Then I remembered that he’d left the bedroom with an apology shortly after midnight and hadn’t slept beside me at all.
“What time is it?” I asked. “I need to be at work at eight-thirty.”
“It’s just after six.” He stood and walked over to me, placing his hands on either side of my waist. Or, more accurately—on either side of the general vicinity of my waist. I was wrapped from chest to toe in one of his soft red satin sheets. Anatomical accuracy was difficult. “My bedsheet suits you.”
I snorted. “I didn’t get dressed again last night after . . . well.” I trailed off, blushing. “Wrapping up in this sheet was easier than finding where you’d tossed my underwear.”
He hummed, and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “You look divine.”
“I do not.”
“I hope you never wear anything else.”
He kissed me then, chaste and tender. I placed my hands on his chest and leaned in, enjoying the soft brush of his lips against mine.
“I’m surprised you’re not dressed,” I mused. “It’s not like you were asleep all this time.”
My fingertips traced the outline of a jagged, prominent scar just below his right nipple. I wanted to ask him how he got it. If it happened while he was still human, or after. But now wasn’t the time.
“Going forward I intend to spend as much time shirtless as possible.”
I huffed a surprised laugh. “What?”
“You like it when I don’t wear a shirt,” he said, as matter-of-factly as if he were telling me rain was in the forecast. “You like it a lot, in fact. I like doing things that please you.”
I hadn’t exactly tried to hide how into his body I was, but the way he’d phrased this made me wonder something.
“Can you tell that I like it when you don’t wear a shirt?” I ran my hand down his fabulous chest for good measure. “Beyond me simply telling you that you have a great body, I mean.”
He smiled, bashful. “Your scent changes subtly, but unmistakably, when you are aroused.”
My eyes widened in surprise. That was a new one.
“It does?”
He nodded. “Until last night I told myself I was mistaken, that it was simply wishful thinking on my part.” His smile turned devilish when he leaned in and pressed his lips to my ear. “I know now, though, that I was right.”
I thought back to the way he’d all but breathed me in last night, and I shivered, gooseflesh erupting on my arms. It should have weirded me out, the idea that my scent changed when I was turned on and that Frederick could sense it. But for some reason—maybe because it was Frederick who was telling me this—it didn’t.
His hands started working their way beneath the place where I’d cinched the bedsheet closed around my body. “I want to be inside you again, Cassie,” he whispered into my ear. He pulled me closer, until I could feel every inch of his need jutting hard and urgently against my stomach. “Last night was glorious beyond anything I could have imagined. But I want more.”
I shuddered, throwing my arms around him and burying my face in his shoulder.
I mentally screamed at Marcie for signing me up for a Saturday morning shift.
“I want that, too,” I said. “But unfortunately, I have to go to work.”
Frederick groaned and pulled back from me. My body was screaming at Marcie now, too.
“Fine,” he said, tersely. “I hope, however, that you are not averse to picking up where we left off when you get back home.”
Then I kissed him. Because no—I was not averse to it at all.
* * *
I floated more than walked into the library for my shift.
When I got there, I sat down at the circulation desk in the children’s section and went through the motions of putting away my purse and logging into the station’s communal desktop. But my mind was miles away, back in the apartment.
The sun had risen about an hour ago. Frederick was likely getting ready to go to sleep. This morning was another art day, and I needed to get the watercolors, canvases, and plastic floor coverings all set up. Kids had already started showing up for the event, milling around book displays with their parents until we were ready to get started.
While art days were usually a highlight for me, right now I wished I were back at home, cuddling with and sleeping next to Frederick.
“Good morning.” Marcie was tying her hair back into a ponytail, rummaging around for supplies in the closet behind the circulation desk as she greeted me.
“Morning.” I looked down at the plan for this morning that I’d come up with a few days ago, glad Marcie had printed it out and placed it in front of the computer. “What do you think of my idea?”
“Paint Your Favorite Book’s Setting?”
“Yeah.”
Marcie smiled at me. “I think it’s great.”
My chest warmed. “I’m glad to hear it. I’m pretty proud of it.”
“You should be,” Marcie said. I blushed a little at the praise, then grabbed a ponytail holder from my own bag and pulled as much of my still too-short hair as I could into a messy knot on top of my head. “We’ve done book characters before, and Disney princesses, but not settings.”
“So many children’s books take place in amazing locations,” I said. I crouched down and started hunting beneath the desk, trying to find where I’d stashed the box of brushes and colored pencils. “I hope the kids have a lot of fun with this.”
I didn’t have to wait long to get confirmation that the event was a wild success.
“Miss Greenberg? Is it okay if I add a dragon to my castle?”
I turned away from a little girl I’d been helping who was painting a vibrant picture of the sun. She’d chosen a nearly neon shade of purple for the sun’s rays. It was easily my favorite of all the projects the kids were working on.
“Of course it’s okay,” I said to the little boy who asked the question, who’d earlier introduced himself as Zach. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Zach gave a one-shoulder shrug. “The instructions were to paint our favorite book’s setting,” he said. “I already did the castle, and I thought painting a character, too, would be breaking the rules.”
I crouched down so I was eye-level with Zach. His canvas was covered in shapeless swirls of browns and greens. It didn’t look like any castle I’d ever seen—but then again, I’d never seen a castle in person, so who was I to judge? Maybe in his favorite book, or in his imagination—or both—this was exactly what castles looked like.