I lean back and gulp in cool air, trying to get my bearings. Vincent takes the opportunity to duck his head and plant attentive kisses along my exposed collarbone.
He’s good at this. Suspiciously good.
“Do you make a habit of seducing women in libraries, or is this a new thing for you?” I want it to sound like a joke, but I’m sure he can hear the anxiety seeping into my voice.
Vincent presses one last kiss to the base of my throat before straightening to look at me.
“No,” he says, then amends: “I mean, I’ve seduced women, but never in a library. And that wasn’t what I was trying to do. I really do have a paper due Monday, and this stupid fucking brace”—he lifts his injured arm and lets it drop back to his chest—“is real. I sprained my wrist during summer training. It’s not just a bid for sympathy.”
I watch him through narrowed eyes. “Just sprained?”
“Fell on it coming down from a contested layup.”
“Hmm. The sling seems pretty serious.”
“My coach,” Vincent says tightly, “might’ve overreacted. He doesn’t want me to miss any more games than absolutely necessary.”
I press my lips together, remembering all the footage I’ve seen of him getting rough with the opposing team on the basketball court. The words bubble up into my mouth before I can think them through. “You sure you didn’t punch someone?”
Vincent sighs and tips his head back, eyes on the ceiling. “I take it you know who I am.”
“Just because I don’t go to parties doesn’t mean I’m completely out of touch with what goes on at this school.”
“Have you ever been to a basketball game?”
“No, but I saw the video of you breaking that guy’s nose last year.”
Vincent winces. “Not my brightest idea. That asshole had it coming, though.”
“What’d he do?”
For a moment, he seems surprised—like he expected me to preach about violence never being the answer.
“He said something he shouldn’t have.”
“To you?”
“No. To my teammate. Jabari.”
“Oh.” I frown. “Well, then you fucked up, Knight.”
“Really?”
“Yep. You should’ve gotten at least three more hits in before the refs pulled you off.”
Vincent cracks a slightly sheepish smile that does terrible things to my insides. His good hand drops to my shoulder. I wonder if he knows that I feel electric sparks of pleasure every time the pad of his thumb traces my collarbone.
“Seems unfair that you know my name and I don’t know yours,” he murmurs.
I didn’t realize until now that my anonymity was a comfort blanket. I could give Vincent a fake name, of course, but something about lying to him makes my stomach squirm with guilt.
“It’s Kendall,” I offer quietly.
“Well, Kendall,” he whispers, my name soft in his mouth, “this sling isn’t a pickup tool, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I bite back a smile. “I didn’t think it was. It’d be kind of a lame pickup trick. I don’t know how you could properly ravish a girl against a bookshelf with only one good—”
The only warning I get is the twinkle of mischief in Vincent’s dark eyes.
And then he wraps his good arm around my waist, beneath my cardigan, and lifts me up off the ground. I let out a humiliating squeal of surprise and throw my arms around his neck, one hand clutching at his hair and the other tight around a handful of his shirt. I’m not a small person. I’m not built like the heroines who get tossed around in bedrooms and called cute or feisty. Despite the width of Vincent’s shoulders and the impressive circumference of his biceps, I’m a little terrified shit could hit the fan very quickly.
“That was a joke. I was joking.”
“And I’m not.”
He shifts his hold on me. I feel fingers digging into my hip, just hard enough to hurt in the most glorious way. Maybe I’ll bruise. I don’t know why the thought of it thrills me.
“Do not drop me,” I warn.
“You know I could squat lift you, right?”
The firm curve of his ass against my calves is proof enough of his claim.
“I’m just saying.”
Vincent laughs, his hot breath feathering over my skin. “Just give me a minute. At least let me try to act smooth. I promise I’ve got you, Kendall.”
My name in his mouth makes me needy all over again. Vincent must be able to tell, because he steps forward until I feel something hard behind me—a bookshelf. It’s bolted to the wall, so I know we probably can’t knock it over, but it still feels precarious to be pinned against it with nothing but open air under my feet.
This is all very dangerous.
“What were you saying,” he murmurs, “about me ravishing you up against a bookshelf? Because I think it’s clear I’m more than capable.”
Giddiness floods my body. I duck my head so my lips brush his ear.
“Prove it,” I whisper.
Vincent doesn’t laugh, but there’s a rumble in his chest—low and suspiciously like a growl—before he surges forward to kiss me again. This time, it’s not so gentle. Our mouths meet with a hunger that makes my belly twist.
He can’t be real. It’s the thought on loop in my head as Vincent’s hips roll against the cradle of mine. Where did this boy come from? Because it’s so fucking fun to have a little verbal warfare with him and read my favorite poetry and then make out against the wall, and I can’t believe I’ve made it almost twenty-one years of my life without feeling this way. My brain is going fuzzy at the edges. My world has collapsed to this: Vincent’s solid and warm body, his hands cradling me, pressing me closer while his mouth—
Something hits the ground to my left with a heavy thud.
I jolt back from Vincent like I’ve been shocked.
It’s a book.
I must’ve knocked it off the shelf. I’ll have to figure out where it came from so Margie doesn’t have to—
Oh, fuck.
Margie.
