Free Firsts by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn Page B

baggage sometimes.
    It just so happens that Juan Marco Antonio is my very first exchange student. I learn this by looking him up on Facebook before he comes over, where I also learn that his home city is Madrid and he loves taking photos of himself. He isn’t in any of my classes, but I sense he is the target of much female attention, probably due to his newness and his sexy Spanish accent. So far, his relationship status shows that he is committed to this Isabella, even though I recognize her from my American History class last year and I’m pretty sure her real name is just plain Isabelle.
    “Isabella is like the sun that shines over me. I want to please her. Show me how.” He stares up at me from where he is already lying on my bed.
    This is the other thing that’s unsettling about Juan Marco Antonio. I find it extremely difficult to believe he’s a virgin and that he hasn’t tried to get Isabella into bed already. I wonder why a guy who looks like Juan Marco Antonio would need my help at all. He is beautiful, with molten chocolate eyes fringed by thick black lashes. And even if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, his accent alone should be enough to get him a girl. But he doesn’t want to get a girl. He wants to keep her.
    “I want Isabella to come back and meet my family,” he tells me.
    “One step at a time,” I say, slipping into my walk-in closet.
    I think the most unsettling thing about Juan Marco Antonio is that I don’t know how to read him. If I don’t know how to dress up for a guy at first, I almost always know by the time he has strung together a few sentences and made himself at home on my bed. But not Juan Marco Antonio. My trusty black negligee won’t do for him, and I don’t want to go the slutty cheerleader route for fear of offending his precious Isabella . Juan Marco Antonio seems too sophisticated for an oversized men’s shirt, and too foreign to appreciate boy shorts and a matching camisole.
    For Juan Marco Antonio, I might have to break out the leather. It’s my hardest outfit to get into but the one that has the best chance of making Juan Marco Antonio the hardest. Although that’s never really a problem for any virgin.
    But when I come out from the closet, he isn’t looking at me. He’s rummaging around in my nightstand.
    “What exactly are you looking for?” I half shout from across the room. Nobody looks through my stuff. Nobody .
    “I’m just searching for, you know, a rubber,” he says, turning to look at me. “Wow. You are so very beautiful.”
    I put one leg up on the side of the bed and bend over it, giving him a view of where my breasts are bulging out of the leather straps binding them in. I might not be able to read Juan Marco Antonio, but I’m banking on the fact that he will respond to the universal language of cleavage.
    And I’m right. His hands are out of the clutter on my nightstand and on my breasts in a second. Just when I think this might not be so bad after all, he has a very strange request.
    “I want to blindfold you,” he says. “I always wanted to blindfold someone.”
    I raise my eyebrows. It’s nice to know that I can still be surprised.
    “I don’t think so. I’d like you to keep your hands where I can see them.”
    “But it’s my first time,” he says, curling his lips into an exaggerated pout. “I want it to be very memorable for me.”
    I scrutinize his face, the way he combs his curly hair off his forehead. I don’t like the way he smells, like he bathed in Armani Code, and I don’t like his odd request. But he has a point. It’s his first time, not mine.
    “Fine,” I say. “But one weird move and I’ll be tying you up instead, and you won’t like it. Comprende ?”
    Some girls might like being blindfolded or tied up, but I’m not one of them. Being restricted or cut off from any one of my senses freaks me out. He uses his tie to cover my eyes, which I hate even more because it reeks of his cologne. I try to hold