Offensive Behavior (Sidelined #1)

by Ainslie Paton

  Things got stickier at Lucky’s because she simply wasn’t a good enough liar to play this off as anything but what it was, a very hot one-night stand and a short but sweet fling.

  “How good is his equipment?”

  That was Lizabeth’s opening question. Zarley pantomimed the innocent, with a finger to her lips, and downcast eyes. “More than ample.”

  “Did he know how to use it?” said Kathryn.

  She laughed. He did now. “I’m not going to kiss and tell.”

  Lizabeth looked at Kathryn. “We’ll have to torture it out of her.” She brandished a nail file in Zarley’s direction.

  Kathryn snapped the elastic of her bikini pants in the time-honored tradition of these are creeping up my ass. “We’ll just oil her pole, that’ll fix her.”

  Zarley laughed and Therese gasped. “You’d do that?”

  Lizabeth transferred her nail file aim to Therese. “Yeah, don’t mess with us.”

  Melinda rolled her eyes. “Don’t listen to them, honey. Lou would have anyone who did something like that out of here so fast their G-string would strangle their fallopian tubes.”

  “Interesting option,” said Lizabeth.

  Therese still looked freaked out. Zarley leaned back on the edge of the countertop that served as their dressing table. “It was fun. He’s geeky. You saw that at breakfast. He has no furniture and he drinks straight out of the bottle from the fridge. But he’s sweet too.” And intense, so intense thinking about him now had everything south of her hips twitching. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  Lizabeth paused from fixing her eyelashes and blinked at Zarley with one sparkle-studded falsie on. “You seeing him again?”

  “Yes.” That got hoots and catcalls. She put up a hand to silence the mirth. “But it’s just a quick fling. Reid and I are not in the same time zone, so when we’ve worn it out between the sheets it’s over.”

  Because that’s what happened when you had a thing, it was good till it wasn’t and the idea was to get out before it went bad.

  “And he’s cool with that?” Kathryn said from the doorway. She was about to go on.

  Zarley hesitated. He’d come on so darkly possessive this morning, which was not okay, despite the fact it was seriously hot and also confusing. He didn’t get to do that after one night together and then with what she’d learned by googling him, it was clearer than ever the two of them wanted different things. The girls were all looking at her. Kathryn’s music, Blue Foundation’s “Eyes on Fire” had started.

  “He’s totally cool with it.”

  And if he wasn’t, well he would be when she’d finished with him.

  She danced her first set and tried not to feel like something was missing. She liked her sexy secretary costume, a butt-grazing box-pleat skirt and a white bra top worn with black-framed glasses and pencil in her bun. The routine she chose was also comfortably familiar, as was the song she danced to, Jessie J’s “Sexy Silk.” But the back booth was empty and much as it should’ve made her happy to know Reid had kept at least that part of his promise, it was a downer too. He was her most appreciative audience, after all.

  When she came off stage she stood with Kathryn in the wings watching Therese. The girl was still painfully nervous and instead of a cheeky disdain in her manner like Zarley used, the haughty, no touching attitude Kathryn projected or even the too-hot-to-handle way Lizabeth worked the stage, Therese was all fumbling enthusiasm. She got laughs instead of lustful looks.

  That might’ve been how the night with Reid played out, more energy than desire, more groping and manhandling than genuine skill, but he was a quicker study than Therese.

  Bastard was probably already on the prowl.

  She leaned into Kathryn. “Would you do me a favor?”

  Kathryn bumped her hip in agreement.

  “Would you hit on Reid?”

  “What?” Kathryn’s brilliantly made-up eyes found Zarley’s in the dark.

  She sighed. “He was, um, surprising and then I googled him and he’s one of those tech start-up geniuses.”

  “No kidding.”

  “I like him. I had a good time, but I don’t want to find out he’s got a girlfriend or is a major player.”

  “He sat out there,” Kathryn waved a hand toward the stage, “for a month on his own. He didn’t act like a guy with a girlfriend.”

