Service is its own reward.

Gavin grunted to himself, upside down under the table at Windhame Public Library. Someone had put out a cigarette or something INSIDE the backway for the wires, and it was just … just a terrible mess. None of the metal had melted yet, but the plastic was trashed, and he was busying himself with his tools to strip and reapply covering. It took a specialized device, but it would save the library at least fifty bucks, so him doing it for the cost of “what insulated plastics do you have laying around,” was a great deal.

Truth be told, Gavin liked volunteering at the library. He’d started right after junior year, just after he turned eighteen. It gave him a sense of purpose he found school didn’t really provide. While he had initially done it out of sheer boredom, the initial computer literacy class he helped with made him feel like he was having an impact on his community for the first time in his life. Though he still did those twice a month, it had graduated into a lot of engineering work. The IT and maintenance departments for the county were woefully underfunded, meaning the machine-oriented high school senior had no trouble finding things to fix.

The staff had been the biggest help. The actual volunteer coordinator, Remy, was kind of a tool, but the librarians really appreciated how much smoother things ran on the floor with less customer complaints, wire shorts, and breakages. Though one had been more supportive than most.

“Gavin, I’m heading out, you almost done?” Remy asked, poking his bespectacled head around the door. Gavin looked out at the man, who he really thought was twenty-five by the off-color flannel, piercings, and down-the-sides haircut, but was apparently forty, and shrugged. “Oh. I mean. If you’re not, we need someone to stay … and I have some stuff to do …”

“I’ll be here, Remy,” a low, but feminine voice called out over the clack of heels. Gavin glanced back through the other side of the desk. Even upside down, Annalise Mercado looked amazing to him. The chief administrative librarian at Windhame was thirty-two, always dressed professionally, but with just a hint of sultriness that Gavin found impossible to ignore, and definitely the single biggest reason he was volunteering there, even over the considerable psychological benefits it gave him. It’d be an understatement to call what he had on her a crush.

“Oh, cool. Alright. See ya’, Gavin! Goodnight, Ms. Mercado!” Remy called out, going into the back room again to head home for the evening. Annalise sighed, taking a seat in the computer lab while Gavin worked. It was … distracting. The sharp, black heels drew attention to her pale, shapely legs, up over the black pencil skirt that fit tightly around them, towards the cream-colored, silky blouse that covered her ample chest, to her slender neck, deep red lips with a tiny scar just above the righthand side, mischievous, near-black brown eyes, and the jet-black bob that framed her face, all of which was completely in opposition to working with any kind of heat-based tool like Gavin was.

“So, were you?” she asks, leaning back. “Almost done, that is. Not that I have anywhere to be.”

“You have a cat,” Gavin responded, tone surprisingly level for the amount of lust he was holding back inside himself. “Pumpkin just gonna’ starve to **** if I take my time?”

“I fed her at lunch,” Annalise said with a half-smile. “Besides, we spent all yesterday together. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind her break from me stretching just a bit.”

“Home all day. Good lazy Sunday or bad?”

“Both,” she answered with a small huff. “Henry called Saturday, and talking with the lawyers ate my whole day. He’s determined to fight this as long as he can.”

“He’s an asshole,” Gavin said frankly as he slid out from under the table, turning off the small iron and packing up as he rested it on the marble table to cool where it wasn’t a risk. “I’m sorry he got to you. Aren’t you past the point of no return on the divorce?”

“Shockingly, the man who browbeat and gaslit me for six years doesn’t seem to care. It’s a lost cause, but he’s going to tell himself he can win until it’s all official. The divorce. Separation’s been official for almost a year now. Hence, dragging it out.”

“Pumpkin help, though?” Gavin asked with a smile. Besides knowing the answer before she said it, he was also a big fan of her ridiculously massive orange tabby. Pumpkin had her name since she was a kitten, and she wasn’t so much fat as obscenely massive in every way. She tended to curl up to Annalise like a dog instead of on top of her like a normal cat, but she was soft, friendly to a fault, and the laziest cat he’d ever seen.

“Her recommendations for binging were top-notch,” the older woman admits. “Always are, though. She’s really got great taste in movies.”

“Gets it from her mother,” Gavin quipped as he tested briefly if the iron was cool enough to pack up, then did so once he was satisfied. “I am, incidentally. Finished. The wires should be back in working order. Call me if anyone sees sparks, smells smoke, unexpected shutdowns … nothing looked like more than a patch job, but you never know.”

“What did we do without you, Gavin?” Annalise sighed, standing up. It still surprised Gavin that he had a good five inches on her despite her fourteen years on him.

