Page 15 of The Casanova Complex

My grin seems to further her annoyance, and she exhales roughly before gathering her books and pushing them to the opposite side of the table, where she sits with her backpack and pulls her laptop back out. Her gaze snaps back to mine. “Did you actually hear anything that I just said?”

I nod. “Of course I did. The project’s important, and I have to be on my very best behavior. Got it.”

She casts me one last withering look before looking down at her laptop. While she’s tapping away at the keys, I watch her, dragging my eyes over that choker around her neck, along the pale, creamy swell of her tits, which are gathered together while she types. The deep purple polish that’s chipping along her nails as if she’s been biting them, the stacks of rings covering her slender fingers. There’s a thick, shiny silver ring on her index finger that she’s running her thumb along, spinning it in circles, over and over.

I think it’s some type of fidget thing, but in ring form.

The way she’s focused on her computer, her gaze fixed to the screen, it seems like she’s doing it absentmindedly.

Out of habit.

I wonder if it’s something she does when she’s nervous.

Am I making her nervous?

My stomach dips as I bite back a grin by gnawing on the inside of my cheek.

I want to ask her about it, but I think she’d probably impale me with a pen, so I don’t.

“Stop staring at me,” she mutters, never taking her eyes off her computer.

I laugh. “I’m waiting for instructions.”

Only then do her pretty brown eyes meet mine, followed by a sigh. “I’m not holding your hand with this, Legros. You’re a big boy.” When she sees me smirk, she rolls her eyes. “See what I mean about being serious? I need someone who’s going to hold their weight in a project this big and complex.”

“Woah.” I hold my hands up in surrender between us. “I am being serious. Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. No questions.”

For a beat, she stares at me, and I can practically see the wheels turning in her head.

She’s probably thinking of a hundred ways to kill me, or at the very least to try and get a new partner.

“Did you even read the email Professor Hart sent?”

“Uh, well, not… entirely. Just that you were my partner and the email for us to meet. I was in the middle of a team workout.”

I can see the distaste on her face as she rolls her eyes yet again before glancing back to her laptop and typing. Then she grabs a small lime-green sticky note pad from her backpack and scribbles something on the top of it before turning it toward me and pushing it across the table.

“There.”

I look down at it, and my brow furrows. “What is this?”

“That,” she says, “is the book you need to read in order to write your point of view for the novella we’ve been assigned.”

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

“It’s only five hundred and fifty pages or something, and you’re in luck—they have a copy available here on campus, so you can start today,” she adds.

My eyes nearly fall out of my head.

Five hundred fucking pages?

You’ve got to be kidding me.

“Yeah… no,” I say, shaking my head. “There’s no way I have time to read this.”

Merritt arches a brow. “Then make time.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s a CliffsNotes version somewhere online on some AI site that’ll sum it up quick. I’ll find it and read that instead. Easy. Or wait, is there a movie? That would be even better.”