Free Sex in the Stacks by D. B. Shuster

SEX IN THE STACKS
    MELANIE MADE A hasty escape to the campus library, a place where she’d always been able to clear her head and focus on her research … until now.  
    Now she noticed the silver block letters over the entrance. Vanderhoff Library. Hunter’s family had donated the building and collections. She’d left him behind near her office with a brusque dismissal. Even though he’d grudgingly obliged, there was still no relief from the throbbing … fantasies of him.  
    Forbidden fantasies of sex with a student. In the lecture hall. Where they could be caught.
    Her skin felt prickly and hot. She peeled off her sweater and then pulled at her blouse and fanned herself as if it were the height of summer. The effort did nothing to alleviate her internal heat. She was her own internal combustion engine.
    Inside the library, she hurried through the grand rotunda and over the lavish mosaic tile. She didn’t take the time to appreciate or enjoy them, the way she usually did. This library, built like a Gothic church with its stained glass windows and soaring ceilings, used to make her feel at one with her higher purpose. She had escaped her past, had left all that nastiness behind her, and had earned entry to this special place of knowledge and learning.
    But the only ideas in her head right now concerned Hunter: a gorgeous, naked, shameful-to-waste specimen of a man dusted in gold, spread out for her to lick and tease and taste.
    Her feverish fantasy threw off enough heat to warm the entire library on a winter’s day. What was wrong with her?
    She had passed out during her class after giving a purportedly excellent lecture employing sex toys. She had no memory of the lecture. She had lost the better part of an hour. And what an hour it had been, filled with all-too-real dreams of Hunter.
    When she’d awakened, she had been relieved that they were only dreams. She would never cross professional boundaries with such behavior.
    At least she hoped she wouldn’t.
    The guard sitting by the metal detectors recognized her and waved her through without checking her campus i.d., a good thing since in her haste to escape she’d left her wallet in her office.
    The rows of shelves of books, the quiet hum of the computers, the welcoming glow of reading lights over cushy chairs and long wooden tables—none of them tempted her out of her daydreams. None of them protected her from her own lust, which growled and demanded with the force of a starving belly, indiscriminate in its hunger.
    “Hey, Melanie. Stop!” Violet called to her from across the rotunda.  
    She picked up her pace and ducked into the stairwell, then raced down three flights of stairs to the library’s basement. The last thing she needed was an encounter with her twin, who would undoubtedly gloat at the way she was becoming undone. Violet was supposed to be the bad one, the wild one, the slutty one, the one with her finger over her own “self-destruct” button.
    At this moment, Melanie couldn’t keep a firm grip on the smug superiority that had distanced her from her twin. She would rather hide in the dim library basement with old, dusty books than face Violet or the terrifying realization that they might not be that different, despite her doctorate and years of education.
    Doubts flooded her about the kind of woman she thought she really was—the upstanding scholar, who until last night had been in what she’d hoped was a stable and committed relationship, or the orgasm-crazed lustbucket overcome by inappropriate urges every time Hunter or Simon looked at her with desire in their eyes.
    She paused in the stairwell. She didn’t hear Violet’s footsteps, or anyone else’s, for that matter. Hardly anyone ever came down here, whether by stairs or elevator. She had discovered that she could find refuge down here for hours without being disturbed by another soul.  
    This neglected area of the library sacrificed the poshness of the upper levels for the bliss