In Too Deep by Portia Da Costa Read Free Book Online

might well pretend to cringe with embarrassment at the thought of such a suspender button and use that as an excuse to hide downstairs in the basement all day, to get away from the pathetic vamp librarian who had the effrontery to grab hold of his tackle?
    The last seems likely. Our pet professor has an improvised carrel tucked away in the archives, and even though sometimes he comes upstairs and searches for items in the general lending area, and in the local collections that are available to the public, we haven’t seen so much as a sniff of him so far today, and it’s already halfway through the afternoon. After yesterday’s debacle, it seems he’s either not coming in or he’s spending the day safe below ground.
    Well, screw you, coward! I’ve got other things to occupy me.
    I decide to open the suggestion box again. There was nothing in it this morning. Well, not of the flavour I was looking for.
    Emptying the box involves coming round to the front of the Enquiry Desk and crouching down slightly to unlock a door in one of the wooden panels. It’s all a bit antiquated in these days of computerised lending and multimedia this, that and the other, but we have a lot of older borrowers who like things traditional and old school. Being an old-fashioned girl myself a lot of the time, I know how they feel.
    Anyway, dipping down as gracefully as I can, I feel as if there’s a ten-thousand-watt searchlight beaming down on me. And that a thousand avid eyes, not just those of Nemesis, are greedily following my every move, my every breath, my every twist. I can almost hear a salacious collective grunt of approval as the gabardine of my skirt tightens across my bottom and outlines its well-rounded shape.
    Sweat breaks out between my breasts as I reach in and pull out the wire basket. I’ve got one of my best bra-and-panties sets on today too. Not crimson satin, alas, just crisp white lace with delicate embroidery on the bra cups and accenting the knickers in a sort of ‘Here it is! Get it here!’ style. Why on earth I’ve gone to this trouble I don’t know. Well, not consciously. My nasty subconscious is probably even now working out how I can let slip a glimpse of this semi-fabulous underwear to Daniel Brewster – or even Nemesis, if I should happen to find out who he is.
    But the contents of the basket knock the wind out of my sails. No blue envelope. Is it over so soon? All that talk about the pervs losing interest if you don’t respond to them
is
true.
    Oh shit, I really want this, don’t I?
    After locking the box again and retreating behind the desk, I stare blindly at requests for more shelving space to be returned to books and ‘why do we have to have so much audio-visual crap these days instead of real literature’. Complaints about long waiting lists for the top romance authors. What about more Children’s Book Club events? The usual stuff.
    But it’s like a foreign language, and the only tongue I want to read is the one that’s written in copperplate on eggshell-blue paper. I feel like crushing all the legitimate, bona fide but irredeemably boring library communications and hurling the crumpled balls across the room at the tedious and most likely non-kinky browsers amongst the shelves.
    I want excitement, something huge and breathtaking, a taste of dark compulsion I fantasised about last night. Nemesis hasn’t shown that particular card yet, but my every screaming instinct says he will. Or he might have done, if I’d had the bottle to reply to him. His email address was at the bottom of each note, inviting me. But I was too chicken to answer. And now it might be too late.
    I tear all the suggestions into tiny, tiny little pieces and then realise this is really not on, because we
are
supposed to read them and raise the issues at library development meetings. Will anybody discover my crime? I decide to cover it by slipping the bits into the shredded-paper recycling bags, down in the basement. I decide to