WITHOUT YOU (STRIPPED) by Brooklyn Skye Read Free Book Online Page A

burning to get high and blows me in return.” Another inhale. Exhale. Then his eyes meet mine. “Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.”
    Andrew scrunches his nose. “Isn’t that chick like twenty-eight with two kids?”
    “Fuck if I know.” Dabbs smiles. “It’s not like she comes over to talk .”
    Just then a pair of arms wrap around me from behind. “Thought that was you,” a familiar voice says close to my ear. Soft and sultry, and very much not Quinn’s.
    Candace slinks around to my front, bare feet poking out from her skinny jeans, her full pink lips puffed out in her look-how-cute-I-am way. “Were you gonna say hi, or just ignore me like the last time?”
    Andrew’s brows draw up, his Oh shit, that’s your ex-girlfriend thought widening his already-sober expression. He knows her from before—the last time, as she’s referring to, when I realized I couldn’t play her ridiculous cat and mouse games anymore and left her at some frat party. Not by coincidence was it the same party Quinn found me, the same night she and I escaped to the bluff to mess around with my new camera. The night I understood the feisty, closed-off Quinn was maybe just a front and the desire to see what was beneath her hardened shell was too strong to ignore.    
    “Hi, Candace,” I say, looking over her face. I won’t lie; she’s pretty with blue-green eyes the color of sea glass and a smattering of freckles over her nose and cheeks. Her hair’s long like Quinn’s, only with choppy pieces that frame her face. 
    She steps closer and hooks her arms around my neck. Her breasts press tight against my chest, lips brush my ear with the words, “I’ve missed you, baby. Especially,”—one hand trails around my head, her fingertip skimming lightly across my lips—“These. On mine.”
    “Don’t bother, Candie,” Dabbs spouts from beside me. “He’s got a ‘sort of’ girlfriend.”
    Candace leans back, raises a perfectly-shaped eyebrow. I take the moment to reach behind and unclasp her hand from my neck, nudge her back into her own personal bubble.
    “Hm,” she huffs out. “A sort of girlfriend? Is that what I was?”
    Candace was a distraction, a way to pass the time and help me forget about my suspension from the team. Sure we had fun for a few months, but there was no connection. Not emotionally, anyway.
    Pursing her lips, she eyes the beer in my hand. “Torrin, I need to get my vodka from inside. Come with me?”
    Candace is a normal college girl who likes to have fun. Not sneaky or a minx with a hidden agenda of seducing her ex-boyfriend. 
    “Yeah, sure,” I say, looking to Dabbs to see if he’ll rescind his “no one allowed inside” rule. 
    He lets out a huff. “Just stay out of my room.”
    Inside, through a remarkably clean living room, I follow her to a small office-like den where she shimmies closed the shutter doors, securing us off from the tendrils of reggae music drifting in from the front yard. Grounded in sage-colored walls and oak bookshelves with a bronze ceiling fan anchored in the center, the place is far from one’s typical bachelor pad. It actually has style, thanks to Dabbs’s mom who hired a decorator when the house was purchased.
    Candace pads across the room and from a small black cabinet beside the L-shaped desk, she pulls a fifth of vodka. She turns and grins, sweeping her hand over the glass bottle in game show fashion. “My juice of choice, as you might remember.”
    Ignoring her comment, I settle into the padded wingback chair in the corner of the room and take a swig from my beer. “I don’t know how you drink that stuff. It tastes like rubbing alcohol.”
    “Because beer is gross, tequila turns me into psycho-Candace, and whisky makes me throw up. This,”—she uncaps the bottle and takes a long pull ending on a slight recoil—“isn’t the best tasting, but it gets me drunk and happy.” She sets the bottle on the desk and lowers beside it. “So, Captain Kingsley, is