Page 24 of Ravished By Her

“You’re welcome.”

She ate her sandwich thoughtfully and didn’t speak until she’d finished.

“If there was anything that you liked, you know, I’d be happy to gift you something. Same goes for Lexi Starr. If she wants anything, in exchange for the books, she’s got it.”

I was about to tell her that was a generous offer when Kai pulled into the driveway.

“Hey,” she said when she got out of the car and then went to the passenger side. She emerged with a tote bag almost completely weighing her down on one side.

“Jesus, Kai,” I said, racing down to help her.

“I’ve got it,” she said, but I started pulling books out of the bag to lighten it for her.

“Christ, did you bring the entire library?” Lacey asked and Kai smiled.

“Not quite. We just had a lot of books laying around and I couldn’t stop grabbing more.”

We ended up in the dining room and Lacey unpacked the bag which also had a ton of swag in it with bookmarks and a cup and even a baseball cap that said READ MORE SMUT on it that almost made me choke when Lacey showed it to me.

“This looks more your style,” she said, plunking the hat on my head with the bill in the front. I glared at her and she studied me before taking the hat off, smoothing my hair with one hand and then placing it on my head with the bill backwards.

“There,” she said, her eyes sparkling a little. I felt a blush creep across my cheeks and looked away.

“Tell her thank you for the books, seriously,” Lacey said to Kai.

“No problem. And I can get you on her ARC list so you’ll get review copies for her upcoming releases if you want,” Kai said.

Lacey shook her head. “That’s way too much.”

Kai waved her off. “We love supporting sapphic readers.” I didn’t miss the way she looked back and forth from me to Lacey and back. She was definitely going to bring every single detail of this interaction back to my sister and I was never going to hear the end of it. I should have told Kai to bring me the books and then I could give them to Lacey, but it was too late now.

“Shit, I love a foiled cover,” Lacey said, picking up one of the hardcover special editions and stroking the cover.

“Me too,” I said. “My sister just bought me a Jane Austen collection with velvet foiled covers and I have to stop myself from constantly petting them.”

Lacey raised one eyebrow and I realized how suggestive that sounded, even though that hadn’t been my intent.

“Well, I’m going to head out. I have a lot of book boxes to pack,” she said, but she was smiling. Sterling had told me that Kai had worked as a bank teller and hated every second of it, but my sister had inspired her to quit and do something else. Now she split her time between working at Mainely Books Bookshop in downtown Arrowbridge, and working for Tenley, a.k.a., Lexi Starr.

“Thank you again,” Lacey said.

“Nice to meet you, Lacey,” Kai said, and I realized that we hadn’t even given her a tour of the house, but maybe Lacey didn’t want to do that.

Kai left and Lacey carefully packed up the books again and put them in the cab of her truck.

“That was really generous,” Lacey said. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“From my experience, Tenley is just like that. She loves giving books away. Sometimes she’ll take a bunch on a road trip and just leave them places, or in those little free library things.” Tenley and her girlfriend, Mia, were fascinating people, and I was going to make a point to hang out with them more before I went back to Boston. You didn’t meet many couples where one was a sex toy designer and one was a sapphic erotica author, but they fit together perfectly. Their lives would make a fantastic reality show.

“You know, if you wanted to meet her, she’s a part of this book club at Mainely Books in town. My sister and her girlfriend are in it, and they’ve been trying to get me to go,” I said.

“I don’t know if I’m a book club kind of person,” she said.

“Yeah, me neither. Kai was really down on it until she first went, but obviously she changed her mind.” I had the feeling my sister had as much to do with that as the actual book club meeting itself.

“I’ll think about it,” Lacey said, sighing. “Should we get back to work?”

I almost said no. Painting was the last thing I wanted to do right now. I wanted to…I wanted to go to Mainely Books with Lacey and see her pick out whatever she wanted. We could go to Castleton and gorge ourselves at Sweet’s Sweets Bakery and then walk on the beach. She could take me to the place she was staying and show me how she made jewelry. We’d cap off the day with pizza from Nick’s and then…

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