Vincent—a true gentleman—pops open the button and unzips my jeans for me. He tugs them down my thighs and calves and then over my sock-clad feet, which look utterly silly now that my legs are bare. But Vincent doesn’t laugh at my dorky mismatched socks (one dotted with flowers, the other with a cartoonish black cat by my toes). His eyes are locked onto the place where my borrowed bodysuit snaps together between my legs.
“This,” he says, hooking a finger under the fabric at my hip and letting it snap back to my skin. “I love this thing. Whatever the hell it is.”
I snort. “It’s called a bodysuit.”
Vincent sucks his lips in like he’s trying to stop himself from saying something.
“What?” I demand.
“Okay, you’re going to hate me for this, but have you ever seen those warm-up pants that basketball players wear before their games? The ones with the snaps up the sides? And then they just, like, fucking rip ’em off?”
A laugh rips out of my mouth. “Vincent! Why would you say that—”
“Is this one of those situations?” he asks through his own laugh.
“Oh, absolutely not,” I say, trying to look stern despite the fact that I’m still grinning. “This bodysuit belongs to my roommate. It’s her favorite, and I’m just borrowing it, so I’m going to need you to please refrain from dramatically tearing it off me.”
Vincent puts his hands up in surrender. “Well, now I don’t trust myself. Could you do the honors?”
I make a show of sighing, like this is a huge inconvenience, and reach down between my legs. Vincent’s eyes track my every move as I gently pop open the snaps of my bodysuit. It takes me a few tries, because I’m trembling, but eventually I get them undone. Now I’m glad I wore nice underwear tonight—plain, inoffensive, forgiving black cotton.
It’s fitting that I’ve worn black for, as Nina would probably put it, the funeral of my virginity.
“There,” I say, stacking my hands one over the other on my stomach. “Please proceed.”
Vincent’s eyes rake up and down my body, leaving trails of heat wherever they’ve been. Down my neck; the valley of my breasts; between my hip bones.
“God, I’m in trouble,” he whispers, so softly that I’m not entirely sure he means for me to hear him. He reaches out and strokes his fingers against the cotton of my underwear where it’s stretched taut over my cunt—and it’s the first time in my life I’ve thought of it as that. My cunt. I’ve only ever encountered that terminology in erotic novels, and it’s never seemed to fit into my everyday vocabulary. It’s too blunt a word. Too harsh. But the gentle press of Vincent’s fingertips and knuckles has me thinking all kind of blunt, harsh words.
I let out a heavy breath.
“Let’s get these off of you too,” Vincent murmurs.
I don’t wait for him to help. I hook my fingers under the waistband at my hips, press my heels into the bed, and arch up off the mattress. With a few tugs and a bit of pulling my knees up to my chest, I’ve got my underwear off and in one hand. I chuck it indiscriminately across the room. I don’t even watch to see where it lands.
And then it’s done. I’m half naked in front of someone else for the first time.
Vincent won’t stop staring.
“What?” I snap.
“Nothing,” he says. Then, softly: “You look good in my bed.”
My heart clenches. I try to deflect the feeling, because it’s too much. “I’d better look good. It took me half an hour to do my makeup. You have no idea how hard it is to get your eyeliner even.”
Vincent’s lips twitch. “You’re right. I have no idea.”
He leans down to kiss me. I’m glad for the momentary break from being viewed. This all feels a lot easier when my eyes are closed and Vincent’s mouth is on mine—or sliding along my jaw, down my neck, into the valley between my breasts.
His eyes land on the place where Nina’s bodysuit stretches over the curve of my right tit. The flicker of heat in his expression leaves me winded. Vincent looks like he’s suddenly thinking of a hundred ways to ruin me. And I’d let him. I want him to slide a hand under the fabric and do whatever the hell he wants with my phenomenal tits. I don’t care if he brushes a thumb over my nipple, featherlight and tender, while I squirm and giggle. I don’t care if he takes an entire tit in his hand and squeezes it, like he’s rock climbing and needs to find purchase. I don’t care if he twists and sucks at my nipple until I’m screaming and sobbing and begging him to do terrible things to me.
