In Too Deep (9 page)

Did last night actually happen? It feels like a dream, or something on the television that I half watched as I was falling asleep. I don’t really see how it could have been real. I just don’t
do
things like that.

But I must have. There was a damp spot: the bit of sheet that I dripped on when I was too aroused to think straight. And what’s more, there was the chat transcript. I’ve printed it out, but I get the collywobbles when I try to read it. I suppose I must be harbouring some vague idea of challenging Daniel with it. But really, I’m not sure I want to. If I call Nemesis’s bluff, it’s game over. Before we’ve really started. And today I’ve got to deal with the forfeit he imposed on me when I admitted I’d had a climax.

NEMESIS: You’re wilful, Gwendolynne. Now you must pay.

I shift on my stool at the Enquiry Desk. I feel uneasy. Not actually uncomfortable, but very, very strange. My forfeit is to come to work without panties. It’s slightly scary – and very draughty. And, wouldn’t you know it, it’s turned cooler today and there’s a frisky chill blowing around my nether regions that makes me constantly aware of my hidden nakedness.

I’m glad of the distraction, though, thankful for the excitement. There was some far less fun correspondence in the post this morning: another in an interminable series of letters from my ex’s solicitor. Yet another salvo in his campaign to shaft me over the sale of our house. I would have liked to have parted thinking at least benignly of the man, but he’s making it fucking difficult with his unfair demands.

All of which makes the Daniel/Nemesis/naughty-letters-and-dares situation a delicious gift. Not even my wildest imaginings could have come up with a better way to take my mind off my troubles. A gigantic turn-on. An insane game. A battle of wits that makes me crazy-alive and excited. I feel deliciously exposed and available, even though my skirt is a sensible knee-length work one and primly modest. It’s as if every male in the library has suddenly developed X-ray vision and is ogling my pussy.

Every man I meet today seems to have a smile with a sinister edge to it. Even the most innocuous greeting sounds like a barely coded double entendre. I must have encountered at least ten men today who
could
be Nemesis, although by mid-morning the prime suspect hasn’t yet put in an appearance. He might be down in his lair, but I’ve been too busy to visit. And the more the day progresses, the more nervous and jiggly I feel inside. Because the forfeit has a rider.

It isn’t mandatory, but Nemesis has dared me to do something. Something absurd. Mad. Dangerous. And it’ll probably get me sacked if it goes wrong. I have to
reveal
my commando status during the course of the day. Either by accident or design, I’ve got to flash somebody.

With a full complement of staff on today, Tracey arrives to cover for my coffee break, and even she gives me a strange, complicit look.

‘Going down into the archive?’ Her eyes narrow as I slide
awkwardly
off the stool and pick up a few books that need shelving downstairs. ‘Mustn’t keep your boyfriend waiting.’

‘What do you mean? He’s not my boyfriend.’

‘Professor Hottie … Josie saw him heading off towards the garden the other day, not long after you left, and he was obviously following you. And then last night he stopped to talk to you as he was leaving.’

‘So? It’s a public garden … and he was just being sociable last night. There’s nothing more than that. I wish there was!’

She chuckles. ‘And it’s been noted how often you seem to find things to shelve in the basement these days.’ Her pointed glance drops to my pile of books.

Now this is slightly alarming and my face must show it.

‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s just me and Josie who are keeping tabs, not the big cheese. Your secret love affair is safe with us.’

‘There is no secret affair!’ I hiss at her as she settles on the stool. Oh, it must be so much less disturbing to sit there with your panties
on
. I’m relieved about the news concerning Mr Johnson, the Chief Librarian, though. I don’t think he approves of any outside-work fraternisation with our celebrity guest.

‘Whatever you say,’ Tracey purrs, logging on to the Enquiry Desk terminal. ‘Now get yourself off down there. Your prince awaits!’

I give her an old-fashioned look and speed off. I close the door to the main Lending Library behind me and lean on it, breathing hard. It’s only my knickers I’m missing, but it might as well be my skirt, my blouse, my everything. I feel as if my pussy is a cauldron of seething hormones. I’m going off my head, I swear it.

After a moment or two, I begin to descend, trying to fool myself that everything is perfectly normal and I’m just heading down for a bit of shelving. But all the time I’m thinking, ‘Is he here? Is he here?’

