Offensive Behavior (Sidelined #1)

by Ainslie Paton

  “I’m sorry.” He’d said that a lot to people in the last year. He’d never meant it like he did now. She lifted her head from his chest to look at him, no sign of the tears she’d sobbed. She was the fearless Lux once again, and he was simply her latest conquest. “I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m glad you told me.”

  “Because it helps you understand how broken I am that I choose to dance for men to throw money?”

  That stung. “No, no, because I understand why you dance, why you want to fly. It’s not only for the money and the scheduling. It’s because you get to defy gravity again.”

  She nodded. “You’re not completely useless at people stuff.”

  “I’m trying.”

  For Zarley he was trying. For Zarley he wanted to be better at it in a way that professionally he’d never understood the need. At work people should be tough, it wasn’t personal, it was business, it was serious. When he’d criticized or been demanding, it was about the job. When he lost his temper or was unaccommodating it was about performance. But people brought their feelings to work and feelings got in the way of doing good work, but not in his bed.

  In his bed, feelings were the job and he was sorely under-skilled.

  She pulled on his earlobe. “I’ve had worse.”

  “I want to learn how to be better at knowing what to say, how to say it. Not intimidating people.” He put his lips to her forehead. “I don’t intimidate you. Why?”

  “There are no wimps in the gym. Wimps get hurt, they don’t win. I trained to be a winner. No, you don’t intimidate me. And I won’t stand for any crap.”

  He’d seen and heard the evidence of that. “What does intimidate you?” Not drunks in alleyways, not men too sick to stand up on their own.

  “Nothing. No wait, failing at this. Failing to make a decent life for myself now that my head is screwed on again. That terrifies me more than any competition I faced. It’s not a game for glory, it’s my future and it’s very different to the one I thought I’d have. No place for me in the gymnastics world, no sponsorships, no endorsements. I was out, cold turkey.

  “One day I was perfecting the salto sequence for my floor routine and the next I was homeless, jobless, friendless and sick. I lost a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. At my lowest point I considered becoming a cam girl, simulating lap dances and stripping from my own bedroom.” She propped herself on his chest. “I can’t afford to screw up again.” She had a fierce look in her eyes. “I can’t afford to get involved with people who distract me.” He was under no illusion that’s how she saw him. “I know how to focus on goals and I’ve got my focus on.” She kissed his jaw and pulled back again. “This thing we have is a little side excursion. You don’t have to worry about me because we had sex.”

  But what if he wanted to. He’d never so much as cared for a pet, let alone another human apart from Mom. Sure he had Owen, Dev and Sarina, and yes, Kuch too, but their primary relationship had been about work, and now he wasn’t at work, he didn’t know what he was supposed to do to be just a friend. And worse, he was hiding behind the contract clause that banned him from talking to them about Plus.

  “What intimidates you, Reid?”

  He laughed. Was she in his head? “Women.” Zarley.

  She poked him in the ribs.

  “That I can’t learn. That I’m too rigid, that I’ll continue to think of it as suffering fools when I should be, I don’t know. Sarina says it’s my job to help the fools see things more clearly without letting on I think they’re idiots, and that even kings kept fools around for a reason.”

  “Sarina is a girl you never had over for breakfast or lunch.”

  He nodded. “She’s a girl I went to college with. She runs HR.” The idea of Sarina being the kind of girl he’d want to kiss was ludicrous. She was one of the guys.

  “She’s right.”

  “I didn’t think so and I lost my company over it. That’s never happening again.”

  “So I can trust you won’t show up at Lucky’s and drink yourself into another hangover.”

  “I’m done with that. I’m not sure what comes next, but I’m done with wallowing.”

  “You’re doing better than me. I wallowed for years, punished myself for losing everything I’d dreamed about, everything my family, Costin, my whole town expected to happen, and I still don’t know what comes next.” She kissed his chest. She was done with that conversation. “Though I’m wondering about your bath.”

  “It’s big.”

  “I noticed.” Her hand strayed down his stomach and he tensed, and she teased, passing it over his hipbone. “It would take both of us.”

  “I guess. I’ve never used it.”

  She sat and looked down at him. “You’ve never used that gorgeous big bath. You might as well be living in a tent.”

  “Didn’t seem to be any point.”

  She did the teasing move with her hand again. “Can you see the point now?”

  “Bath sex. That wasn’t on the list.”

  “Call it a bonus special.”

  They fooled around while the bath filled and then they soaked in it, wrapped in each other. The sex when it happened was slippery and playful and showed off Zarley’s flexibility. She did things with her body he didn’t know a body was capable of and he thought he’d seen all her moves on the pole. Seeing how flexible, how much control she had made him ache for her.

  She had him sweating for it, sloshing water on the floor and moaning like a dying cow. He’d have sold himself into slavery for her or willingly drowned to have her at his lips and his cock and his heart like this every bath time.

  Half in, half out of the water, poised above him like a demon mermaid who might as easily strangle him as fall asleep in his arms, she was captivating. “You’re a dream. A dream I never had.”

  “You have me.”

  For now. But she was slick and knowing and he was floundering, out of his depth in unchartered waters.

