A quick brush of powder covers some of the freckles that make me look twelve years old. And there’s nothing to be done about my hair, which falls damp and sea-blown no matter what I do. There’s a mirror on the door, and I look at my hazel eyes, wondering what Sutton sees in them.
Sutton uses people. That’s what Christopher said, as if I didn’t know what men want from women. Even if I’ve never had sex before, that doesn’t mean I’m totally naive to their ways. I’ve been to plenty of frat parties. Walked in on one of my professors and his student, once.
And there was that husband of my mother’s, the one who climbed into my bed.
I know what men want from women; I’m only surprised that a man like Sutton wants it from me. Does he think I have more experience than I do? It might be a disappointment when he finds out I can paint a siren better than I can be one.
Sutton reclines on the armchair in the corner, scrolling through his phone. There are probably a hundred emails in his inbox. Phone calls to return. Or maybe he’s looking at his bank balance, counting the money. That seems like something an ambitious man would do.
He looks up, and nothing about his expression changes. At least not that I can discern, but there’s a sense of amusement glinting in his eyes. “You are the most interesting woman I’ve ever met, Harper St. Claire.”
“Oh good,” I say, picking up the coffee he brought me. It’s infinitely stronger than whatever the hotel has in that silver carafe. “I thought you wanted me to be sexy, which was nerve-racking. The interesting thing I’ve been doing for years.”
His lips press together like he’s holding something inside, which I’ve already figured out is an unusual look for him. He says what he’s thinking.
“What?” I say, looking down at my shirt. “Too much?”
He barks a laugh. “God, woman. You’ll be the death of me.”
“Now you’re just being cruel.” I grab my clutch from the nightstand. “Let’s go.”
He follows me, muttering to himself and shaking his head. “Not sexy? If you were any more sexy, I would come in my goddamn boxers.”
Chapter Nine
TWO-MILLION-DOLLAR BATH
I expected a hollowed-out building, maybe one of those abandoned spaces where the earth has started reclaiming the land with ivy grown over cracked concrete. There are enough old places in the west side of Tanglewood for that to be possible.
Instead I find a grand old building with cornices and ionic columns and a wide bank of brass doors set in thick wavy glass. Inside there’s a marble entranceway and a dome stained-glass ceiling. Only a few panes are broken, petals in the flowers that let in shards of sunlight, illuminating a wealth of dust floating in the air. The whole place is done in an art deco style, original work with brass cage light fixtures and stylized roses in the marble floors.
High wooden countertops line the entrance, where intrepid old Tanglewood citizens would go to ask questions before you could ask Alexa anything on your Amazon Echo. Behind the counter is the focal point, a wall carving that’s two stories high—a collage of waves and sky, square-faced men wielding tools and working with the land. It’s a story of triumph, that carving. Even an inch deep in dust and with a bird’s nest hanging loosely off one of the men’s eyebrows, it takes my breath away to look at it.
And through a great curved hallway, shelves and shelves of books.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
“It’s something, isn’t it?” Sutton says, sounding reluctantly impressed. “Apparently they ran out of funding to pay the librarians, so they just shut the doors one day. Didn’t bother to sell off anything inside or use the building for something else.”
I wander over to a circular file which has little printed cards where people could write requests. There’s one sitting with a half-sized pencil, the words Crossing the Rubicon written on it. They really had locked the doors without any notice or closure.
One day there was a functioning library. A center for knowledge and community.
And the next day, nothing.
I whirl on Sutton, remembering what he told me. “‘This is more of a teardown and rebuild.’ That’s what you said. Are you insane?”
“There’s no money in a library,” he says, his voice gentle.
It makes me think that maybe he mourns the loss of this place, too. Not enough to go easy on him, though. “No wonder Mrs. Rosemont was pissed at you. This is a travesty.”
“That woman has enough money to have restored the library herself if she cared about it that much. It’s convenient that she’s worried about it now that I own the deed.”
