Page 38 of Holly & Hemlock
The library is hollowwhen I enter, its lamps cold and dust motes thick in the stagnant light. I’ve traded my wet, snow and mud-covered boots for a pair of house shoes. The book in my hand—something on the preservation of pigments—feels laughably clean, a prop from a less chaotic world. I hold it like a shield, but the illusion is wasted. Larkin is here, somewhere, and I can feel the voltage in the air before I see him.
I move toward the reading table, intent on returning the book and escaping back to the kitchen. I’m too confused about my feelings to get into a sparring match. I lay the book on the pile, try to align it with the others, but my hands shake and the line goes crooked.
“Not your best work,” Larkin says, stepping from theshadow between two stacks. He wears a sweater the color of bone, a pressed shirt underneath, the cuffs immaculate. His hair is damp, and he smells of some expensive soap I don’t recognize that’s probably made with the best cold-pressed essential oils.
He moves closer, not quite blocking the exit, but close enough that retreat would be performance. I don’t give him the satisfaction.
I say, “Didn’t realize I was being graded.”
He smiles—flat, no mirth—and gestures at the book. “You always put the spine out. Even when the rest of you is falling apart.” His gaze drops to my hands.
I glance at my fingers. The dirt is ground in beneath the nails, and there’s a faint blue bruise on the heel of my palm. I cross my arms, half in defiance, half to hide the evidence.
“What do you want, Larkin?” I ask.
He circles the table, runs a hand along the polished wood. “I saw you this morning.”
The words land with a dull, dense weight. I wait for him to elaborate.
“In the garden,” he adds, as if I might have missed the surveillance. “With Lane.”
I force a shrug, but my throat goes tight. “We were clearing debris. The storm?—”
He cuts me off. “You think I don’t know what’s happening here?”
There is a new edge to his voice, a blend of anger and something else—fear, or maybe desperation. His eyes, always so precise and cutting, are now glassy at the edges, like the surface of a lake about to freeze.
I look at the floor, at my boots leaking thaw onto the oriental rug. I say, “What do you care?”
He laughs—a single, brittle bark.
He closes the space between us, faster than I expect. I smell brandy, sharp and citrusy, beneath the cologne. He grabs my wrist, not hard, but hard enough to remind me that everything is a negotiation here, that no touch is ever neutral.
“You want to fuck the help,” he hisses, and I can feel the tremor in his hand. “And here I thought you wanted to fuck me.”
I twist away, breaking the hold, but he is already crowding me against the shelf, the books firm and unyielding at my back. The spines dig into my shoulder blades, a row of silent witnesses. I could scream, but the house would only echo it back, an endless ricochet.
“Get off me,” I say, steady as I can manage.
He leans in, his breath warm on my cheek, the line of his jaw a knife. “You think you’re in control. That you can play us against each other. But you don’t understand what it means to belong here. You’re not just passing through, Nora. You’re the axis.”
He means to scare me, but he’s too close for that. The heat between us is electric, but I don’t want him to see me admit it. I shove him, palm flat against his chest. He doesn’t budge. He waits, daring me to escalate.
I slap him. Not hard, but sharp, the sound cutting the hush in two.
For a split second, Larkin blinks, shocked—then, before I can process the aftermath, he grabs my jaw and kisses me.
His mouth is hard, almost cruel, the scrape of his teeth deliberate. I try to push him away, but my body betrays me. I open, I answer, I match him breath for breath. His hands tangle in my hair, pulling me back, exposing the line of my throat. I gasp, and the sound is half surrender, half rage.
He presses me into the books, hips pinning my waist, one hand snaking up beneath my sweater to trace the bare skinabove my waistband. His fingers are cold, but his touch burns. I want to bite him, but instead I find myself pulling him closer, nails raking the back of his neck.
He kisses down to my jaw, the corner of my mouth, the hollow beneath my ear. Each contact is a dare, a promise, a history. I taste blood—mine or his, I can’t tell—and there is a moment when I think I might bite through his lip just to make a mark.
The world outside the library vanishes. The only things that exist are his breath in my lungs, his hand at my waist, the furious cadence of our mouths colliding. The books tilt and sway behind me; one tumbles to the floor, the dust of a hundred years rising in a single, golden column.
We break apart, panting, foreheads pressed together, the silence between us as loud as the storm had been.
“You’re a monster,” I whisper, but it’s not an accusation. It’s a diagnosis, and I’m as much the patient as he is.
