Page 73 of Night Shift

And then I drop to my knees.

“Tell me what to do.”

Vincent blinks down at me with the kind of baffled expression I’m pretty sure he’d be sporting if I started reciting Chaucer in the original Middle English. I wait for him to catch up, fidgeting with one of the buttons on my cardigan impatiently, but it’s like he’s stuck, buffering, staring down at me with a half-open mouth and wide eyes. I sigh. It would appear that I’m on my own down here. That’s fine. I can definitely get his jeans unbuttoned without a user manual. After that, we’ll just have to take it one step at a time.

The sight of my hand approaching his crotch seems to jolt Vincent back to reality.

Lightning quick, he catches my wrist.

“Wait.”

I’m fully convinced he’s about to drag me back up to my feet and tell me he’s changed his mind about the whole thing, but then he drops my hand and shrugs off his jacket. I wait patiently as he folds it up, crouches in front of me, and offers me his shoulders for balance while he tucks the makeshift pillow under my knees one at a time. They’ll probably bruise anyway. I don’t really care—but I’m touched that he does.

“Such a gentleman.”

Vincent shakes his head as he stands to his full height again. “I’m not thinking like a gentleman right now.”

“Tell me what you’re thinking, then. What do you like? What feels good?”

A weak laugh rips out of his chest. “You could literally just look at me and I think I’d come in my pants, Holiday.”

This earns him a blush and an eye roll.

“Seriously, though,” I say, wiggling into a comfortable kneeling position, “give me some tips. I want to be your best.”

“That . . . wouldn’t be hard.”

I look up at him, eyebrow arched in question. He looks down at me, fully blushing.

“I’ve only ever done this drunk,” he admits. “It’s usually not great.”

“Like this specifically? A blow job?”

I’m proud of myself for saying the word in an even voice.

“Yeah,” he says. Then, quieter: “But also . . . the rest of it.”

I keep staring at him.

Vincent groans and scrubs his hands over his face, like he can’t believe I’m making him say it.

“I’ve only had sex drunk, Kendall.”

Unbelievable. For the better part of a month, I’ve agonized over the fact that I told him (in a horrible burst of panic-fueled oversharing after mauling him in the library) that I’d never kissed anyone sober. I still have to fight back a full-body cringe every time I think about the breathy, nervous pitch of my voice.

“And you decide to tell me this now?” I demand, thoroughly offended.

Vincent’s lips twitch. “Well, it feels relevant.”

“It was relevant a while ago!”

But even as I say that, I realize I’m not upset he hasn’t told me until now. Not really.

“Hey, I wasn’t totally sober on my birthday,” Vincent says, echoing the argument I’ve already made for him in my head. “I had two shots before you got there. I might not have been drunk, but I wasn’t technically sober, either, so what was I supposed to do? Tell you it was my first time eating pussy while slightly tipsy?”

I will not laugh.

And I will not be distracted by the way the word pussy out of his mouth makes me want to do unspeakable things to him.

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