Is... is this... it? Her eyes widened in shock.
It was... large. It was, she had to admit, far larger than she had pictured. The novels, she thought, her mind starting to whirl again, had been rather vague on the specifics of scale. This was... significant.
"Oh my!" she gasped.
It was a small, sharp, sound of shocked awe. Her hand, the one that had been resting on her chin, flew to her mouth, her fingers pressing against her lips.
Her gaze traveled up. And up.
"Does this... does this really go inside a body?" she asked. Her voice was a tiny, stunned, awestruck whisper. She wasn’t asking him. She was asking the room.
Something this... this big, Ines? her mind added, her inner voice sounding a little faint. How? A baby’s head, perhaps. That, I have heard, is difficult when it’s coming out of there. But that? How is that even... possible?
Carcel could not breathe. He was being... inspected. He was being... reviewed. By his best friend’s sister. Who was crouched at his feet. In her nightgown.
"With..." He cleared his throat. His voice was a hoarse, strangled, utterly humiliated rasp. "With... thorough foreplay. To... to properly... warm up... a woman’s body. Even... even this size... can easily... go in."
He sounded, he thought, like a man reading a medical textbook that he had, in fact, never read, and was not at all sure he believed.
Ines, however, did not look convinced. She leaned closer.
He actually flinched. A small, involuntary jerk.
"No matter how much foreplay," she said, her voice still a low, fascinated, academic murmur. "It still looks so... so thick. And... and intimidating."
She tilted her head, her gaze clinical. "And the color..." she noted, almost to herself. "It is... it is not like the rest of his skin. It is... darker. A... a... pink... and... bit of purple? Fascinating."
She was still crouched, her chin now resting on her hand again, a true scholar, observing a rare, newly discovered, and very strange, pulsating orchid.
Her writer’s-brain, as it always did, searched for an analogy. A description. Something for her ’diary.’
She whispered, her voice so low he almost didn’t hear it. "It looks... it looks... delicious."
Carcel, who had been in a state of pained, rigid, suspended animation, heard it. He was not sure, but he thought he heard it. Delicious?
"Like... like breakfast sausages," she finished, a note of pure, simple, culinary appreciation in her voice.
He heard that.
He was, he knew, with a sudden, dreadful certainty, going to die. He was not going to be shot by Rowan. He was not going to die of a heart attack. He was going to die, right here, in this library by this woman’s hands.
She had just compared his... his manhood... his pride... to breakfast sausages.
Ines, however, her mind now on a new, logical, and truly terrifying track, had followed her analogy to its only natural, simple, conclusion.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were wide. They were innocent. They were curious. And she was, he realized, with a new, dawning, bolt of pure terror.
"Can I... bite it?" she asked, her voice a model of simple, polite, genuine inquiry.
Carcel’s entire body went rigid.
The shock, the amusement, the hysteria, the shame—it all vanished, vaporized by a single, sharp, primal, and utterly masculine bolt of pure, agonized fear.
"INES!"
He did not shout. He did not yell. He roared.
His hands, which had been frozen, moved with a speed that would have impressed his old fencing master. He did not grab her. He did not push her.
He covered himself.
He shoved... it... back, a fumbling, desperate, frantic motion, clamping his hands, both of them, over the ruined, gaping, button-less front of his trousers.
"NO!" he yelled, his voice a high-pitched, horrified, cracking squeak that he would, he knew, deny to his dying day. "What in heaven’s name goes through your head! You absolutely... cannot... bite it! Why... why would you want to do that? Do you want to kill me?"
Ines just stared at him. She was still crouched, her head tilted. She was... confused. Deeply, genuinely baffled. Why is he reacting that way? She thought to herself.
"Okay," she said slowly, her voice calm, as if she were speaking to a very large, very loud, and very unreasonable child.
His overreaction was, she thought, most peculiar. It had been a simple, logical, research-oriented question.
Carcel was breathing heavily. His heart was hammering. He was safe. Ish.
He slowly, slowly, began to relax his death grip.
Ines, her previous line of inquiry having been so rudely, and so loudly, shut down, had already moved on. She was... she was staring at his hands. At the bulge that was, she could see, still very much present under his hands.
And it was... moving.
She could see it, pulsing. A steady, rhythmic... throb.
A new concern dawned on her. It looked... it looked angry. It looked... it looked painful.
She asked, her voice full of a genuine, tender, and very clinical concern, "Carcel... doesn’t it hurt?"
She gestured, with her chin.
"It... it looks painful."
Carcel let out a sound. A low, long, pained groan. He let his head fall back, his eyes squeezing shut. He was not going to survive this. He was not.
He looked down at... the situation. At his hands, which were still, uselessly, trying to hide the truth.
"It doesn’t... hurt," he bit out, his teeth clenched. "Not in the way you mean."
He had to be honest. He was, after all, her teacher. "But," he said, his voice a low, pained growl, "I do... I do want to release it. Soon."
Ines’s mind leapt on this new, fascinating, piece of data. Release!
Oh! she thought, her eyes brightening. He means... to reach climax. Of course. The final Chapter. The thing the books always end with. The ’release.’
She had a new question. The most important question.
"Doesn’t it need to... to go inside a woman? For that?" she asked. Her voice was, once again, one of pure, innocent curiosity.
Carcel was broken. He was a ruined man. He had been inspected, analyzed, compared to a sausage, nearly bitten, and was now being given a performance review on a process he hadn’t even been allowed to begin.
He was done.
A slow, dangerous, and utterly, devastatingly, mischievous smile, the one she had seen in the hallway, the one she had seen just moments ago, returned to his face.
He looked at her, this small, absurd, and completely, terrifyingly fascinating creature, still crouched at his feet.
His eyes, which had been full of horror, were now dancing with a dark, wicked, familiar light.
"Not necessarily, Ines," he said, his voice a low, smooth, silken purr.
He leaned forward, just a fraction, his hands, finally, falling away from his... trousers.
"What," he asked, his voice a soft, dangerous, challenge, "do your novels say?"