I just want to see what he wants to do. I want the surprise of his desire.
But then Vincent inhales hard, like he’s pulling himself together, and settles back on his knees between my legs.
“I think I should warm you up,” he says.
“Warm me up?” I croak.
And my liquefied little brain is too slow to catch on—because even when Vincent crouches low and wraps his arms around my thighs, I don’t understand what he means. Not until he ducks his head and licks one long, slow stripe right up the seam of me, from opening to clit. His mouth is so hot and wet, and the sight of his dark hair between my legs and his eyelashes against his cheeks is so utterly erotic, that I gasp in shock.
When Vincent lifts his head, there’s a proud gleam in his eyes.
“Like that.”
I don’t have it in me to make a witty comment—or to rocket launch myself into self-consciousness about how I must look at this angle or what I taste like. The world has narrowed into one small point of light. My whole face is hot. Even my neck and chest are on fire.
“It’s your birthday,” I say, a weak attempt at a joke. “Shouldn’t I be giving you a gift?”
“Believe me, Holiday. You are.”
And then he ducks his head and seals his mouth over me. I let out a shuddering breath and grab one fistful of the duvet beneath me. My other hand knots into Vincent’s hair while he works his jaw like he’s kissing me. Or like he’s trying to devour me. It’s hard to tell. His tongue traces laps up and down, swiping inside and then flicking at the bundle of nerves that makes my right hamstring tremble.
Vincent moves his tongue and slips one finger inside me. It goes in so fucking easily. If I weren’t halfway out of my mind right now, I might blush at the soft, slick pop of him sliding in right to the second knuckle. But it’s not enough—not even close—so I rock my hips up, seeking more friction, more pressure, more anything.
Vincent grunts and pulls back to say, “Greedy.”
“Stop teasing,” I demand, giving his hair a sharp tug.
Vincent’s answering groan tickles against the inside of my thigh. “I just want to make sure I’m not hurting you.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
That does the trick.
Vincent slips a second finger inside me. The stretch is glorious—just enough to pinch a little, just enough that I really feel it when he spreads his fingers inside me, pressing on opposite walls and stretching the muscle, testing it. I groan and let my head fall back, eyelids fluttering shut.
“Okay?” Vincent asks.
“Mmh.”
“Good girl.”
A strangled laugh rips out of my throat.
“What?” Vincent says. “I thought you wanted me to keep talking.”
I press my lips together. I’m not going to admit that those two words do . . . things to me. Vincent knows. He can feel it. And I can hear in his voice that he’s teasing me.
“I said talking was good. Not dirty talk. Dirty talk is—”
He withdraws his fingers almost all the way, then thrusts them back in at a new, better angle.
“—cheap,” I croak.
“So, you don’t want me to tell you how hot and wet you are?” Vincent asks, feigning innocence. “You don’t want me to say that you’re dripping? That I can’t wait for you to ruin my sheets? And I definitely shouldn’t tell you how tight you’re gripping my knuckles and how fucking sweet you taste, right?”
I open my mouth, fully determined to tell him to fuck off.
What comes out instead is a low and throaty moan.
“’Attagirl, Holiday.”
Vincent pumps his finger in slow, terrible strokes and presses his face to the inside of my thigh, kissing my skin and mumbling words of praise that I barely catch over the sound of my own pounding heartbeat and the wet little squelches coming from where we’re connected. I press my heels into the mattress and clench down. Vincent groans, his movements stilling before he shifts his weight and starts pressing harder, faster, and razes his teeth over the tender skin on the inside of my thigh.
I let out something like a strangled laugh, because this just isn’t fair. On the few occasions that I’ve tried fingering myself, it’s been a waste of effort—I just end up sweaty and underwhelmed, my hand cramped and back aching from contorting myself in a sad attempt to reach something. To make it feel the way romance novels have told me it should feel. I just figured I was one of the many women who prefer clitoral stimulation to penetration.
