Rock Kiss 02 Rock Hard(37)

“HEY, YOU MIND IF I grab this seat?”

Charlotte looked up from her book, her sandwich halfway to her mouth, to see the Boy. That was the name she and Molly had given him after spotting him on campus at the start of the semester.

He was blond, the kind of streaky, summer blond that came with hours in the sun, his skin always deeply golden. From a T-shirt he occasionally wore, one bearing the label of a local surf shop, Charlotte had deduced he was a surfer. He had the lean, muscled body for it too.

Today, he slid in on the other side of the table without waiting for her reply. “I’m Richard.”

His smile, it was like something out of the movies. His teeth were flawless, his lips perfect. Add in the chiseled jawline and the bright blue eyes, and he was the most physically perfect human being she’d ever seen in real life.

“Charlotte,” she managed to say, not quite daring to believe he was talking to her. Boys who looked like Richard did not talk to nerds like Charlotte unless they wanted to borrow lecture notes—and as far as Charlotte knew, she and Richard weren’t taking any of the same classes.

Then he said, “I’ve seen you in Introductory Accounting.”

That was a huge first-year course with hundreds in each lecture theatre.

Charlotte still couldn’t imagine how she’d missed him. “Oh.” She wanted to slap herself for the monosyllabic response—you’d think she’d have gotten over her shyness by now. “Did you want to borrow the notes from today’s lecture?” A whole sentence, she’d managed a whole sentence.

Shaking his head, he bit into an apple. “No, I was there. God, the prof drones on, doesn’t she? I call her lectures War & Peace & Accounts.”

Charlotte felt her lips tug up at the corners. “Yes.”

“So you want to get into accounting?”

“I thought I might, but it’s not me.”

When he smiled again, it was as if the sun had come out. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I’m taking first-year law too, but I don’t think I’m cut out for the life of a lawyer.”




CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD HAD ended up talking for so long that she’d missed her next class. It was the first time she’d ever played hooky. The fact she’d done it with the cutest boy she’d ever met had sent her skipping across campus after they finally went their separate ways.

Now, alone in her bedroom, Charlotte wiped away a tear. Not for Richard but for herself. She’d been so young, so naïve. She might have been a few months past eighteen, but she’d known nothing about men, not really. If things hadn’t gone so terribly wrong for Molly at fifteen, Charlotte would’ve learned by watching her best friend—Molly had always been the braver of the two of them. But Molly had changed after that awful year, boys far, far down on her list of priorities.

That was how Charlotte came to be the first of the two of them to actually have a serious boyfriend. While Molly focused on her studies, Charlotte fell dizzyingly for the beautiful boy who’d noticed the mouse in amongst all the butterflies. Unsure about her path in life and searching desperately for something to fill the hole left inside her by the deaths of both her parents two months earlier, she’d felt hope for the future. Maybe, she’d thought, maybe even shy girls with glasses got happy endings.

Molly had been so excited for her. They’d giggled in Charlotte’s bedroom as they picked out outfits for her dates with Richard, trying out different makeup looks they’d found in magazines or online. Things most girls did in high school. It had been fun and innocent and hopeful.

No one could’ve predicted the horror to come.

Taking a shuddering breath when her heart began to thump, Charlotte got up and went to wash her face. She could refuse to allow the memories to drag her under, but one fact she couldn’t avoid: she was still clueless about men. Richard had been a cruel boy under his golden looks, and she could rely on none of her experiences with him when it came to dealing with an adult male like Gabriel.

Should I stop?

The memory of his deep voice, his steely eyes holding her own, his big body so close to hers, it made her shiver. “No,” she whispered into the mirror, her heart in her eyes. “Don’t stop.”

The phone rang.

Her heart thumped again, this time in anticipation. For so long, late-night calls had been a cause for fear, but those memories stood no chance against the reality of Gabriel’s voice in her ear. “Am I disturbing you?”

Her thighs pressed together, her skin suddenly tight over her body. “No. Did you need something?”

“Yes.”

Knees weak at the way he said that, though she knew she was reading far too much into a single word, Charlotte sat down on the edge of her bed. “I’ll grab my laptop.”