  “I could love you for this bath alone.”

  He was lost in her, in the secret world she had the key for and even with his own map, drawn from new experience, he knew he’d never have this time again with someone else. He needed to find a way to hold her for longer than a time-out.

  He ordered pizza for dinner and they ate on the floor that could’ve done with a rug, in front of the TV. Then they went to Lordran for a pilgrimage out of the Undead Asylum to discover the fate of the Undead. Zarley spend a lot of time in hollow form and it pissed her off to be ghostly.

  “Why can’t I get to the bonfire and heal like you do?”

  “Because I’m boss,” he said, trying to stop a beast from barbecuing him.

  “Ya, no, no. Oww. That bird thing with the pointy beak just carried me away.”

  She wrenched the controller out of his hand and the beast flamed him. “Great, now I’m dead.”

  “You said this was easy.”

  Totally, not. One of the hardest games there is. “Yup. Easy.”

  “Did Sarina happen to mention you’re an incredibly bad liar.” She had and that was part of his problem. Apparently sometimes it was polite to skirt around the truth, and keep the peace, but he’d never mastered the act. He scored as a grand master manipulator, but he stank as a liar.

  “We don’t have to play.” He fumbled about for the remote. “We can watch a movie.”

  She got in his face. “We’re playing and we’re having an extra little wager on the side. If you win, you win me. I’ll give you any sexual fantasy you want tonight.”

  How many times in one day was she going to set off a charge in his brain? He stroked a finger over her cheek. “If you win?”

  “If I win.” She closed her eyes and he waited on her decision, it might as well have been life or death. “If I win, you give me my sexual fantasy.”

  “Kinky ninja rodeo sex I have no idea about.” If he won, his only fantasy was to wake up with her.

  She laughed. It was a last laugh kind of laugh an
d it put a shiver up his spine. “You at my feet while I dance. It’s your job to entice me to strip. You have to outbid every other man there.”

  He felt his eyes bug. “I thought you couldn’t strip at Lucky’s.”

  “I didn’t say it had to be at Lucky’s.”

  “Holy fuck. If I lose, you strip for me, publicly, like in a kinky way. If I win, I win you, doing whatever sex magic thing I want tonight. Let me repeat that, whatever I want.”

  She nodded.

  “I need to teach you how to negotiate, you’re shit at it. I win no matter what happens.”

  “You think? I keep the money and I don’t strip cheap. I’ve never stripped, so you can imagine the kind of stake it might take.”

  “I did tell you I was loaded.”

  “But you need to think about a payoff in some unspecified future, or in about an hour’s time.” She shoved the controller at him. “Play to win, Reid, because fantasies don’t come cheap, but they could come tonight.”

  He’d played this game hundreds of times but he’d never played it sitting beside a woman who’d made him hard while she negotiated terms that would make him harder. There was no justice in that. He had her beat in fifteen minutes but she didn’t know it yet, so he played it out another fifteen while he tried to construct a fantasy that was less lame than asking her to let him curl around her and fall asleep beside her again.

  When she got smashed by a dragon’s tail, she snatched the controller from his hand and straddled his lap. “Name your fantasy.”

  Her cheeks were pinked, an eyebrow quirked. She knew he’d set her up. She knelt across his outstretched legs with her hands on her hips. She wasn’t wearing a bra under that white t-shirt. Jesus, his fantasy was having her here, glaring at him like he’d disappoint her if he didn’t demand a naked lap dance.

  “You, just you, doing whatever you want to do with me.”

  She made a tsk sound. “Did you pickle all your ambition at Lucky’s?”

  “You doing whatever you want to do with me has worked out pretty goddamn well so far, I don’t see any reason to change a good thing.”

  She stood. “Next time we play I will take you down.”

  Next time. Sweet, sweet words. But yeah, she’d never beat him at Dark Souls.

  She fiddled about on his TV until she got streaming music, then searched for something she liked. Female singer, soft piano.

  She pointed to a spot on the floor facing the empty dining room. “Sit there and don’t move.” She looked at the ceiling.

  He went to the spot and sat cross-legged. “What—?”

  “And don’t talk unless I speak to you.”

  And she’d called him bossy.

  She stood in front of him and stretched her arms over her head, then went palms flat to the floor with her legs straight, forehead tucked into her knees. She stood and bent one knee and took her foot by the hand and stretched that leg straight up near her ear. He’d seen her do this on the pole, under lights in her costumes. But here, in the space that should house a dining table she did it without anything to hold on to. She did the same thing with the other leg and when she released her foot and returned it to the floor she bounced up and down, hopping from leg to leg, shaking herself all over, easing her neck side to side. This wasn’t a dance, it was just the warm-up, and she wasn’t smiling, but he was already tense.

  Then she pulled her t-shirt off.

  His breath caught. He’d seen her naked more times than not today and still the sight of her bare breasts got him worked up. They were a gentle swell, round and plump under his hands, but firm like another muscle on her body and tipped with bubblegum-colored nipples. When the pants went the way of the t-shirt and she stood before him in candy pink panties, his throat dried and he coughed. There wasn’t much material in those panties. Whatever she was planning to do to him was about to get real.

