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of quiet. She imagined the library basement had been intended for other purposes but had been called into service when the university’s book collection overflowed the rest of the building.
    The floors were uncarpeted cement, and there were no oil paintings or modern prints adorning the walls. The industrial metal shelves were the same as those used in the rest of the library, but the lights hanging above each row were naked bulbs controlled by switches at the end of the row. Most of them were off.
    She leaned her head against the cool metal side of one of the shelves. With everything going digital, students and faculty alike hardly felt the need anymore to venture to the library and comb through the books. Melanie didn’t usually come here to read, either. Instead, she came for the solitude and the sense of connection to the scholars who had gone before her.
    She lost even that small luxury when the elevator doors slid open. She glanced over her shoulder expecting to see Violet and thinking of where to run and hide, but Simon, her department chair, strolled out instead.
    “Professor Stevenson, I asked you to come see me after your lecture, did I not?” He addressed her before she could move. Simon had directed her to come to his office after her class, likely hoping she’d show up with the box full of sex toys in hand. The reprimand in his tone sent a fresh wave of heat rolling through her. “I might need to punish you.”
    After her hot and heavy fantasies of Hunter, her body was primed for a…reality check. She could have Simon if she wanted him.
    Who wouldn’t want him? He was devastatingly handsome, with classic features and smoldering eyes. The silver streaks at his temples gave him an air of worldly sophistication, heightened by the confidence in his decisive movements, and his devilish smile suggested he knew secrets. Her secrets.  
    He knew how to unlock her inhibitions, how to make her nerves sing with pleasure, how to make her desperate with wanting.
    That was the problem; the other reason she had sought shelter in the library. Wanting her boss was wrong.
    She might not have acted on her impulses with Hunter, but she had indulged in all kinds of inappropriate behavior with her sexy department chair. Her very married department chair. She still couldn’t believe she’d let him finger her under the dining room table while she sat across from her then-boyfriend and his mother.
    “Simon, you’re married,” she blurted.
    “Shh,” he said. He laid his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “I told you I’m getting a divorce.”
    “For real?” He was so experienced. Was this merely a line he gave reluctant conquests, a myth like the Tooth Fairy?
    “Would I lie to you?” His fingers danced along the column of her neck.
    “I don’t know. Would you?”
    He crushed his mouth over hers to quiet her or to try to prove his veracity,—she wasn’t sure—and his expert kiss persuaded her she was exactly where she should be, even before he employed his silver tongue. “You don’t know what you do to me,” he said. “I can’t get enough of you.”
    She dared to believe he had told her the truth, that he was leaving his wife, that he wanted her with a great and undeniable passion, that his kisses meant…something. The surrender soothed her tattered nerves. She could lay down her burden of worry, hand over control, and let herself indulge fully in his hands, safe from the fear that she was self-destructing.
    Simon was a professor, like her, only more accomplished and successful, more experienced. He understood the academic world and what it took to gain and maintain membership. He wouldn’t lead her down a path that would destroy what she’d built or put her future in jeopardy.
    He took her by the arm and steered her deeper into the stacks, pulled her with him into the shadows, down a row with the lights off. He backed her up against the shelves and dove into another kiss. In the darkness,