  “I know.” She shrugged. “I just—”

  “You really like him.”

  “I do. And the sex, it was, it was—”

  “Not something you want to have to share, right?”

  “You said it.” Kathryn was classically beautiful and clearly smart. The kind of woman a man like Reid would find hard to pass up. “Would you, maybe, call him? You could say you got his number from me and wanted to thank him for breakfast, then you could . . .”

  “Sleaze on him.”

  Zarley felt her face color. “Yeah.”

  Kathryn laughed. “You’re in deep.”

  Not yet, but someone had greased her pole.

  They snuck into the service corridor between sets and Kathryn called Reid. The call rang out.

  “Try again.” It wasn’t late yet. If he was playing one of his video games, he might not have heard the call. Zarley’s gut squirmed, or he was with someone, or, crap—she was in deep.

  Kathryn hit redial and at the last possible ring before the call timed out, Reid answered. Except he didn’t say anything.

  “Ah, hello, is that Reid?”

  Her head close to Kathryn’s, Zarley heard Reid’s brusque, “Who wants to know?”

  “Ah. It’s Kathryn, Cinnamon, from Lucky’s. You know, we met, you took me for breakfast.”

  Dead silence.

  “Zarley gave me your number.”

  Not a sound. Reid could do intimidating from half a city precinct away.

  Kathryn scrunched her brows. “Anyway I wanted to call you to say thank you for the meal. It was fun. Nothing like that’s ever happened before.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I was wondering—”

  “Is Zarley okay?”

  Zarley was feeling more than okay. Zarley was almost tap dancing.

  “Oh sure. She’s great. She’s changing to go on again.”

  Silence.

  “So, I wondered—”

  “Goodnight, Kathryn.”

  Reid disconnected and Kathryn blew out a breath. “Holy shit. That was cold. You like that guy?”

  A whole lot more now that it didn’t seem as though he was going to move on too soon for her liking. She twanged Kathryn’s bra star. “He grows on you.”

  The other dancer rolled her eyes. “Calcium grows on you.”

  And that’s how the next few days played out. She went to college. Did her homework. Helped Cara apply for jobs. She danced at Lucky’s and she thought about Reid. A whole lot too much.

  On Friday between class and Lucky’s she sent him a picture of her elbow. There was a long silence during which she was consumed with anxiety, as if she’d risked so much more than a not very erotic part of her arm on his continued affection.

  Alone in the apartment, she was scrubbing the bathroom floor when her cell peeped. He sent a picture of his bare knee. Oh, this was fun. She responded with a shot of her collarbone. She got the cut of his hip, out of focus but it would do. Her belly button got his chest, with tattoo. Her pointed toes, his flexed bicep. She upped the stakes. The curve of her breast with her hand over her nipple got a badly framed shot of the side of his butt. She wondered if that was because his hands were unsteady, if he’d rather be doing something else with them.

  She could stop there. She should stop. Cara had a point. This was a dumb thing to do with a guy you’d known for two minutes and picked up in a dive bar where he was attempting to drink himself stupid. Who wasn’t good with people, or photography it seemed.

  But she’d already stripped off and that was a waste of good undressing time and Reid had too, she’d be a prick-tease
if she didn’t deliver. This cooling off, think-music period was meant to be for him, but she couldn’t remember being so hyped about a man, about the thought of having sex. Not since Dalton, and then part of the attraction had been about their whole relationship being forbidden, secret, not a good idea. To hell with whether Reid was a good idea or not, he was the best idea she’d had for a long time.

  She could manage a full frontal in the mirror on the back of Cara’s bedroom door. She took the shot but before she could send it her cell pinged. Not a picture, a text. It said. I bought furniture. It made her smile.

  It pinged again. I want to spread you over the dining table and make a meal of you.

  Oh.

  And again. I thought about you nonstop.

  She did a little dance, nothing sexy, all elbows and knees and cartoonish bopping on the way back to the bathroom where she’d dropped her clothes. Her cell pinged again and she had to race back to Cara’s bedroom in her underwear to get it.