  He caught a line in the song about never wanting anything so much.

  She turned a cartwheel and he laughed it was such a mood change. She did it again but without putting her hands down and again in the other direction, so fast and sure he didn’t have time to wonder if she might brain herself on his stone floor until she was standing on her hands, her body a perfectly straight, sure form.

  And the singer sang about falling into gravity.

  Zarley arched her back, her head lifting, one leg reaching forward, the other back, that knee bent so her pointed toe tipped the messy bun on her head. She held that position steady, like a snapped photograph.

  “You’re incredible.”

  For that he got a flicker of a smile, before she rotated her hips and split her legs at either side, her back arched, her eyes on him. Every movement violently slow, and God, he wanted to stand in front of her and run his hands along her legs to the bunched muscle of her ass and feel the power of her infinite control. She held that position longer than he thought possible in such a rock solid way, he knew he’d underestimated how strong she was. Then she bent both knees so her feet touched her shoulders before going to the floor in a complete back bend and straightening up to stand.

  “If your ceiling was higher, I could do more.”

  “If my ceiling was higher, you doing more would undo me.”

  She smiled. That was clearly her point, then she forgot he existed and performed for herself, bending and twisting, turning and reaching, slowly, with exactness and deliberate, sustained suspension, every filament of her body in perfect tune with her will.

  What he saw was the genetics that gave her compact stature and form, the talent that resided in her body, but what he craved, what made him feel almost sick with desire was the iron discipline, the determination and single-mindedness that lead her to master these skills.

  She stood on her hands again and he realized he was on his knees, ready to crawl to her. Zarley was showing off her body, but she was letting him inside her brain and his need to touch her made his gut ache and his chest burn.

  She caught sight of him and brought her feet to the ground and stood. “Do you like what you see?”

  “I like everything I see and everything I can’t know about what you had to do to have this ability.”

  She grinned, hands to her hips. “Good answer.”

  “I want to touch you.”

  “I know you do.”

  “Can I touch you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You want me to burn up.”

  “I won’t let you turn to ash.”

  She was the one exerting herself, but his hands trembled.

  “Listen. Watch.”

  He became aware of the music again, a new voice, but a heavier beat, a song about having a road and walking it alone. She pointed at him, touched her chest acknowledging his Rumi tatt, and from no preparation at all turned a somersault, making him gasp. The song had lyrics about being incomplete, still working on a masterpiece, but Zarley was perfect.

  She danced, but not like a striptease, she was a ballerina, a wisp of wind, a leaf falling from a tree. She was the tide and the fall of night and loneliness of a kid whose unshakeable obsessions: dinosaurs, mechanics, star systems, explosions, made him the odd one out, made him turn inward and hide the parts of him others thought were weird.

  Zarley could make emotions with her body that were bigger than the place in his heart reserved for feelings. She stretched that creaky hollow until the back of his eyes stung. She filled him up with longing and with fear. Now he knew she existed, he didn’t want to be without her and he had nothing she needed because the only win she valued was one she designed and achieved for herself.

  She told him to watch but she didn’t dance for him so much as for herself, testing her body, loving what she could make it do. And what astonished him most was that she gave this so freely to him.

  When the song ended she stood in front of him, her skin shone with perspiration. He crawled forward and knelt at her feet. It wasn’t quite her fantasy but it shared the same theme. He adored her and he wante
d her to know it. He passed his hand from her ankle to the back of her knee and up her thigh. He rested his forehead on her hip.

  She pushed her fingers through his hair. “Don’t ever try to fake me out again.”

  He kissed her stomach. “Never.” He pressed his lips to the triangle of pink cotton covering her and she laughed softly. Bringing his other hand to the back of her knee he folded her to his lap and pushed his face into her neck. Her skin was hot and his head swirled with so much feeling, he didn’t know what to do with it; shout, rage, break something. Cry.

  She found his lips. She held his face and took the ache away with her kisses, with her hands under his shirt and her legs wrapped around his waist. The music was still in her limbs and it spilled out all over him, firing nerve endings, sharpening his senses. Each kiss was deeper, more full and hungry than the next. Each time she rolled her hips against his he lost his breath, until he was panting with the need of her.

  “Do what you want to me, baby? I’m all yours.”

  He got them off the floor in one move. She stayed wrapped around him like a bear cub and he took her to bed, to explore her, to worship her, to be inside her, to be outside himself.

  Afterward he slept badly, waking often in the dark to check Zarley was still beside him, dreaming she’d brought him on stage at Lucky’s and laughed at him. In the dream he’d gotten sick again and she’d left him in the alley in disgust. That woke him and it was light enough to see she was gone, but the place she’d lain in was still warm and he could hear her voice. He pulled sweats on and went in search, finding her in the far corner of the empty dining room.

  She leaned against the wall, watching the bay. She wore those pink panties under her untied black robe. She stood with one leg bent resting on the ball of her foot and the robe framed her body, showing him the plump curve of both breasts and her flat belly.

  “I have to go,” she said into her cell when she saw him. It was a message for whoever she was talking to. And for him.