In Too Deep (2 page)

Taking some deep breaths and trying to look like a perfectly normal human being, I scan all of the main Lending Library that I can see. Yet despite the fact that I feel as if I’ve got a neon sign flashing ‘Whore of Babylon’ over my head, nobody is looking at me. Everything’s quiet and in the pre-lunch lull there’s only a small handful of punters perusing the shelves. It’s safe to pat my pocket and think again about my new ‘correspondent’.

The weird and slightly sad thing is that, in spite of it being anonymous, pretentious, kinky and slightly disgusting in a good sort of way, this is actually the nearest thing to a love letter that I’ve ever received. Even when we were hot for each other, my late and not particularly lamented ex, Simon, never sent me love notes or even emails. And since we split up all I’ve ever received are terse ‘communications’ about the divorce and ‘orders’ about selling the stupid house. He’s still trying to order me about.

Well, balls to him. I’ve got more immediate things to worry about. Somebody who sounds like much more fun trying to control me. And occupy my mind.

Who the devil is Nemesis? And where is he lurking? And where does he get off, telling me to touch myself? Judging by the letter, he must be a library regular, and that means he’s probably quite close to me. Possibly even right now. What if he’s watching me at this very moment? The library’s quiet. He could be anywhere … just feet away.

Did someone turn the heating back on today? I’m too young for hot flushes, but whatever it is I’m having certainly feels like one. Surreptitiously, I flap the neckline of my top. Then stop immediately. Nemesis will go mental if he sees me doing that. I glance around and the lobes of my ears prickle as if the possibility of being watched is an actual physical force.

Is he here? Looking at my nipples through my top and imagining what’s beneath my skirt? My head fills with bizarre notions of X-ray vision and me walking through the library with transparent clothes on. The way Nemesis talks about my body, he makes it sound as if he’s actually seen it naked.

Oh, why did I just think that?

Nemesis isn’t the only one who can have porny fantasies. I get a flash image of me lying on the floor of the Reference Library, just like he said. I’m flat on my back and there’s a
gorgeous
man pounding away between my spread thighs. The real Nemesis is probably fat and middle-aged with a comb-over or some such hideousness, so for convenience’ sake – and because he’s in my mind quite a bit anyway – I substitute my current major lust object into the action: the library’s pet celebrity, who’s working in the special collection in our archives for a few weeks, researching a project.

Now there’s someone I wouldn’t mind doing all the stuff in Nemesis’s letter with!

I glance over my shoulder in the direction of the Ref. That floor in there is hard. But I still seem to feel it against my bottom, as I writhe.

Nemesis isn’t the only one who’s mental! I’ve only gone and made myself start getting wet now … Am I just as twisted and kinky as he is? I’m definitely horny, and at the same time I feel as if I’ve had the wind knocked right out of me. I’ve let myself respond to the ramblings of a pervert. Someone who could be dangerous. And sick. Someone who probably
is
dangerous and sick.

And someone, whoever he is, who’s certainly been close enough to me to pop a sealed envelope in the Lending Section’s suggestion box. Someone who knows the library’s routines and personnel too. Who knows that it’s my job to empty the box, and when I’m likely to do it. Who knows the times when the General Enquiry Desk probably won’t be manned.

The desk is on a little platform, just a few inches above floor level, but it’s still a vantage point. From here I can scope out quite a bit of the open-plan section of the library’s new building. People are starting to filter in for lunch-hour browsing, and Nemesis could be any one of them. Hundreds come in every day during opening hours. There are several dozen in now, about half of them men, meandering round the shelves.

Over there by the sports section, there’s a shifty-looking individual, a prime candidate. He’s a regular and I’ve caught him looking at my breasts often enough. He’s doing it now, the swine. Oh no, I don’t want Nemesis to be him!

It’s at times like these that I wish my boobs were a bit smaller. In fact, I wish that
all
of me was a bit smaller. Most of the time, I really don’t mind being a curvy girl, in fact I quite like it, but ample flesh does seem to bring out the beast in a lot of men. And especially, it seems, a new breed of beast … one who seems to be trying to make his basic instincts seem more acceptable and less gross by flinging in the odd bit of fancy talk about worship and courtly love.

