Read WITHOUT YOU (STRIPPED) for Free Online

class last quarter. I guess you could say he’s a decent artist.” Her bantering tone elicits a grin on Billy’s pale face, and my hand bolts around her waist. He’s seen her pose nude on more than one occasion.
    Pain like a vise clamps my gut.
    “Babe…” I breathe in and out, and the sense that I can feel and hear my own heartbeat diminishes. “Why don’t you go get dressed.” It’s not a question, and my voice is a touch too hard.
    For a moment her eyes skim my face, looking like the same thought has crossed her mind, wondering why the hell I’m being an ass. Then without a word to me she turns, telling Billy she’ll see him in class next week, and disappears behind the door.
    “I better go, too,” Billy says quickly, an uneasy waver in his voice. He whirls back toward the row of classrooms. Halfway down the hall he tugs a phone from his pocket, scans the screen, and responds with a quick tap of his fingers. He slips into an office just as the door to Quinn’s room opens. She steps out: a duffle bag slung over her shoulder, hands on her hips, unsmiling.
    “Is this how it’s gonna be now?” she says. “I get a job, and you’re a jerk about it?”
    Ignoring her question I scoop her into my arms, drop a kiss onto her cheek. “Nice to see you, too.”
    “God, Torrin. I’m serious.” She pushes out of my grip and tugs at her shirt. “What was that about? And since when did you become the jealous boyfriend?”
    I shift on my feet and sigh, rubbing the back of my neck where residue from the earlier tension still lingers. I told myself I didn’t have a reason for showing up here unannounced, but somewhere deep in my conscience, I know there’s something that needs to be said to her. Just not here.
    With my finger, I brush back a thread of hair from her face and answer anyway, this response just as truthful. “Since I had to start worrying about what every guy is thinking as he watches you stand naked before them. As they scrutinize every inch of your body, beautify it, and keep it in a notebook where they can drool over it… any time they want.”
    She rolls her eyes, but a trifling grin betrays her look of annoyance. Which concerns me even more. She likes them looking at her?
    “That’s a bit farfetched. Artists take Hunter’s class because they want to learn technique, not so they can go gaga over the models.”
    “When I was a freshman, I wouldn’t have taken the class for that.” She lifts an eyebrow and I add, “Plus, I just watched some dude get all puppy-eyed when you were talking to him. And that fucking kills me.”
    “He’s just a friend.”
    “In your eyes,” I challenge and she blinks, taking a minute to let my words soak in. My fingers trail along the underside of her jaw as I step closer, lower my voice, and add, “Is it so horrible to want you all to myself?”
    Pink creeps into her cheeks, and her gaze falls to the dirty linoleum floor. I bring her hand to my mouth and kiss each of her fingers, watching how the hardened mask of her face softens each time my lips touch her skin. Over two months together and I can still recognize the very look that had me diving head first into a relationship with this girl.
    I lift her chin until she meets my gaze. “Come to the beach with me?” 
     
     
    ~*~
    “Have you ever had a moment in your life when everything was so perfect, so amazing that you wouldn’t change a thing?”
    A crinkle forms along Quinn’s forehead as she rolls onto her side and looks at me. I guess my words sort of came out of nowhere. Lying here on the sand, a breeze drifting over the Mexican blanket I spread out for us, we’ve both been rather quiet.
    With her fingernail, she presses a grain of sand into the red and black loops of thread and answers in a cautious tone. “Yes.” Most likely the thought of a time when her sister was alive and her parents had money accompanies that word. I nod, continue softly so the cluster of tourists sitting on the sand