Ensnare: The Librarian’s Lover #1 (Demon Paranormal Romance)
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Ensnare: The Librarian's Lover #1 (Paranormal Erotica) © 2014 Mac Flynn
Book 1 of the adult ENSNARE THE LIBRARIAN Series
Genre: Contemporary Romance / Paranormal Romance / Erotic Romance
Due to sexual content, this book is not intended for readers under the age of 18.
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Chapter 1
I never knew passion, or even love, until I fell in love with that book. I guess it was fated to be. For as long as I could remember I'd loved books, so much that when I went to college I took a job at the campus library as a night worker. That was when I learned about passion, and a whole lot about lust. Maybe it was fated to be. With a name like Leslie Faulkner, what else could I be interested in other than books? Before the lesson in passion, though, I learned about heartache.
Heartache is when you don't have what you desperately want. What I desperately wanted were luxurious breasts, long, flowing hair, and a skin complexion that didn't show my love for the indoors. Oh, and Tyler Williams. He was the best college football player on the team, and the hottest. I never saw him without a girl under one arm, and sometimes both arms. He'd flash his smiles at the lucky few, and always beautiful, girls who swooned at the sight of his chiseled abs beneath his tight shirts and his wavy hair that glistened in the sun. It made me hot just thinking about his strong arms wrapping around me as he embraced me in a delicious, sensual kiss.
But he never flashed those smiles at me. I wasn't one of the pretty girls. To tell you the truth I was a mousy little thing with plain brown hair, plain brown eyes, and plain white skin from my hours working at the library. Even though he didn't admire me I admired him from afar. That's what I was doing that fateful late afternoon when Tyler strolled into the library with his arm wrapped around Ashley Alston's waist. She was the head cheerleader for the college squad. After all, who else was good enough for him to go out with?
But I'm jumping ahead in my story. Let me introduce myself. My name is Leslie Faulkner, wallflower extraordinaire. I was a college student at a four-year state university when my adventures began. Apprenticed to the college library to help pay the bills, I was the loner nobody ever paid attention to, even the professors. I could lie dead in the middle of campus and nobody would have noticed me until the stench became overpowering.
Stench was the definition of my life. Everything about it stank. I had my routine: get up, go to school, work at the library, go back to my room. Simple, boring routine. I wanted adventure, excitement, a boyfriend. I waited for them patiently like a child waits for Christmas, but my presents never came. That is, not until that fateful afternoon.
Tyler and Ashley walked arm-in-arm, the perfect picture of perfection. Locked together, the pair went up to the second floor study area of our large library. It was an impressive building, five stories tall with three of the upper floors open to the foyer. The top floor was completely closed off and accessed through a locked door with the key handled only by the full-time librarians. The other floors were filled to the brim with shelves three columns deep that stretched out from one wall to the other, or from one wall to the balcony overlooking the foyer. In a few of the corners were study tables and chairs, and even a couch here and there. There was also a creepy basement where the spare shelves and computers were stored. Most of the shelves were those moved when the college decided to put computers on half the ground floor five years before.
But as I was saying, on the second floor Tyler and Ashley passed by me like I was one of those bookshelves. An invisible person with a cart full of books. They slipped into one of the corners that had a couch, and like their shadows I followed them back there. I told myself I needed to go in that direction to shelve the books on my cart, but none of them went in that part of the library. My real desire was to watch them from the bookshelves and yearn for what they had: love, affection, and lust. I quietly pushed my cart along the balcony walk, mindful of the bumpy spots on the faded gray carpet. The hour was about five o'clock on a Monday afternoon, so the library was deserted expect for these two scholars intent on learning more about human anatomy.
I left my cart beside the bookshelf closest to the railing around the drop to the foyer and slunk into the stacks of books. My prey were found on one of the couches close together with sweet, tender smiles on their faces. "So are you going to give me the notes from class?" he cooed.
Ashley giggled, a sound as empty as her head. I suspected he wanted something from her, but it wasn't her notes. "Maybe, but what do I get out of it?"
Tyler smirked and leaned in to capture her lips in a breathtaking kiss. His hands slipped up beneath her shirt and massaged her perfect body. She groaned and leaned her head back to allow him to leave a blazing trail of kisses down to the tops of her perfect breasts that peeked out from the top of her small shirt. My hands clung to the nearest shelf and I bit my lip to keep back a moan of delight and disappointment. I wanted to be the one on the couch, the one to feel his hot lips against my heated skin.
Ashley was a little worried worried about the location. "Are you sure we're alone?" she breathlessly asked him.
"You really want me to stop?" he mumbled from between her luscious breasts.
"No, but still-"
Tyler pulled his head back and grinned at her. "It's all right. Nobody's around here," he comforted her. He was right. I was a nobody. "Now let me really reward you for those notes." He flung off his sports jacket and set it behind Ashley as a pillow. He lay her down atop it and pulled her shirt over her head to reveal her white bra and flawless skin. Her breasts heaved and her eyes were half-lidded as she gave into her ecstasy. His lips pressed down against her breasts as his hands slid up her short skirt. She gasped when he found her sweet spot.
I stood in the wings with all the frustration of a jilted lover. My needs were simple, but unfulfilled. My body ached to replace her, to be on that couch beneath him as he made love to my breasts. To have his fingers dance across my quivering flesh as my moans filled the air. He would undo my pants and thrust into me with the fury of a lustful lover. I would cling to him and scream his name to the heavens as I achieved an orgasm no woman had ever reached.
