Offensive Behavior (Sidelined #1) (36 page)

“Miss. Halveston,
off those knees and onto mine.” He held a hand out and she took it, grateful
he’d taken control, coming to her feet then taking his lap sideways.

He
traced her lips with a finger. “Those smart lips are mine.”

“Yours.”

Hand to
her throat, he flattened it across her chest, smoothing down till she opened
her legs and he tunneled his hand into the hot gap between them. “This body is
mine.”

She
leaned back on the arm that circled her shoulders. “Yours.”

His
hand moved to her thigh, making the muscle jump, to her knee where he squeezed,
then down her shin to her foot where he covered her instep. “These legs and
feet.” He grabbed for her hand and brought it to his lips. “These hands.”

She’d
taught him too well. He could inflame her body and devastate her emotions. “All
yours, tonight.” And after tonight, memories and fantasies.

He
kissed her temple. “But what’s in here. The ziggurat of Zarley, I’ll never know
what comes next, never find all the secrets, and I’ll never have enough of that.”

Don’t
think about all the pretty things he says. Don’t think about the fact he means
them.
“My big bad boss is a huge flirt.”

He
flicked her bra catch open. “Your boss has a huge urge to give you dictation.”

She
smothered a laugh. “I take excellent dictation, sir.” She emphasized the take.

He
laughed aloud, gripping her by the waist, lifting her and tossing her on her
back on the sofa. He pulled her bra away, her panties. “You’ll take it, Miss. Halveston.”

“Take
it till I get it perfect.”

His hand
over her breast, eyes locked on. “Already perfect.”

The
kiss she launched at him wasn’t perfect. It caught his lips on a smile, it
grazed his cheekbone with her knuckles as she grabbed for his neck. All her
confusion and longing, the game that hid her feelings, and need to pull away
from him was in that kiss. When it centered on his mouth and opened into pure
heated desire with licks of her tongue and the taste of him, she moaned in
grief and ecstasy.

Her
breath caught but so did his, the kiss breaking but merging again. Reid’s arm
was under her back, his thigh braced beside her hip, securing her against him
as if he knew the risk of losing her. With hands and lips she found the places
on his body that gave him joy and was merciless in attacking them, using her
body to tease and tempt and draw him on; losing the sense of cause and effect
in the mad rush of sensation that rippled through both of them.

His
fingers inside her were sweet relief but he had the touch of a torturer she’d
never taught him and loved all the more. He bit her earlobe, used a well-placed
thumb and other evil insanely good tricks to make her try to climb over his
back to get away and dig into his skin to stay.

“Miss. Halveston,
I want to hear you scream.”

Now the
game was making him work for it, because he craved that, buzzed to know he
could tear away her discipline and wreck her control. She’d begun to live for
it; for the moment it was all blurred, the sharp and soft, the give and take,
the part where she ended and he began, where they breathed through each other’s
mouths and absorbed each other’s quakes. Where her scream was his doing and his
shout was her triumph.

This
time it wasn’t what he did but what he said that made release thunder through
her body and rip free. Not her name. Not I love you. Nothing dirty or
mindlessly erotic.

It
tripped from him like shock. “You’re the beginning of me.”

She
screamed.

Because
loving him too much would be the end of her.

Eventually
they made it to the bedroom, settled curled around each other. Reid fell fast
and heavy, his arms going loose over her. Zarley didn’t want to sleep, didn’t
want to waste being with him sooner than she had to.

She
whispered the thoughts in her head to his sleeping form. I love you. It wasn’t meant
to happen. You snuck under my guard. You’re not to sulk. Okay, maybe for a few
days. But no drinking to excess and don’t forget to eat. I love you. Don’t miss
me. You have everything you need to know. You don’t have to be alone.

He
didn’t see the tears so she let them come and her eyes were full of grit when
he woke her. It was early, he was dressed to go. He generally let her sleep.

“What’s
wrong?” It seemed the right question and his answer was a threat.

