Page 5 of Love Without Control

I smiled at the picture of the six of us. We looked like a rainbow. Juli and I were in the middle with our lilac and sky-blue bikinis with matching sarongs. The twins were to the right of me in red and orange, and Arya and Holly sported yellow and lime-green on the other side of Juliette. The sun had already set, but our faces were lit by the flames of the big bonfire on the sandy beach.

I was the shortest of the group, a fact that was even more apparent when I stood next to my best friend, who was statuesque. Arya was the same height as Juli, but she had smaller boobs and hips. The Papadopoulos sisters, on the other hand, had enviable curves for days, while Holly looked like a badass motorcycle chick with her spiky hair and tight muscles beneath her dark skin.

After shooting off the picture to my dad, I stuck my phone in my bikini top and joined the ongoing party.

The deejay began playing “Hips Don't Lie”by Shakira, and our little group hit the dance floor, which was actually just a flat area of sand set about thirty feet from the shoreline. There was much bouncing and booty shaking as one song bled into another.

“I’m parched,” Arya yelled over the music five songs later. “Let’s get some drinks.”

The half dozen of us skirted around the deejay booth that was on a raised platform near the stairway leading to the resort.

“Hey, you ladies need some drinks?” a man asked. He was holding a tray of plastic cups and held it out to us.

“Oooh, I want the pink one,” Juliette said, reaching for the beverage, but I grabbed her wrist to stop her.

“No thanks. We’re going to the bar,” I told the guy. He was short and stocky with sandy-brown hair, and his lips turned down when we strolled past him.

“Why are we going all the way to the bar when he had drinksright there?” my best friend asked, peeking over her shoulder as I dragged her away.

“He could have put something in them,” Emersyn informed her.

“Right, and he was wearing a yellow polo like the staff here, but it didn’t have the resort’s logo on it,” I added. “That seemed shady to me.”

“You mean, like, he may have put drugs in the drinks or something?” Juli asked, her guileless aqua eyes rounding. “I didn’t know that was really a thing.”

“Definitely a thing. Don’t ever take a drink from anyone except a bartender.” I was going to have to keep an eye on my sweet friend. She’d grown up in a small town in Texas, while I’d grown up partying in New York City, so I was aware of the dangers. I would never forgive myself if something happened to her.

“What can I get you ladies?” the cute bartender asked as we approached the tiki hut that was strung with chili-pepper lights.

I leaned over the bar. “First of all, there’s a guy on the other side of the deejay booth trying to give drinks to girls as they pass. He’s not wearing the staff shirt with the logo we were told to watch for.”

The man squinted into the distance before pulling a walkie-talkie from his hip and speaking into it. “I’ve alerted security,” he told me, hooking the device back on his hip. “Thanks for letting us know.”

“No prob. Can we get a round of margaritas?”

We were having so much fun. We’d each had three frosty margaritas, and our entire group had let loose on the makeshift dance floor. The normally reserved Arya had her sarong tied around her head like a scarf, moving her body sinuously as we danced to a cool mashup of “Promiscuous” by Nelly Furtado and “SexyBack” by Justin Timberlake.

A pair of warm hands encircled my waist, and I spun to find a dark-haired guy with a sexy grin and no shirt. “Hey, gorgeous. What’s your name?” he asked with a slight Spanish accent. He had a snake tattoo winding down one bicep.

“Evie,” I told him, draping my forearms over his shoulders.

“Evie what?”

“Business.”

His dark eyebrows rose. “Your name is Evie Business?”

“Yep. My middle name is Nunya.”

The man threw back his head and laughed. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Evie Nunya Business. I’m Felipe.”

We danced to the rest of the song, and then I backed away, throwing him a friendly wave as I made my way over to my friends. Everyone was covered with a fine sheen of sweat from the heat of the night and the nearby fire, and Mady was holding her mass of dark locks on top of her head.

“That guy was cute,” she commented.

“Yeah, he was,” I told her. “I’m going to the bar to get a bottle of water. Anyone else want one?”

Everyone raised their hands, and Holly decided to walk with me. “You having fun?” she asked me once we passed the stacks of speakers and the noise level subsided a bit.

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