Free Burn: A South Beach Bodyguards Book by Erin McCarthy Page A

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,