Page 33 of South Beach Bodyguards

“What do you mean?”

“Forget my place or yours. Let’s get a room at the Fountainbleau.” I’d never even been inside the hotel and I had no idea how expensive it was, but fuck it, I would bill it to Mickey for the job. Isabel deserved the night to be special, momentous. Any girl who had waited until almost twenty-two to have sex, then asked me, of all people, to rid her of her unwanted virginity, should at least be pleased she hadn’t waited any longer. Part of me felt like at this point, she could just wait until marriage, but then I wondered what kind of asshole expects to marry a virgin, when you know he wasn’t one. I didn’t want Isabel with a guy like that.

I wanted Isabel with me, in the luxury of an iconic hotel. Tonight.

“What?” she laughed. “Ryan, that’s crazy! We can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because… we’re not on vacation. We live here.”

“So? Famous people do it all the time. Let’s go have dinner, hang out at the pool, sit on a balcony and watch the ocean. We can’t do that at either one of our places. We can order room service in the morning.”

She looked intrigued by the idea. “That sounds expensive.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, like I was some total baller. A hiphop star, a drug dealer, a mob hitman. “I’ve got it.” Technically, I probably could afford it. I didn’t spend a lot of money, because my needs were pretty damn simple. Protein, vegetables, beer, and new multi-packs of gym socks a few times a year were about the extent of it beyond rent and my car. “I want to do this.”

“But…” Isabel looked like she knew she should continue to protest, but didn’t quite have it in her. She wanted to go with me.

“Please?” I leaned over and kissed her sweet lips. “Pretty please?”

I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist that and she didn’t. She sighed. “This is crazy.”

“What’s crazy is how we ended up laying here on the beach. Taking this to a hotel isn’t really that nuts in the grand scheme of things.”

She gave me a faint smile. “True.”

I had never been one for fantasies. It made real life to hard to stomach. I was the guy who stayed grounded, who kept my nose to the grindstone and did what I needed to do. I was satisfied. Fantasizing, daydreams, they all created hope that I couldn’t afford, because what was going to change? Nothing. I liked my life. I liked my job. There was no need to crave things I couldn’t have and make myself miserable.

But for once, I was going to make an exception. I was going to play the game. Pretend to be someone else, with a different life, a money man with a beautiful girlfriend. There was no harm in one day. One night.

“So why Julia?” I asked Isabel. “Do you remember anything at all about last night?”

I knew the whole drunk-name thing from Brandy, but I wanted to hear it from Isabel. I was still trying to pick through who she really was. What was real, what was not.

“Julia is my alter-ego,” she admitted. “It’s a joke Brandy and I use when we go out. But I don’t remember anything, just a hazy memory of walking around eating pizza.”

Naked. She had been eating pizza naked. Rolling onto my side, I propped my head up with my arm. “You’re beautiful,” I told her. “And you have no idea how sexy you really are.”

“Oh, my God, stop.” She shielded her eyes and shook her head slightly. “You don’t have to flatter me on top of everything else, Ryan. You’re already doing enough.”

Cursing my stupid comments in front of Alejandro, I decided to shut the hell up and just go with my strengths. I wasn’t a big talker. Never had been. I was the strong, silent type. I let my muscle and my actions speak for me and trying to be all poetic or romantic or whatever wasn’t my style. I couldn’t score points trying to get to know her, or giving her flattery. I sounded like Rocky on his awkward-as-hell first date with Adrienne. Since Isabel loved movies so much, she had me thinking in movie metaphors.

No offense to Rocky’s wife, who came into her own, but Isabel was way hotter than Adrienne was back in the day. She had been solid in nerdy librarian territory, and somehow looked forty when she was eighteen. Whereas Isabel dimmed her sexuality by her shy demeanor, but she could never hide that banging body or her beautiful face. She didn’t think she was as attractive as her mother, but Kim had an overblown beauty that was perfect for pole work. But Isabel had a sweeter beauty. Tiny nose, proportionate features, delicate lips that were a natural fullness.

Lips without fillers. That I wanted to kiss. Since I had no clue how to be romantic with my words, I just reached out and cupped her cheek with my big, clumsy hand. It enveloped the whole side of her face. I didn’t think much about my size most of the time other than just to acknowledge that it was a fact, but with Isabel, I felt clumsy and huge, yet at the same time grateful that I was so much bigger than her. It made me feel intensely protective of her and turned on by the fact that she was so feminine, so petite, next to me. I studied her face, watched the way she realized what I was going to do, and swept her eyelashes downward, in the sexiest modesty I’d ever seen.

Isabel was a mystery to me, her brain a well of thoughts and emotions she kept to herself, but I knew one thing for damn sure. She wanted me.

So I covered her mouth with mine, lightly, then pressed harder, taking the kiss deeper. Isabel responded eagerly, opening her mouth for me, and without much thought for where we were, I teased my tongue between her lips, wanting to taste her. She gave a sigh, and her hand gripped my bicep. There was something about her enthusiasm, her total lack of hesitation, her openness, that drove me crazy. The kiss got heated, and I got hard. Pulling her over on top of me, I sank back into the sand and enjoyed the feel of her body sprawled over mine, all those curves and warm skin pressing against me, as we continued to kiss, more fervently now.

Her belly was against my cock, and it wasn’t satisfying at all. It was almost worse than being nowhere near her, because it was not nearly enough. I wanted to take, to thrust, to nudge, to rub. I wanted to use it the way nature intended and right fucking now. She broke off the kiss, gasping for air, her eyes glassy. My sunglasses had been knocked off kilter and I took a deep breath, fighting for control. She was going to destroy me. I wasn’t going to walk away from this shit with a bounce in my step whistling. I was going to be left wanting more. If I had an ounce of common sense, I’d pull the plug on this right now.

But how could I do that to Isabel? I couldn’t.

More to the point, even knowing I would regret it, I couldn’t stop myself.

“Pack your stuff up,” I said gruffly. “Let’s get a room.”

---