: Chapter 34

I try to laugh.

Really, that’s what I intend to do. But somehow the sound that bubbles up in my throat is the lowest and loudest moan I’ve ever uttered. Vincent doesn’t tease me. His eyes stay on mine, patient and dark with hunger, as he gives me a moment to get over my embarrassment. I wrap a hand around his wrist—the one pinning me to the mattress—and nod.

When he moves again, it’s not slow, or shallow, or gentle.

“Look at you,” Vincent murmurs. “So good for me. Taking all of it. Knew you could.”

Maybe if he weren’t buried inside me to the hilt, and maybe if he were laughing at me, I’d have the strength to remind him how cheap I find dirty talk. But I must be off my game, because everything coming out of Vincent’s mouth is starting to sound like poetry.

More, I think deliriously. Say more.

Vincent reads me like an open book.

“Messy girl,” he says. “Who made you this wet? Who’s this for?”

“You,” I gasp.

“Whose pussy is this, huh?”

I sob out a laugh. “Mine.”

Vincent’s hand leaves my shoulder to grip my chin, squeezing my cheeks just hard enough that my lips are forced into an open-mouthed pout.

There’s laughter in his eyes. He looks utterly furious about it.

“You and your smart—fucking—mouth.” He punctuates each word with a snap of his hips that makes my eyelids flutter and my breath catch. Then he ducks his head and kisses me so hard I see stars. “I set myself up for that one. But nicely played.”

“Thank you,” I squeak. “Could you please—”

I don’t have to finish the thought.

Vincent shifts his weight on one arm again and reaches down between us. He presses his palm down just below the soft curve of my lower stomach and grinds the pad of his thumb on my clit. I return the favor by clenching in that way that made him gasp earlier, and I’m rewarded with the brief stutter of his hips before he finds his rhythm again.

It’s too good. Too much. The pressure is unbearable and glorious, and, when he tunnels into me, I can feel every single inch of his perfect cock drag against the tender spot inside me. My thighs are tensed and trembling, my toes curled, one hand grasping hard around his wrist—entranced by the way I can feel his muscles and tendons work under his skin as he plays with my clit—and the other hand clutching frantically at his bicep, his shoulder, his dark, disheveled hair. Anywhere to hold on while the tide rises higher and higher.

“Please, please, please—”

“Come on,” he says. “You can do it. I’ve got you.”

My back arches. My abs contract. My fingernails carve into his skin.

“Vincent,” I gasp.

It’s the eye contact that does it.

His hands and his dick and his encouraging words have dragged me to the point of no return, but I am, as I’ve established, a soft and sentimental bitch. So, it’s the sucker punch of Vincent’s pretty brown eyes, heavy-lidded with lust and bright with affection, locking with mine that shoves me over the edge.

The aching pressure low in my belly coils tight and then, abruptly, explodes.

My eyelids flutter and threaten to slam shut, but I force them to stay open. I need to see Vincent. I need the tether of him watching me while I come undone. And Vincent—my rock, my anchor, the boy who always keeps the door open for me and gives me more than I’ve ever thought I deserve—holds me as I come apart and back together again, the aftermath of my orgasm leaving me limp and gasping.

But he doesn’t stop thrusting.

Stupid, unselfish, people-pleasing bastard. He’s going to kill me.

I groan and lift my head to tell him that there’s really no need to be such an overachiever, but then I notice the little wrinkle of distress between his eyebrows. He keeps glancing down where our bodies are joined like he’s trying to calculate something, to time it just right. I hate it. I hate that he’s preoccupied with anything other than enjoying himself.

Also, I think he’s planning to pull out, and fuck that.

“Don’t,” I say.

Vincent blinks up at me, dazed but determined. I want to remember him like this forever.

“I’ll pull out,” he tells me. “It’s okay. I’m close. I’ll pull out—”

There’s the tiniest twist of reluctance in his voice. He tries to hide it, but I hear it.

It’s sweet that he’s trying to be so considerate, but if he thinks I’m about to let him sacrifice this because he feels guilty asking me for what he really wants, I’ll kill him. He’s wearing a condom. Nina and Harper will gladly pay for my Plan B out of their sheer hatred of the surprise pregnancy trope. Vincent and I are being responsible adults, and responsible adults get to live a little. So, I hook my arms under his, reach across the broad expanse of his sculpted upper back, and grip his shoulders. The move forces him to hunch in on me, pressing our bodies closer and letting me use his impressively solid core strength for leverage to angle my hips up.

I meet him on his next thrust with such force that it rattles my bones.

“Don’t,” I say again.

Vincent’s eyes flash with understanding. He sucks in a ragged breath.

“Holiday.”

It’s another warning. Once again, I choose to ignore it. I cross my ankles over the back of Vincent’s thighs, wrap myself tight around his waist, and look him straight in the eyes as I flex my tired muscles with all the strength I have left.

“Inside me. Come inside me, Knight.”

