Page 12 of Claimed By the Bookstore Alpha
The scent change carried a message. He wasn't just being friendly or professional. This thing between us had evolved into something deeper, and his body was responding whether he realized it or not.
My wolf urged me to kiss him and I so wanted to but what were we to one another? We were sort of friends? Or was that me overstepping?
I tried to push the feeling down, but Clark laughed at something and his face lit up. I was in serious trouble. The kind that started with attraction and ended with complications I wasn't ready to handle.
But as he pulled me back into the convention center, still talking about everything we'd seen, I found myself not caring about the complications. For once in my carefully controlled life, trouble was exactly what I wanted.
SIX
CLARK
"Do you want to come up for coffee?" We were approaching Turning Pages. "Real coffee. Not the sugar water they were serving at the convention."
We’d missed our coffee date but had a convention one instead.
I glanced up at the windows above the bookstore and at the gauzy curtains that let in the light. He probably didn't invite people into his private space very often.
"I'd like that." I tried to keep my tone even as my heart sped up. I longed to drag him into my arms and stick my tongue down his throat. But that wasn’t Flynn. If I did that, he might shove me out the door and send a lawyer’s letter saying I had to stay at least a hundred yards from his store at all times.
He led me around to a side entrance and pulled out a set of keys. "Fair warning." We climbed a narrow staircase. "It's not much and it probably smells like books."
"I like books and I doubt your apartment is anything less than organized.”
Flynn's soft laugh drifted back to me. "I’m not sure about that."
The apartment was small but not cramped with exposed brick walls and those same tall windows I’d looked at that overlooked the street. Books were everywhere. Not just on shelves, but stacked on the coffee table and the windowsill. It should have been cluttered, but instead it was lived-in and comfortable as though Flynn had built himself a nest out of stories.
"This is amazing.” I was still in my Peter Pan costume and probably looked ridiculous. "It's like a literary cave."
"That's one way to put it." Flynn moved into the kitchen and started the coffee maker. "You can sit anywhere that doesn't have books on it. Which is... the couch, I think."
I settled onto the sofa, noting the paperback on the side table. "What are you reading?"
Flynn glanced over from the kitchen. "Poetry. Probably not your thing."
"You don't know what my thing is.” I picked up the book and flipped through it. "Though you're right, I'm more of a prose person but I’m familiar with this poet.”
“You’re full of surprises."
The coffee maker gurgled in the background but we studied each other. I took in the sharp line of Flynn's jaw and his gray eyes. Without the bookstore counter between us or the havoc of the convention, the space was very intimate.
"I should probably change out of this costume." But as soon as I said that I wished I could take it back. He would either think I wanted to go home or that I was going to strip naked in his living room and demand sex. Yikes! If I was honest, I did want sex. But it was too soon. We were only at the coffee and convention stage.
Flynn's shy glance had me wanting to squeeze his hand. Or plant a kiss on his lips. "I have some clothes that might fit you."
It was an unusual offer because the idea of wearing a host’s clothes and smelling like him, especially a person you were fond of, should only come after you’d slept together. We were far from that.
"That would be great. These boots are killing me."
He disappeared down a short hallway and returned with a pair of jeans and a sweater. "Bathroom's first door on the left."
His bathroom was as meticulously organized as the rest of his space, but it was the small details that caught my attention. The expensive shampoo that I sniffed and smelled like pine and rain and the single toothbrush in a ceramic holder that I was certain was handmade.
Flynn's clothes fit better than I expected. The sweater was so soft against my skin and carried that clean aroma that I was beginning to associate with safety.
When I emerged from the bathroom, he was curled into one corner of the couch with two mugs of coffee on the side table, more relaxed than I'd ever seen him. He'd changed into jeans and a dark blue henley that made his eyes look almost green.
"Better?" he asked as I settled onto the other end of the couch.