“Barter for vellum and wondrous inks from the Far East to scribe your tomes. Anything else I should take a look at before I leave?”

“Well, my control function is having issues. Could you check that out?” she asked him, tilting her head.

“Absolutely,” Gavin answered with a serious nod.

The two of them burst into Annalise’s office locked together, furiously kissing each other. Her skirt was already riding up in Gavin’s hands, and she let out a laugh of enjoyment as he slammed her up against her desk, kissing down her neck.

“I missed you so much this weekend,” she told him as he nimbly undid the buttons on her blouse. “I swear to God, it was so shitty, you have no idea how much I needed this.”

“I got volunteered for the science fair,” he murmured, from between her breasts as he slid her shirt open, kissing over the peaks of them. Annalise groaned, pushing up towards him. Even since their first time together, he’d always made her feel like every nerve in her body was a live wire. “You know I’d rather have spent Sunday with you and Pumpkin.”

“She’d probably have to leave the room for an hour or so, though …” the librarian teased, pulling her young lover back up. She kissed him harder, hungrier, dropping her shoulders to let her shirt fall off. “She gets clingy.”

“Ms. Mercado, this is no way to get me to fix your control key,” Gavin said as she pushed him back and whipped his shirt over his head. Not that he was precisely complaining, and it did some things to her that made Annalise’s panties soak through when he called her “Ms. Mercado.” It felt dirtier.

“I said MY control function!” she corrected him, running a hand down his chest, then suddenly pulling him back to her with the other as she dipped the first to feel his bulging cock, straining against the khakis he wore at Windhame to look more presentable. “And if I don’t get your cock in me soon, I can promise you I’m going to absolutely lose that entirely.”

“So, you want me to wait …?” Gavin taunted, taking the lead back with a sudden surge that brought her entirely into his arms. She stared up at him, eyes wide and sparkling with desire, but not desire alone. She couldn’t help but grin looking at him. It was so different than dating had been for anyone else. Yeah, he was young, almost inappropriately so, but he was funny and smart and none of her neuroses adult life has forged into her made her think she’d “changed,” from whoever she used to be. Even if the people who said that only knew her for a few months. She couldn’t pretend anything around him. Her musings broke with a deep, eager breath as Gavin unhooked and threw away her bra without breaking eye contact.

“I love you,” she said, stroking one of his cheeks with the back of her fingers. “I’m so fucking glad you kissed me that night, this is … I don’t know what I’d be doing without it.”

“I love you, too,” he answered, pulling her close until their bare chests pushed together. It wasn’t the first time they’d said it, of course. Some time in early August had been that particular event. Still, the only thing keeping them from going any farther was the looming divorce. While her affair with him was, by California definition, NOT an affair, it would look extremely bad if exposed, could cause problems with her career, and give her ex-husband more ammunition to belabor the court case further. Gavin didn’t mind, but Annalise couldn’t help but feel she was robbing him of some part of the normal relationship experience. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Anna. I know how you feel.”

“Good,” she told him, just a hint of a tear forming at the edge of one of her eyes. Mushy crap like this always spiked right into her heart. She sniffed, clearing it and her head, then looked back up. “So, how about we come back to gushing later, and right now you give me that big, hard cock I know’s been up since you looked up my skirt when I walked by the table?” Gavin grinned, then kissed her ravenously, moving back down and teasing her nipples while his hands slide under her skirt. Finding her wearing a scandalously-thin thong, he slid it to the side, pulling a moan from Annalise as he briefly teased her clit. She bit her lip between it and the sensations flowing from her chest, making her tilt her head back as she braced her hands on her desk.

“I dunno’ …” Gavin sighed, feigning disappointment as he slid her skirt all the way up, bunching around her hips and leaving the lacey, black thong exposed along with her pussy where he pulled it aside to revealed how positively drenched it was. “I’m pretty sure gushing is still going to happen.”

“Prove it!” she hissed as he dropped his pants, then underwear. They kissed again, slower, then broken by a groan of pleasure as Annalise felt Gavin’s prick slide easily inside her. She bit his lip gently and wrapped her heel-clad legs around him to pull him to her, bottoming out inside her in very short order. “I’ve been thinking about screwing you all day, don’t hold back!” she half-ordered, half-begged him.