  I’ve never jacked off so much in my life as I have waiting for you.

  Oh for that, for that, he got the full frontal. But he got in first. A ping. A picture. Her heart cartwheeled. He’d sent her a shot of his fist wrapped around his erect dick. Her mouth went dry. The shot was badly framed but the subject matter was stunningly clear, from the thick blue vein traversing his length to the engorged, reddened tip. His knuckles were white, his stomach hollowed out. Oh. She put her hand between her legs. She should’ve asked for video. He was making himself come.

  And that’s how Cara found her. In Cara’s bedroom in front of the mirror. In her underwear. Flushed, mouth open, phone in one hand, the other halfway to helping her join Reid.

  She was in so deep, so very gloriously deep.

  FIFTEEN

  The percentage chance of not screwing up with Zarley was so low as to be technically irrelevant. It was so low as to make the furniture Reid had a store decorator choose redundant. What was he going to do with a dining table and ten chairs, with a bigger sofa, with six kitchen stools?

  He had lamps, for fuck’s sake. He’d never owned a lamp in his life, unless you counted the one over his desk at college, and that’d been left behind by the room’s previous occupant. He had bedside tables, two of them, at least they made sense. He had somewhere to put his clock, the tablet he took to bed, that wasn’t the floor. He had an entrance hall table with a big glass bowl on it and a hall runner. He had a coffee table and a rug in front of the TV.

  He drew the line at art. The decorator had wanted him to buy a centerpiece for the dining table, stuff for the walls, but he had the whole bay at the window and if he had Zarley in his life, he had all the things he could possibly ever want to look at.

  He stood in his furnished apartment and thought about the fact he should’ve bought art. He’d just sent Zarley a picture of his cock, when all she’d showed him was body parts with no sexual menace, an elbow, a belly button, the sweet curve of her breast. He’d asked for stimulation and he’d taken it to extreme. He’d screwed this new thing up in less than a week.

  He looked at his cell. No new flashing lights. Nothing he’d missed when he’d thrown himself in the shower and indulged in another fantasy of her before the reality of what he’d done kicked in. He called up a number, waited for it to connect, got a cautious hello.

  “I’ve done something dumb.”

  “I’m going to say this once, Reid, only once. I can’t talk to you about anything to do with Plus. And certainly nothing to do with Ziggurat.”

  Reid wiped a drop of water that trickled from his wet hair down his forehead. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  “Yeah, you would. Which is exactly why Kuch bound you, me too. I can’t talk to you about the business.”

  “But I’ve done a new dumb thing. Nothing to do with Plus.”

  Sarina laughed. “Then I have all the time in the world. Spill.”

  “I met someone and—”

  “Wait. What?”

  “I met someone.” He sat on his new sofa, realized he was still wet and stood again.

  “Stop. What kind of someone?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Reasonable.”

  He looked at the sofa. It was chocolate-brown leather. You could sit on leather wet, couldn’t you? “No it’s not.” Leather was supposed to be forgiving. He wanted to have a sex lesson about using furniture with Zarley on the forgiving leather.

  “Dev says you’re not eating enough. Owen says you’re drinking. A lot. He’s worried. I’m worried. Dev wants to host an intervention.”

  “I bought furniture.” A shitload of it. Nothing from Sarina. “I stopped drinking and going to that bar. I started working again. Planning. Nothing concrete yet, just ideas.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. That sounds a whole lot more like you, except for the shopping part. No, hold on. You used a service.”

  About which he was a little ashamed. It was an expensive way to shop. “Is there anything wrong with that? I wouldn’t have known what to buy.”

  “Nothing wrong with it, you can afford it.” Affordability had never been what stopped him. It’d simply seemed unnecessary before Zarley. “What kind of someone?”

  “A female kind.”

  “Really.” Sarina’s voice did that kick at the end that told him she was doubtful.

