Above and Beyond

by Riley Morgan

  Lena

  Lena quickly got bored of hiding in her room and called for Tia to discuss the newest development in her life. Tia joined her with some lunch and the two women sat down on Lena’s bed to eat and talk.

  “I can’t believe Zeus is doing this to me,” she said.

  Tia was not convinced.

  “I can’t believe your bodyguard is such a hunk. I wish I had a man like that following me around.”

  “Gross,” Lena said, giving Tia a look that told her that the younger woman was not interested in discussing that subject with the woman who she considered in many ways to be her mother.

  “What bothers you so much anyway?

  Lena released an exasperated sigh.

  “He’s always right behind me. He’s like a little lost puppy, with big lost puppy eyes. And he’s such a wimp. Always ‘yes sir, no sir, yes ma’am no ma’am’, it’s pathetic.”

  “You know, in my day we called that manners,” Tia said. “And it’s his job to follow you around. The rest of us around here don’t have any choices about doing our jobs, you know?”

  “I know,” Lena sighed. “But I don’t need him. I don’t even want him. You and Michaela are family, he’s like a creepy uncle,”

  “What does that make your creepy uncle then?” Tia whispered conspiratorially.

  Both women laughed and for a moment forgot about men and the trouble that they had brought them.

  “What do you want to do when you get out of here?” Tia asked.

  “Ugh, I don’t know.”

  “Come on, there must be something. A girl as smart as you can do whatever she wants in the world.”

  Lena blushed. Tia held the girl in high regards, and she sometimes worried that she’d never live up to the image that her surrogate parent had for her.

  “I just don’t know. I don’t want to stay here, but I don’t know where else to go or what I’d do.”

  “What about college?”

  Lena had been so frustrated by her time at the boarding school that she’d honestly never given university a thought.

  “Maybe I could go to get my MRS,” she said.

  “Masters of…”

  Lena laughed.

  “My missus degree, auntie. I could go to meet a nice boy.”

  Tia smiled, but did not share Lena’s sentiments.

  “You want to meet a nice boy? Why not start with the new man in the house?”

  “Oh Tia no! He’s awful!”

  “I don’t think so,” Tia said. “I don’t think you think so either.”

  Lena did think that Ramon was awful, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t interested either. He was different from the goons that her father normally hired, and although she was not interested in his quiet subservience or his impossible distance, she did want to know what made Ramon tick.

  “I don’t want him anywhere near me.”

  That much was true, but only in a very narrow sense.

  Ramon

  Ramon was going to need some more clothes and a few comforts of life. Zeus had given him his first paycheck up front so that he could get settled into the house. Zeus knew that nobody would run off with his money without first doing the job that they were paid for.

  He picked up his cell phone and called Gabe.

  “Ramon, how’s it going man?”

  “Not too bad,” Ramon said. “You didn’t tell me this guy was for real though.”

  “You’re a smart boy Ramon, I knew you’d figure it out. You aren’t scared are you?”

  “Not of the old man,” Ramon laughed. “But this girl scares the piss out of me.”

  “No shit? Never thought I’d hear Ramon Sanchez afraid of some girl.” Gabe regretted saying it as soon as he did. In this context, he was not wrong. Ramon did not have a history of being socially or romantically intimidated by women. But in a broader sense, girls were often the subject of Ramon’s nightmares, for reasons that Gabe understood as well as anyone.

  But Ramon played it off.

  “I swear to God brother, she’s out to get me. She hates me like whoa.”

  “Yea?”

  “Today, she goes around all day pretending I don’t exist. Literally says not one word to me. When she’s talking to other people, she calls me names like I’m not sitting right there, and she does this thing where she puts on awful TV with the volume up way high. I don’t know how she takes it. But I swear man, she’s fucking with me.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “It gets worse. She goes out for a swim this morning in a tiny little bikini and makes a big fucking show of oiling herself up. I’m trying to ignore her as best as I can, and she comes over and asks me to get her back.”

  “Oof, ya man she’s playing you.”

  “It gets worse. I turn around a minute later to ask her a question and her bikini is sitting on her chair, and she’s in the pool just drifting along on her back with her tits hanging out.”

  “Oh brother you lucky sonofabitch, is she fine?”

  “I don’t want to think about it man. I thought I was going to die out there.”

  The two friends commiserate for a while longer before Ramon got around to giving Ramon his shopping list. They said goodbye, Gabe made plans to stop by in a couple of days. The drive from Miami was a couple of hours, but Gabe would be happy to make time to see his old friend.

  Lena was still in her room, and Ramon found himself with time to kill. It would be time for dinner soon, and he’d hoped that Lena would make herself available. He’d got a good sense of the compound and of the unique problems that it presented from a security standpoint, and he was ready to have the initial meeting with Lena about what needed to be done to ensure her safety.

  Lena

  It was true that Lena had a little crush on her new bodyguard. But he was gorgeous and she had not gotten laid in a long time, so it seemed to her to be expected. But, as she was always quick to point out to Tia and herself, Ramon’s positive qualities (his eyes, his muscles) did not match up to his negative ones (his spinelessness, his coldness, his apparent neanderthal tendencies).

