Down to the Bone

www.beautifultroublepublishing.com

Copyright © 2011 by Thirteen

All Rights Reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including but not limited to: printing, photocopying, faxing, recording, electronic transmission, or by any information storage or retrieval system without prior written permission from the authors or holders of the copyright. 

This book is a work of fiction.  References may be made to locations and historical events; however, names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination and/or used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), businesses, events or locales is either used fictitiously or coincidental. All trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, and registered service marks are the property of their respective owners and are used herein for identification purposes only.

Published by

Beautiful Trouble Publishing, LLC

PO Box 61

Colfax, NC 27235

www.beautifultroublepublishing.com

Cover Art: Marteeka Karland

Editor: Legacy Editing
http://legacyediting.com/

Proofreader: Cindy Davis

Formatter: Jim & Zetta,
http://www.jimandzetta.com/

E-book Conversion:
Jim & Zetta,
http://www.jimandzetta.com/

ISBN: (ebook) 978-1-61788-255-5; (print) 978-1-61788-256-2

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OOKS

eBooks are NOT transferable.  Re-selling, sharing or giving away eBooks is a copyright infringement.  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author or Beautiful Trouble Publishing.

CAVEAT

This work of erotica contains adult language and sexually explicit scenes.  This book is intended only for adults, as it is defined by the laws of the country in which the purchase is made.  Keep this book out of the hands of under-aged readers.

SEPTEMBER

The Neanderthal was searching for a book, which Liddy, flipping through her own text, found amusing. He looked as if he’d never ventured into the college library, let alone up into the rarified, fourth-floor towers that housed the reserved volumes. His confusion was explained, in part, by his football jersey.

Liddy removed her glasses and finessed a lock of dark hair behind her ear before taking another glance at the jock. It was really unfair to call him a Neanderthal. He didn’t look that far up the evolutionary ladder. Not that he wasn’t a fine specimen, all shoulders and muscled limbs. Good bone structure, too. He had hair the warm yellow of a campfire and a charming dimple in his chin. Not Neanderthal then. Homo habilis, perhaps? The handyman of genus homo, a crude tool maker, one step above Australopithecus.

“Jarr-ett!” The exasperated voice belonged to a tanned female, long hair dyed honey bronze. She appeared out of the stacks like Eve from the garden and leaned herself on the edge of Liddy’s table. She took no notice of the occupant.

How sweet, Liddy snorted to herself. The caveman has his own one-million-year B.C. babe.

“You left me,” the girl pouted, canting forward until her skirted ass was high, like a puppy asking to play. Her pert breasts nearly popped out of her cropped top.

“I have to find this book,” her still-evolving boyfriend said.

“Why can’t you get the information off the internet?” the girl whined.

“Because it’s not on the internet. The fucking thing’s not even in print anymore.” Was that exasperation? Liddy wondered. Trouble in paradise? Poor Homo habilis.

“There’s nothing to do up here,” the girl complained, stretching back her legs to show off their incredible length.

Now that wasn’t at all true, Liddy thought. With all these books a bored young lady could surely find some occupation. Build a house maybe, or make paper dolls.

“Let’s go to the Coffee Bar for an iced mocha,” she coaxed.

“You can go if you want,” the jock told her.

B.C. Babe didn’t like that. “There’s a dance at Club Savage tonight, a pizza-and-movie party at Sigma House, oh, and the basketball team is having a kegger at the lake. Which do you prefer?”

Liddy barely stopped herself from shaking her head, and on a school night, too.

“You decide,” her guy said.

“Maybe I should go out, make a few phone calls, see who’s going to be where,” B.C. Babe wondered aloud. Without waiting for his response, she pulled out her cell from a cute little, suede purse and made for the stairs.

“Suit yourself.” The jock didn’t even glance back. Liddy covertly watched him search both sides of the stacks again. He pulled out and checked his own phone, doubtless for the book’s number, and sighed with frustration. Liddy went back to her biological anthropology texts. Time to study the real Homo habilis.

Jarrett Evans couldn’t stop glancing at the geeky girl. He didn’t usually visit the libraries on campus, this one least of all. It was a brick monstrosity filled with narrow staircases and tall stacks that were barely wide enough for his broad shoulders. The situation was especially bad up here, in the “Ivory Towers” as they were not-so-imaginatively called.
Geek Retreats
was their other name. The hanging lamps were harsh and tended to flicker and the air smelled of must and moldy leather. What few tables there were seemed to be hidden away in shadow so that patrons bumped into them.

Which was why he hadn’t noticed the girl at first. She’d been as shadowed as the table. It was only when Crissy leaned provocatively across it that Jarrett caught sight of her. She had dark hair and a plain, almost elfin face made a little more interesting by square, Clark Kent specs. She never looked up once, even though Crissy was practically sprawled across her books and Jarrett was right there, not a foot away. He thought at first that she might be averting her eyes like an embarrassed nerd, but it soon became apparent that she was ignoring them.

That didn’t happen to Jarrett, not since his first growth spurt at age thirteen. Feminine eyes followed him wherever he went, flickered side-wise, glanced longingly before demurely falling. Especially the desperate eyes of girls like this one.

Crissy left to call her girlfriends and Jarrett stepped around to get a better look at the geek. She was seated, so it was hard to see her figure, but the V-neck of her inky camisole top revealed adequate breasts. Her upper arms looked plump and soft, not unattractively so, but Jarrett was used to the toned limbs of cheerleaders. Marking her left shoulder was a strangely compelling tattoo of a skull with a heavy brow ridge. No jawbone, just the jutting upper half of the face. It wasn’t done up to be scary or iconic, rather it looked like some textbook sketch of a piecemeal relic. Not the sort of tat to turn a guy on, Jarrett thought. A butterfly or floral tramp stamp that was sexy, or something delicate and pretty around the ankle or accenting the nape of the neck. Something to kiss and lick seductively.