“You and Christopher,” I remind him. “You own it together.”
He laughs. “If Christopher had his way, we would have had a wrecking crew already through here. He doesn’t see anything of value between these walls.”
There’s an uncomfortable symmetry between this old building and me. “And what about you? Do you see any value here?”
He looks up at the broken stained-glass windows, his handsome face in silhouette, revealing a place in his nose where it once must have broken. “It’s a beauty, that’s for sure. I thought it would be enough of a tribute to build something grand in its place.”
“That’s not a tribute. That’s—that’s—”
“A travesty,” he says, his voice dry. “You mentioned that. There was an option in the construction plans, an idea I had once to keep the walls and the doors. Even the old style, but most of this would still be cleared to make way for the stores.”
“The stores.”
“It’s going to be a mall. We may not understand the way society ladies work, but we know enough. If there’s a Jimmy Choos over where the picture books are, they’ll come shop.”
“I resign,” I say, tossing the empty coffee cup into a trash that’s half full with crumpled paper. “And I’m joining the Tanglewood Historical Society.”
Sutton doesn’t look alarmed by my declaration. Instead he seems pleased, maybe even a little smug. Typical man. “I knew you were the right person for the job.”
“Because I’m quitting?”
“Because you aren’t going to let us screw this up.”
My skin prickles with that sense of a role reversal again, that Christopher is always trying to save me. That Sutton thinks I can save them both, instead. “I’m serious, though. This place is like magic. You can’t turn it into a mall.”
“We aren’t a charity,” he reminds me, but his voice isn’t a reprimand. Instead it’s like we’re brainstorming, so I let him lead me deeper into the library. “This has to make money or we just took a two-million-dollar bath.”
“No one needs to be that clean,” I agree, secretly shocked that they had poured that much money into this place. No wonder Christopher’s so bent on starting construction. It would take a serious overhaul to turn this place into a shiny mall with luxury shops.
Sutton pauses to look at a row of plaques that has the names of old families. The brass is tarnished and green now. This is what’s become of their legacy.
I walk past him to a great hall that contains books in rows and rows. The dust is dense here, without even the broken stained-glass windows to let in fresh air. It tickles my nose until I sneeze, disturbing the layer of gray on a book beside me. I touch the old cloth spines as I pass, taking away a smudge of dirt with my forefinger, leaving a trail where I’ve been.
The rows are even enough to follow, but the signage less clear. There aren’t any signs above each row to say what’s inside. You’d have to ask one of the long-gone librarians to find anything. I keep walking, gradually coming to understand the system for things. Fiction and nonfiction. Memoirs and reference materials. There’s a large section on history, which is super meta considering this building has become a slice of the past.
My finger touches books that haven’t been read in years, their pages silent in this tomb of a library. Books about the medieval times and the ancient Vikings.
There’
s a section about Greek and Roman history. There are a few books I skimmed through in Smith College’s library. Ancient history doesn’t change that much.
One catches my eye. The Goddess of Egypt, it says, with a stylized painting that could only be Cleopatra. At least they’ve drawn her without the asp wrapped around her arm, but she has the classic heavy eyeliner and seductive pose. The Mona Lisa smile.
I flip it open, which sends a cloud of dust into my eyes. They’re watering by the time the page comes into focus. The text is small enough to need a magnifying glass, but a sentence in this random place jumps out to me.
It’s a testament to female power that she was able to create a shadow of her own beside two men of incredible ambition and renown.
Two men of incredible ambition. I have a little experience with that after last night, though I’m not sure how much of a shadow I create myself. I’m not sure I want much of a shadow, considering we know the tragic end that Cleopatra met. History wasn’t kind to women who held beauty and power. I’m not sure the present is much kinder.
“What do you think?” comes a low voice behind me.
I gasp in a mouthful of old air and cough. Sutton stands too close to me, his body warm and imposing, somehow making the aisle shrink. “I think you surprised me.”