Not that I’ve let any of the beasts get their paws on me all that often lately. Since my divorce I’ve been holding out for quality, not quantity. Maybe for some kind of hero. Being choosy seemed like a good idea at the time, but it’s backfiring big time now because I’m just dying for some sex. I hardly dare admit it but, if Nemesis is halfway decent looking and not too deranged, I’m seriously tempted to give him a shot.

Which is the reason I’m probably not going to tell anybody else on the staff about my pervy letter. We get weird stuff in the box all the time, and the harmless items we have a good giggle about in the lunch room at break times. The sicker ones get reported to the Chief Librarian, although goodness knows what he can do about it. But they’re mostly one- or two-offs and the pests quickly lose interest.

This is different, though. I just have a feeling. And this is
my
pervert too, and I don’t want to share him.

I stare at the Hotmail address at the bottom of the page: [email protected].

Should I send a message? Tell him to leave me alone? Or maybe give him a shock and answer in kind? Make up the dirtiest fantasy I can imagine, about my lingerie, or some
confection
of lace and satin I haven’t got and probably couldn’t afford? Or maybe I should concoct an elaborate story about him and
his
masturbation? I was always good at composition at school. Maybe I should tell him what I want
him
to do?

Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve opened the email client on my terminal.

Oh, no, no, no … that’s just wilfully stupid and dangerous. But God knows I want to. I think I probably am as perverted and strange as he is and I just didn’t realise it. My fingers hover over the keys, and it’s only the thought that the library’s computer system is subject to random monitoring that stops me. Even so, my heart flutters madly, and down below I feel a stickiness in my knickers. The higher brain functions don’t seem to be working correctly, and my body has turned into an out-of-control mass of hormones.

Sports-section guy has lost interest now, and is actually reading a book. If it were him, and he’s seen me with Nemesis’s blue writing paper in my hand, his eyes should be out on stalks and he should be moving in. But instead he seems to be engrossed in the history of Yorkshire rugby.

Who are you, Nemesis, you sick devil? Are you here? Now? Within visual or even touching distance?

There’s no way to know. I’m not on duty in the main Lending Library all the time, so anyone could come to the box during the course of a day. And this is the Borough Library Headquarters, and we’ve got the Scientific Library, the Audio Visual Library, the Children’s Library, the archives and a variety of specialist collections. Nemesis could be anywhere in what’s a very large and quite rambling building, much of it open to the public. He could be disguised as a bona fide punter.

Breathless panic wells up again. What if he
is
genuinely dangerous? I need to get out of here, and I release an inner sigh when I spot that the big clock by the entrance reads nearly
noon
. Thank heavens, I’m on early lunch today. Within minutes I can be out in the fresh air and thinking like a person who’s
not
insane again.

As if she’s a genie and I’ve summoned her, Tracey arrives promptly for her stint on the desk. It’s not manned all the time, but we get lots of reader enquiries during the busy lunchtime.

‘You OK?’ she enquires, and it dawns on me that I must look as flustered and slightly off my head as I feel.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I lie, fabricating what I hope is a normal-looking grin. ‘I was checking the catalogue and the system went a bit weird again, and I thought I’d cocked something up … But it seems to be OK now.’

We chat for a couple of moments on routine library business, and I think I’ve fooled her into believing that this is just another in a never-ending series of mundane and uneventful mornings. I feel guilty not telling her about Nemesis, though. She’s a friend and, under normal circumstances, she’d be the one I’d have a laugh with over all this.

Two or three minutes later, I’m heading for the back door on my way out to get some air. Clarkey, the building’s maintenance manager, and the visiting techie from Borough Hall who’s supposed to be upgrading the computers were in the lunch room. Is Nemesis either of those two, I wonder? Greg, the computer nerd, is young and bright and cute, but yuk, the thought of Clarkey sending me sex notes makes my stomach curdle. Mind you, I hardly think he’d have ‘greedy famished senses’ for anything other than the enormous meat pie he was shovelling down his throat and, judging by the scarcely legible notes he tapes to the staff cloakroom’s water heater when it doesn’t work, I’m not sure he could manage copperplate handwriting.

Security is tightish at the library, as we’ve got some rare and
precious
documents in the archives, but after my usual wrangle with the keypad and the deadbolt I manage to get the door open and launch myself outside, with the intention of heading for the small urban garden beyond the parking area, for some thinking.

