I've been told this is dark...
Cross-posting from my LJ where I've put it up for a sort of flist beta. Warning: it's, well, kinky. Just a bit. Someone dared me.

'Bibliophilia'

Giles/book (yup…)

FRAO Fairly significant kink.

Ne securus amet nullo rivale, caveto;

non bene, si tollas proelia, durat amor.

ille viri videat toto vestigia lecto

factaque lascivis livida colla notis.

munera praecipue videat, quae miserit alter.

Beware of letting him love securely, rival-free:
love never lasts if you take away competition.
Let him see signs of activity in your bed,
and show lascivious marks on your bruised neck.
Above all show him the gifts others have given.

Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid): 'Amores' Book 1, Elegy VIII




**********************************
Smell.

Breathe. In, out.

Ah.

Not dust, no; they are too well-kept for that. The friable edge of every page is glossed with gilt. The bindings girdle each one tightly, swirling marbled linings wedded to crimson, rich-grained leather.

Which to choose? Why choose at all? They are a matched set; elegant manuals of base seduction posing as upright, dry, classical texts. Works of enlightenment fit for a gentleman's study, a bachelor scholar's library, an exiled Watcher's… private collection.

Look.

Front.

Pretence.

Rupert Giles knows those arts well. Sometimes they are irksome, restraining his true nature. Sometimes they are welcome, a shield against the young and nosey. This is his private time and space. They have all gone home to their sundry gropings and pokings, writhings, thrustings and tusslings. They scuttled away giggling at the theatrical wince and blush he conjured for their benefit. It is true he does not wish to see, to hear details, but he knows what they'll get up to.

When he was young he was like them, loins full of eager, experimental flame. Now…a banked fire gives out a steadier, reliable heat. He knows what he wants. They would be shocked to see him thus: one hand on the spine of a book, the other slipping his shirt open to tease his own nipple, stroking slowly, eyes closed, wetted lips parted, hot breath trembling.

Listen.

Be still.

Silence.

He no longer needs the text. Once it had stirred him, alone in his cell at the Council refuge, abrading him with memories of the pursuit and conquest of women and girls of many a hue and temper, in every imaginable circumstance. If he chose, he could even now recite every line; turn each phrase just so, as to leave no listener in any doubt of to the subject matter.

It is the books themselves, that they are his property and not another's; that they are so very beautiful of their kind. They too have the power to tempt and beguile, to distract and give pleasure, and unlike the rest, do not run away, cannot leave him. He will not let them come to harm. They are his.

Touch.

Caress.

Solid and smooth. The spines are ridged, tooled and worked patiently; as patiently as he works his own body. He is tugging his belt open, grunting, shoving his fly down in a single movement, then rubbing his knuckles against the swelling flesh of his cock under the cloth, trying to make it last. The rising urgency comes upon him like a roll of thunder but he wills it away. He reaches further in to free his balls, heavy and ripe. It is a long time since he last spent himself, in this or any other way.

Taste.

Sour.

Salt. He cannot resist just running his tongue tip over one pinched fold of animal skin, over the proud margins of a single punched letter. The barest contact, not enough to spoil. Enough to mark the hide darker with his essence, even though in a few hours no-one will guess, no-one would know without microscopic examination. He nips the end of the yellow silk page-marker where it loops out over the shelf beneath, hard, just as he touches bare flesh, harder. He hisses as the ribbon slips from his mouth losing strength in his limbs as every nerve in his groin fires at once. He stumbles, crouches in front of the bookcase, goes to his knees for a moment, bent over the blissful ache and the pungent scent of himself, heat and musk.

He's using both hands to massage himself, roughly: knowing, not caring, that he'll pay for it later. He's no longer silent. There is no-one else here to care about that, to be ashamed or titillated. Only the names inked in those fly-leaves – those other owners - hear him down the corridors of memory. His father warning of sacrifices to come, like this life he has now; Ethan laughing as they read Ovid and worse, translating as they went, tatty Rizlas dropping herbal ash onto the sheets. Jenny smiling, leading him on, cock-teasing, lost, forgiven. Liv devouring him, doubting him, leaving him.

My life, now. My fucking life, for what it's worth. My space. My books. My hand…my need…

My *God*.

Oh. Oh. Falling headlong from climax, he rests his forehead against the punishing edge of a lower shelf and is not remotely sorry.

He's kept the mess off the books.

*His* books.

END