night? Did you send her in to make sure I was… wait, why did you do that?”

Benj scowled. “I didn’t want… if you were like the others, I didn’t want to know. But you spent hours in there, mesmerized by Rosa’s diary.” That whisper was going to be Jeremy’s undoing as much as Benj’s blushes were. “You followed the rules.”

“You didn’t want me to disappoint you?” Jeremy had no reason to grin, but he did, because they both knew he only followed rules he wanted to. “But we sullied your library tonight,” he pointed out. He was a little smug about it, even with cooling semen sticking to his shirt.