: Chapter 33

Vincent makes a point of setting my underwear on my bedside table—where we won’t lose it this time around—before he climbs up onto my mattress with me.

The rustle of my duvet, the creak of the bed frame, and the patter of the rain on my windows are almost loud enough to drown out my heavy breathing. Almost. I swallow hard as I let my thighs fall open so Vincent can slot himself between them, his hands braced against the mattress on either side of my shoulders. My skin sparks with electricity everywhere our skin brushes, his body radiating warmth that melts right through me. And as I stare up at Vincent, our faces close enough that I could count the faint freckles across the bridge of his nose if he had the patience for it, the gravity of the situation settles heavy on my shoulders.

Virginity is a social construct.

I know that. I know that nothing about a boy putting his penis inside me is going to fundamentally alter me as a person. It’s really not a big deal.

But, to me, it kind of is.

I’m soft. I’m sentimental. I’m a romantic. And I want to hate myself for it, but then I remember what Nina told me: I’m allowed to feel this way. I’m allowed to be shaky with nerves and giddy with excitement in equal measures, and I’m allowed to feel the weight of this moment with my whole chest.

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I warn Vincent, “so please don’t roast me if I do something weird.”

“No promises.”

I smack his bicep. His lovely, sculpted bicep.

He arches an eyebrow. “Is that the hardest you can hit?”

“Keep making fun of me and you’ll find out, Knight.”

Vincent brings his mouth to my ear and whispers, “Joke’s on you. I like it rough.”

But he’s not rough. He’s heartbreakingly gentle as he rocks forward, the muscle in his forearms flexing like a live-action sculpture out of Greek antiquity. My eyes lock on his left wrist—the one that was in a brace and a sling the night we met—and my heart hiccups. This is it.

My little moment to myself is interrupted when Vincent shifts his arms again, trying to find better purchase on my too-soft mattress, and catches a strand of my hair where it’s splayed out around my head.

“Ow,” I hiss. “Hair, hair, hair.”

“Shit, sorry.”

Vincent quickly lifts the offending hand and presses it flat against the wall above me instead. We lock eyes. We’re both a little bit mortified, but as soon as we see it’s mutual, we’re snorting and smothering our laughter like kids in the back of a classroom.

“I swear I know what I’m doing,” Vincent says.

“Sure, sure. You seem like you’re a real—”

He pulls his hand off the wall, reaches down between us, and plunges two fingers inside me.

“Cheap,” I gasp.

I think Vincent tries to give me that smug smile he always wears when he manages to prove me wrong, but his eyelids flutter as he wiggles his fingers against tensed muscles and then works them in and out in slow, seeking strokes.

“Fuck, Kendall,” he curses. “How are you this wet?”

“Now you’re fishing for compliments,” I say hoarsely.

Vincent keeps his eyes on my face as he withdraws his fingers, leaving me suddenly and achingly empty. Thankfully, he’s quick to wrap one hand around his erection and line our hips up. I feel the gentle but insistent nudge of him between my legs. And then it happens: the head of Vincent’s cock nudges just inside me.

My face scrunches up against my will.

“Give me a status update, Holiday.”

My only response is a very earnest, “Oof.”

Vincent winces. “You’re too tight. I should’ve warmed you up.”

“I don’t think I can get much more warmed up,” I admit with a pinched laugh. “Really. I promise. It’s just—it’s just, like, the initial nerves. I’ll get over it.” That’s how it always works in romance novels, at least. An initial burn that fades. A pain that becomes pleasure. God, I really hope that’s not just another trope that doesn’t apply to real life. “You can keep going. Seriously. I want to know what it feels like when you’re all the way in.”

Vincent doesn’t look totally sold.

“Stop me if it’s too much?”

“All right, big boy,” I say with a roll of my eyes, “you’re not that massive.”

But he kind of is, and my attitude gets a swift adjustment when he accepts the gauntlet I’ve thrown down and sinks another two inches inside me. I hiss in a breath through my teeth and clutch blindly at my sheets.

“Breathe, Kendall.”

I meet his eyes and do as I’m told. Two deep, slow, measured breaths. In, out. And again.

He nods. “Good girl.”

