Chapter 1 The Forbidden Shelf

Paige

I never meant to find The Forbidden Shelf.

It was just another Thursday evening in Albuquerque, the desert air turning cool as the sun slipped behind the Sandias and painted the sky bruised lavender and molten orange. Piñon smoke drifted from neighborhood firepits, threading through dust and old pavement, while traffic murmured somewhere along Central.

I had spent the day at the university archive repairing the spine of a crumbling nineteenth-century botanical journal, coaxing brittle paper back toward life one careful stitch at a time. By the time I locked up, my shoulders ached, my fingertips were smudged with dust and glue, and that familiar quiet loneliness had settled over me.

At thirty, I had built a life that fit neatly around solitude. I was soft-bodied and curvy in all the ways fashion magazines implied should be corrected, though I had long ago stopped trying to make myself smaller.

My honey-strawberry hair was pinned into a practical bun that never stayed neat, my glasses were forever sliding down my nose, and I favored oversized cardigans and long skirts that softened the curves I had stopped apologizing for.

Books were easier than people. They never interrupted, never looked past me toward prettier women with louder laughter, and never made me feel like an afterthought. I lived between pages more comfortably than I ever had in the world outside them, though there was an old ache beneath that truth I rarely examined too closely.

Which was why I should have kept walking when I saw the alley.

Something about it tugged at me, though, and halfway down the narrow passage stood a storefront I would have sworn had not existed the day before. A weathered wooden sign hung above the door, elegant gold script shimmering beneath a single streetlamp.

The Forbidden Shelf.

There were no posted hours or glowing Open sign, only one dusty front window with a leather-bound book displayed upright beneath a pool of amber light.

I should have found that unsettling. Instead, before caution could get a vote, I was already reaching for the door.

The bell overhead gave a soft, almost reluctant chime when I stepped inside, and warmth enveloped me at once. The air smelled of old paper and vanilla, incense and smoke, with something darker braided beneath it, something warm and skin-close and faintly sinful that made my pulse skip for reasons I couldn’t explain.

Books climbed floor to ceiling beneath brass lamps casting pools of intimate golden light. Narrow aisles twisted deeper into shadow, and some of the spines seemed almost luminous. The place didn’t feel decorated so much as aware, as though the shop had noticed me the second I crossed its threshold.

“Can I help you?”

The voice slid over me, low, cultured, dangerously intimate.

I turned so fast I nearly dropped my tote.

He stood behind a scarred oak counter, polishing a brass bookmark with maddening deliberation. He was tall and lean, beautifully put together in a rolled-sleeve white shirt and black vest that fit a little too well. Dark hair fell in loose disorder over his forehead, but it was his eyes that caught me.

Amber. Not brown. Amber, as though someone had trapped candlelight in glass.

They held mine with unsettling patience, and something in my stomach gave a small, traitorous flip.

“I…” Heat rushed to my face. “I was just passing.”

Brilliant, Paige. A literary seductress.

He smiled, and I had the absurd thought that the room dimmed around it.

“Most women who come in here aren’t passing,” he said, leaning onto his forearms. “They’re answering something.”

There was amusement in his voice, but something knowing lived beneath it.

“A hunger they’ve been pretending not to have.”

I should have rolled my eyes. Instead, I swallowed.

“I’m Andy,” he said. “Andy More. Proprietor, curator, and occasional corrupter of otherwise respectable readers.”

That startled a laugh out of me. “Paige Turner.”

His mouth curved slowly. “Miss Turner.”

He let the name linger just long enough to make me suspicious.

“How perfectly appropriate.”

It was an obvious joke, yet something in the way he said it made it feel layered. Before I could decide why, he pushed away from the counter.

“Come.”

Not would you like to. Not if you want. Just come.

And absurdly, I obeyed.

I followed him through winding shelves, my fingertips brushing gilded titles as we passed. The Selkie Bride. The Wolf at Winter’s Door. A Crown of Salt and Starlight. Each sounded like a secret, and the farther we walked, the warmer the air seemed to become.

Then I saw the placard.

Princesses & Other Dangerous Delights.

I laughed under my breath. “Oh, this I have to see.”

His mouth twitched as if he liked that I’d said it aloud. He scanned the shelf and pulled out a midnight-blue volume, its gold foil lettering gleaming in the lamplight.

Cinderella.

I stared at the cover, then at him. “Cinderella? I thought this was supposed to be dark fantasy.”

His grin turned wicked. “It is.”

He handed me the book, and the leather was strangely warm beneath my fingers.

“Don’t confuse familiar titles with innocent stories, Paige. These aren’t the versions you were read as a child.”

A little current ran through me, made worse by the way his gaze flicked to the flush rising in my chest.

Oh, he noticed.

“If it disappoints you,” he murmured, “bring it back and I’ll pretend I never saw you blush.”

I bit my lip. Damn nervous habit.

“What’s the catch? There’s always a catch.”

He reached beneath the counter and drew out a brass library card. My breath caught because my full name was already stamped into it.

Paige Eleanor Turner.

I had not given him my middle name.

A chill chased up my spine, but before I could ask how the hell he’d done that, he said lightly, “Trade-in policy. Very generous. Keep the book and relive the story whenever the mood strikes, or return it and choose another.”

“Relive it?” I laughed, though the sound came out breathier than intended. “It’s just a book, Andy. Not some kind of magic theme-park ride.”

His amber eyes sparked with something darker. “You’ll see. Take it home. Read it when you’re alone, when everything is quiet.”

His gaze held mine.

“When you’re ready to want more.”

The word want landed somewhere low and inconvenient.

I nodded before sense returned. He slipped the brass card into the book and handed it over, his fingers brushing mine in a touch so brief it should have meant nothing.

It did not feel like nothing.

“Come back soon, Miss Turner,” he said. “I’m curious what kind of reader you are.”

I left in something very close to a retreat.

The alley looked ordinary again, almost offensively so. By the time I made it home, I had convinced myself I would wait to open the book. Tomorrow, maybe. The weekend. Possibly never.

I lasted until 11:17 p.m.

Three pages in, one sentence stopped me cold.

Desire denied did not die.

It sharpened.