Stolen Moments (24 page)

Eyes still closed, she was so lost in her musing that when a woman said, “Hey,” Martha nearly levitated from the chair.
Orlando
abruptly flew off her lap, bounced on the leather seat cushion, and somersaulted over the edge. The woman lurched forward and dropped to her knees, catching the book with the adroitness of a center fielder.

For a moment, Martha simply stared at her.

Big, dark brown eyes, curious and half-mooned with laughter. An open, even-featured face with freckles sprinkled over the nose. Silky-looking, dark brown hair that fell forward over her shoulders. And she wore a faded light blue denim shirt tucked into stone-colored chinos.

Shit
, Martha thought.
Eleanor Watson!

“I need help finding a book,” Eleanor said, gesturing toward the rear of the second floor.

She was, of course, still beautiful.

Martha’s heart went from zero to sixty in the approximately ten seconds it took Eleanor to speak. Stunned, Martha simply gazed at a slightly older rendering of the face so inadequately captured in her bookmark before reminding herself that this was the real woman and she shouldn’t be staring at her like a complete idiot. In a rush, she levered herself awkwardly over the armrest and scurried toward the desk.

All long limbs and athletic grace, the other woman got to her feet, looking at something in her hand and then glancing sharply at Martha. Lanced by the curious gaze, Martha tucked
Orlando
into the small shelf under the desktop and hopped onto the tall stool. She concentrated on reorganizing the placement of the pencil holder and the mouse pad as Eleanor pulled a backpack up over one shoulder and came to the other side of the desk.

“W-what’s the t-title and the author’s name?” Martha asked, feeling her face heat up and cursing herself for stuttering.

Eleanor replied in a soft, clear voice, sliding a three-by-five index card across the desk to Martha. Martha fixed her eyes on the card, her heart still booming in her ears. She could barely hear the specifics as Eleanor went on speaking. Martha kept her attention riveted on the screen as she ran a series of complex searches. It took her four minutes and an improvised respelling of the author’s last name, but she found the book.

“It’s in the library archive,” Martha said, wonder entering her voice.

“Oh.”

“You need a permission note to get in there.”

Eleanor looked down, then adroitly slipped whatever it was she was still holding in her right hand into a back pocket. Smiling at Martha, she reached into her front pocket. “My sponsor gave me this.” She handed over a folded piece of paper.

Martha opened the note and found the signature of the head of the psychology department at the bottom of a neatly typed letter explaining that Eleanor Watson was pursuing her doctorate in behavioral sciences and gathering data for her dissertation. The letter requested the assistance and cooperation of all computer and library study officials in helping Eleanor access whatever she needed.

“Doctorate,” Martha murmured. “Huh.”

Eleanor shifted from one foot to the other, looking a little nervous.

“Okay, you’re in,” Martha pronounced.

She placed the “Desk Closed” sign on the desktop, then opened the desk drawer and got the keys.

“Please follow me,” she told Eleanor, managing to briefly make eye contact. Trying to muster a pretense at dignity, Martha marched out from behind the long counter, leading the way to the back of the library. Now that she was in official business mode, she thought she could handle the fact that the most incredible woman she had ever laid eyes on, the source of her sexual fantasies and her romantic enthrallment, was walking a few steps behind her, looking like an advertisement for the Olympic Games.

When they got to the door to the archives, Martha’s hand barely shook as she pushed the key into the lock. The second lock was a little trickier. As Martha tried to get the special “pull the knob and twist the lock” combination that was required, Eleanor stepped up behind her, asking, “Need some help?” It was spoken near Martha’s ear and she couldn’t stop the trembling flush that coursed over her body.

“No.” It came out in a small voice.

The lock turned, and Martha pushed the big metal fire door open. She turned on the lights and then they stepped into the chamber where the climate control features of the facility began. Dutifully, Martha closed and locked that door behind them and moved ahead to the next door. This was the original oak-and-glass fixture that the university founders had installed, just after the Civil War. Martha inserted the fork-end key in the cartoon-shape hole above the doorknob, then used the 1930s improvement in the second lock higher up on the wood. This was where a lot of people made jokes about entering Fort Knox.

