Sex in the Stacks (3 page)

“I’m sorry.” He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder.
 

She wasn’t sure whether he was apologizing for suspecting her of being Simon’s flavor of the month or for her breakup.

She pulled away and wiped her face yet again. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t want to be like this. Especially not here.” She glanced around, hoping no one else saw her little scene. “I think I might head home early.”

“That might be a good idea,” Kevin said.

She brushed past him, barely daring to take a breath. She was going to make a clean escape. She was going to get a free pass on her indiscretions, and then she was going to take great care not to repeat them. She almost felt giddy at this unexpected reprieve. She wanted to run out the door and then skip across the quad, but she kept her steps measured and dignified.

“Um, Melanie,” Kevin called from behind her. His voice was dangerously cold as he said, “You might want to fix your skirt.”

She felt behind her. Her skirt was tucked into her panties. How mortifying!

She couldn’t bear to turn around and face him. He’d just found the proof he’d expected. She tugged her skirt free and scurried toward the exit, but she couldn’t outrun this latest disaster.

Kevin easily caught up with her. He grabbed her wrist and stared at the belt in her hand. “This is Simon’s. Isn’t it?”

She’d been caught. She wasn’t clever enough, despite all of the letters after her name, to talk herself out of this predicament. She clamped her lips shut.

She’d ruined everything for a few sexy moments with Simon, who wanted Josie instead.

“Jesus,” Kevin swore. She couldn’t imagine what he saw in her face, but he draped his arm protectively over her shoulders and led her toward the exit. He waited until they were past security to speak again. “What did he do to you? Did he force you?”

“Please, don’t ask me any questions,” she said. “I can’t talk about this. I won’t.”

“It’s harassment,” Kevin said. “He’s the Chair.”

She remained silent.

“You’re not the first,” he said. “He’s predictable. He plays these games everywhere he goes, and sometimes it doesn’t end well for his…” Kevin paused as he searched for the word. His choice was telling. “For his victims.”

Bad enough she had abandoned her own senses, but to do it and be a walking cliché? Her tightly coiled shame was like a rock in her stomach. She felt sick.

“I don’t blame you,” Kevin said quickly, as if to reassure her. “I know you’re not like this.”

He was wrong, of course. She was exactly like this. Simon hadn’t threatened or coerced her. She’d been on board with every naughty, kinky thing he’d wanted to do…until he’d accidentally called her “Josie”. If not for that misstep, she might have enjoyed the whole thing, might even have trusted him enough to stay by his side and share the risk of discovery.
 

“He’s chased a lot of his younger, female associates,” Kevin said.

“How do you know?” she couldn’t help asking. She’d heard the rumors, of course. They all had. But people, especially the old brass in her department, were jealous of Simon, who had been recruited specifically to rebuild a floundering department. Such malicious gossip couldn’t exactly be trusted.

“His wife told me,” Kevin said. “She would know. That’s how they fell in love. Their affair broke up his previous marriage. And she’s worried it’s happening again.”

So maybe Simon had told her the truth about his marriage after all. Maybe he was getting a divorce now, too, spurring his wife to try to find out who was getting between them and perhaps put an end to the affair.

The knowledge would have cheered her earlier, would have made her even more secure in her decision to trust him. She might even have talked herself into a grand romance, convinced herself that his games were acts of love.

Now, it made no difference. He might be free, but he didn’t want Melanie.

“I need to be alone right now,” she said, the first true thing she’d told Kevin.

“I understand.” There was real compassion in his eyes. “But I’m worried about you.”

That made two of them.

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Professor Melanie Stevenson’s “evil” twin decides the Department Chair needs to be punished for his… misdeeds in the library. While her kinky tease is designed to render poetic payback, another university woman takes Simon…in hand with a far more sinister and sophisticated version of “woman on top.”

SHE COULD SEE the calculation in his gaze. He wanted to turn the tables, to have her under him and at his mercy. He was undoubtedly wondering what he had to do—how much he had to humor her, exactly how much compliance might be necessary—before he got what he wanted the way he wanted it.

He didn’t realize that today there’d be no reward, no matter how good his behavior. Only punishment.

She slid off the desk. He reached for her, but she slapped his hand away.

“It’s my turn,” she said. “Put your hands behind your back.”

He hesitated.

She decided he needed a little extra incentive to get with her program. Remembering how much he’d enjoyed being spanked, she stepped around him, smacked his naked butt with the belt, and then pushed up close behind him.

“It was dark in the library,” she said. “I’d like the chance to…inspect your equipment.” She dropped her voice to a low, husky whisper. “Very closely.”

She leaned in, bit the top of his ear, whispered, “I’m going to drive you wild, and you’ll be helpless—totally in my control.”

He moaned and closed his eyes.

