WITHOUT YOU (STRIPPED) (6 page)

“And?” The fear, it’s there in that one tiny meaningless word. The awareness that I could strip away what we have with whatever comes out of my mouth next. I lock my eyes onto hers, my stare solid and unwavering.

“I didn’t feel anything. And hated every second of it. Then I pushed her off me, told her I didn’t want her, and went home.”

“Your text last night… Saying I was your everything—”

“Wasn’t because I was feeling guilty. It was because I missed the
hell
out of you.” I close the gap between us and reach for her hand, bring it to my lips. “I know yesterday was a special day, I understand that now, but it kinda sorta killed me that you didn’t call after that. Worse, there was a tiny part of me that thought you’d given up on us.”

Rolling her wrist, she slips her hand from mine and strokes my cheek. “I didn’t think I could hold it together long enough to talk to you. Because they were the sweetest words anyone’s ever said to me.”

And then we’re kissing.

April 20th

“Come.”

Quinn’s lips pull back from mine, her golden-brown eyes constricted and crinkled at the edges. “Excuse me?”

“On. I meant come
on
,” I say, chuckling at the utter shock on her face. I guess that did sound a bit vulgar. I tow her out of her desk chair. “Grab a sweater. We’re going out.”

She tugs out her ponytail, long hair spilling over her shoulders. God, she looks sexy when she does that. My fingers twist in her shirt, the heel of my palm pressing into her bare stomach. The smoothness and warmth of her skin seeps clear to my bones. I don’t know what’s gotten into us. Apparently, losing ourselves in each other is our fucked-up way of avoiding the one thing we should be talking about: the internship.

Her back arches into me, and I dip my head to the crook of her neck, drowning myself in her intoxicating scent.

“Where are we going?”

My mouth moves along her neck, hand tangles in her hair. “Mmm, not telling.”

“I hate when you try to surprise me.” She attempts to pull back, surely with a look of disapproval warping her face, but my grip tightens and she goes nowhere. I smile against her soft skin.

“This I know.”

~*~

“You could’ve just told me we were coming to your place.”

“Oh, we’re not going to my place. Yet.”

I park in the lot behind Merriam Hall and pull a bottle of champagne from behind the passenger seat. Quinn raises an eyebrow. Smiling, I shove the bottle into my backpack and climb out, the cool evening air replacing the stuffiness of the car. “We’re celebrating today. Zoe’s twenty-first.”

“Torrin.” My name is a warning; Quinn’s way of saying
please don’t do this
, and I refuse to let her suppress the pain of her sister’s death any longer. She’s grown a lot in the few months we’ve known each other, talking about life when her sister was alive instead of running from it, but old habits die hard and I know this will probably be challenging for her. 

I round the front of my car, grab her hand and tug her off the front seat. Bending to her level, our lips millimeters from touching, I say, “You said it’s what she would’ve wanted—champagne instead of flowery cake. Don’t fight it, Quinn. We’re celebrating, and you’re going to enjoy yourself, and there will be no sulking because this is not a pity party.”

Unenthusiastically, she smiles, and I drop a kiss onto her mouth.

“C’mon.” I take her around the waist and guide her east of Merriam Hall toward the gymnasium where the entrance should be. “The Blazin’ Bluegrass Festival is calling our names.”

Her steps slow. “Bluegrass Festival? Are you kidding me?”

“I kid you not.” I nudge her forward. “Complete with clogging, arts and crafts, and a corn hole tournament—which sounds a little kinky to me, but whatever attracts the community, right?”

That elicits a giggle from her.

Out from the shadows of my dorm, the festival comes into view. A small stage erected on the grass in front of the library, booths and stalls encircling out from it with large, colorful signs for every type of carnival-like food imaginable: kettle corn, cotton candy, smoothies, and barbequed chicken legs. After I pay the six dollar entrance fee for her and show my student ID to get me in, we make our way to the grass field and find a sunny spot off to the side of the stage.

She watches as I yank a small blanket from my backpack and spread it out. I sit, then pat the stretch of fabric in front of me. She lowers her back to my chest, fitting perfectly in the nook between my legs, and I didn’t realize how much I wanted to be touching her until the weight of her is pressed in to me.

