Burn: A South Beach Bodyguards Book (9 page)

“It’s my business because it’s my job and because my father cares about your mother.”

That was the sound of all my delusions shattering. “How long am I going to be stuck staying at your place?” I asked, flustered. I went for an overnight bag from my closet. I hoped it was not going to be longer than a night because I was really uncomfortable with the entire situation.

“A couple of days.”

That wasn’t so bad. I could survive that. Part of me wanted to just call my mom and put a stop to the whole damn thing, but then a second part of me wanted to be around Ryan. I couldn’t help it. That wasn’t even the drunk Julia side of me. It was my true self, the one who had noticed that Ryan was loyal, hard working. The one who I wanted to climb him like a tree and find out for myself what it was like to have a man deep inside me.

In other words, the daydreamer who spent far too much time analyzing statistics at school, and not enough time talking to guys.

Also, I couldn’t lie. I was the girl who couldn’t watch horror movie or crime TV and I didn’t read suspense novels. I freaked myself out too much and wound up sleeping with the lights on. The thought that I could be in danger, crazy as it may seem, was terrifying when I allowed myself to think about it.

“Do you need help?”

“No.”

“This used to be my room,” Ryan said.

I knew it was his room. That’s why I had chosen it. It had made me feel like I knew him in some way. That we shared a secret. My bedroom wasn’t particularly representative of me. I’d left the blue paint intact and hadn’t removed his belongings from the bookcase and walls. He had walked out after high school and left everything behind and I had just moved in around it, adding my own artwork and personal photos to the walls next to his sports posters and bikini models.

“I know.” I pulled my drawer open and grabbed a couple of tank tops.

Ryan fingered a baseball trophy on the bookcase. “You could have packed all this stuff up and tossed it or given it to my dad.”

That made me stop what I was doing and forget all my embarrassment. “Why would I throw out your stuff?” I asked, astonished. “These are your memories.”

Ryan pursed his lips and flicked the signed photo of a former Miami Dolphins quarterback. Dan Marino. The quarterback with the perm. I had to admit, I wouldn’t mind taking that down.

“I don’t know,” Ryan said. “Because this is your room now, not mine?”

“If it bothered me, I would have picked a different room. I don’t like blank walls. I like clutter. History.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “You’re a sweet girl, do you know that? I suspect that you are sometimes underappreciated by people.”

That made me flustered. “I don’t know about that.” Unable to look at him, I just went back to my drawer, pulling out some panties and some yoga pants.

“Did I leave condoms in that dresser?” he asked.

Yes, he had. They were still there. “I found some and threw them away. They were expired.” I wasn’t sure why I lied. I just didn’t want him to think I was weird. Because I was feeling pretty weird.

But I was also a terrible liar, as bad as Ryan was. The two of us could never go Bonnie and Clyde, clearly. Ryan came over and moved in beside me. His presence was overwhelming as usual and I started to shift away but he put his hand on my waist and lightly restrained me. It only took him a second of fishing around in the drawer to find a row of condoms, which he held up.

“I can’t figure you out,” he said.

“You don’t have to.” I smiled at him. A tight-lipped repressed virgin smile, which was what I was. It seemed fitting.

“Why didn’t you just toss these or use them?”

“Because I don’t need them.”

“You can still get an STD even on the pill.”

“Oh, my God, why are we having this conversation?” I asked, mortified. “You’re not my father. Don’t worry about it.”

“But tell me you use condoms.” He was frowning at me. Hell, he was glaring. “Seriously. I just want to hear you tell me you’re being safe.”

“I’m a virgin, Ryan. I don’t need condoms.”

For a heartbeat, there was no reaction. His jaw worked, like he was seeking words, but couldn’t settle on any. His brows furrowed. Finally, he said, “What do you mean?”

That actually made me laugh. “What do you think it means? It means I haven’t had intercourse. Hashtag no penis inside of me.”

“But… you’re twenty-one years old.”

Suddenly I felt on more even footing. His astonishment was amusing. I didn’t go around telling people I was a virgin, but those who knew usually reacted pretty similarly, but they hid it better. Ryan looked like he’d taken a two by four to the face.

“I know how old I am.”

“And you’re beautiful.”

That gave me pause. “Thank you,” I said, touched. There was sincerity in his voice. I wasn’t beautiful. I never had been. My face was too round, my features just a little disproportionate. Like I’d told him, I had more of my father in me than my mother, and while my dad was a decent man, classically beautiful he was not. It worked on a man. On me? Not so much. I wasn’t ugly, just… unusual. “But you don’t have to be ugly to be a virgin.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I just don’t get it. But it’s not any of my business.”

“It’s not,” I said. Yet I felt like I needed to explain. I wanted to explain because Ryan factored into my thoughts and feelings and life over the last eighteen months. He didn’t know that and maybe I needed to let him know that, just a little. “But the truth is, I just never met the right guy. I didn’t date in high school. In college there have been a few guys but no one that I wanted to be that… intimate with. Maybe that doesn’t make sense to you, but it does to me.”

None of the guys I had dated had made me feel like Ryan did, and I knew that was ridiculous, but there it was.

He ran his hand over his face. “Fuck, I feel like such a dirtbag.”

That startled me. “Why?”