  All of that being the case, Lena resolved to express her disinterest in Ramon by means of subjecting him to any torture that she could consider. Lena had never really had a knack for being mean directly. The force of her character came from her ability to be so delightful and charming that people tripped all over themselves to bend to her will. That was the basis of her plan to get under Ramon’s skin and to get him out of the house.

  She started by casually mentioning to her father how much Ramon creeped her out. When Zeus did not take appropriate notice to her comment, she added in passing that he’d made a crude solicitation to her. One that she had rebuked as a matter of decency of course.

  She then proceeded to let Ramon know personally just how disinterested she was in him, and that no matter how big his muscles or how brown his eyes, that he was just too much of a meathead croney to be of any interest to her.

  That was the hard part out of the way. All that Lena had to do next was to be herself. Ramon would be naturally drawn to her infinite charm and good nature while being simultaneously repelled by the simple conditions of his employment and her wishes. The conflict, Lena hoped, would either tear him apart or force him to one extreme of behavior or another. Zeus would see this behavior, of course, and have no choice but to release Ramon from his service as Lena wished.

  It was a good plan. Almost.

  Lena made the fatal mistake of underestimating some combination Ramone’s strength of will and utter disinterest in her. It wasn’t a terrible surprise to her. He’d seemed totally unaffected by her stunt at the swimming pool. The same went for her evening run. She had opted for an outfit of compression shorts and a sports bra, one that nearly offended her own nearly nonexistent sense of modesty.

  If her attempt had succeeded, there were no signs of it on Ramon’s face, or in his pants. It was about this time that Lena seriously began to question Ram
on’s sexuality.

  In the face of all of this, Ramon remained steadfast as an enforcer of his father’s rules, along with inventions of his own. “This is all to keep you safe,” he had said, but Lena was beginning to believe that he might be on to her ruse and that some of his ideas might have been exclusively designed to get back at her.

  He had expected her, by the next night, to come up with three escape plans from both her bedroom and the living room. None of them were allowed to use the front door, and he was going to actually make her execute two of them at random, one of them in the dark. That wasn’t even the worst of it. She wasn’t allowed to swim until modifications had been made to the walls around the pool, and she had to eat in her room or in the kitchen. She wasn’t safe in the dining room, Ramon said.

  All of that on the first day.

  By nighttime, Lena was fed up with Ramon’s stupid rules and her utter failure to produce any noticeable result on his psyche, so she decided to resort to drastic measures.

  Ramon

  Ramon went upstairs to relax for a little while. Lena had really put him through his paces and he was exhausted. Thankfully the little pixie demon had retired for the night, and he had a chance to think. He’d done good work for his first day. There was a long list of improvements that he’d been able to suggest, along with an update in protocol around the house. There was a non-stop procession of goons, thugs, and henchmen coming and going freely, and Ramon wanted to put a stop to that first thing, for his sanity as much as Lena’s safety.

  He didn’t do well around guys like that. He’d known more than a few in his time and they were universally bad news. Quick tempered and severe, they were the sort of people that you didn’t want to get on the bad side of. Trouble was, they didn’t have much of a good side. Most of them weren’t terrible industrious, and they wouldn’t be a problem. By the time that their temper could get out of hand, Ramon would have them eating dirt. It was the smart ones that worried Ramon. All Zeus had to do was piss one of them off, get one of them thinking. Then he had an enemy on the inside with the time and motivation to plan something.

  The dirty secret of bodyguards everywhere is this: no amount of security will prevent, dissuade, or otherwise stop a well planned attack. All you can hope to do is disrupt it. Make sure that the bad guys don’t plan on everything you have up your sleeve.

  That’s where people like Ramon came in. He understood how a bad guy might plan an attack on the house, on Lena, and he knew where the weak points in that plan were. Anybody who wanted to hurt his client was going to have a series of rude surprises every step of the way.

  But what kept him awake at night were the little details. Things he might have missed or overlooked. Assumptions that he’d made that might be invalid. Bad guys that were smarter or more sinister than he was.

  He was up late now, thinking about what his next move was.

  His phone rang, and he picked it up without looking at it. As far as he knew, the only people with the number were high enough priority that he’d take their calls no matter what. He didn’t expect that Lena would be on the other end of the line.

  “I’m working on my escape plans, and I had a few questions.”

  Ramon told her that she could ask whatever she needed, but she insisted on him coming down to her room to work with her in person.

  “It will be better if you can help me hands on,” she had said.

  Ramon hung up the phone and grimaced, wondering what kind of abuse he’d have to endure next.

  He got his things ready for bed and dropped them off in the little closet room across the hall from Lena’s bedroom, then knocked on her door.

  “Come in.”

  He opened the door and scanned the room. It was empty. The balcony door was open, a breeze blowing through and ruffling the sheer curtains. Lena had a notebook open on a small desk on the inside wall of her room where she had been working on her plans. Ramon thought about sitting down, but the chair at the desk was too small for him, it was a relic of Lena’s childhood. Hot pink and covered in glitter and sequins.