I nearly hyperventilate when I see the soft pool of light at the end of the stacks. He
is
here. Daniel? Nemesis? Both?

I pad quietly to the end of the long lines of tall book-stacks. Daniel’s work area isn’t nearly as brightly lit as normal and there’s no sound at all. What the hell is he doing? Immediately, I imagine him masturbating again. I see him sprawled in the old manager’s chair he’s purloined from somewhere, his flies open, his magnificent cock rearing up out of his trousers like a fat red spear clutched in his sliding fingers.

I’m creeping now, inching, inching forwards. Then I slide around the corner, not knowing what to expect, but hoping for something like yesterday’s awesome spectacle.

He’s lying in the chair, legs spread, head tipped back. He isn’t masturbating, but he’s wearing a mask. He’s wearing a bloody mask!

I sway and nearly drop my books as I try to work out what I’m seeing. But alas, it’s not the kinky leather fetish mask from my fantasies, but what appears to be a pale-blue cool-pack pressed over his eyes like in
American Psycho
. He’s holding it in place with both hands and they look tense, white at the knuckles. His body looks uncomfortable too.

‘Gwendolynne?’

Slowly, as if it pains him, he lifts the mask away from his face, lays it aside and rises to his feet, looking a little unsteady. His eyes, usually so handsome, look red and irritated and he blinks furiously as he stares in my direction, his head tilted as if he’s not quite seeing me. He runs his fingers through his hair, ruffling it as he massages his scalp, then cups the back of his head as if it’s made of glass.

What the devil is wrong with him?

He reaches for his spectacles, which are lying on the table, and once they’re in place he seems to focus and brace up, and gives me an uncertain smile.

So not Nemesis.

‘Are you all right?’ It’s a redundant question. He looks all wrong. Almost as if he doesn’t realise what he’s doing, he pushes up his glasses again and rubs his eyes. ‘Is there something wrong with your eyes?’

‘No. Nothing. They’re fine. I’m just a bit tired, that’s all.’

It’s more than that. Any fool can see he’s in pain. Those beautiful eyes themselves make him a liar. He’s worried, perhaps even afraid. There are shadows, dark shadows in those brown depths.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely. Don’t fuss,’ he says crisply, his entire body coming to attention and casting off the last signs of weakness. ‘How are you? Any more secret letters?’

For perhaps a fifth of a second I think of the solicitor’s letter, but I quash the thought viciously. The way Daniel’s mouth curves and his whole expression brightens makes that task easy. If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to take a man’s mind off his aches and pains and worries, it’s sex. And it works just as well for a woman’s murderous thoughts about her ex-husband too.

‘Well, not so much a letter as a “correspondence”,’ I answer, deliberately vaguely, to tantalise him.

He gives me a very professorial ‘please expand your answer, recalcitrant pupil’ look.

‘An online chat. I had an online chat with Nemesis last night.’

‘Really?’

Oh, if he’s Nemesis, he’s even cleverer than I already thought he was. His voice is perfectly neutral. There’s nothing affectedly uninterested about it, or salaciously enthusiastic either. The pitch is perfect for someone who’s mildly curious, perhaps slightly concerned, but observing the phenomenon from the outside.

‘Do you want to talk about it? Or is it something you’d prefer not to share with a third party?’ He purses his lips and looks a bit put out. Is he jealous at being excluded now? Or is this just more of his phenomenally accurate performance?

‘Yeah, it’s all right. No biggie.’

Actually, it’s a huge deal, and I’m stark, staring crazy to share this with him, regardless of whether he’s Nemesis or just a less than innocent bystander. If he isn’t, the words are far too revealing, and if he is, well, I’m just getting myself more and more entangled with a seriously devious game player. But there’s no way back now, for my body or my mind.

‘Are you able to stay a while?’ He’s already walking round his cluttered table and pulling out a chair for me, another of those battered old executive jobs on wheels with bits of stuffing hanging out of it here and there.

‘Yeah, it’s my tea break. They’re pretty flexible. They owe me some hours.’ Which is total bollocks, but Tracey will cover for me. She seems determined that I get off with Professor Hottie.

‘You can always say you were assisting me with my research.’ He dips down to his bag, fishing round for something, but not before he’s flashed me one of those ever so slight, maybe/maybe not winks. When he pops up again, he’s holding two little individual apple juice cartons, complete with straws, and a large bag of crisps.