But just as I’m hurtling out, someone else is hurtling in, and I run smack into a dark, bespectacled, heavily laden figure. He isn’t moving fast, but his arms are full of his briefcase, a pile of books, several newspapers and a rolled-up map and we cannon into each other, sending his paraphernalia flying everywhere.

And I’m blushing again. It’s only our semi-resident, semi-superstar eccentric academic I’ve gone and barged into. The adorably fit and lovely but rather bookish and haphazard Professor Daniel Brewster.

‘Oh dear! I do beg your pardon,’ he apologises as if it’s entirely
his
fault and not mine for forgetting to look where I’m going due to woolgathering about perverts and blue notepaper. We both swoop down, fielding the books and papers, and, as I pick up several volumes that I know he really shouldn’t have removed from the archive, I’m struck again by how scrumptious he is in a distracted, studious way. His curly black hair looks as wild as a gypsy’s and as usual there’s that gorgeous, swarthy hint of stubble darkening his cheeks. If he didn’t have the rather etiolated look of someone who stays inside poring over books all the time, he could easily pass for an earthy Mediterranean sex-machine. Apart, of course, from the seriously studious glasses and the superannuated tweed jacket.

I get the shock of my life as I look up from retrieving a few sheets of typed paper, to meet the dark eyes behind those elegant specs … and find them locked on to my cleavage like a pair of targeting lasers. It’s clearly visible in the dip of my V-necked top.

Is
he
Nemesis? The notion makes me rock on my heels and nearly tumble over backwards.

Every part of me starts to tingle but, when he blushes a darker crimson than Nemesis’s lurid underwear fantasy, it’s seems unlikely that he’s the man himself. Especially when, having been crouched down on his heels to sweep up his books and papers, he promptly
does
tumble over backwards on to the concrete path. All from the shock of having been caught staring at my ample bosom. I’ve only gone and knocked a minor TV celebrity, whom I just happen to fancy something rotten, over on to his arse! It’s all your fault, Nemesis, for making me crazy!

‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ I exclaim, graciously taking the blame for him falling, even though I didn’t knock him over; he fell over while gazing at my breasts. Which he’s still doing, his brown eyes on fire. His ears seem to be feeling the heat too, because the lobes have acquired a very fetching touch of pink. I suddenly wonder what it would be like to gently nibble them.

What? I don’t know what’s got into me these last few days but, what with Nemesis and Professor Hottie McHotstuff here, I seriously think I’m turning into a sex maniac.

Hauling in a deep breath, I reach out to help him rise, thus improving his view of my boobs, but he springs up with an unexpected athleticism, snapping to his feet in an almost panther-like leap.

‘No, no! It was my fault,’ he corrects, sounding both mortified and slightly irritated. He bends down again to scoop up more of his maverick paperwork, and then as he looks up from his search, his face is almost parallel to my crotch and only inches away from it. He doesn’t tumble over this time, but sort of starts backwards as if proximity to my pubic parts has zapped him. The action’s more like a startled gazelle this time than a sleek feline predator.

This whole episode is rapidly turning into a mini-farce, so I thrust the pretty professor’s papers haphazardly into his hands and dash past him, flinging a smile and another ‘sorry’ and a ‘see you later’ over my shoulder as I run across the tarmac in the direction of the garden.

2 Time Out with Professor Hottie

WHAT A LUDICROUS
pantomime that was! As if I wasn’t shaken up enough by Nemesis and his erotic ramblings, now I’m all of a lather over Professor Hottie again. I’ve been fancying the famous Professor Daniel Brewster since well before he became a temporary feature attraction at the library several weeks ago, when he arrived to research a new book and a possible television series. His popular history documentaries are frequently repeated on UKTV and, even though I’ve seen them repeatedly, I always watch them when they’re on.

Now, though, I don’t look back, and I keep moving at a trot, trying to pretend that none of our little prat-fall ballet on the back step happened. I don’t stop until I reach my special place, a secluded bench in a small shady arbour, well out of the way of the main park area where people gather for lunches. Very few people seem to have found this little haven, which is sheltered by several large trees and a high hedge, so it doesn’t get the sun. That probably explains its desertedness. Most folk round here still seem to be devoted to the active pursuit of melanoma. So this is a place where I can find peace and quiet, uninterrupted, in the middle of the day.