I thought I knew myself.
But I guess I was wrong, because when Vincent’s fingers curl and bump against a tender spot inside of me along my front wall again, I nearly come on the spot.
“That,” I gasp. “Do that again—”
The words are barely out of my mouth before Vincent’s fingers are back against that front wall again. But this time, his other arm loops around my thigh, anchoring me to him, and the heel of his palm lands on the tender skin between my pubic bone and my belly button. He presses down.
My muscles flutter, my abs contract, and my hips buck up against Vincent’s hands. But he holds steady, an immovable wall of muscle and bone. I’m pinned. I have nowhere to go. And there’s a tide rising in me, threatening to wash me right over the edge of something enormous and a little bit terrifying. I grab at Vincent’s wrist, not sure if I’m trying to pull his hand away (to tell him that something is building and that the magnitude of it scares me) or if I’m trying to hold him closer (because I think I might actually kill him if he stops what he’s doing).
“Don’t fight it,” he murmurs. “You’re okay.”
“Vincent,” I say, and it’s a warning—or maybe a plea. I can’t tell.
“I’ve got you, Kendall,” he says. “Come.”
He presses his mouth to my center again and sucks hard.
The knot inside me pulls tight and, in one burst, comes undone. My eyelids flutter. My mouth falls open. I dig my fingernails into Vincent’s skin and hair, tensing involuntarily as I gasp for air. And then the pressure moves through me, like a wave in a storm, leaving behind slack muscles and oversensitive nerves. I shiver and sob beneath him, but Vincent doesn’t let up. He keeps pressing, pumping, sucking at me until I’m pressing at his head and begging, in a mess of words I can’t even untangle, to have mercy.
The mattress dips and bounces, and then Vincent’s up above me again and pressing a kiss to my mouth. I’m too dazed to do anything but mimic him, my tongue clumsy and my breathing still quick. When he pulls back to look at me, his eyes—the warmest shade of brown—are sparkling with something like triumph and wonder.
I feel more than pretty.
I feel like the fucking main character.
And now there’s a new hunger growing in me, sparked by that flush of confidence.
“My turn,” I demand.
Vincent barks out a laugh. “You just had your turn.”
“Not what I meant.” I shake my head. “I get to touch you now.”
Vincent props himself up on one hand and uses the other to push the hair back from my sweat-dampened forehead. “This isn’t a favor-for-a-favor kind of thing, Holiday.”
“I don’t think you’re listening, Knight.” I reach one hand between us and grab the waistband of his jeans. “I. Want. To. Touch. You.”
He swallows hard. “Well, since you’re begging—”
I let the heel of my palm brush his erection through his pants. Vincent’s smug smile disappears and his chin tips back, a low groan rumbling in his throat. It’s deeply satisfying to know I’m capable of wiping that smirk off his face. I want to make him come undone too.
“Who did you say was begging?” I ask.
And I’m a little bit giddy with power now, because I can do this. I can be the girl from the romance novel—except it’s real, and I’m me, and it’s not all in my own head.
“Pants off,” I command.
Vincent nods and reaches for the front of his jeans. I’m glad the boy can take directions, because if I don’t see his dick (cock? penis? I’m undecided) in the next six seconds, I think I’ll combust.
But I barely hear the soft metallic hiss of his zipper when he tugs it down, because outside, in the hall, there’s the thundering echo of footsteps—like a herd of cattle stampeding—and loud laughter. It grows closer and closer, and then there’s the jarring sound of someone pounding on a door.
On Vincent’s door.
“Knight!” a voice I recognize as Jabari’s shouts from the other side. “It’s bar time! Get your ID and let’s roll.”
The doorknob rattles—still locked, thank God—and I am suddenly and painfully aware of the fact that I’m halfway naked in Vincent Knight’s bed, underneath him, face flushed, chest heaving, in the afterglow of what might very well be the best orgasm of my life, with my hands reaching out for his still-hidden dick.
So honestly? Fuck the basketball team.