He
shook his head. “Wanted. Last night, you were.” He shook his head again as if
his gears hadn’t meshed. “You were beautiful.” He smoothed a hand over her
hair. “Always are. Have a good day, Flygirl.”

She
sat, reached for his face and rubbed her thumb over his cheekbone. If she
kissed his lips he’d read every distress she felt. She’d shift his suspicion to
knowledge before she was ready to face that consequence. She kissed where her
thumb had traced. “You too.”

At the
bedroom door, he turned back, a half-smile, half-puzzled look on his face that
he shook off with a wave and left.

It was
early but she didn’t go back to sleep. She got up, showered, dressed, packed
and sat at the dining table to write him all the things she couldn’t say before
she left.

Dear
Back Booth

I’m
sorry to run out on you. I’m not usually a coward but this is one of the
hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll be able to tell
you face to face what I’m going to say here, but right now I’m afraid if I see
you, I’d give in to you and in the end I’ll have learned to hate you.

I
don’t ever want to do that.

I
love you.

I
know you love me.

But
I can’t be with you anymore.

You’ll
find this hard to take. But when you clear your head and think about it, you’ll
see I was right. Yes, you’ll hate being wrong, but I promise, this is for the
best.

Remember
that one big fight we had. Remember the shirt tearing angry forgiveness sex. I
know you do. I told you I was going to need you to need me? I’m sure you
believed it when you said you needed me more ways than you could count.

The
thing is though, it’s not true.

Partly
you and me are a factor of timing that should’ve been obvious to us both. You
weren’t working so you didn’t have any reason not to give your attention to me.
Now that you’re back to your regular life at Plus, you don’t have any time left
to give. I understand that and I’m not asking you to choose between the things
you love, so I’m making it easier for us both.

The
other thing that should’ve been obvious to me is that at heart you’re still the
weird, loner kid. You turned your brand of weird into greatness and you learned
to be loud, but you’re perfectly happy alone. You got that tattoo for a reason.
‘It’s your road and yours alone, others can walk it with you, but no one can
walk it for you.’
I looked it up. It’s Rumi.
When I first saw it I thought it was sad, now I understand it’s part of your
strength. And with your work, I don’t think you even feel alone.

The
confusing part is the sex, right? We kept having it, right up to last night,
and it was never bad, not even from the first time when you almost gave
yourself concussion on the bathroom tiles. I loved the sex as much as I love
you. The problem is we can’t just be about the sex. You said it in Paris. That’s
how we started and that’s on me. That’s all I wanted. But you showed me more
and going back to that is simply not enough for me.

I
think it’s an algorithm, those things you like so much. I understand them as a
kind of sum and I think ours looks like this:

Loner
guy (special virgin edition) + free time x crisis of the soul + scorching hot pole
dancer lust = unexpectedly beautiful sexy relationship.

But
if you subtract the free time and the crisis of the soul, strike out the
special virgin edition and add in the fact that you know everything you need
for a healthy sexual relationship, all you have left is loner guy and scorching
hot pole dancer, and that’s the story of every man every night at Lucky’s.

I deserve
more than that. But I need to make more of me at the same time.

You
know I fudged it when I said my sexual fantasy was you on your knees at my pole
bidding for me to strip. I was messing with you. I didn’t think it would be
cool for me to tease you about having a fantasy if I didn’t put something on
the line for myself.

What
I didn’t tell you is that not everyone has a sexual fantasy. Some people only want
to fall in love with a person who gets them, and work at that love for the rest
of their lives. I thought that was what you wanted, and you’d found it in me,
but I didn’t understand all the things that drive you then like I do now.

We
had a good thing, Reid, it became a great thing, but now the last thing either
of us wants is for what we had to sour.

