Page 18 of Bookworm
But he grabbed me with more force than I think he meant to, which only served to lift my feet off the floor and send us both flying downward.
Out of reflex I reached for whatever my hands could find to catch myself… which happened to be the small bookshelf beside the table.
I gripped the edge, trying to brace myself, catch myself, stop myself from going down. But then Adam’s weight slammed into me. And the bookshelf which I had stupidly assumed would be nailed to the wall (spoiler: it wasn’t), toppled over with us, sending dozens of books tumbling out of the shelf and landing on top of our crumpled bodies with a thud.
Chapter Five
Igroaned. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I’d just taken down several thousands of dollars worth of antique books with my clumsy ass, I might have enjoyed the way Adam’s body was flush to mine.
His pelvis lined up with mine and rock hard abs that I never would have guessed were beneath that crisp button down shirt and cashmere sweater of his pressed against my soft, by comparison, belly.
I lifted my hands to his shoulder, running my palms down the equally ripped biceps.
Good God. When did he find the time to work out? Academia didn’t leave a lot of free time and yet, the man had muscles that didn’t just come out of nowhere.
“Oh my God, Harper,” he said. “Are you okay?” He cradled my jaw tenderly, scraping his thumb across my cheekbone.
Staring down at me, backlit by the dim overhead archival lights, Adam looked like an angel. A beautiful angel … sent here to torment me.
“Harper?” he asked again, more concern in his voice this time.
Fine. I’m fine. The answer lodged in my throat right along with my breath.
Adam was quite literally so breathtaking that he was robbing the breath from my lungs.
Finally, I said, “Can’t… breathe…”
“Oh,” he whispered on the exhale. Then, looking down at our bodies, with him still pinning me to the floor, fallen books framing us on either side, realization slammed into his expression. “Oh! You literally can’t breathe!” He scrambled off of me, rolling to the side and careful not to touch any of the fallen books. “I’m so sorry.”
He got to his feet and offered me a hand to help me sit up, too.
I whimpered as I looked around at the additionally damaged books, the panic of our new situation settled into my bones. “Is this room fucking cursed or something?”
“Calm down,” Adam said, his voice somehow, impossibly, even.
“Calm down? Calm down!? We just knocked down an entire bookshelf of priceless, antique books!”
“Maybe they’re fine?” he offered.
Scrambling, I started grabbing each book one by one, inspecting them to make sure I hadn’t ripped a page or dinged up a corner. The first few were fine, but when I picked up a copy ofRobinson Caruso, sure enough the corner of the cover, likely where it had hit the ground, was dented.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“This one, too,” Adam said, handing me another book.
“And this one.” I realized, picking up a third.
We placed the non-damaged books back on the shelf, then gently piled the damaged books on the table… seven in total.
Seven additional books to fix on top of the dozen or so from the fire.
Adam sighed heavily. “I’ll pull up the incident report for us to fill out on the website,” he said, then dragged his palm down over his face. “They’re going to revoke my privileges to use this room.”
“Wait.” I snapped out my hand to grasp his elbow. “Just… wait a second.”
I flipped through the damaged books again. “These aren’t that bad,” I said. “I can fix them in no time. No one has to know what happened.”
“Are you kidding? I could get fired for not reporting the incident.”
