That perhaps brightens the blush a smidge.

"How 'bout after lunch we pick you out some quarters and let you look at my mini-library?"

"--Library?"

"Oh it barely counts, not in comparison to what I've got in the base in Port Carnelian, but I have a shelf or two of books here in our quarters. You're welcome to pick out any book you like from there."

"I like books!"

"Oh good." And presently she finishes the last bite of her sandwich.

Anselma takes slightly longer to finish her sandwich because she has switched from the "if it's already in my stomach they can't take it away" trauma reaction to food insecurity, to the "crumbs going to waste is a sin" trauma reaction to food insecurity.

This is extremely valid and Sable is quite content to just be delighted about successfully putting a second hearty meal into the girl.

And once she's very thoroughly cleaned her plate Anselma is VERY EXCITED about the mini-library. 

Then Maya washes the plates off and Sable leads the way belowdeck, past crew quarters, to a hatch at the end of the corridor, which swings open as they approach. Inside is a small office, with an elegant wooden desk, two comfortable-looking chairs on this side of it, and an exquisite-looking swivel chair on the far side. Behind the desk is a large window, looking out onto the zee behind the ship, and on the wall to the starboard side is a modest bookcase, latched (but not locked) to keep books from spilling out. Through the glass, Anselma can see three small shelves. The top shelf appears to contain reference material, with titles that mention "Correspondence", "Ballistic Engineering", and "Red Science", among what look to be a few mechanical engineering references, navigational references, and a few journals and notebooks. The middle shelf covers histories and biographies, including a book on London, one on the Khanate, and one on someone called The Last Curator. The bottom shelf contains fiction: Faust, Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, The Count of Monte Cristo, Oliver Twist, Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Three Musketeers, Passionate Trials, Dinner with Love, Swashbuckling Sarah, Sarah's Swashbucklers, Red Riding Hood: Revisited, The Mage Battery, Diaries of a Vampiress, The Scrivener, Nancy and the Knife Thrower, and The Witch's Feast. The books on latter half of the bottom shelf seems to have just a bit more wear than the rest, with the exception of the reference books.

"Tada, my office, and the books I've currently got on board. You're welcome to read anything you'd like."

Anselma scans the titles of the books and picks up the Red Riding Hood one on the grounds that she has ever heard of Red Riding Hood. 

She... totally forgot half that shelf was erotica, didn't she?

Sable blushes again. "Um. Fair warning, that book is erotic literature. Everything to the right of The Three Musketeers is, actually."

The cover art features a slim but buff wolfman, looking down at a sexed up Red Riding Hood and licking his lips, while Red is biting her lip and looks almost more aroused than scared.

"Oh!" 

Anselma, whose priors on this sort of thing have been warped all to hell, does not think to connect the fact that Sable has a crush on her with erotic literature and come up with "embarrassment" as an answer. If she had been looking at Sable, she would have seen the Faces, but instead she has flipped open the book and begun reading. 

She's not sure why she didn't expect this outcome. She should have expected this outcome.

“If you'd like to just start reading, you're welcome to one of my chairs, or we could pick out quarters for you."

She sits down, still reading. It has been too long since she got to read an actual book. 

Well, then Sable will grab one of her references on red science and start making notes on ideas for Anselma's tentacles.

Red Riding Hood is a thoroughly described and sexy older teen, and she's packed a basket of potently healing muffins for her auntie, who's quite sick, in the hopes of saving her auntie the trouble of limping to the next town over to see the healer. She heads out, and is surreptitiously stalked briefly by a Wolf. The Wolf gets nearly as much description as Red does: ten feet tall, muscular, powerful jaws, and much more. He smells the distinctive scent of healing potions in the muffins, and runs ahead.

Eventually Red gets to Auntie's house and lets herself in. She looks for Auntie, finds a note instead. She'd just left for town the day before. Red flops onto Auntie's couch, and wonders aloud what she's going to do with the muffins now.

And that's when the Wolf emerges from the other room.

Red looks quite delicious, the Wolf explains, and he can think of a use for the muffins.

Is the use for the muffins that he's going to eat part of her and then heal her so he can do it again??? Eesh. 

If he's planning to eat her, Red asks, why does he bring up the muffins? That doesn't sound like a very fun time for her, in either case.

But this, the Wolf argues, is exactly the point of the muffins. As is, she's just one morsel, not quite filling for him. But the muffins mean he could keep eating until he was truly full, and and they twist pain around as part of their magic. Plus, an eager meal who's having a good time is so much more fun, in his opinion. And, the rare times when he's had healing magic like this available, his meals have always gone home very thoroughly satisfied.

It's at this point that Red notices one of the Wolf's other attributes.

And she stops and considers for a time, biting her lip.

If Anise were in Red's position she would brain the Wolf with the most convenient heavy object. He's a stranger and she has no reason to trust him. 

But this is a story, and as a story, it might be going somewhere interesting. 

That would certainly be the sensible thing to do, wouldn't it? For reasons that only make sense in erotica, Red decides that, since she does remember this property of the muffin recipe, she's going to give this a try. She takes a preemptive bite of muffin for the pain-twisting, and tells the wolf to fuck her first.

He turns out to have a cock that necessitates a bite of muffin all on its own. He is quite a considerate lover, and spends quite some time warming her up, licking her and teasing her and playing with her, and then she spends the whole night moaning in delight, both from being fucked and being dinner.

There are no muffins left come morning, and Red has resolved to beg the recipe from her mom when she gets home.

Well. 

It isn't not hot. The biting to the point of actually removing flesh is maybe not so much her thing. But it's certainly not enough to spoil the rest, and the rest is...yes. 

Well, if Anselma would like to find out how much the rest is indicative of her Captain's taste, there remain another nine books worth of data on the subject.

Or she could report her findings so far. Sable is flipping through two references on red science and making lots of notes in a notebook.

"So I think I have discovered that I am not a huge fan of flesh being, like, removed."