I pull two Burger King cups from my backpack, cough loudly as the cork on the champagne is popped so those on blankets and towels surrounding us won’t hear, which makes Quinn laugh again. No sadness, yet. So far so good. 

I fill our cups to the rim, emptying the bottle completely, then return it to my backpack.

“Happy birthday, Zoe,” I whisper into Quinn’s ear as I place the cup in her hands.

She sits up and looks over her shoulder, eyes on mine. A moment of silence between us, the musical melody of banjos and fiddles filling the air.

“Thank you,” she says, cupping a hand to my cheek. “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve someone as attentive as you.”

If I was attentive I would’ve picked up on the way she pulled back a week ago. Realized it was about her instead of selfishly assuming it had something to do with me and my life.

I kiss her palm and change the subject. “Do you remember her last birthday?”

Returning her back against my chest, she sips her champagne. On the stage, the banjo’s melody slows and a man with a harmonica steps up to the edge of the platform, cheeks puffing and pulling with a fast-paced tune. 

“Is it horrible I don’t remember any of Zoe’s birthdays except one?”

“Tell me about it.” I take a swig of champagne, the fizziness snapping at every nerve in my face.

Quinn swallows another sip. “It was her sixteenth birthday. She didn’t want a party, and insisted a group of her friends go shopping at the mall instead. Typical teenager, right?” The cup lowers and rests on her stomach. “I begged to tag along because what annoying little sister wouldn’t? My mom dropped us off and as soon as we were out of the parking lot, Zoe stripped off her sweatshirt and started prancing down the middle of the mall in a bright blue tube top.” She leans her head back on my shoulder, the scent of sweet champagne lacing her words. “A fucking tube top! My parents were really strict about what we wore back then. Anyway, that entire afternoon I watched my sister become this person I had no idea she was. Flirting with boys, pocketing the sample lip glosses from a store’s makeup counter. At the end of the day, right in front of everyone, she walked up to one of the boys she’d talked to and kissed him—a complete stranger. Later that night when I went in her room to ask about it, where she got the guts to kiss him, I found her staring out the window with a lifeless expression on her face. At the time I chalked it up to exhaustion, after being excited all day about finally being allowed to drive a car…” Quinn sets her cup on the grass and rests her hand on my thigh, swirling tiny circles with her finger. “Now I know it was her disorder. You know, the manic and depressive moods?”

Finding out about her sister’s bipolar disorder was a shock to us both last spring. Her parents had only known for a few months before Zoe took her life with pills and never told Quinn. Since then, she’s remembered a few instances where she was witnessing the disorder. 

“Her friends never picked up on the manic behavior?”

She shakes her head. “The girls she hung out with weren’t exactly her friends. They just wanted to jump on the popular-girl wagon.”

I smooth my hand over her hair and lower my voice, erasing any trace of sarcasm. “I was kind of expecting a cake, balloons, creepy clown sort of story.”

“I told you, she wasn’t a birthday cake kind of girl.”

Her words trail off to the wheeze and whine of an accordion. For a moment we watch the spikey-haired woman push and pull the ends of the instrument into a rhythm that matches the harmonica. A few minutes pass and the song comes to an end, summoning a dull applause from the sprinkle of bodies on the lawn.

“Maybe this should be the birthday you remember,” I say. Before she can spout a word I grab our cups, haul her off the blanket, and lead her back toward the pathway that swoops behind the library and in the direction of the gym.

“Babe.” She stops. “What about our stuff?”

“I doubt anyone’s going to steal an old backpack and empty champagne bottle. More help to me if they do, anyway, so I won’t have to come back for it.” I return her cup to her hand, tap the rim of mine to hers with the word “cheers,” then chug.

“Jesus, you’re crazy,” she mutters, but does the same. Blinking against the rush of bubbles, laughing, we toss our cups into the trash and continue up the path to the gym. I hold open the door to the gym and poke her hip as she enters. Even though the main door to the gym is unlocked, the one to the pool is not. I retrieve my keys from my pocket, locate the main key, and slip it into the lock. 

Quinn’s hands are on me—lifting my shirt, skimming up my back—before the echo of the lock clicks into the door. As one, we enter the pool room and as soon as I have the door shut and locked, I turn into her, covering her mouth with mine.