There’s
good news. I kept it till last because you’ll worry otherwise. I didn’t win the
Madame Amour scholarship. I did better. Eglantine Foss, that’s Madame’s real
name, wants to pay my college fees and has offered me a low interest business
loan if I decide to start something up for myself. I think I know what that is
and one day when we’ve both got the time and this doesn’t hurt so much, I’d
like to tell you about it.

I
know you’ll want to call me. I’m asking you not to. I already feel like a
coward for writing instead of talking to you. And please don’t hassle Cara.

The
night in Paris, when you told me you loved me you said if I didn’t love you,
you’d still build a great life. I know you will. It’s time for me to do the
same.

I’ve
ticked some boxes to help you put all this in perspective.

Had this great thing with a sexy pole
dancer

She taught me everything I needed to know
about sex

Tried some kinky stuff—you only live once

I’ll always regret our timing was off

We’ll always have windows and park benches
and Paris.

Zarley

THIRTY-ONE

There was a disturbance in the atmosphere. Reid trusted whatever
sixth sense told him things weren’t right. It’d always bothered him how other
people ignored that prickle of awareness that made his brain do a double take. And
things weren’t right. The way she’d kissed him. On the cheek. That meant . . . what?
Zarley had kissed him on the cheek before so it wasn’t about that one thing. But
their thing wasn’t right.

God, he
wasn’t spending enough time with her. She’d said she missed him that one
morning, and she hadn’t meant to let that slip because it sounded like a
complaint and she never complained. And he’d told her he wasn’t going anywhere.
Flaming idiot
. There was more to missing a person than their physical
presence.

He
started going cold from the soles of his feet, by the time that icy
uncomfortable feeling hit his chest he had to move, needed motion to help him
think this through. It wasn’t only this morning’s kiss; it was last night’s
sex. He closed his eyes to see it better. It was amusing and glorious and
Zarley was incandescently bright but what he’d missed in her last night, he
found now.

She was
also unbearably sad.

He
gripped the edge of the table and stood.

“Whoa,
where’s the fire?”

“Is it
something we said?”

He
snapped back to the meeting room. Fifteen or so faces looking at him with what
the fuck expressions.

“Do I
need to be in this meeting?”

Nerida
was standing too. “Reid, are you okay?”

He sat,
“Fine.”

“You
don’t look fine. Would you like to take a break? We can come back to this.”

This
was a presentation of advertising concepts for their new campaign.

“Is
there such a thing as breakup sex?”

If the
standing up for no appreciable reason hadn’t enlightened them all to his less
than focused on the task at hand state of mind, what he’d said blew a hole in
their collective heads.

“There
is, right?” He knew it in his cold bones. Zarley was thinking of leaving him. Maybe
already had.

“Ah,
Reid, maybe you should—” He looked at Nerida. She closed her mouth and nodded. “There
is.”

Another
voice, one of the ad agency guys said, “Hurts like a bitch.”

His
female colleague said, “It’s a damn good idea, the whole concept of breaking up
with your current supplier and starting a relationship with Plus. How it’s
emotional, the various stages, complacency, fear, regret, relief.”

A
conversation started, the attention shifting from him. Nerida knelt by his
chair and pitched her voice low. “That’s not what you meant, is it?”

He
grunted a no.

“We’ve
got this, boss. You should go and do stuff that’s more important.”

“I
should fess up. They think I’ve given them an ad concept.”

“You
have. Ideas come from everywhere.”

“That’s—”
he shook his head. More important things. He stood and the conversation
stopped. Everyone in the room looked at him. “Sounds good to me.” He hadn’t taken
in a word since the meeting started. “I’ll get out of your hair.” He looked at Nerida,
who’d stood with him. “Nerida’s got this. If you louse it up there’ll be
breakup sex all round.”

That
got a chorus of laughs and groans and he used its cover to quit the room. Two
doors down, Dev was running a team meeting. He barged in. No women in this room,
less chance of offending. Six engineers he’d worked with for years turned their
heads to look at him.

“I have
a question.”

