Love Me Like A Rock Read Free Page A

little brain, and the small but vocal conservative contingent on campus had taken up the anti-obscenity cause with relish.
    “God, I’d hoped it would die down over the summer. As if life drawing sessions are even vaguely controversial. Artists have been using them to learn for hundreds, thousands of years! And that guy is the pervert for sexualizing them. He should check his own motivation for showing up to creep on some poor model who’s probably just working for beer money.”
    Now Austin felt distinctly uncomfortable, because he’d definitely been doing some perving of his own during their session tonight.
    The model did it first!
    Oh great. Austin had a hard enough time keeping his inner five-year-old from running the show on the outside. He had no chance against him inside his head.
    The model looking at you was not a sign he wanted you. Or that it was okay to stare at his dick for an hour.
    He wasn’t going to feel bad about this for long. Austin didn’t believe in flogging himself for shit his brain thought. He wouldn’t have time for anything else in that case. If it stayed inside his head, he let it go without much more than a mild oh, Austin —a phrase that was surely a leftover from a childhood full of scoldings for making yet another mess somewhere he wasn’t supposed to.
    “I can’t believe he was encouraging students to show up and protest our sessions for being obscene. Total nonsense.”
    “College students. Always up for a protest.” Austin rolled his eyes with exaggerated effect until Knapp laughed at him. “Just say the word and I’ll show up with my boyfriend and give them something really obscene to look at.”
    Which was more wishful thinking than anything, because Vinnie wasn’t his boyfriend and hadn’t shown any sign in the seven years they’d been friends of wanting to be, but it made Knapp laugh.
    The soft slap of a pile of fabric caught his attention as Knapp waved to him on her way out the door. The heavy terry robe the models were given had fallen off the corner of the screen where Sean must have hung it up.
    He tried to keep his footsteps silent as he went over to retrieve the robe, because there was nothing creepier than hearing someone you didn’t know walk up to the angled M of the privacy screen when you were naked behind it.
    “Hello?” Sean’s voice filled the room from behind the screen, bigger than Austin would have imagined now that the room was empty of everyone except the two of them.
    Whoops.
    Nothing creepier than hearing someone walk up on you except maybe hearing someone trying to do it with sneaky silence.

Chapter Two
    “Just gonna grab the robe. Hang it up.” He kept his voice brisk. Not husky. Not thick with the wondering just how naked the model still was, a couple of feet away. He could smell something pepperminty and warm and wondered if it was Sean.
    “Sorry.” Sean’s voice was a low rumble that Austin felt in his balls.
    “No worries,” Austin said, and left the robe hanging on the wall hook meant for it. He didn’t even try to peek around the edge of the privacy screen, which was a triumph of frigging willpower if he’d ever had one.
    Get your shit and go. This is only revving your motor because Vinnie’s been such a distant prick lately.
    Which wasn’t exactly fair, because his best friend was almost always a distant prick, which was how Austin automatically defined someone who didn’t pay enough attention to him when he wanted. And between crew practice and races, the eternal stick up Vinnie’s butt about studying, and the pressure from his parents, Vinnie rarely had enough free time to pay as much attention to him as Austin wanted.
    It wasn’t Vinnie’s fault necessarily, but Austin didn’t feel like being generous when he’d been back on campus for a month without getting laid.
    “Lock the door when you head out, okay?” he called and hustled to the far side of the room without listening to hear if Sean answered him.
    But at