It’s definitely been fifteen minutes by now, which means there’s a very real chance she’ll come up here to reshelve some books.
I tap Vincent’s arm frantically. “Put me down, please.”
He does so immediately.
The moment my feet are on the ground, I shuffle around him and put a few feet of space between us. His good arm falls back to his side. In the absence of the heat of Vincent’s body, I’m reminded just how arctic it gets in this library, but I resist the urge to wrap my cardigan tight around myself and burrow into it. I will not hide. Not when Vincent’s standing in front of me with pink cheeks, kiss-swollen lips, disheveled hair, and a dazed expression on his face.
I did that, I tell myself. I made a mess of him.
My roommates would scream if they could see me now. Harper and Nina have given me shit for years about being the homebody, the reasonable one, the mom friend of our group. Tonight? I’m unrecognizable. Out of my mind. Fully out of character.
“I told you,” I say with a calmness I don’t actually feel, “I’m not afraid.”
Vincent’s lips twitch. “Fair enough.”
His voice is low and hoarse in a way that makes me feel wobbly. But I need to be more pragmatic. I’m on the clock. There’s a supervisor who might come looking for me soon. And what next? Lose my virginity to a boy I’ve just met in a dark corner of Clement’s only twenty-four-hour library?
Logic and reason are cruel bitches.
I smooth down the front of my shirt and clear my throat. “I should really get back to work. But if you want to follow me to the front desk, I can help you check that book out.”
I take a step backward. Vincent smiles, but it looks a bit like a grimace.
“I’ll meet you down there,” he says. At my curious stare, he motions to the crotch of his pants. It’s dimly lit, and his joggers are black, but I catch the outline of an impressive erection tenting the fabric. “I need a minute.”
My face flushes. “Oh. Oh, right.”
It feels like I should say something else—something to acknowledge the gravity of what just happened—but there’s too much to cover. I don’t even know where to start.
I don’t look back as I leave the stacks, because if I do, there’s a good chance I’ll go running back to finish what we started.
At the top of the stairs, I hesitate before veering off down the hall to dart into the women’s bathroom. The girl who looks back at me in the mirror over the row of sinks is a stranger—eyes wide, lips pink and puffy. A strangled laugh bubbles up in my throat. I have to be dreaming. I did not just make out with Vincent Knight. In the library. During my shift. After some (apparently very erotic) live reading of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
What do we do now? Like, am I supposed to ask him out? Does Vincent Knight even date? Or is this going to be a casual thing where he comes to the library during my night shifts and we come up with a million different ways to defile each section? Maybe that’s too presumptuous of me. Maybe this was a weird, onetime thing. A moment of passion that we’ll laugh off before we part ways.
I don’t know what happens next. I’ve lost the fucking plot.
My hands shake when I reach out to turn the tap on and pat icy cold water on my overheated cheeks. Minutes pass—I don’t know how many, since I don’t have my phone on me—but my body doesn’t seem to want to cool down.
I need to meet Vincent at the circulation desk.
So why aren’t my feet moving?
“Shit,” I say aloud. The word echoes down the line of empty toilet stalls. I meet my own eyes in the mirror again and realize, with startling clarity, that Vincent might’ve been right.
Maybe I am a coward.
• • •
After finally mustering up the strength to emerge from the girls’ bathroom, I hurry down the stairs and head straight to the circulation desk, my shoulders hunched with shame. Margie is back, shuffling books around on one of the small rolling carts we use for reshelving.
There’s no sign of Vincent.
“Did the printing go okay?” I ask.
Margie nods. “Poor kid has a career fair in the morning and couldn’t figure out how to get the right margins on his résumé.”
I hum sympathetically.
Margie heads off with a box of East Asian literature she wants to relocate to a display on the other side of the atrium. I scan the moonlit tables there for any sign of brown-eyed basketball players, then discreetly pull up the library’s checkout database on my computer.
There’s one new entry to the system: six minutes ago, Knight-comma-Vincent checked out Engman’s Anthology.
I slump back in my chair, the air in my lungs leaving in a heavy whoosh. He’s gone. He left while I hid in the bathroom like the coward he accused me of being.
If he wanted to, a voice in my head whispers, he would’ve stayed.
But he didn’t.
It’s probably for the best, actually. It would’ve been awkward to reconvene in the bright fluorescent lights here and try to pretend we didn’t just maul each other. And it would’ve been painful to trudge through small talk as we discovered that, once the thrill of being alone with a member of the opposite sex in a dimly lit corner of the library was gone, the two of us have nothing in common. I still don’t know anything about Vincent Knight—aside from the fact that he’s an obscenely tall basketball player who hates English classes and has a mouth made for kissing.
He probably won’t remember my name by next Friday. I’ll be just another wild hookup story that he tells his teammates about over rounds of beer pong or in the locker room after practice. Because that’s what nonfictional men do: disappoint you.
So, really, I should be thankful that he left without saying goodbye.
Wrapping my cardigan even tighter around myself, I reach for The Mafia’s Princess, still face down where I stowed it on the desk. The naked torso on the cover feels like it’s mocking me. With a heavy sigh, I lean down and stow it in my backpack.
I’ve had enough romance for one night.