Vincent knows what that does to me—and he must feel the way my abdomen tightens up, because his eyelids flutter again and color appears high on his cheeks. He looks feverish. Wild. I brace my hands on his shoulders and give them a squeeze, urging him on, and Vincent resumes his slow push inside me, filling me until I’m sure I can’t take anymore—but I do. With one last press of his hips, Vincent sinks inside me right to the hilt. We both groan. My muscles flutter and contract, trying to adjust to the stretch of him. Vincent lets out a ragged laugh.

“Don’t do that,” he says under his breath. “Please. I won’t last long.”

“M’sorry. Not doing it on purpose.”

I’m really not. I’ve never felt so full. It’s a new sensation, but it’s not painful. Not like one of those scenes in a historical romance where the wedding night ends in tears and blood-speckled bedsheets. I’m a modern woman, thank fuck, and I’ve had fingers (my own and Vincent’s) inside me. But when he moves—just one slow, experimental thrust—there’s way too much friction. Maybe he really is too big. Maybe I’m just too tensed up. Whatever the cause, there’s a sharp sting where our bodies are joined. My entire body goes rigid with panic.

What if I can’t do this? What if, even though my brain is fully ready for this, my body hasn’t gotten the memo? What if I’ve somehow ruined everything?

“Wait,” I gasp. “It’s—it’s too much.”

Vincent goes still. I’m briefly horrified that he’s going to do what he did back at the bookstore and shut this down at the first sign of even the slightest bit of discomfort on my part, so I dig my fingernails into his shoulders until his skin goes white.

“Kendall,” he says very calmly, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Okay,” I squeak.

“What do you need?”

“Huh?”

“What can I do? Can I touch you?”

“Y-yeah, of course.”

“I’m gonna rub your clit, okay?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Vincent shifts his weight onto one arm and reaches the other down between us to trace two fingertips in exploratory circles—slower and softer at first and then in faster and steadier strokes when I hum to let him know he’s found the perfect spot. And oh, that’s nice. I sigh beneath him, my limbs slowly going slack and a content sigh leaving my body. I squeeze my eyes shut (because sometimes, when I’m trying to get myself off, it helps me concentrate) but then I think better of it. I want to stay present. I want to remember that I’m not doing this alone. Vincent is better than any fantasy I’d be able to conjure up in my head.

“Talk to me,” I plead.

Vincent’s eyebrows pinch, and for a moment I’m worried I’m going to have to explain myself, but then he says, “I’m assuming now is a bad time to recite that Shel Silverstein?”

I can’t help it. I toss my head back and laugh.

The movement makes my muscles clamp down around his cock, and it’s still a little too much, but it doesn’t sting this time. Vincent grins, then takes advantage of my bared neck and kisses a line from my collarbone to my jaw and back down again.

“I don’t think I can remember the words right now, actually,” he admits against my shoulder. “I’m pretty sure I’m blacking out. You feel so fucking good, Kendall. I’m so sorry I’m hurting you. We can take as much time as you need, okay? Don’t worry about me. It’ll probably take a lot more for me to come the second time, anyway, so all that matters is making it good for you.”

The words melt me.

And he means them, too, because they’re not delivered like some big chivalrous speech. He’s trembling over me, his left arm and abs straining with the effort to hold still while his right hand rubs steady patterns against my clit. His expression is one of intense and single-minded focus. Like this is the most important task in the world. Like his greatest—and perhaps only—aspiration in life is to get me off so I can enjoy this too.

There’s an odd twist in the pit of my stomach that has nothing to do with the joining of our bodies. I’m not entirely sure how to process it, so I do something a little silly: I push up off the bed just enough to press a soft kiss to the tip of his nose.

“You’re doing great,” I tell him.

Vincent ducks his head and laughs like a man in pain.

The movement makes him rock against me. This time, it’s less of a sting and more of a blunt ache. I think I might like it. I think I might want a little bit more of it.

“You can move now,” I whisper.

Vincent lifts his head and searches my face. “Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.”

He gives me the gentlest rock of his hips, at first. I hum in encouragement, but his strokes remain shallow and tentative.

“Is it okay for you?” I blurt.

Vincent immediately loses his rhythm. “What?”

“Does it feel good? For you, I mean.”