“Jeez,” Eleanor muttered. “With the historic worth of some of the documents in there, you’d think they could afford a little better security!”

Points!
Martha’s mind crowed as Eleanor echoed her thoughts on the matter. Then realization struck.
Oh my God! She’s a scholar!
Anyone who understood the finer nuances of archive maintenance—like security measures—was, in Martha’s book, a scholar.

The door opened and Martha pushed through, thinking hard. “And here all this time, I thought you were Big Jock On Campus.”

She stopped dead, her hand still on the doorknob, shocked to realize she had spoken the thought aloud. Eleanor went by her, turning and laughing.

“Ah, now at last we get to it.”

Her face felt hot again. “W-what?”

“I know you from somewhere. I recognized you as soon as I saw you.”

Martha busied herself with closing and locking the door. “Nah. You’re probably thinking of someone else.”

“Then how did you know I was a jock?” Eleanor placed her backpack on the rectangular table, her brown eyes moving over Martha in a casual nonchalance that did little to hide how intense the regard really was.

She’s cruising me!
For a moment, Martha was so astounded she missed the question. Then, in quick succession, her brain fired off a barrage of damning reactions:
My hair is a mess! I’m five pounds overweight! I’m wearing the jeans with the holes in them and a sweatshirt, for cripes’ sake!

Smiling, tilting her head as if mildly perplexed, Eleanor watched her.

Suddenly aware that the silence had gone on too long, Martha’s mind finally shuffled Eleanor’s question to the top of the heap. “Uh, I was on the sidelines the day your team won the division championship.”

Eyebrows rose. “Oh.” Now it was Eleanor who was blushing.

Taking a deep breath to settle herself, Martha walked forward, passing the rows of nineteenth-century first editions and the precious parchments locked away in metal cabinets. It was chillier here due to the climate-control features meant to preserve the ancient paper all around them. Martha shivered a little, glad of her sweatshirt. She couldn’t hear Eleanor’s steps, but she sensed the woman was right behind her.

They turned down the row that housed the behavioral sciences, and as she slowed, searching for the code that would mark the spine of the book, Martha became aware of the titles.
Sex, sex, and more sex,
Martha thought, and could not suppress a giggle at how preposterous the afternoon was turning out to be.
Trapped in the archives, hunting down an obscure sex book with Eleanor the Great!
She would get months of imaginary scenes out of this encounter, she was sure.

“What’s so funny?” Eleanor asked.

Her voice made the muscles beneath Martha’s shoulder blades wiggle and melt.
Oh God, I’ve got to get out of here.
Then her eyes fell on the title. “
Sexual Inversion
by Dr. Charlotte Fellers. Here it is.”

As Martha plucked the book from the shelf, she turned and found Eleanor less than a foot away, sliding behind her. She glanced down at the book, then asked again, “What’s so funny?”

Mouth dry, Martha found her gaze caught and held by the vulnerable dark eyes above her. She swallowed and involuntarily found the truth coming out of her. “You, me, in the sex shelves behind two locked doors.” She tried to rally with a flirtatious little laugh, but it came out as a cough.

“Oh,” Eleanor said, and made a bemused face, as if recovering from a misinterpretation of some kind.

“Why did you think I laughed?”

She shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but her eyes told Martha that it mattered very much. “You called me Big Jock On Campus. And now I’m making you go to so much trouble, and all, to get this book for my dissertation…”

A clue abruptly arrived. “You thought I was laughing at
you
?”

“You wouldn’t be the first,” Eleanor mumbled.

“I would never laugh at you,” Martha said, her voice hushed but insistent. “I think you’re—” Aghast at what she had been about to say, Martha stopped speaking and stood there, momentarily tongue-tied.

Those soft, dark eyes were moving over Martha’s face again, curious and strangely tender. “You think I’m…what?”

They were so close to one another that Martha could feel Eleanor’s body heat. With gentle hands, Eleanor took the book from her and slid it onto the tops of some others on another shelf. “First things first,” Eleanor murmured.

