They spoke in hushed tones at the desk for a few minutes with Reggie’s voice dripping fake sincerity until Winnie nodded along with her face still flushed, and then Reggie glanced back and flicked his fingers again.
The three of them walked together toward the very back of the library, past reference and periodicals, into the towering shelves of the history section where the lighting went dim and the security cameras didn’t reach.
Wes had about four seconds to wonder what the plan was.
Reggie didn’t waste one second of it.
The moment they were hidden between the shelves he pulled Winnie toward him by the waist and started kissing her, and his hands went to work at the same time, sliding the heavy glasses off her face and finding the zipper of the oversized sweater and dragging it down.
The sweater fell open.
Wes’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, because under all of it, under the baggy sweater and the baggier hoodie and the layers of faded grey, was a masterpiece.
A tiny snatched waist fanning up into a pair of heavy full breasts barely contained by a plain white bra, the kind of figure that made men walk into bike racks, hidden under burlap for God knew how long, and the Dragon of the Stacks had been in disguise this entire time.
While they kissed, Reggie opened one eye, caught Wes’s gaze over her shoulder, and gave him a sharp wink.
“Come here,” said Reggie.
Wes stepped forward with his heart hammering against his ribs, but his shoe came down on a loose floorboard and it groaned like a dying animal, and Winnie gasped and shoved back from Reggie in a panic, yanking her sweater closed with both hands.
She looked at Wes and then back at Reggie with eyes filling with hurt.
“What is this? Were you playing with me?”
She looked like she was about to bolt, and Reggie grabbed her shoulders and kept his voice low and soothing, and Wes watched him switch scripts mid-performance without dropping a single beat.
“It’s not like that, it’s just that my friend is exactly like me, because we’re both incredibly shy and we hate being left out. So, do you think my friend is ugly?” said Reggie.
Winnie blinked, and her gaze flickered over to Wes.
“Ugly? He’s the Prince of the drama club.”
Wes felt his face heat up, and it wasn’t acting, because apparently his reputation as the Chapel Prince carried some real weight after all, even here, even with a woman who’d banned him forty minutes ago.
Reggie leaned in and whispered into her ear, low enough that Wes only caught the shape of it.
That he was the daring one.
That his friend was so timid he’d never once had the courage.
That it would be so kind of her.
“Wouldn’t you like to help him out?” said Reggie.
Winnie looked at Wes’s tall frame and his nervous expression, and Wes watched the exact moment her maternal pity kicked back in and took the wheel, and she slowly nodded while lowering her head.
Reggie let go of her and gave Wes one last smirk, the smirk of a man tossing a loaded gun to a rookie, and then he vanished into the stacks like smoke and left them alone.
Wes scratched the back of his neck and looked down at the floor with genuine embarrassment crawling up his neck.
“Sorry. My friend is a bit…”
He didn’t finish, and he didn’t have to, because she was already looking at him differently than she’d looked at Reggie.
Like the shyness was the part she believed.
“It doesn’t matter, because I don’t mind if it’s you,” said Winnie.
She stepped closer and gave him a tender kiss, and Wes responded with his heart hammering as they began to make out between the shelves.
The thrill of being in the library where they could be caught at any second made his pulse race so hard he could hear it in his ears.
And underneath the kiss, his brain was taking notes.
Because here was the thing he was noticing, the thing that felt like a door opening.
The confidence had gotten him the girl at Big Patty’s, sure, but this, the shy act, the lowered eyes, the wounded friend from the story Reggie had just handed him, this was working faster.
The Dragon wasn’t attracted to the campus heartthrob.
She was attracted to the wounded bird.
His two years of rejections, his ruined reputation, the whole cage the campus had built around him, it was all suddenly armor-piercing, and he could feel himself choosing it on purpose for the first time.
The Chapel Prince wasn’t a cage anymore.
It was a tool, and he was holding it.
Wes rested his hands on her waist, and the assertiveness from the shower this morning had deliberately vanished, replaced by the timid boy she wanted, and Winnie let out a soft laugh.
“Your hands go here,” said Winnie.
She took his hands and guided them down to her butt, and Wes squeezed, and she let out a small sharp moan into his shoulder.
“You have such strong hands. I love them.”
He glanced down at her chest, and he didn’t even try to hide it this time, and Winnie caught the gaze and smirked.
“You’re staring at my breasts a lot. Do you like them?”
“Yes…” said Wes.
“Then why don’t you play with them for a bit?” she said, pulling him closer.
He moved his hands up and finally cupped them, and the weight of them surprised him, heavy and warm and overflowing his palms, because she had kept all of that under a sweater built like a tent.
Winnie exhaled at the ceiling.
“You’re such a good boy,” said Winnie.
The phrase hit Wes like a bucket of ice water.
Good boy.
Colleen’s voice, low against his ear in room 714, her hand flat on his chest, pinning him down.
Same words.
Same four letters.
Different woman, different life, and the identical effect on his body, heat climbing his spine before his brain could vote, and he stood there between the shelves with his hands full of the Dragon and felt the pattern click into place like a pin dropping on a corkboard.
The rhyme was real and the rhyme was data.
He didn’t stop.
He squeezed again, slower, and felt her pulse quicken under his palms.
“Do you want to taste them?” said Winnie.
Wes looked up at her with his best puppy dog eyes, as innocent as he could make them.
“Can I?” said Wes.
Winnie let out a soft melodic laugh.
“Here.”
She pulled her shirt up and popped one breast free from the bra, and Wes leaned in and took her nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the tip while she gasped and slid her fingers into his hair, and he was dimly aware of her murmuring something into the top of his head, something soothing, something a person says to a puppy.
Then heavy footsteps echoed from the next aisle over.
CRACK!
They jumped apart in a frantic blur of limbs, and Winnie scrambled to yank her shirt down and jam her glasses back on.
Wes spun around, grabbed the Macroeconomics book off the shelf, and held it up in front of his face like a shield, flipping it open to a random page with his heart trying to exit through his throat.
A student walked past the end of the aisle without even looking, earbuds in, gone.
Silence.
Just the distant hum of the vents and both of them breathing hard.
Then they looked at each other over the top of the book, and the laughter hit them both at the same time, quiet and stifled and helpless, her hand pressed over her mouth, his shoulders shaking against the shelf.
“I have to get back to the desk,” Winnie whispered.
“Wait,” said Wes.
“Can I have your number?”
“Of course,” said Winnie.
She grabbed a pen from her pocket, scribbled it on a scrap of paper from the returns cart, and handed it to him, and Wes tucked it safely into his jacket pocket right next to the Ledger.
“Can I call you?” said Wes.
“Anytime you want,” said Winnie.
She gave him one last playful look over her shoulder and disappeared back toward the front of the library.
Wes stood alone in the dim stacks with a phone number in his pocket, her taste still on his tongue, and a lot of questions.
The biggest one being that he’d gotten laid twice in eighteen hours, and both times, both times, a woman had called him a good boy.