Ah, crap.

"Good," he repeated. "So the scene we're improv-ing is at the end of the play. Othello is confronting Desdemona. We'll start by reading the actual lines. I've copied them onto the scripts for us. When I ask if you've prayed, that's your cue to improv. Then try to stick close to the plot, but make it work in today's language. Got it?"

Sadly, I did. "Yes."

"All right. Let's start."

And then, just like I'd watched so many times before, Erik Night stepped into the character of someone else and became that person. He turned so that he no longer faced me and began saying Othello's lines. I noticed that he'd dropped the script and was speaking from memory:

It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul; let me not name it to you, you chaste stars, it is the cause. I'll not shed her blood, nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow . . .

I swear he changed physically, and even through my nerves and the mortification I could feel building inside me because I knew this was bound to become a very public, very embarrassing scene, I could appreciate his amazing talent.

Then he turned to me and I could barely think above the pounding of my heart when he took my shoulders in his hands.

. . . I know not where is that Promethean heat that can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd thy rose, I cannot give it vital growth again, It needs must wither. I'll smell thee on the tree.

Then, utterly shocking me, Erik bent and kissed me on the lips. His kiss was rough and tender--passionate with anger and betrayal, yet it seemed he didn't want to take his lips from mine. He made me breathless. He made me nauseated. He made my head spin.

I soooo want to be his girlfriend again!

I pulled myself together as he spoke the lines that cued me to begin mine.

I must weep, but they are cruel tears. This sorrow's heavenly, it strikes where it doth love. She wakes.

"Who's there? Othello?" I glanced from my paper to Erik, blinking my eyes and trying to look like his kiss had been what woke me up.

"Ay Desdemona."

Oh, jeesh! I couldn't believe what my next lines were! I gulped, which made me sound all breathy. "Will you come to bed, my lord?"

"Have you pray'd tonight, Desdemona?"

Erik's handsome face had gone all tense and scary, and I swear it wasn't much of an act for me to look freaked. "Ay, my lord," I read the last lines of my script quickly.

"Good. You'll need to have a clean soul for what's going to happen to you tonight!" he improvised, still looking like the Othello who had been driven insane with jealousy. "What's wrong? I don't have a clue what you're talking about." Improvising to this wasn't hard. I'd forgotten about the class and all the watching eyes. All I saw was Erik as Othello, and I knew Desdemona's fear and desolation at the thought of losing him.

"Think hard!" he ground between clenched jaws. "If there's anything you're sorry for, you need to ask for forgiveness for it now. Nothing will be the same for you again, not after what happens tonight."

His fingers were digging into my shoulders so hard that I knew they were going to leave bruises, but I didn't flinch. I just kept staring into those eyes I knew so well, trying to find the Erik in there that I hoped still cared about me as my forgotten script fluttered from my numb hands.

"But I don't know what it is you want me to say!" I cried, trying to remember that Desdemona was not me. She hadn't been guilty of anything.

"The truth!" he stormed, his eyes looking wild. "I want you to admit just how much you betrayed me!"

"But I didn't!" I could feel tears stinging my eyes. "Not in my heart. I never betrayed you in my heart."

Erik's Othello blotted everything out of my world--Heath, Stark, Loren. There was only him and me and the need I had to try to make him understand that I hadn't wanted to betray him. That I still didn't want to betray him.

"Then your heart is a black, shriveled thing, because you absolutely did betray me."

His hands began to slide from my shoulders up to my neck, and I knew he could feel my pulse that pounded there like a frantically fluttering bird. "No! The things I did were mistakes! I broke my own heart, not just one time but three times."

"So you would break mine along with yours?" His fingers closed around my neck, and I could see that there were tears in his eyes, too.

"No, my lord," I said, trying to hold on to some part of Desdemona. "I just want you to forgive me and--"

"Forgive you!" he yelled, interrupting me. "How am I supposed to do that? I loved you, and you betrayed me with another guy."