Page 72 of Night Shift

“Oh, come on. Don’t tease me.”

“Forget it, Kendall,” he says on a groan, pitching forward and burying his face against my neck like he wants to hide. “Please forget it. I just want to kiss you. Kissing you is more than enough.”

He tries to catch my mouth again.

I grab the collar of his jacket and twist it around my fist.

“Vincent. What do you want?”

“You. On your knees.”

The admission, delivered in the ragged voice of a man fighting for his life, sends a shot of heat straight between my legs.

Giving a guy a blow job always seemed like something I’d eventually have to learn how to do—sort of like how I knew I’d eventually go to the DMV to get my driver’s license, or eventually take a nice piece of clothing to a dry cleaner, or eventually file federal and state taxes. A rite of passage. A chore. Something adults just did because they had to. But I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t thought about it since meeting Vincent. Not my taxes—a blow job. I’ve wondered how he would taste. How he would feel in my mouth. What he’d look like standing above me and if he’d ask nicely or grip my hair and take what he wanted.

So, yes. I’ve thought about it. In great detail.

And as I let my eyes drop down to the erection straining against his fly, I realize I’m about to do something that will make Nina and Harper lose their fucking minds when they inevitably ask me how my weekend without them went.

Because yeah. I want me on my knees too.

I hook my fingers through Vincent’s belt loops and twist us around until he’s the one with his back to the bookshelves.

“Holiday,” he says warily, “what are you . . .”

But he knows. He definitely knows, because when I reach up and start gathering my hair to twist it up in a low bun, he swallows hard and looks at me like he’s been stranded in the desert for weeks and I’m an oasis. It’s both deeply flattering and incredibly inconvenient, because I’m pretty sure the way my stomach just clenched means my underwear is going to be soaked.

“We’re celebrating your birthday.”

He lets out a strangled laugh. “Fuck off.”

“That’s my line. And keep your voice down.”

Vincent watches with equal parts horror and wonder as I slide the hair tie off my wrist and then smooth my palm down the back of my head, checking that I haven’t missed any pieces.

“I didn’t mean right now, Kendall.”

“Why not?” I challenge.

“This is a bookstore. People come here to read.”

It’s a bucket of ice water on my red-hot desire. Just because I let him eat me out at a party doesn’t mean Vincent is totally cool with the threat of accidental exhibitionism. He’s right. Our local bookstore definitely isn’t the place for me to be so overcome with lust that I throw common sense to the wind. I need to respect his boundaries—and not wanting to get arrested for public indecency is a pretty reasonable one.

I won’t take it personally if Vincent turns me down right now. I won’t.

“Do you want me to stop? Or do you want—” I gesture vaguely at his crotch.

“No.”

Brutal.

“That’s fine!” I hold my palms up in concession. “Completely understandable. Yeah, no, I totally get it. Sorry, I just got a little carried away with—”

Vincent catches my chin between his thumb and forefinger.

“Holiday,” he says very slowly. “No, I don’t want you to stop.” The naked desire in his eyes is enough to end me—because he wants this, wants my lips wrapped around his cock—but what really does me in is when he adds, solemnly, “But only if you want to.”

I laugh in his face.

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