Gavin didn’t make her wait or plead, picking up the pace and thrusting into her fast and hard. On the one hand, the high school boy knew he wasn’t going to last long at the frankly vicious pace he was fucking his girlfriend at, but he could also tell by how ready she was earlier that she wasn’t going to be able to, either. Annalise’s finely-kept, purple nails dug into his shoulders as she gasped and panted, pushing back against him while using their momentum to brace herself. She still couldn’t believe how right he felt inside her, or how he got her so fucking horny with just a few gentle teases and a smile. She was never like this, not even in college. For his part, Gavin’s insistent pumping inside her soaked cunt felt incredible, and he loved the way she felt pulling at him, legs, hands, pussy, all of her begging for as much of him as he could give. It made him feel powerful and sexy in a way that was new, but more than welcome.

He bit her neck, not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough for Annalise to let out a squealing noise of pain and lust, both of them writhing faster and more furiously against each other. She ran her fingers through his hair, then tightened her grip at the same time he pulled hers down to bare more of her neck and heaving tits as he fucked her. Together, they guided him back down, and he sucked on her nipples hard, tongue teasing their peaks as he felt himself throbbing inside her. Annalise could feel herself contracting on him, too, blind passion taking over her movements and noises as the two teetered on the edge of orgasm together.

“God, yes!” she moaned when she felt Gavin start to spurt his hot cum inside her. She kissed him, muffling a high-pitched scream as her pussy burst over him, running down her legs and a little over her desk as she clenched and squeezed around Gavin’s dick. “Fuck me, Gavin! Don’t stop, give me all your cum! God, you feel so good!”

“I’m going to fill you up, Anna!” he gasped as he kept pumping, still blasting his seed inside her as his low, harsh tone made Annalise squirt again, riding into another orgasm as she closed her eyes to groan and try to steady the frantic breathing it was forcing out of her. “Jesus, you’re like a vice around my cock, I love you so goddamn much!”

“I love you, too, baby!” she managed to say before their lips locked again, both grunting, gasping, then giving a long groan as of the last of Gavin’s semen filled Annalise’s pussy. They clung to each other for a moment, grips relaxing, but still resting their mostly-disrobed bodies together.

“Fuck, I think I need that, too!” Gavin finally said between deep breaths, recovering first. “Well. More than usual. I didn’t realize how much I missed you this last week.”

“Get me a cup, and I can put a number to it,” Annalise joked as she felt his cum starting to run out of her slowly. “You’d have to move fast, though.”

“I’m good with the mystery.” It was another few minutes of holding each other before they could bear to part, Annalise quickly cleaning up her legs while Gavin did his best job to do the same to his cock with the meager supplies in her office. While almost no one knew about their relationship, his mother did and was under the expectation he’d be with Anna for the rest of the night. Both of them were surprised she took it so well, frankly, but neither of them wanted to prod why and risk it. They could do a more thorough clean there.

“Can’t keep you up tonight,” she chided him lightly, buttoning her top back up. “One, two movies, then we’re out. You’re not getting in trouble at school because of me.”

“I won’t. Besides, I already have my acceptance letter. Responded, even. I’m pretty sure I could miss a month solid and be fine.” He grinned at the old-lady expression on her face, shock and horror at the dismissive attitude towards his education. He’d been fifty since he was twelve, of course, so it was nothing unfamiliar to him. “I’ll still get there on time. Don’t worry. Hell, you’re closer to school than my mom’s.”

“Good. Else I’d have to punish you,” she returned to teasing her boyfriend effortlessly, smiling with him. A sudden ping from her phone pulled her attention, smoothing her outfit while checking the alert from the county office. “Oh my God.”

“What is it?” Gavin asked, tucking his shirt back in as he walked up beside her.

“Baby, do you know a Logan Ravers?” she asked, concern washing the humor and libido out of their conversation immediately.

“I mean, Zack knows him better, but he’s a good guy. Why?”

“You may want to call Zack, then,” she explained, handing him the phone. “It looks like he was in a car accident, a bad one.”

“Fuck. Is he okay?” Gavin asked, face paling a little at the idea of one of his friends, even a bit of a distant one, being in danger.

“Intensive care, critical condition,” Annalise parsed the county abbreviations from the police station’s county staff email. “It was a car wreck, though, and … Gavin, it says two dead at scene.” Gavin’s eyes shot open, completely unsure of how to process that. Did he kill someone? Was he in the car with someone else who got killed? Who? Did he know them? What happened? “I’ll drive,” his girlfriend stated calmly, but with authority to help him through his shock. They left quickly, Gavin rapidly texting Zack, Chloe, Heather, anyone who he could think of close to the situation, trying his best to make sure everyone was okay and informed despite the paralyzing helplessness he felt as they got in Annalise’s car and headed to Azure Rocks General Hospital.