“Holy shit,” he says, breathless, and starts to thrust. He repeats those two words over and over again, like a mantra, as his forehead drops to rest against mine. And then he’s kissing me—sloppy, scattered presses of his lips over my sweat-damp skin and then a hungry swipe of his tongue into my gasping mouth—as I rake my fingernails through his hair with encouragement and affection and . . . something I can’t name yet.

“It’s yours,” I whisper. “It’s yours, it’s yours.”

I’m yours.

Vincent wraps a hand around one of my thighs and hikes it farther up against his waist. On the next thrust, I realize, with aching clarity, that the pressure is building all over again. It’s different now—less sharp, but dull and deep in a way that sort of scares me. It’s always taken me ages to chase down a second orgasm. I almost always call it a night after one, because getting to the next one is just too much commitment and ends up in sweat-drenched pajamas and a cramped wrist.

But this is different. I think I might actually come again.

Vincent must see it on my face, because his eyes light up.

“One more,” he tells me, keeping his pace steady. “Give me one more, Holiday.”

“I can’t—”

“Yes, you can.”

His blind confidence in his ability to make me orgasm might be infuriating if it weren’t so fucking hot. I reach up to pinch his nipple. Vincent easily catches my hand and drags it down between us, pressing my palm flat against my lower abdomen so I can feel him inside me while he strums my oversensitive clit with the pad of his thumb.

I can’t move. I’m pinned beneath a sweaty, flushed, panting boy who is apparently going for an Olympic gold medal in making me orgasm, and I’m helpless to stop him.

I really, really don’t want him to stop.

“Wait,” I sob, even as I arch into his touch. “Vincent—”

“Let it happen,” he says. “I told you, Kendall. I love when you’re a mess.”

“Fuck off—”

And then I come. Again. Just like he told me I would.

If the first one was a lightning bolt, this one’s the thunder. There’s no quick burst or sudden snap of release. The rolling pressure climbs and climbs and then, almost gently, spills over some unmarked tipping point. But the resulting flood that ripples through my body is anything but gentle. It’s so intense, so deep, that I briefly lose all control of my body. I think I sob. I think there’s a rush of warmth and slickness between my legs. I think I clamp down so tight around Vincent that he barks out my name like an invocation. With stuttering hips and a low roar, he follows me over the edge, the cradle of his hips grinding flush against mine as his cock pulses and throbs, before collapsing on top of me.

Vincent gives me only a moment to appreciate the full brunt of his weight (crushing) before he loops one arm around the small of my back and rolls us over so I’m sprawled across his sweat-damp chest. His heartbeat hammers against my cheek. I feel the echo of my own heartbeat thudding between my legs.

For a very long moment, we’re both too spent to do anything but try to catch our breath.

And then, slowly, my brain starts to reboot.

Holy shit.

I try to press my lips together and keep quiet, because it seems rude to start full-on laughing after sex, but Vincent must feel me shaking on top of him.

“Shit.” He tries to sit up. “Did I hurt you?”

I lift my head to look at him, equal parts exasperated and elated.

“Oh my God, Vincent! I’m fine. Holy shit. Why didn’t we do that weeks ago?”

The pinched concern on his face immediately dissolves.

“That good, huh?” he asks with a smug grin.

“It was . . .” I trail off, shaking my head in disbelief. “Perfect. It was perfect.”

I’ve thought a lot about how I’d lose my virginity.

Worst-case scenario, I knew it could involve either a complete lack of enjoyment or—and this was something that I’d tried not to think about—a lack of consent. Best-case scenario, I figured Harry Styles would notice me at the back of one of his concerts and whisk me to an unspecified European city to do adorably artsy date activities before we eventually made love, by candlelight, on a bed of rose petals (a girl can have her dreams, and this was one I’d nursed since high school and gradually tacked more plot points onto over the years).

But this? This was better.

It was clumsy and frantic and messy and perfect. Vincent and I communicated—even when it was more practical than provocative—and we laughed—even when we were making complete fools of ourselves—and we both came so hard I think it’s going to take us a solid half hour to come back down to reality, so I’m chalking this one up as a big fat win.

All the romance novels I’ve read and the wildest fantasies I’ve entertained can kiss my ass.

They don’t measure up to this. To me and Vincent.

“It was perfect,” he agrees.

I beam at him. And then I say, very quietly, “I’m really glad I waited for you.”

Vincent’s face scrunches up.

“Shit, Holiday. Don’t get soft on me.”

His voice is tender, and his eyes are suspiciously shimmery. I think maybe what I just said means more to him than he’s entirely ready to admit. I cup my hands on either side of his face and scoot up to kiss him, gently but firmly enough that I hope he can feel what I’m not ready to admit either. When we pull back and look at each other, I have the unshakable sense that we’re thinking the same thing: it’s half terrifying and half exhilarating to realize you’re falling for someone, but it’s a little bit easier when you know you aren’t alone.

“That was really fun,” I whisper.

Vincent nods. “Yeah, we’re definitely doing that again. But you’re gonna have to give me some time to recover. That was . . . a lot. I really didn’t plan to be that rough with you.”