With a gasp, her lips separate and I kiss her deeper, holding tight around her head so she can’t escape. Her hands slide my T-shirt further up my chest and, though it almost kills me, I pull away. Having sex with her in the school pool was not my intention. I take a breath and internally shake away the heat building in every part of my body.   

“Let’s swim,” I say and remove my shirt. Quickly I slip out of my jeans, not paying attention to the smirk she directs at the bulge in my boxers.

“Here?”

“The door’s locked, there’re no windows and, besides, I doubt any staff member is going to be walking in when there’s a festival going on outside. I think we’re safe.” Then I take off and front flip into the six-foot deep Olympic-size pool. By the time I emerge, cool rivets of water trailing down the side of my face and neck, Quinn’s already standing in her purple thong and black bra with her flowered skirt and thin-strapped tank top resting at her feet.

Despite the temperature of the water, a hot rush darts to the lower half of my body. I’m not sure how I got to be with someone as stunning as her. 

The corner of her mouth lifts deviously, and then she dashes across the rubber floor mats and dives into the pool with a squeal. Adjusting the slight twist in her bra as she breaks the surface of water, she says, “You’ve gone absolutely out of your mind. Can’t we get in trouble for this?”

I ignore her question. Swimming during closed hours isn’t grounds for another suspension. No doubt Coach would be pissed if we were caught in here, but at the moment Quinn’s happiness is more important than Coach’s.  

Hooking my finger under the strap of her bra, I straighten the coiled material. “Name something you’ve never done before.”

“Uh, jump into a school pool with my underwear on?” Beneath the surface, her legs move in alternating circles to keep her afloat. Her body dips lower, water caressing her bottom lip, and I grip her waist then pull her to me. She straddles my torso, settling the warm spot between her legs just above the waistline of my underwear.

Shit, maybe I should’ve kept the space between us. 

I step back until my heels bump the edge of the pool. Her arms circle around my neck, fingers comb through the hair. A chill oozes down my spine and I pull her in tighter. Even if someone were to peek in the room, we’d go unnoticed because we’re tucked into the corner, heads below the lipped edge. 

“You’ve done that now. Name something else,” I say to distract myself from the little voice in my head that whispers
remove the rest of her clothes
.

She tilts her head, a small grin sitting upon her mouth. “What is this about?” 

I shrug. “If we’re going to make this birthday memorable, you need to do something you’ve never done before, no?”

Her gaze skirts over my shoulder to where two brown doors rest ajar. “I’ve never been inside a boys’ locker room.”

“Suppose I could help you with that.” Carefully, I lift her to the edge of the pool and pull myself up next to her. “Though, I was thinking something a bit more exciting than traipsing a sweat-stenched room.”

“I’m sure we can find more to do in there than
traipse
the room.” The seduction in her voice is met with a desirous burning in her eyes and, holy hell, I can’t stand up fast enough.

Our feet pad toward the darkened room beyond the door, Quinn in front of me, her barely-there thong taunting me with every step. Once inside, I flick on the lights and scoop my arm around her stomach. She lets out a squeal, but doesn’t protest when I lift her up and press her back against the wall.

My lips ravage her neck, her collarbone, the swell of her breasts. She arches into me, rolling her hips at the same time. My fingers itch to touch her as I remove her bra, letting it fall to the floor, and slide the triangle of damp material between her legs to the side, feeling her wet desire for me on my knuckles.

The right thing would be to stop and talk about the internship—our future and what we plan to do about it. But, like Quinn, I can be good at avoiding uncomfortable topics.

A swipe of my finger draws a delicious moan out from her mouth, and then I lose control. My fingers slip deep inside, thumb rubs circles over the sensitive spot above while she squirms and pants in my grasp. Holding back no reservation, I suck her nipple, flicking my tongue against the hard nub.

Her hands tangle in my hair, and I watch as her eyes roll back into her head and my name purrs off her lips. Little by little her body droops against the wall, a lazy grin on her mouth.

After a few deep breaths she opens her eyes, pinning me with a longing stare as she reaches between our two bodies and shoves the elastic band of my boxers lower, revealing the part of me she’s in search of.