Dev
tried to shut him down. “If it’s about the changes to the back-end protocol—”

“Are
you meant to know if you’ve had breakup sex?”

Stunned
silence. No one here was going to misinterpret him. Dev put his head on the
table with a thump.

Reid
pulled a vacant chair out and sat. “I had. I’m not sure what it was. I might’ve
fucked up. I need help.”

“We
were meeting about work things, because we’re at work,” Dev said largely to the
table.

“I know,
but who else am I going to ask?”

“I’ve
had it.” They all looked at Greg. Unmarried, untidy, surfed in his spare time. “I
really liked that girl, white blonde hair, crazy blue eyes. I never saw it
coming. She stopped answering my calls.”

“I’ve
definitely given it.” All eyes to Hank. Overweight, into gaming in a big way,
the oldest of them. “You know when you like a woman, but not that much and the
sex is good, but she annoys you when you’re not having sex, and so you want to
break up with her, but then you don’t, because the sex is good, and it all
builds up and one day you have sex and then you break up.”

“Way
too much information, dude,” said Greg, while Lorenzo, handsome, the only
legitimate player in the group high-fived Hank.

“Swipe,
bed and forget, man. It’s always breakup sex,” Lorenzo said.

Dev
said, “I hate today.” He sat upright with a red mark on his forehead from where
he’d head-desked.

Reid
zeroed in on Hank, their least likely Lothario after himself. “What you’re
saying is it’s an unspoken thing. You might not know until it never happens
again.”

“Yes,
but sometimes you do know it’ll be the last time so you make it as good as you
can.”

Oh
fuck. That’s what Zarley had done. He stood. “Thanks, appreciate it.” He let
himself out of the room and went to his office. He was there five minutes and
Dev came in.

“Yes,
all right. That was a stupid thing to do. I’m sorry I interrupted your
meeting.”

“Are
you?” Dev sat. Reid hadn’t made it as far as a chair.

“No.”

“What’s
going on with you?”

Now he
sat. First personal thing Dev had said in the months he’d been back. “Are you
asking because you think I’m about to do something worse than what I just did?”

“I’m
asking because what you just did was both completely in character and also
totally alien.”

“I’m
not following.”

“You
busting into someone’s meeting for your own purposes, totally an annoying Reid
McGrath thing to do. Doing it because you needed personal advice?” Dev’s face
darkened. “About sex,” his voice squeaked. “What planet are you on?”

“I’ve
screwed up with Zarley.”

“How?”

“You
and me are going to have this conversation?”

Dev
nodded. “It’s about time we had a conversation that wasn’t about the business.”

“Does
that mean you’ve forgiven me?”

“We’ll
see.” Dev made a come on gesture with curled fingers. “Out with it.”

“I have
a horrible feeling she’s about to leave me.”

“She’s
not said anything?”

“Not a
word, but then she’s not someone who would complain. She’s not someone who
would suffer in silence either so I don’t know what to make of it.”

“What
are the clues?”

He
sighed. This wasn’t a problem with a typical diagnostic. There was no single
point of failure or a range of events with errors logged against them. But this
was Dev so that didn’t matter, because Dev believed in sixth sense feelings
too.

“It was
the way she kissed me this morning. And I woke her up. I normally let her
sleep. I don’t know why I woke her. It was unnecessary, but I did it
deliberately.”

“Go
on.”

“Last
night you and I were late getting back and I was a little tense because of the
news about Owen and then you and I—”

“Disagreed.”

“Yeah. It
was a shitty day. She waited up and she was—” His chest was so tight he
couldn’t get the words out.

“Is she
unhappy?”

“I only
saw it in her last night, but maybe it’s been there for a while. If she wants
to leave me what do I do?”

“You
love her.”

“More
than I know how to feel. My heart is ten times its regular size because of
her.”

“That’s
it then.”

“What?”

“That’s
why you’re different. Sarina said so. I was too angry with you still to believe
it.”

