The rare-books reading room locked from the inside after ten. You were the only one there. You found the book on the wrong shelf — a leather spine without a call number, jammed between the bound theses. You took it back to a carrel. The lamp had a brass hood. You opened the book. The first sentence asked you to read it aloud, and you did.
Your tongue moved on a word it did not know. The page turned itself. Your collar pinched. You looked down and your shirt was tighter at the chest than it had been a sentence ago. Your fingers softened on the page. A nail you did not paint clicked against the leather. Your hair fell over your glasses — there were glasses now — and they were the right prescription. The carrel was very quiet.
You read the next line and your breasts strained against the cloth. The buttons of your shirt were very tight. The pages turned by themselves. The brass lamp clicked and the next carrel was dark. You could hear your own breathing. Your hair smelled like a stranger's. Your legs were bare, and your skirt was riding up them. Your nipples were hard under the buttons. You were hot and you were wet and your hand was moving down.
Your hand slipped under the plaid hem. You touched yourself through the cotton and the cotton was already wet. A button on your shirt popped onto the page. You bit your lip. The book turned another page on its own. Somewhere in the next aisle, a shoe scraped on the carpet. You took your hand back. The brass lamp clicked. The book lay open and waiting.
***
He came around the row of stacks without hurrying. Tall. A grey overcoat over a soft sweater. He set a coffee on the next carrel and looked at the book in front of you, then at you. "You read it," he said. He did not seem surprised. You did not stand. The shoe scuff had been him in soft brogues. He pulled out the chair beside yours and sat down.
He took your glasses off your face and folded them and set them on the table. His face was calm and a little tired. He reached for the coffee and offered it to you, and you took a sip. He leaned closer. "I know what you are," he said. "You don't," you said. "I do." His hand was warm on the back of your neck and his kiss was confident. He pressed you against the wooden table. He unbuttoned your shirt and ran his hands across your skin. He bent you over the book, and when he touched you there, you were already wet.
He pushed your skirt up over your hips. He put one hand flat between your shoulder blades and held you down on the page. The book did not protest. He pushed inside you and the breath left your throat in a small sound.
"You're mine," he said. "Yes," you said, and "yes," and "yes." When you came, he pulled out and spent on the open page. The page drank it. You did not know the field you had been studying anymore. The seminar paper you had been writing for someone whose name you could not find was already on someone else's desk. Your own annotations were waking up in the margins, in your hand. You closed the book carefully. The brass lamp clicked off. His palm came to rest flat on the cover.