Oh goodie, a picnic! Technically, we’re not supposed to bring food and drink into any part of the library other than the staff room, but who cares? Daniel is an honoured guest, after all, and allowed some latitude.

‘Wow, thanks!’ The sweet apple juice on my tongue seems to loosen it. ‘Yeah, it was pretty wild last night. I’ve never done anything like that before. The anonymity makes you feel as if you can do or say anything … it’s really liberating.’

‘But how on earth did he find you? Your email address or whatever …’ He takes a long pull on his straw and slurps like a schoolkid. The way he smirks over the top of the box is adorable. ‘I’d say that’s rather worrying.’ He frowns. ‘You’re playing with fire, Gwendolynne. You ought to be more careful.’

Yeah, fire indeed. And I’m roasting on the griddle right this minute.

‘He found me via MySpace, sent me a message. A chat invitation.’

Daniel shrugs and shakes his head as if despairing of that imbecile student again.

‘Look, Professor Know It All, I know this probably sounds foolhardy to you, but it’s … it’s
exciting
! And if you had to work in this gulag of a place all the time, you might feel like taking a few risks too. Plus …’ How to explain it? And dare I challenge him? How do I tell him that, even if Nemesis
isn’t
him, I know the guy won’t hurt me? ‘Well, whoever Nemesis is, I don’t think he means me any real harm. He’s a freak, but somehow he still seems benign to me.’ I slurp my own juice now, and we both laugh.

‘Seriously, though, I’ve no intention of saying or doing anything I don’t really
want
to.’

Daniel absorbs this, and I can see him mulling it over. Frowning slightly, he pulls open the crisps and offers them to me. I refuse, my stomach knotting in strange excitement. This den in the bowels of the library is as much a cocoon of unreality as the one I inhabited last night when I chatted with Nemesis.

‘Whatever you say …’ His tone is one of pointed resignation, like someone who thinks I’m a blithering idiot but is refraining from saying it. Which could be how he really feels, or a command performance by a supremely gifted thespian.

‘Yes, whatever I say …’ I look him in the eyes, trying to plunder
his
secrets. But I get nothing, except a hint of humour deep in there somewhere, possibly imagined. I reach into my pocket and pull out the folded transcript. ‘And here it is – what I said.’

He cocks his head on one side, eyes narrowed behind his spectacles.

‘I saved a log of the chat. Here’s the transcript. Do you want to read it?’ I tweak it at him, teasingly. ‘It’s not copperplate on Basildon Bond or whatever, but it’s, well, pretty damn hot in its own way.’

He reaches out, long fingers elegantly extended, then pauses. ‘But these are your words too … are you sure you want me to read them?’ He retreats an inch or two.

‘I don’t care. Go ahead.’

The paper is suddenly out of my hand and flicked open. No chance to change my mind, obviously. Daniel switches on a couple more of his Anglepoise lamps.

For the next few minutes, the atmosphere down here in Professor Hottie’s hideaway seems to thicken as if we’re in a pressurised chamber. We sit in silence, apart from the occasional rustle of the paper and the discreet background hum of the building’s air conditioning and pipework. And Daniel’s breathing, which seems to punctuate the rapid gathering of tension and desire. I’m excruciatingly aware that I’m not wearing any panties, and that within seconds the dark, beautiful man sitting just feet away from me will be aware of that fact. When his eyes flick momentarily in the direction of my pelvic regions I almost faint.

Finally he lays the sheets of paper aside and draws in a deep breath. His body sits uncomfortably in its chair now, and the slight hitching to and fro of his hips while he was reading only adds to my mental picture of his erection. His crotch is slightly in shadow from where I’m sitting but I know he must be hard.

He taps his soft lower lip with his fingertip and then says, ‘Wow …’ Continuing to tap, he sits back in his chair, staring not at me now but into space.

Wow? Is that all? God, you’re a cool customer, Professor Hottie.

‘What do you think?’ For some reason his studied lack of interest and his denial of his own body’s reaction irk me. I decide to shake him up. ‘Does it turn you on as much as it turns me on?’

Hah! His eyes snap back towards me and he adjusts himself in his seat again.

‘Well, yes, of course it does. It’s a very erotic scenario. Very intense.’ He makes a little harrumphing sound, quintessentially academic. ‘But I still think you’re skating on very thin ice with this fellow.’