Page 173 of The Night Shift

It was not the last time.

“Oh,god.” Holly’s sharp cry ricochets through my car. She grabs my hair, tugging it hard enough to make my scalp burn.

Outside, snow drifts in slow, lazy spirals, but here, everything is fever-hot. I’m on my knees, the seat shoved back as far as it’ll go. Not enough.

I bought this car because it was bigger, thinking we’d have more space. I was wrong. There will never be enough space for all the things I want to do to her.

“Harder,” I tell her. “Pull harder.”

She does.

A sharp sting burns across my scalp. I groan. My tongue flicks against her clit. I work her open, one hand gripping her thigh, mouth focused and unrelenting. She’s shaking, breathless curses falling from her lips — my name mixed in somewhere between “fuck” and “oh god.”

Things have been a bit off between us since last night.

We’ve had sex four times in the last twelve hours, and it’s been nothing short of spectacular. But Holly’s been the one initiating it. And it’s been throwing me off more than I’d like to admit, because this isn’t exactly normal behaviour for her.

For one, she’s supposed to hate me.

Okay, perhaps “hate” is too strong a word. She’s supposed to find me mildly insufferable. She’s supposed to smack me and stab me, yet ever since last night, she’s been looking at me like I’m the only solid thing in the world. She keeps reaching for me, tugging at my collar, pulling me close, and pressing her mouth to mine.

But once it’s over, it’s like flipping a switch.

The second we come down, she pulls away. No lingering touches, no soft murmurs. Just a quiet, deliberate distance, like she needs to reset — like whatever was driving her to reach for me in the first place has burned itself out.

I want to ask if she’s okay. I want to know how I can help, to tell her she doesn’t have to do this alone. That she can lean on me — not just when she needs to, but even when she doesn’t.

But I don’t. Because I know Holly.

Push too hard and she’ll get spooked. There’ll be no more Holly.

I push two fingers inside her, pumping them in and out, curling, teasing, coaxing more from her. She’s close. I can feel it. Her hips jerk to meet me. I graze her clit with my teeth and a soft, shattered whimper slips past her lips.

My head lifts just enough to see her and the sight nearly undoes me. Her free hand is clamped over her mouth, muffling the sounds I’m desperate to hear. Her cheeks are flushed, her lashes damp with the effort of keeping herself contained.

I push my fingers deeper. Holly’s breath stutters, her whole body tightening. I press a kiss to her inner thigh. “Let me hear you, love.”

She shakes her head, eyes squeezed shut, jaw clenched. Stubborn. Always so fucking stubborn.

I move my fingers faster. Deeper. Harder. I move them in a punishing rhythm until she finally loses her control to a string of moans and comes apart on my tongue. Her fingers grasp blindly at my hair, my shoulders, anything she can anchor herself to. “Fuck,Theo.”

Her head falls back against the leather seat, her mouth falling open in a breathy scream from the force of her orgasm.

My cock jerks inside my pants. Untouched and aching. A sharp pulse tears through me as I groan into her pussy, barely registering the mess I’ve made of myself, too caught up in the way her fingers are tangled in my hair like she can’t quite let go. I let her ride out her orgasm, dragging my tongue over her one last time just to feel her shudder.

When I sit back, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, she’s staring down at me, flushed and dazed.

I grin. “You’re so pretty when you come for me.”

She’s still catching her breath but somehow manages to roll her eyes. “Shut up.”

I press a slow kiss to her knee before sliding my hand underneath her arse to help her pull her pants back on.

I slump back into the driver’s seat, the taste of her still thick on my tongue. With my good hand, I reach into the glove compartment, grabbing a pack of wet wipes. It takes some manoeuvring, but I’m able to clean myself up. The used wipe gets sealed in an empty snack bag and tossed into the mini car bin.

Holly reaches for my belt. My hand snaps around her wrist before she can undo it. A small frown creases her brow. “Don’t you —”

“I already came,” I say simply.