“Because for the last eighteen hours all I’ve been thinking about is screwing you to within an inch of your life. I told myself there was no fucking way I could touch you. Now I know there isn’t.”

My nipples hardened. My inner thighs grew damp. Now it was my turn to be at a loss for words. He had wanted to have sex with me? That was the most awesome and amazing and unbelievable thing I’d ever heard in my whole life. Yet he was restraining himself? What nonsense was that? “Are you sure you can’t?” I asked.

Because what he didn’t know was that what I was really waiting for was him.

And I wasn’t saving myself for marriage. Just for the right moment.

Maybe that moment was sooner than I’d thought. Saliva was thick in my mouth.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Of course I’m sure.”

“I’m not.” Then while I was trying to work up the nerve to say something or do something to entice him, he swore and chucked the condoms into the wastebasket next to the dresser.

“What do you mean?” he asked, his voice tight, eyes intense.

“I mean that I want you to.”

He reached out, like he was going to touch me, and I leaned toward him, aching with the need to have Ryan’s hand on me. But he stopped himself.

“Isabel. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

That made me bristle. I was tired of being treated like a child. No one seemed to have noticed that I had grown up, you know, like four years ago. “I may be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. I know what I’m saying.”

“What are you saying?”

So he wanted me to spell it out. Fine. I never thought I would have the chance. I wasn’t going to let it pass me by. I might never get another opportunity to tell him how I felt and what I wanted.

“I want to have sex with you. I have for at least a year.”

“I thought you said you weren’t stupid,” Ryan said, looking frustrated.

I lifted my chin. The words were out there, and I couldn’t take them back, so I had to follow through. “I have a four point oh grade point average.”

For a long, agonizing moment, he didn’t say anything at all.

But then Ryan said, “Fuck it.” He put his hand around my waist. “Come here, you sexy little brainiac.”

I
wasn’t going to have sex with Isabel. I couldn’t, no matter how hard my dick was and how much I wanted to bury it inside her. It would be literally the worst thing I could do to a person who deserved better than me. But I could kiss her. Just one, never-to-be-repeated taste of her lips beneath mine. Then I would be done and she would come to her senses and realize I wasn’t worth her time.

Tugging her body closer to me, I studied Isabel’s face. She was so beautiful, her dark eyes big and expressive, with such thick eyelashes. Her mouth was full, plump, her smile a little crooked, revealing a single dimple. I brushed my thumb over it. She shivered beneath my touch.

The plan was just to drop my head, have a brief, fleeting, platonic, kind of, kiss. But of course that wasn’t what happened. We locked eyes, and I swear to God, the fucking tile floor cracked and shifted under my feet. It was a look I had never seen on a woman’s face and it was so beautiful, so sexy, that my intention to keep distance between us evaporated. It was gone. Forgotten.

She was already up on her tiptoes, meeting me, head tilted back. Her mouth parted, opening for me. If she were flirty or smirking, I could have resisted. But this, who the fuck was I kidding? Just one real kiss. That’s it. Then no more. So I helped raise her up even further, and I bent to eliminate the remaining distance between us. She was already reaching for my neck, sliding her hands over my shoulders.

Then my mouth was on hers, and we were kissing. There was nothing tentative on either of our parts, and damn it, she tasted just as good as I could have imagined. Her lips were full, soft, sweet. She sighed and opened her lips further so I could take her harder, deeper. It gave me an unexpected jolt of hot, pulsing desire. I didn’t get hard from one kiss normally, but this was different. The chemistry between us was undeniable, explosive. It was a sexy, craving kiss, and I squeezed her waist harder. I shifted my legs, so I could bring her closer into me, feel her body fully, her breasts brushing against me.

I wanted to scoop her up and take every inch of Isabel with my tongue, and make her mine. If I licked it, it would be mine, right? And no one else could have her.

It was that thought that brought me back to my senses. I broke off the kiss and set her away from me. She fell down off her toes, dropping six inches and out of my range, thank God.

She smiled at me. “That was better than I was expecting.”

“Me too.”

“So let’s not stop.”

She reached her arms up again but I just took her by the wrists and kept her firmly a foot in front of me. “We’re not taking this any further. You know we can’t.”

I expected petulance. Maybe even pouting. She had displayed quite a bit of that in the last eighteen hours. But she just gave me a smile. It scared the living daylights out of me.

“What?” I asked.

But she just shrugged, that smile still tugging at the corner of her mouth.

That was the look of a woman planning something. I didn’t know how to drive home the fact that it was a one-off, that I was not going to cave. I just wasn’t. “Isabel, I’m not kidding.”

“Did I say anything?”

“No.” Now I was thoroughly confused. “But you understand, right?”

“I understand everything.”

The hell she did. “You think you know me. You don’t fucking know me.”

But she just smiled again. “I’ll just finish packing. I don’t need much.”

What the hell did that mean? I was afraid to ask.

It became pretty damn obvious when she bent over and fished the condoms out of the wastebasket and checked the expiration date on the package. “Oh, yeah, these aren’t any good. We should stop at the store.”

I felt my jaw drop. “Isabel. That was a kiss. I’m not having sex with you.”

“But I want you to.”

“I want a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean I should do them.” Like her. I should not do her.

She blinked at me like it was all so obvious. “I want you to be my first. I promise I don’t expect anything afterwards. I don’t want to date.”