Martha felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Mesmerized, she watched Eleanor slowly edge closer. There was no mistaking what was about to occur. Eleanor was giving her plenty of time to withdraw if that was what she wanted to do. Instead of withdrawing, Martha leaned toward her, trembling. A hand slid behind Martha’s neck and goose bumps erupted. Martha closed her eyes.

Yes, yes, yes…

It was a sweet kiss, expressing courtliness as well as desire, as if to let her know that the woman kissing her was chivalrous. All the same, Martha found herself breathing harder, erotic anticipation roaring through her. The kiss was so good that when it stopped, Martha swayed like wheat in the caress of a zephyr.

Within seconds, the sweet lips were back, giving small kisses, until Martha realized that she was being asked a series of questions.
How much do you want? When should I stop? Where are the boundaries?
Those soft, questioning lips kept leading her on, and she had to follow, answering more and more boldly.
I want more. Don’t stop, there are no boundaries—not when it’s you.

She was being gathered in, held by strong arms in soft blue-jeans cloth, fitted into a leaner, larger body. Her own arms were around Eleanor, and she was giving herself over. She was reveling in the way she felt, unabashedly chasing the mouth that interrogated her, the dialogue between them being paced with gasps for breath.

Eleanor’s hands went beneath her sweatshirt, sweeping over her back and her ribs, and Martha thought she would shoot out of her skin. She writhed against the taller woman, her voice choking loose in a high cry of need. Giving a low grunt, Eleanor brushed a hand near Martha’s breast, and through the sweatshirt, Martha grasped the hand and directed it where she knew it wanted to go. Almost as if possessed by a sudden surge of ownership, Eleanor lifted her and pressed her against the stacks. Martha shuddered, and her head fell back and bumped into the soft leather spines of the large texts there. Within seconds Eleanor’s fingers were teasing a nipple. Bending her head, Eleanor delicately licked the edge of her ear. A thigh pressed lightly against Martha’s center, thoroughly igniting her, and then easing away. Martha could barely stifle a cry, and her hips jerked forward of their own accord, trying to reconnect.

There was a whisper at her ear, and after straining to focus, Martha realized the voice was appealing to reason. “This is crazy. We don’t even know one another. We’re in the library!”

“Don’t you dare stop!” Martha ordered. “Library be damned! I’ve been waiting…so long…I can’t wait anymore!”

She laced her fingers through Eleanor’s dark, wavy hair, then used her palms on either side of Eleanor’s beautiful face to direct that lovely mouth back to her own. Kissing her fervently, Martha pleaded with her tongue and lips for the salvation she had unwittingly prayed for each time she held her bookmark. For so long now, she had used the laminated photograph of this woman to mark the pages of what she read, and now she found she had marked her own soul. One more day, one more week, one more month without Eleanor the Great. Until today, nothing she had ever felt was as electric as that incredible exchange of gazes on the hockey field. This seduction among the archival media could not end in frustration.

Eleanor’s thigh nestled in again, pushing between her legs. Martha had to break their kiss to breathe. “Yes! Yes!” she urged. Martha was pressed into the bookshelves at hip and shoulder level; it was an easy and instinctive act to hike one leg up and wrap it around Eleanor’s thigh. In one primal move she betrayed the depth of her need, her womanhood offered in open invitation.

Eyeing her with an almost savage fierceness, Eleanor eased away. “Now, isn’t this something,” she said. With a deliberately teasing stroke, Eleanor caressed her abdomen, watching Martha twitch helplessly. “Right here, then?” Beyond words now, Martha could only nod, gasping as the hand roved over her. Slowly, Eleanor unbuttoned Martha’s jeans, and fascinated, Martha watched her.

“Let’s find out what you like,” Eleanor coaxed, sliding her hand into Martha’s panties, tickling the hairs a friendly hello and then moving steadily down lower. Two fingers slid on either side of Martha’s clitoris. Martha moaned. “That’s it,” Eleanor said. “Almost ready.”