She slid along his body as she lower herself to her knees beside him. She yanked down his pants and drawers. His prized tool popped out, ready and eager to be put to use.

He cooperated—surprise!—as she nudged his feet out of the pile of clothes on the floor and stuffed his rumpled pants into a corner under his desk, the harder for him to reach. He would be the one on hands and knees searching for them later, when it was time to dress.
 

Then she leaned toward him and eyed his increasingly erect package. Upon direct, up-close observation, she concluded he was…distinctly average.
 

In Brighton Beach, New York, the largest Russian immigrant community in America, criminals and spies live among hardworking immigrants. The mafia rules with an invisible hand that reaches from beyond the former Iron Curtain. Ruthless men vie to reign as kings over their profitable corners of Little Odessa, and no one can be trusted. Not even family.

At fourteen Vlad escaped his violent father, a notorious Thief in Law, and the criminal soup of Brighton Beach. Now, twenty years later, he will reclaim his father’s place in the Russian mafia if he can survive.

Vlad plans to ingratiate himself with his father’s former partner, Artur, learn the “business,” and commit a hostile takeover. But Vlad isn’t the only one interested in claiming Artur’s slice of Little Odessa. Vlad’s rivals have no code of honor, and Artur’s daughter, Inna, is discovered in her brother’s own nightclub, raped and drugged, with a gun in her hand and a dead mobster sprawled on top of her. The dead man’s comrades want retribution, blood for blood, but Vlad is convinced Artur's mafia princess is innocent and that the real killer has ambitions to start a war in Brighton Beach.

Keep reading for an excerpt from Episode #1…

INNA LAY ON something cold and hard, and a steady beat thumped beneath her. Far away, she heard the din of voices and the rhythmic swell of techno music. Closer, there was quiet, save for an intermittent drip drop, drip drop, like a faucet with a slow leak when water has pooled in the sink basin.

Where was she? Why was she so wet and cold? Her heart beat sluggishly, and she strained for consciousness. Behind her eyelids, she sensed light. She shivered with cold, felt a strange wetness under her shoulder. She struggled to open her eyes, but the effort seemed so great. Lethargy sucked at her, and she sank down into a quiet haze before again trying to fight her way to the surface.

Drip. Drop. Drip… drop.

Familiar scents teased her nose. She tried to inhale, but something large and heavy crushed her ribcage. What was it? She smelled laundry detergent and men’s cologne. These scents mingled with others, familiar, but not pleasant—the stench of sweat and fear and something else, something distinct and metallic.

Her limbs seemed far away, her head fuzzy. She tried to move her legs, her hands, but, like her eyelids, they didn’t quite obey. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she move?

Drip. Drop. Drip… drop.

Her thoughts tangled and drifted. Unfocused images played behind her eyes. The lacy hem of a short red dress against her thighs. A sparkling drink with a wedge of lime. The dizzying glitter of the chandeliers at Troika.

Troika. She remembered accepting a drink from the bartender at her brother’s nightclub. Then what? Her memory was blank.

Drip… drop… drip… drop.

She recognized the coppery smell now. Blood. It was blood. And the scent was all around her.
 

Panic knifed through her stupor. She opened her eyes. She was on the floor. Light from a chandelier stabbed at her eyes, and she turned her head away.
 

Near her shoulder, she saw a long-fingered hand with wisps of black hair over olive skin, palm spread against the familiar tiles of the nightclub she had decorated. A man’s hand.
 

Dread jolted her system, coursed through her limbs. He was on top of her, his groin against hers, his leg thrown over hers. She thrashed underneath him, trying to heave him off, but he didn’t budge.
 

He didn’t resist her efforts. He didn’t move at all.
 

Drip… drop… drip… drop.

Who was he? She craned her neck, felt slick, sticky wetness under her cheek and the skin of her bare shoulder. She angled her head to look at him, but couldn’t see his face. His chin was cradled against her shoulder, and his arm had pinioned hers. All she could see was the blood pooled on the floor.
 

Something was in her hand. She managed to wiggle and flex her fingers. They curled around something hard and cold and heavy. A gun.

There was a gun in her hand! Her body started to shake uncontrollably. Had she killed him?

Inna squeezed her eyes closed, prayed she was hallucinating. When she opened them again, the horror was still there. Someone started screaming, a shrill keening.

Only when she felt the raw pain in her throat did she realize the screams were hers.

D. B. Shuster is a professor of Sociology in New York. While her depictions of university life may be more…accurate than some people would care to admit,
this is a work of fiction!
From neurotic academics to Russian gangsters in Brooklyn, she enjoys writing about complex and quirky characters behaving badly, and she loves serving up serial thrills to readers. She lives in New York with her family.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 D. B. Shuster
 

Cover Illustration Copyright © 2014 Crime Bytes Media
Cover design by Asha Hossain, Asha Hossain Design, Inc.

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