  “Yes, really. Is it so hard to believe?” He knew it was.

  “I thought—”

  “I was gay.” He’d always figured she thought that. Wasn’t the type of thing he could talk to her about.

  “No, asexual.”

  He sat. “As in didn’t like sex at all.” He rubbed his face, that was worse, wasn’t it? Much worse than her thinking he was gay or celibate. She thought he was incapable all round.

  “Can you blame me? I’ve known you ten years and you’ve never so much as looked at anyone with interest beyond what technical skills they had and what you could do with them.”

  He grunted. “I was focused.”

  “To the exclusion of everything else.”

  But not anymore. He’d only just noticed the hall runner matched the rug in the living room. “It was the right thing at the time. No detours, no time wasted. That’s changed now.”

  “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I miss you. It’s not the same without you. In lots of respects it’s better, it was the right thing and I’ll stand by that, but I, Sarina Eliza Gallo, personally miss having you around. I was like a damn puppy looking for you the first few weeks. Kept expecting to find you chewing someone out or sulking over your desktop. Pointing at me and saying, hire more women programmers.”

  “I didn’t sulk. Did you hire any?”

  “You so did. Not telling, but if I was, it would be yes, two.”

  “I’m not asexual. I like women. Not you, for instance, but I’m not gay or celibate.”

  “Glad we got that sorted,” she said dryly. She’d have eye-rolled, he knew it. “What did you do to this woman?”

  “Sent her a dick pic.”

  “Oh shit, Reid. You can’t just, oh hell.”

  “In my defense, she asked for it.”

  “A random woman asked for a dick pic.” Sarina’s voice went upscale again.

  He winced. There were three people in his life who could make him do that. His mother, Dev’s mother and Sarina. “She’s not random. We know each other.”

  “How well?”

  “In the home-movie porn channel sense.”

  “Dear Lord. You didn’t—”

  He sighed. “No, no. No filming except for the pic I sent her. We spent the night together.”

  “One night.”

  “And a day and, okay, not a lot of time, but I like her, and I want to see her again and she said we had to have a cooling-off period and that she wanted me to get some furniture and send her a dick pic.”

  Sarina said nothing. But he could hear her moving around. Walking across what would be the cement floor in the recepti
on area at Plus.

  “You’re not saying anything.”

  “I need to think about this.”

  Oh, that was bad. “It’s terminal then.”

  “It’s surprising. You met a woman and that woman gave you instructions, and you followed them.”

  If only she knew how many instructions and how blissfully and diligently he’d followed them. “I followed instructions you gave me. That’s why I’m calling.”

  “You followed them grudgingly and only when absolutely necessary and more often than not you took my advice and ignored it.”

  “But I always appreciated it and I won’t do that now. Tell me what to do. We were texting, sexting, she sent me random body parts and I reciprocated. There was kind of a buildup, nothing pornographic, and then she stopped and I guess I jumped the gun and I went straight to the big finish.” He paused because Sarina was breathing funny. “You’re laughing at me.”

  Sarina laughed out loud. “I’m guessing you went pornographic and she didn’t respond.”

  “Radio silence.”

  “Oh Reid.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Ball is in her court.”

  “Funny hah hah.”

  “I wasn’t punning.” Sarina barely got that out amidst the snorting. “You have to go with whatever she decides.”

  “No, no, there has to be something I can do to fix this.”

  “You could apologize.”

  “But she asked for it. There was just something wrong with my delivery.”

  “Then you have to trust her to tell you what she’s thinking.”

  “Meaning I do nothing.” That was completely useless. That was why he often ignored Sarina’s advice.

  “You need to give her room to think about it. How long ago did this happen?”

  He checked the time on the cell. “About fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Geez, give the girl a break. If she’s at work, she—”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “When you play with fire.”

  “I don’t mind getting burned. I don’t like the feeling I have to wait for the flames to roast me. I want to know when it will hurt.”

  “Because you have the patience of a hungry pig at a trough and you’re a total control freak.”