My answer was interrupted with a low groan and the frat guy’s lips smashed back onto mine with a lot more enthusiasm than before, his tongue immediately darting back in my mouth.

Soft hair, smelling of wood and forest, tickled my nose as his face pressed against mine almost to the point of pain. He moaned with each strike of his tongue and delved deep like he was devouring the best dessert in the world—I couldn’t do anything but reciprocate.

My hands lifted to wrap in his hair—long, soft hair—and I tangled it into my fists, earning a wicked, hard growl as we grappled with each other to get even closer.

I had no idea how long we kissed, but I thought my heart would leap out of my chest the longer it went on.

He controlled, I obeyed, and we both basked in each other’s embrace.

The moment I felt one of his hands move to ghost down my neck, somebody yanked on my shoulder and the hand cradling my face slackened.

“Enough! What the hell, Rome? Get off her, now!” Shelly trilled, her voice sounding remarkably like nails scratched down a chalkboard.

My blindfold was tugged from my eyes and when the cover of darkness dropped, Rome was before me—as in right before me, the tips of our noses almost touching. He was dressed in the same clothes as earlier, ignoring Shelly pitching a fit beside us, and staring at me with an expression of blatant want.

“Hey, Mol,” he rasped, all the time glancing from my eyes to my swollen lips and back again.

“Hey, you…” I whispered back, unable to find any other words in my frazzled brain.

Rome leaned in once more, like gravity pulled us in, and my chin instinctively tilted in response. Shelly reached for Rome’s arm, jerking him back several feet, but still, he did not break our strange little staring contest.

“Hey!” she screamed sharply and slapped his cheek with considerable force. That got his attention and earned reactive gasps of shock from everyone in the room.

Dropping his repositioned hands from my face, Rome grabbed her wrist, gently but firmly, and spoke through gritted teeth, a terrifying sneer on his face. “Don’t f**kin’ hit me. Ever. Again.”

Shelly’s eyes widened at his harsh and threatening warning while others in the room stared at me like I was a science experiment gone wrong.

“It was mint,” I blurted out, Shelly whipping her neck to face me. “Rome tasted of mint. That’s what you wanted, right, for this ridiculous initiation task?” Even to my ears, my words sounded ice cold as I stared Shelly down, trying to dissipate the crackling atmosphere that had descended over the room.

Rome’s hard, angry gaze focused on mine, and I momentarily lost my breath. No one had ever made me feel like this before and I began to panic at my unfamiliar attraction towards him.

His mouth tightened into a hard line and his nostrils flared as if he could smell my intense attraction. “She’s right. I’d just chewed gum.”

Ripping his arm from Shelly’s hard grip, Rome pushed her back, swiftly turned, and left the room with a hard slam of the door.

After several tense seconds, the rest of the frat guys followed suit and that only left the gawking pledges and sorority sisters regarding me with a cocktail of impressed smirks and astonished expressions.

Lexi and Cass came barrelling over, excitement radiating from their wide smiles. Lexi held my hand and squeaked, “Molly, do you know who that was?”

“Yeah, it was Rome. I met him earlier today—he’s in my Ethics and Philosophy class.”

Cass snorted. “Hell yeah, it’s Rome, but he’s more than just a student, Molls.”

“Okay?” I replied, confused.

Lexi leaned in. “Molly, he’s a senior and, just so you know, completely unattainable. He’s standoffish, all moody and dark, but more importantly, he’s the friggin’ starting QB for the Tide!”

“Official statistics—six foot three, two-hundred and thirty-five pounds of solid muscle!” Cass added excitedly.

“He’s a what? For who?”

Cass recoiled and placed her hands on her bulging chest like I’d just cursed out the pope. “He’s the star quarterback for the Crimson Tide.”

“Oh, I noticed that was written on his shirt. It’s an American football team, right?”

“Right? RIGHT? Ain’t they got football in England?”

“Yeah, but it’s the kind we play with a round ball. Soccer, you guys call it. That and rugby, cricket, tennis. We don’t play American football, at least not professionally.”

“Sweet baby Jesus… I can’t imagine life without football. No tailgates, BBQs, or hot dog stands. Life would be unbearable.”

“I was brought up by my grandma in a small mining town in the north of England. Her idea of fun was knitting scarves and playing chess. Then I went to Oxford where I studied twenty-four-seven for my bachelor’s degree. Excuse me if football didn’t play a huge part of my life!” I tried to joke but felt the familiar anxiety start to rise in me at just the mention of my old life. I choked it down before it overwhelmed me.

Lexi waved her hand dismissively. “Fine, we’ll clue you in. Romeo Prince is the starting QB for the Tide—the football team here at UA—and he’s definitely heading to the NFL at the end of the year. He was expected to go for the draft twice already, but for some reason decided to stay on and finish college before hitting the big time. You, Molly Shakespeare, have just publicly made out with the most desirable guy on campus. A guy that never commits to anyone. A guy that other guys are shit scared of and girls would gladly give up a lung for.”

“Yeah, you lucky bitch!” added Cass, with a gentle punch to my arm.

My blank face must have hinted that I still didn’t understand the true impact of what’d just happened.

Cass dramatically rolled her eyes. “Let me put this in a way that you can understand. You, Kate Middleton, have just kissed the Prince William of The University of Alabama and possibly all of American collegiate football.”

The penny finally dropped.

“So Rome is kind of a big deal around these parts?” Their huge grins showed me that sentence was massively understated.

“Romeo Prince. He’s a bit intense, isn’t he?” I stated quietly, remembering his uniquely addictive taste, his possessive hands on my face, and his deep growls of satisfaction.

“Intensely f**kable! You wanna see him on the football field… Christ, it’s something! He loses his cool, a lot, kicks the shit outta folk when they get in his way, but girls kinda dig that moody thing and he’s f**kin’ sex on legs—cut, gorgeous, tan. Shit, I almost came just thinking ‘bout him!” I grimaced at Cass’s crudeness. She simply shook her head at me in dismissal. “But he couldn’t get enough a’you, girl! I thought he was gonna rip off your clothes right there on the spot! He nearly decapitated Mac when he went to kiss you. When he shoved him to the floor, the murderous look on his face was scary as shit. I got chills!” She held out her arm and rubbed it to demonstrate.