“You fit here, which is strange.”
“Strange because I know how to read?” I ask tartly.
“Strange because you’re the epitome of the modern woman, but you look so comfortable in this stuffy old library. I think you’d fit in anywhere, wouldn’t you?”
“That comes from moving every few months,” I say, the words out before I can call them back. I don’t usually share that with anyone. Definitely not a man who thinks I’m beautiful and mysterious. “Not that I minded.”
He looks grave. “Are you going to settle down in New York?”
That’s where most of the people I know have moved. Or places farther away, like Milan or Bombay. Places to inspire an artist’s heart. I never told them that I long for something simpler. Something more like an old library that hasn’t been touched in forever.
“Maybe.” I snap the book shut and carry it to the front.
He follows, a little bemused. “You’re stealing a book.”
A gasp of outrage. “I wouldn’t steal. I’m checking it out, obviously.”
“Should I go behind the counter, then?”
“No one would mistake you for a librarian,” I say, glancing wryly at the elegant lines of his suit. How such a large man manages to move gracefully is something physicians can study. Something old Greek artists would have tried to carve out of marble.
I push aside a swinging wooden door to go behind the counter myself. There’s a time capsule back here, papers in stacks moved only by the wind from above. Old stools with the leather worn, probably old even when the library closed. What had the librarians done when they closed the doors? Had they mourned this place? Someone should have.
Sutton follows me behind the counter, his blunt fingers moving along a carving in the back wall. Leaves create a forest wall made out of mahogany. A place for a tired librarian to lean against between moving stacks of books around.
Finally I find the little cards that they would fill out to lend a book. There’s a place to write the full name and address of the person. A place to write the book information. An optional ten-cent donation check box. Sutton joins me, placing his hand on my waist—such a small touch. It shouldn’t make my heart race.
“Look,” I say, showing him. “You can earn back your two million with this.”
He bends close, his blond hair more golden in this dim and dusty light. “How many books would we have to lend? It’s not as fast of a return as we hoped for.”
A sense of lightness invades my chest because he plays along with me. Does that mean he respects me more or less than Christopher, who rejects my ideas right away? I’m not sure either of them see me as an equal, but they both want my body.
Looking down at the cover of Cleopatra, the artist’s rendition of an overpriced prostitute done with childish ideas of Egyptian fashion, I wonder if that’s all we ever have.
Sutton turns his face toward my neck, breathing in. I turn toward him, my mouth only a few inches away. We could kiss in this place, and it would be almost sacred.
He pulls away, only an inch. Enough. “We can go to the office,” he says, his voice rough. “I’ll show you the plans and then we can talk about next steps.”
So businesslike, those words. Next steps.
I turn so that the counter is against my back and I’m facing Sutton. He could step back, if he really didn’t want this. If he didn’t want me to grasp his red tie and pull. If he didn’t want me to push up on my toes and kiss the corner of his lips.
He groans and opens his mouth over mine. His tongue touches my lower lip, my tongue. He touches me in intimate, warm places, and I can only think about him kissing me between my legs. Especially when his palm lands heavy on my thigh.
“Here?” I ask, but it’s not really a question. It’s more of a command.
His hands grasp me in a brusque motion, pushing me so that I’m sitting on the counter. My legs open with a naturalness that surprises me, and he moves between them. Even with the way his waist narrows, he spreads me wide. His demanding kiss pushes me back, only an inch, enough to unbalance me. My hands fall back to catch me on the dusty stacks of paper.
“Here,” he says as if it’s an order.
Both of us know by now that it’s acquiescence. He’s put me in charge of this thing we’re doing, made me the goddess of this ancient library. It makes me feel powerful when I grasp his hair and hold him steady, biting his bottom lip.
His hips jerk, as if against his will, pressing something hard and long against the inside of my leg. It makes me bite him again, harder this time. How does he do this to me? Make me vicious. As if something dangerous inside him calls to me.
