Offensive Behavior (Sidelined #1) (16 page)

“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 reception 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.”

“I’m
not a total control freak.” Not where Zarley was concerned. He said that
softly, more to himself but Sarina was the most perceptive person he knew and
he should’ve known better.

“What’s
changed?”

He’d
told her quite enough. “I’m unemployed.”

“Something
else.”

“Nothing
else. I wanted to see if you had any advice.”

“Go
slow is my advice. These are new wings, don’t get them bent out of shape too
soon.”

“I’m
not the one with wings.” Although with Zarley he felt like he might learn to
fly.

“What?”

“Never
mind. Are you well?”

“I’m
well.”

“Happy?”

“Doing
fine.”

“Owen
and Dev. Kuch?”

“You
could ask them yourself.”

“They’d
think I was sick, dying or something. I’m not ready to speak to Kuch yet.”

“I get
that. Owen isn’t you. He’s finding it tough, but he won’t let on. Dev is Dev. Also,
you should know, we’re having an anniversary party for the ten years.”

“Fucking
without me.”
Jesus
.

“Would
you want to be there?”

“Yes.” God
that stung. “Have a fucking great time.”

“Reid.”

“What?”
He knew what.

“Don’t
do that. Bitterness is going to eat you alive.”

“What’s
going to eat me alive is when Ziggurat fails and the whole Plus business is—”

“I’m
not listening. Not listening.”

“When
is it?”

She
told him about the event, the date and venue. “Formal. You always hated black
tie.” But it was his company and he could’ve gone wearing any damn thing he
wanted no matter what the invitation said.

He
grunted. “You should get back to work.”

“Because
the new boss is a bastard.” Owen didn’t have bastard in his repertoire. “Hope
she loves your—”

“Okay,
okay. This is one of those conversations I’ll trust you to keep to yourself and
forget.”

“Already
done, but before I go I want you to know I’m happy you’re exploring other
facets of life.”

“Furniture.”
He knew she meant fucking.

“Yes. You
were always a damn pain in the neck. Furniture.”

He hung
up none the wiser and looked at his fucking waste of time and money furniture
and then his cell beeped. Zarley. A text.

If
you want me, I’m all yours, Sunday.

He
dropped the phone in his fumbling haste to respond. It bounced on the rug and
he went to his knees to snatch it up, grateful for the thick pile.
I’ll pick
you up
.

I’ll
need sleep
.

I
need you in my bed
.

No
response. Because it was too much. Like the dick pic. His pacing was all off. There
must be rules for romance by text; reply times and message length, all context
he had no idea about and no patience to learn. He started on another reply and
hers came through.

Anyone
else been there while I was busy?

Fuck
no.
It’s only you I want.

See
you Sunday. Save some of that lovely dick for me.

He
dropped his head to the rug and breathed the wool and silk fibers. He lived to
fight another day, to make extra kitchen stools useful and the promise of
fucking Zarley over the glass dining table come true.

He made
it through the hours in between the dick pic and Zarley’s quitting time at 2 a.m.
Sunday morning by working. It wasn’t anything yet, but it was a strategy. If he
wanted Plus back, he had to be clever about it. He had to get the investors on
side, make them fear for Ziggurat without him being around and put back-channel
pressure on Kuch.

He took
the bike. It was insurance. If he had to ride, if he had Zarley on the back
he’d need to keep his head together. The one part of Sarina’s advice that did
make sense was to give Zarley space, not to crowd her. It was enough that she
wanted to come to him again and sleep in his bed for a few hours. They had the
rest of Sunday to test out the furniture. But try telling his dick that.