Just because I’m the one losing my virginity doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten that Vincent told me he’s never done this sober. He deserves to be checked in with too.

“How do you think it feels?” he asks.

My eyes narrow. “Is that a rhetorical question?”

Vincent pulls almost all the way out of me, the head of his cock tugging at my entrance, before plunging in again. Yep. Okay. Rhetorical question. We both groan. Vincent repeats the motion for a second time, then a third. On the fourth thrust, I lift my head off my pillows to watch his cock disappear inside me and almost choke on my own breath at the sight.

I reach out to touch the place where we’re joined. Vincent looks down too and groans. I can’t tell if it’s because my fingertips brush his cock or if he’s just as turned on by the sight of us as I am. Everything feels hot and swollen and slick. At first, I think Nina’s hot pink condom must be lubricated or something, but then I realize it’s not the condom. It’s me. Vincent wasn’t kidding: I’m soaking wet. It makes me strangely proud of myself.

I just needed to relax. I just needed to take my time. Vincent and I will figure this thing out together, even if we have to stumble and laugh our way through it.

At the thought, I feel myself loosen up.

I think I get why Vincent is a human biology major now. Shit’s cool.

“Little bit harder,” I request.

Vincent arches an eyebrow and snaps his hips once, roughly.

He’s joking. I’m not.

“That,” I gasp. “Fuck. Do that.”

Vincent ducks his head into the crook of my neck and takes a deep breath, like he’s trying to collect himself. Then he starts pumping into me, bottoming out on each stroke and stretching me until I’m full. So full it brings tears to my eyes. When his rhythm picks up speed, it’s all I can do to hold my thighs wide apart and clutch at his shoulders, his waist, his stupidly muscular ass, and try to keep my eyes from rolling back into my head.

“More,” I urge, tilting my hips up to meet each thrust.

I know I’m whining. I can’t help it.

“Jesus Christ, Holiday,” he groans. “You’re out of your mind.”

I manage a laugh. “Thought you—liked it—rough.”

Vincent hooks one hand under my knee, wraps my leg around his waist, and drives into me like a man with a point to make.

And it’s so good. It’s so fucking good. Better than I thought it would be, because I’ve fantasized about this. About Vincent. I’ve spent a solid month imagining him and myself as the stars of every romance novel I could get my hands on—soft and sweet, hot and heavy, dark and deliciously depraved. Every dynamic. Every trope. Every position. But this is different. This is more. My imagination couldn’t make a composite picture: the heat of his breath on my forehead; the warm, slick slide of our thighs; the familiar hum of his voice, his grunts and muttered curses reverberating in my bones and drawing the muscles in my stomach tighter and tighter.

Oh, I am in trouble.

I’m going to say ridiculous things.

Things like harder or more or literally just crush me, Vincent.

“You’re making faces,” he tells me. “Talk to me.”

“You can’t make fun of me,” I mutter.

“I won’t.” Vincent’s pace slows. “I promise. Give me your worst.”

He shifts his weight onto one arm. The new angle makes me squeeze my eyes shut. It’s glorious. So glorious that it takes me a second to register his lips on my cheek, my nose, my eyelids. I tilt my head up blindly, and Vincent puts his lips on mine without being asked to. It gives me a burst of courage.

“You’re so big,” I groan against his mouth.

“You’re so warm,” he shoots back. “And so fucking wet.”

“Wet for you. Oh my God, I’m sorry. That was so bad.”

“You’re a bad girl, huh?”

A laugh rips out of my mouth. “What was that?”

Vincent laughs, too, his eyes twinkling with self-deprecation and affection.

“I don’t know. Not very poetic of me, huh? Maybe I need some more tutoring.”

“I’m not sure if I’ll be much help. I mean, fuck, I’m in the honors English program—I’m supposed to be the articulate one here—and I’m like ten seconds away from going, Oh, Vincent, hold me down and make me take it.” Vincent makes a choked sound. I power on. “See? Batshit. People don’t really talk like this during sex, do they? That’s just in bad erotica.”

I’m joking, of course.

But then Vincent’s hand comes down on my shoulder, his thumb pressing hard against my collarbone and effectively pinning me to the bed, and it’s not a joke anymore.

“Be a good girl for me, Kendall,” he says without a drop of humor, “and take it.”