Page 44 of Rebel Romeo

“How much is it?”

“Over six-thousand for the year.”

“Christ.”

“For my half.”

“Seriously?” My eyes bugged out as I looked around her small dorm room. “So without that discount they’re getting upwards of twelve grand a pop for these shoeboxes?”

Another nod.

You could literally rent a pretty decent apartment off-campus for that price.

“Anyway… I just wanted you to know I’m not selling my um, you know, for tequila or diamonds or anything like that.”

“I didn’t think that,” I said quietly. The tears that brimmed in her eyes nearly cracked my heart into a million pieces. “You seem more like an emeralds girl, anyway.”

Her mouth popped open briefly before she smacked my shoulder. The hit was way less hard and way more playful than the slap in the face I’d earned after cornering her in the alley after the party. “Sapphires for me, thank you very much!”

“Noted. Sapphires. Like your eyes.”

Joking aside, I knew that for a girl like Katherine to sell her panties and to send videos of herself to me, she must have really, really needed the money. Stepping forward, I cupped her jaw, dragging her gaze to mine. That plump bottom lip of hers popped free from her teeth and I skimmed my thumb across it. “Were you at least a little happy to discover it was me buying your panties?” I asked, my voice rough and graveled.

I loved the way her eyes widened. The way her lips parted. The feel of her soft skin against my hands.

The pink of her cheeks deepened, desire softening the irritation of her pretty little mouth. “Yes,” she exhaled. “Happy… and relieved.” Then, with a gulp, she whispered, “Would you think less of me if I said I liked it a little?”

“Never.” I leaned in, then at the last minute, I turned my head, brushing my lips against the shell of her ear. She shuddered in my arms making my cock immediately hard.

She pushed me to arm’s length, clearing her throat. “We should probably, um…” Kate said, backing away from me and pointing at her script. Then, taking a seat on her futon, she curled her leg under her and lifted a leather binder from the table beside her, opening it. As I lowered myself to sit beside her, I peeked into the binder. Meticulous pages of her script were printed on large font within the covers of the three-ring binder. It was impeccably tidy, with a pink highlighter marking her lines in perfectly straight rectangles and tabs marking the pages.

Seeing how organized Kate was only displayed how messy and imperfect I was. My script was curled in my hands, the cover already torn. There was a muddy boot print on the inside cover where I’d dropped it on the floor and Duncan had stepped on it.

“Ready to get started?” she asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Forty minutes later, we’d gone over the party scene at least a dozen times, and I could finally recite those damn lines without stumbling all over the words.

Kate stretched, her t-shirt edging up over her belly and revealing a strip of impossibly smooth-looking skin.

“You’re doing well,” she said, smiling at me through her stretch. “With a little more practice, you might almost be as good as Leonardo DiCaprio.”

I gave her a doubtful look. “Like… in Titanic?”

“No. Like in Romeo and Juliet.” When I didn’t react, her jaw dropped. “Oh, my God. Have you not seen the sacred Baz Luhrmann Romeo and Juliet?”

“Uh, no. I’ve seen the truly sacred DiCaprio movie…”

Her eyes squeezed shut. “Please don’t say?—”

“The Departed.”

I chuckled when we both said the movie name at the same time. “See? So, you know. It’s fucking amazing.”

She sighed. “I wouldn’t know.”

My jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me? It’s worth seeing for the acting alone. Well, except for Nicholson’s terrible Boston accent. Ignore that.”

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