Okay, so maybe my needs weren't that simple, but all I was getting at that moment was a soft beep from the outdated pager clipped to my waist. Phones in the hands of library patrons were discouraged. Phones in the hands of employees were outright banned, hence the beeping. I scurried away before the lovers could overhear my calling and raced back to my cart. The non-stop beeping told me who summoned me to-
-a lot of trouble in the form of the resident bullies. You wouldn't think bullies would hang around a library on an afternoon that offered boos and excitement, which was most any afternoon, but the library had plenty of tasty nerd targets for them. There were two bullies that afternoon, a short one and an even shorter one. The short one was Justin, a leftover from the age of the Neanderthal era who had crooked teeth, a fat gut, and beady eyes beneath his overgrown hair. His partner in crime, and who I considered the mastermind between their combined intelligence of negative fifty, was Austin. He was a little below five-five with blond hair and dark, cruel eyes.
They were high school students from the local community who pestered and threatened the nobodies on campus, which unfortunately included me. A few girls complained about them, but the pair were smart enough not to leave evidence of their harassment behind or in clear view of the cameras on campus. That was why they were
able to come back to the library. It was open to the public, and they couldn't be banned until someone had proof of their harassment.
The pair spotted me before I spotted them. Justin stepped out from behind a bookshelf in front of me and grabbed the front of my cart. I glared at him and tried to back up, but ran into Austin behind me. Trapped like a rat by two rats. "You guys mind? I'm trying to do my job," I told them.
Justin grinned. "Maybe we do mind," he argued.
"Then I'll have to introduce you to disappointment and tell you I need to go," I replied. I tried to push the cart through him, but he was both too strong and too wide. Austin bumped up against me and I felt more than the bulge of his jeans against my butt. I tried not to show fear. Primitive animals could smell fear. "It's been nice seeing you boys again, but I really have to go."
Austin roughly grabbed my arm and I felt his stinking breath on my throat. "Maybe you want to take the rest of the day off and spend it with us?" he offered.
I inwardly cringed, gagged, and puked. Jumping off the fourth floor balcony was more preferable than that. "I'd rather just keep working. Got to work my way through college and all that."
"People don't need no college degree," Justin argued in his special double-negative way of talking.
"Good news, then. I'm not a people, I'm a person, and I need to get back to work," I insisted. I tried to free my arm, but Austin held firm. It looked ugly for me, and not just because of their mugs. That is, until my beeper went off again. The tiny noise was heard by all three of us. I looked to the two stooges and raised an eyebrow. "You guys going to keep her waiting? She'll come looking for me if I don't get to her really soon."
The boys glanced at each other and sneered. Austin passed me and looked me over with a glimmer of lust in his eyes. Just my luck the only boy in the world who wanted me was an asshole. Now the asshole and his dick friend were out of my way, and I scuttled back to the first floor and the safety of the front desk using the elevator to get my cart down.
The front desk was a long counter that ran along the wall near the front doors. Behind the counter were carts of books old and new, and there was a partition wall filled with posters encouraging people to read with cringe-worthy slogans like "Don't Be A Dunce, Be A Dude and Read!" In the cluttered partition wall were doorways that led into the maze-like back room filled with a dozen halls and small rooms were used for storage and the drop box. A side door just off the partition wall led to the basement, and down the hall and to the right was another door that led into the main librarian's office.
I'm sure you're wondering who was beeping me. That was my boss, Miss Edna Hamish. She'd been the head librarian for the entire school library system for longer than I'd been alive, and she was a strict, if kind, taskmaster. That meant she wasn't too happy with me when I reached the front desk. She had her arms crossed and a frown on her wrinkled face. Her old eyes glared at me from beneath her permed white hair. "Where have you been? I thought you'd been crushed beneath a pile of books," she scolded.
I sheepishly smiled and shrugged. "Guess I just got distracted," I told her. Willingly and unwillingly.
Miss Hamish tapped her fingers across her crossed arm. "What have I told you about being distracted?"
"Um, don't be?" I guessed.
"Precisely, now don't let me catch you doing it again. Understood?" I hung my head and glumly nodded. Hamish sighed and set a hand on my shoulder. I looked up and saw the look in her eyes had softened. "You're a good librarian, Leslie, but lately I get the feeling your heart's not set on being that for the rest of your life."
I shrugged. "Guess I'm just having one of those identify-crisis nights," I replied.
She smiled. "Well, while you're trying to figure out who you are and what you want to become, how about taking charge of the front desk for a few minutes? I need to make a call to another library about a missing book."
"Sure thing," I agreed. I left my unfinished cart with the other ones in the rear and sat on the stool at the Help part of the counter. There were computers along most of the counter where people could self-checkout their books just by scanning the bar codes on the back cover. Easy, efficient, and slightly dehumanizing to the librarians. We were only there to fix printers, Word documents, scanners, and peeling bar codes.
Oh, and watch my crush walk down the stairs with another girl in his arm. Tyler and Ashley were all innocent smiles as they passed by, but I noticed one slight mistake. "Your shirt is crooked," I told Ashley. They didn't hear me, but blithely passed by with eyes only for each other.
I sighed and slumped down over the counter. Welcome to my place of work and all the troubles that came with it. I thought my life would never have more adventure than a lost book or having a battle of wits with bullies who were unarmed.