Sun-Kissed (Love In All Seasons 1)

It’s been fifteen years since my parents died—it’s time for me to become a man.

Just then, Leo juts out his chin, and I follow where his eyes have landed.

A group of bachelorettes just came to the club. They're drunk and wearing sashes reading BRIDE TRIBE.

"You want me to fuck a woman who's engaged?" I ask, looking at the woman with a tiny veil perched on top of her head. She looks just like the rest of women here in Miami. Tan, toned, plastic.

"No, not her," Leo says. His eyes run over the group of five women, and they land on the one who isn't wearing a teeny tiny bikini.

He's pointing to a woman in a polka dot one-piece, a giant straw hat atop her head and huge black-rimmed sunglasses covering half her face. Jackie O glasses. She's as pale as a full moon.

She's also fucking beautiful. If I was looking for something different, Leo found it. This woman is not like the rest.

And I mean that in a good way. She's exotic, which is saying something considering we're in Miami––a tropical paradise.

This woman, though. She looks like she doesn't belong. At least, she doesn't belong here.

In fact, I have a feeling that tonight she belongs with me.

"You picked a winner," I tell Leo, realizing that maybe he does know me as well as he thinks he does.

He laughs knowingly.

I hand him my drink, I need to know her name.

I need to know her.

Now, she is a woman I could take home to meet my mom… the kind of woman who could be more than a fling.

She is the kind of woman I could make my wife.Chapter TwoI love my best friend Lexi, I really do. We were college roommates, so of course, I got on a plane in New York City and came to Miami for her bachelorette party.

Even though I love her to pieces, this is so not my scene. Maybe in the three years since we graduated, I've become a spinster. But I know that's not it entirely. I've never been considered a free spirit, a free-for-all.

People use words like prim, proper, and responsible when describing me. Usually, that description works just fine—in fact it's the truth. After all, I'm a high school guidance counselor—and not exactly a living-on-the-edge kind of lady.

But right now, I either need to go home ASAP or give in to what is going on around me.

I don't want to be some uptight busybody. Not on Lexi's weekend. Everyone else seems so capable of having fun and letting loose and smiling. It's not that I'm morally opposed to any of those things, it's just that those things don't ever happen to me.

Earlier this week in the staff lounge, the music teacher, Ms. Sandeles, who is approximately eighty years old asked me about my spring break plans. When I told her about the trip to Miami she smiled, exhaling a politically incorrect statement, “Oh thank goodness, Dottie. Everyone has been talking about how badly you need to get laid.”

“Everyone who?”

Ms. Sandeles just waved me off, microwaving her left-overs. “Just the faculty.”

“Like, in general?”

She nodded as if my sex-life was a regular topic of conversation. “Someone your age should be having sex at least four times a week.”

Four times?

A week?

How about once, ever?

This had gone on long enough. My virginal status was nothing I was intentionally holding on to—but maybe I had reached a point where I needed to intentionally lose it.

I’d be lying if I said Ms. Sandeles (and the entire staff at my school) didn’t spur me into action. I had spent years hiding in my shell, but I didn’t want to die a virgin.

Heck, I didn’t even want to end spring break a virgin.

So, I went out after school that day and got a bikini wax. Then I ordered this super cute swimsuit—and even paid for overnight shipping. Which considering my teacher salary—means something.

It means I have one real plan for this week, even if Lexi knows nothing about it.

I plan on finding a nice looking man who wants to sleep with me. I don’t need anything hot and heavy—I just need good old fashioned, vaginal penetration so I can finally get over this hurdle that is getting bigger and bigger every year.

But standing here at the cabana of this premier Miami beach club, I'm realizing that I'm overdressed. Which is saying something considering everyone else is in bikinis.

Why, oh why, did I order a one-piece? And why didn't I get a spray tan like all the other ladies with me? I thought I was being so on point.

"Oh, my God," Lexi says, squealing. She's wearing high heels, a string bikini, and a sash that says, bride-to-be. She looks freaking hot. I look like I stepped out of my grandma’s high school photographs.

"Oh my God, did you see the ladies in the pool? They’re stripping! I can't even!” Lexi screams. “This is the best bachelorette weekend ever!"