I push up onto my elbows.

“Hey,” I say, fingertip pressed to his sternum, “I asked you to be.”

There’s no way I’m letting him beat himself up and play martyr for something I very expressly requested. If anything, I’m the one who’s going to apologize for not warning him, in advance, that he was opening up a can of tightly pent-up sexual tension.

But Vincent just snorts. “I know you did. I was there.”

I press my lips together and tuck my chin against his bare chest sheepishly. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t my brightest idea to ask for it hard and fast when my body isn’t used to the impact. I’m going to be sore. Probably not as sore as I was the last time I tried to keep up with Harper at the gym, but there’s definitely going to be ibuprofen and a lot of groaning involved.

Vincent looks a little worse for wear too. Hair dark with sweat and sticking out in every direction. Tiny pink scratches and half-moon divots peppering his chest and arms where I clung a little too tightly. Body flushed and sweat-damp and shaky. He looks like he’s just won a brutally competitive championship game in overtime.

“I might have been a little overambitious,” I concede.

“No shit,” Vincent says. “I’m gonna need to wash your sheets.”

My face heats. “You don’t have to do that—”

“Shut up and let me take care of you, Holiday.”

I roll off Vincent so he can dart into my bathroom to take the condom off. He only leaves me sprawled out alone on my mattress for about fifteen seconds before he returns with one of my hand towels, soaked and wrung out so it doesn’t drip all over my floor. With one dry corner, he blots sweat and a little bit of foundation off my forehead, and then he wipes between my legs with a few gentle passes of the wet side of the towel. He used warm water. That was nice.

But Vincent’s always nice.

Well. Almost always.

Vincent tosses the towel in my half-full laundry basket, then comes back to the bed. But rather than sit on the perfectly open stretch of mattress next to me, he throws the entire length of his enormous body directly on top of me, like he’s my own personal weighted blanket.

Air leaves my lungs in a whoosh.

“Hey,” he says into my neck.

“Hey,” I grunt back.

“You wanna grab dinner or something?”

I laugh breathlessly. “Like, right now?”

He shakes his head against the crook of my shoulder. “No. For now, we’re just going to do this, so you know I’m not going anywhere this time.”

My eyes feel tight and wet.

For a long moment, we stay like that. Sandwiched together. Vincent hums in contentment when I stroke my nails over the back of his head through his sweat-damp hair.

“I mean, I am a little hungry,” I finally murmur.

Vincent lifts himself up on his elbows. “We should probably put on some clothes first. And you should chug some water and take an Advil or something. But I meant what I said about going on a real date. There’s this new Thai restaurant downtown that opened up over the summer. I’ve only had it through Postmates, but it looks nice online. It’s probably nice and cozy in the rain. Wanna check it out?”

“I could definitely go for some Thai food.”

Vincent nods, like it’s settled. “C’mon. I’m taking you out.”

He stands up from the bed and crosses my room in two easy strides to collect his shirt and jeans from the floor. Vincent frowns when he looks back and realizes I haven’t moved.

“Or we could order delivery,” he offers, sounding like he might actually prefer the idea of staying here, just the two of us. He braces his hands against the mattress on either side of my waist and leans over me, smiling with such honest and uninhibited joy that it momentarily knocks the wind out of me. “You could still make it to your shift if you wanted to, Holiday. I’ll walk you to the library. I’ll even hang around and bug you for more reading recommendations until you kick me out. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to give anything up for me. I’ll have practices and games and stuff, and you’ll have your time to do your thing too. You’re still in charge.”

My heart hiccups.

I’m done being afraid. No more hiding from my life. No more living every Friday night like it doesn’t really belong to me, or like the only good adventure worth having is printed on pages. My TBR list isn’t going anywhere, and I’ve only missed one other night shift this semester. Margie won’t be too mad if I call in sick again.

“We’re going out,” I announce, hopping off my bed. “And I’m paying.”

Vincent arches an eyebrow. “Your treat, huh?”

“Mm-hmm. This guy who’s taking a poetry class Venmoed me a hundred bucks for a thirty-minute tutoring session. Total sucker.”

He catches my wrist and pulls me in close.

“In his defense,” he says, “he’s shit at flirting.”

I don’t think either of us is entirely done exploring this new and wonderful world we’ve unlocked. Maybe he’s not quite tired of playing with my phenomenal tits; maybe I’m still a little curious what his stubble would feel like against my thighs. But right now, going out to dinner sounds like a dream. To hold hands on the sidewalk, to sit side by side in a little booth by the window, to talk and laugh and exchange anecdotes and fun facts and secrets—one at a time, savoring each—until the restaurant closes and they kick us out. And then, if the rain has stopped, we can take a long walk around the moonlit campus, or we can come right back here, to my bed, and talk until we can’t stay awake.

We don’t have to choose right now. We get more than a few hundred pages of hand-selected moments together. There’s no rush. No last page to turn to.

We have time.

All the time in the world.