  Instead, he stood over the desk, studying Lena’s drawings. They were remarkably thorough and well noted. He was still reading through them when Lena came back inside from the balcony. She moved quietly, and when she locked her bedroom door with a click, she managed to do something few people could and surprised Ramon.

  He was even more surprised to turn around and find that she was not wearing a single thread of clothing.

  Lena

  Making Ramon’s ‘stupid escape plans’ wasn’t as bad as Lena had thought it would be. Actually, it was quite a bit of fun. In school, Lena had always found herself getting really involved with projects. She liked the sort of critical thinking that comes in making a plan and dissecting it, analysing it until you have the purest and most potent result possible.

  The best part was putting the final product on paper. She loved the presentation. Loved laying her idea out, finding the execution that made it come to life for her reader.

  She’d intended just to half-ass Ramon’s assignment, but by the time she’d finished with her first three plans, she’d spent nearly four hours going over different possibilities, had made detailed lists of assumptions, alternative options, and contingency plans. There were still the last three plans to make for her bedroom, but she figured they could wait until the morning. Maybe once she’d had her way with Ramon, he’d see differently about giving her this useless busy work.She’d invited him down to her room with the express purpose of getting her claws into him. He’d been able to avoid her so far. That was the only way that he could have resisted her.

  Well there would be no getting away now.

  While he was mindlessly lost in her plans, she locked her bedroom door and palmed the key. If Ramon wanted to get out, he’d have to jump off the balcony.

  “Galena,” he said, startled. Lena had to appreciate the man’s resolve. His eyes went straight to hers and did not waver once.

  “Call me Lena,” she said with a smile and a step closer.

  Ramon swallowed a lump in his throat and pressed his hands to his side. He did not back away, but Lena could see his body tense as though he were about to dive away from her. Instead, he scooped up the notebook and held it between them.

  “Lena, these plans are very good. I’m impressed.”

  “You want to talk about this?” she asked as she ran her finger along her collarbone, over her breast, and down the curve of her side. She took another step towards Ramon. She could smell him in his fear and his eagerness. It was obvious now. He was not disinterested. Not at all. Only pretending to be and doing a damn good job of it.

  “You didn’t? I thought you called me down here to help you.”

  Lena couldn’t actually tell if he was hopelessly stupid or just pretending to be. She took the last step towards him, pushing the notebook to the side and pulling herself against his body. His personality was so reserved and distant that she’d never really felt how big he was. Standing next to him, Lena realized that her eyes only came about halfway up his chest. His chest that now seemed so broad and strong. There was such serious solidity to him. It took her breath away for just a moment.

  “Ramon, you know exactly what I called you down for.”

  She could feel him through his pants, feel his heart pounding and his breath, fast and light. He took a deep breath and let it out in a slow sight.

  “You’re right,” he said, submitting. “I do know.”

  “And you’ve wanted it since you got here, haven’t you.” She stood up on her toes, grabbed Ramon by the back of his head and pulled him down as she kissed the exposed skin at his collar and along his neck until she was teasing his earlobe in her lips, letting him hear how heavy he made her breath.

  “I did,” he said, whispering softly.

  Lena lowered herself to the ground, running her hand over his cheek, just barely rough from a long day.

  “Do you want to kiss me?” she asked, letti
ng her other hand slid down his body towards his cock. She wanted to feel how hard he would get for her while she played her game.

  “Yes.”

  Ramon

  How had Ramon been so stupid? Lena had been playing with him all day, then she invites him to her room at 11:00 and he walked right into her trap. He thought fast and tried to deflect her advances with her notebook, but she pushed his defense away.

  He knew that he wouldn’t be able to get out of this by trying to talk to her, but he tried anyway. It only bought him a few seconds, but it was enough. He stayed cool as Lena grabbed him by the shirt collar and began to whisper into his ear, pressing her lithe body against his and kissing him with those sweet lips. Her scent was intoxicating. He wanted her. He could not have her for fear of his job, and this fear kept him focused even as temptation called him.

  Lena pulled him down to kiss him. He would have liked so much to kiss those lips. To taste her. To do so much more.

  Ramon leaned down to meet Lena’s lips. At the last second, he jerked hastily forward, catching Lena’s delicate nose with his cheekbone. The collision was hard and drew blood in an instant, just as Ramon had hoped. Lena’s hands flew to her face, crimson running between her fingers and down her hands.

  “Oh my God, Lena I’m so sorry,” he said, expertly feigning surprise embarrassment.

  Lena let out a low moan, something like a scream, and ran to the bathroom. Exactly as Ramon had planned. He was at the balcony door in three steps. It was dark outside. The moon was hiding behind low clouds, but thankfully the Buldovas were vain enough to illuminate their house with dozens of floodlights. Shielding his eyes from the lights, he turned towards the building and looked for the series of handholds that he’d spotted earlier in the day. He didn’t trust the lattice to his right. If it was solid, he could have easily climbed down it to the wall. If it wasn’t solid, he’d fall two stories onto his back and best case scenario, have a lot of explaining to do.