He
wasn’t different. They all kept saying it. He simply didn’t see it. “I’m trying
to be less of an asshole.” He’d made up a set of rules. No interrupting people
when they spoke, no calling them names, no implying they’re halfwits, no
physical intimidation, no taking his frustration out on the furniture, no
yelling, no sulking, no taking over other people’s work, no being bad-tempered for
no clear reason.

He’d
broken every single rule, daily, sequentially, serially. He rubbed the back of
his neck. It was exhausting. He’d thought Owen was a weaker leader but Owen
laughed at his list. There wasn’t a thing on it that Owen would ever have done.
The reason doors were off hinges was because Reid was known to slam them. Owen
wasn’t the one who broke their coffee machine or kicked the photocopier. Owen
didn’t have to apologize and no one was confused about whether his excitement
was a precursor to a flame out.

“It’s
working, Reid.”

“Not if
I’ve lost her.” He slumped in his chair and the back creaked. There was a piece
of tape holding the lever that adjusted it because he’d broken it off instead
off yelling when Lashaya told him they had a problem with the billing system
that he’d warned accounts about dozens of times.

“I made
her compete with all this. When we met, I was out. I had time. Now I have the
little spaces between the next critical thing to do. I made her unhappy because
I don’t know how to separate myself from here.”

He knew
what he had to do. To keep Zarley, he had to quit Plus.

“Stop
thinking like that.” Dev put two fingers to his temple then pointed them at
Reid. “Why would she want you to choose?”

“She’s
worth it.”

“I’m
assuming she thinks the same about you.”

Reid
covered his face with his hands. “This is why I never did relationships.”

“No
it’s not.” Dev groaned. “You didn’t do relationships because you were shit
scared of women.”

“Not
denying it. I’m not made for emotional turmoil and all the mess people make
with, well, emotions.” Dev eye-rolled. “I failed with Zarley.”

“You
also have the biggest goddamn ego. And you haven’t stopped to think this is
about her, not you.”

“About
her.” Thought stopped his brain; the world went still. “Still means I failed.

“You’ve
got better at handling that lately.”

No
single thing he’d ever fucked up would be as bad as losing Zarley. “She’s my
personal ziggurat. If I lose her . . .”

“So
don’t.”

“Are
you going to tell me how to achieve this piece of impossible?”

“Nope. You’re
the one does the pieces of impossible around here.”

“Not
this kind of—shit, Dev. Are we at least okay again?”

“We
will be if you keep her.”

He
pushed back into his chair, but forgot it was broken. It didn’t ratchet back,
just made him bounce forward again. “Our friendship is contingent on me keeping
Zarley?”

“Yup.”

“How is
that reasonable?”

“It’s
not. But neither are you. You were born without the reasonable gene. One day we
might be able to steal you one on the reasonable gene black market, but until
then having Zarley in your life makes you a more acceptable human being. I kind
of like you again.”

Oh far
out, that was good to hear.

“What
are you doing sitting there like a packet of unsent data? It might not be as
bad as you think.”

He
could only hope it wasn’t, even as his gut told him it was. “It’s called work.”

Dev
stood. “It’s called stalling.”

He
reached for his cell. “Aren’t you paid to do something around here?”

“I’m
glad you’re here,” Dev said, repeating what he’d said at the hospital, but this
time he looked like he meant it.

Zarley
didn’t answer her cell. She didn’t answer at the apartment. He called Sports
Pro because maybe he’d forgotten when her shift was. They told him she was on a
break. She didn’t get breaks. She got straight four-hour shifts. He rang back. This
time he was told she wasn’t working today. He had an urge to wreck something or
to scream at someone. He got on the bike and went home. Before he put his key
in the door he knew she wasn’t there, but he had to see what she’d left behind.

He saw
the note on the dining table and understood in a wave of nausea that rolled
through his body that it was the worst set of words he’d ever have the
misfortune of reading. Worse than those he’d had to write to explain his own
humiliation.

He had
to sit.