And I know that he’s strong enough to take anything I give him.
“Do you think,” I say, gasping, “there were librarians who did this?”
He moves his mouth to my jaw, making my skin oversensitive with his lips. “God, I hope so. It would have been a travesty to have this counter and not use it.”
When he brushes his teeth along my collarbone, I let my head fall back. I look up at the broken windowpanes, at the too-bright sun. “I didn’t come last night.”
“No?” he asks, nipping at the upper curve of my breast. “You didn’t have Christopher finish what I started? You didn’t tell him to get on his knees for you?”
“He—” I have to pause and search for words as Sutton pushes his hand, blunt and urgent, beneath my panties. “He wanted to.”
That makes him push his clothed cock against me, same as the bite. He likes it when I’m rough with him. We’re both animalistic this way, here in this abandoned place.
“Would you touch me now if I’d let him?”
“Hell yes,” he says, his voice a grumble, those blue eyes narrowed. “I’d show you that I can make it better. I’m not afraid of competition.”
“You like it,” I say, panting.
“Yeah,” he says, and his fingers find me wet and swollen. His lids lower. He presses an open-mouthed kiss on my belly. Lower, lower. “I like competing. You gonna make me fight for it, honey?”
It’s probably wrong to answer yes. There’s some moral weakness inside me that only came to the surface when Christopher showed up at L’Etoile last night. “Would you win?” I whisper.
“No chance in hell I’m letting this sweet pussy get away.” That drawl becomes stronger when he’s turned on. It makes me want to push him further, to see how heavy and thick he can sound. So I spread my legs wider, using my heel on the counter for leverage, pressing myself against his mouth. He grunts his appreciation, spearing me with a blunt finger, and then two. His hand twists and does something inside me, something that makes my mouth fall open.
He pulls ba
ck enough to watch his fingers, in and out, in and out.
“Don’t stop,” I moan, pushing my hips against the air.
He laughs against me, the breath of it a terrible tease. “Did it hurt last night?”
“Evil,” is all I can say, especially when he presses a small kiss to my clit.
“My dick hurt like hell,” he says, rubbing his thumb against my clit. “Couldn’t jerk it because it made me wonder if you were with him. So I had to lie there hard as a fucking rock all night, waiting until it was morning.”
“I’m sorry,” I say on a moan, but that’s a lie. The same way he lies to me. I’m not sorry he hurt for me; it feels like the only compensation in this whole confusing situation. That his cock throbs and aches and wants the way my body does.
“You will be,” he says, his voice low and hard-edged. “You’ll be sorry when I spank your ass pink with one of these books. Then maybe you’ll know better than to tease me.”
Surprise squeezes my lungs, because I’m pretty sure he’s only pretending. Or maybe he’s really going to punish me. My body doesn’t seem to care, because I gasp and writhe in his hold, fighting him in this maybe-game we’re playing.
Large hands grasp my hips and flip me over like I weigh nothing. Then I’m bent over the counter where a hundred books must have been lent over the years. A thousand books. More?
I’m defiling all of it with my breasts pressed against the dusty wood and my hands clenching in old paper. He picks something up; I feel the whoosh of air where I’m exposed. I tense, but nothing hits me.
“Don’t worry,” he says in that hard-edge voice that means I should be very worried. “I’m going to warn you before I do it. I want you good and afraid.”
“I’m afraid,” I whimper.
He shows me the book he has—there are stacks of them haphazard on the counter, books that were returned but never shelved, forever in purgatory. It could have been any one of them, but of course it’s The Goddess of Egypt. Stylized Cleopatra looks back at me with her mysterious eyes and knowing smile. I’m going to paint her. I’ll have to paint her, in some way other than in that seductive pose they always use. Maybe she’ll be bent over a table, her body shaking in almost-real fear at the man behind her.
Love Triangle: Six Books of Torn Desire Page 35