Offensive Behavior (Sidelined #1) Read online

  He dropped her on the bed on her back and stood over her wondering what he was doing because she was naked now and she was so lovely she couldn’t be for him.

  “Come and get me, Back Booth.”

  The sweats had to vanish. When he slipped them off and looked at her again she said something about women who’d let him go. He couldn’t concentrate. How did people have a conversation and sex at the same time? Even if he had words, his mouth was so dry they’d never make it to his lips. He put a knee to the bed and reached for her. “Stop talking.”

  “Talking is half the fun of sex.” She put her hand on his thigh and the muscle jumped.

  “Can’t talk, you’re too much.”

  “Poor baby.”

  Yes, everything hurt and he needed the relief of her, so why wasn’t she under him already.

  “It’s my turn on top.”

  “Fuck.”

  She laughed. “Is that a yes or a no?”

  He half tackled her, going to his back and pulling her alongside him. “Jesus, yes, anything, yes.”

  “See, you can talk. In fact, you swear like a pissed-off bartender when you’re excited.”

  He did? He had her hands in his and she moved her knee across his thighs and sat there. He watched her look at him. He liked the heat in her eyes but he was leaking all over his belly and his stomach was a misery of knots he could feel in his tailbone.

  “Are all pole dancers sadists or just you?”

  She bent forward and licked him base to tip and he shouted a curse, his hips lifting from the bed so sharply when she flickered her tongue around the head, he nearly dislodged her. And she gave him no chance to recover. She shifted so she sat over his cock and the slippery heat of her made him groan loudly enough to wake the upstairs neighbor, and then she moved, letting go his hands to brace on his ribs, sliding forward and then back.

  That made him grip her ass, curl his torso off the bed to watch. It made him grind his teeth. And when she increased the pace of her hip rolls and her hair fell over her face he pushed it back and held it so he could see her bite her lip, squeeze her eyes shut. He felt her shudder. Could she make herself come like this? She was incredible, focused on this like she focused on her pole routines. It would be enough for him if she kept it up, the sight of her working him over was the best thing he’d ever seen and the friction was mind blowing, till on a backward hip roll, she caught him at her entrance. He stopped breathing. She froze there a second and then took him inside.

  “Holy fuck. Zarley. Zarley.”

  “Oh you fill me so good, Reid. So good like this.”

  He had to move. No choice. He tilted his pelvis experimentally and her body rippled. Again and she folded forward onto his chest. He kissed her forehead and she lifted her face and then they were kissing, wet, tongues tangled, but he needed to move again, thrust again and again, meeting the roll of her hips, slapping their bodies together, faster, faster, more, more.

  She gripped his shoulders and he grasped her ass and he chased that whiteout, that brain blast zone, and he smashed into it when she tightened all around him, burying her head in his neck muffling a shout. He came a stroke, two after she stilled, his groin going tight, electricity crackling up his spine and jolting right to his head, the pleasure so intense his calves cramped and his hands fisted before he went limp.

  It might’ve been a century later and neither of them had moved when he said her name.

  She tried to sit, but he stopped her, wrapped his arms around her. “I want you here.” She sighed and sank back into him. “You got there.”

  She nodded.

  “I felt it. You liked it?”

  She propped her chin on his chest to look at him. “Now you want to talk.”

  He smiled. “I should shut up?” He’d soften, knew he would slip out of her, didn’t want that to mean they’d stop being close.

  “You should shut up.” She stretched to kiss him, and he adored these deliberate kisses that worked like punctuation in a sentence. They stood apart from the ones he got carried away with and had their own meaning. “It’s much easier to kiss you when you’re not talking.”

  This kiss meant shut up, but he’d never been one to take advice. He smoothed a hand over her hair. “Do you want to sleep?” He didn’t; unlike earlier, he was energized and also hungry.

  “I want round two.”

  Expectations thoroughly exceeded. Best weekend of his life. Hunger could wait. He shut up, but got busy kissing her, using his hands, finding places on her body she liked to be touched, licked, squeezed, sucked. Behind her left ear, her left nipple more than her right, the slope where her neck met her shoulders on both sides.

  He rolled them so they were side by side but pressed together, separated by nothing but spit and breath and his best intention not to start round two too soon for her.

  “I loved watching you like that, chasing your own pleasure.”

  She smoothed a finger over his brow. “Once I’ve finished with you you’ll know how sex works and you never have to feel embarrassed with anyone.”

  He grinned at her, fitting his thumb in the dimple on her lower back and splaying his hand over her ass.

  She eyed him suspiciously. “What?”

  “That gives me a dilemma.”

  “Which is?”

  “If I’m a good student I’ll learn how to please you. But I don’t want to graduate head of my class.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’d rather be teacher’s pet. Earn credit for extra classes.”

  She tapped his nose; it made him blink. “You aren’t anywhere near graduation yet.”

  He shook his head. His best concerned expression. “I’m not. No ma’am, I am most definitely not.”

  “You have much still to learn.” She was trying hard not to smile but it was in her cheeks and eyes.

  “I’m willing to do anything.”

  She snorted, then composed herself. “There’s sex so wild you break something.”

  “That would be advanced rodeo sex.” He moved his leg so his knee nudged between hers. “It sounds angry.”

  She hung her arm over his shoulder. “No, no, no, grasshopper. A lamp or a bedhead, not a limb. Wild, out of control, hot monkey, bad for the furniture sex shouldn’t be confused with angry sex. Angry sex is take no prisoners.”

  “I don’t have any lamps and angry sex sounds bad.”

  She played with the ends of his hair. Who’d have thought he’d like that. “But it can be followed by make-up sex.”

  “Which sounds good.”

  “Very good. Then there’s half-asleep, lazy sex.”

  “Mmm. I like the idea of that.” God, if only she’d stay long enough for the novelty of all of this to wear off so he could feel lazy and half asleep about sex.

  “There’s the quickie. Every room in the house sex. Role playing. Sex with toys. Sex outside. Landmark sex.

  “As in somewhere famous.”

  “Ah-huh.”

  He laughed. “And I was thinking on the back of my bike was adventurous.”

  “You have a bike?” She shifted so she was riding his thigh. “Now I’m thinking about sex on the back of your bike.”

  There was no helping himself. He palmed her breast, rubbed his thumb over her nipple. “At your disposal.”

  “Hold that thought.” She watched his thumb move and her hips twitched. She put her hand to his face, cupped his cheek. “There is sex so tender it makes you never want to let go of that other person.” She pinched his nose, “And sex so funny you can barely hold it together to fuck.” She let go his face but licked across his lips. “Then there’s kinky sex.”

  “Wait, you mean like with—no, what do you mean by kinky?”

  She met his eyes. “It can get very kinky, but despite being an exotic dancer, I’m not into hanging from the chandelier or wielding a whip.”

  “You’re not?”

  “So we’re clear.” She frowned. “You sound disappointed.”

/>   He plumped her breast. “I’m not.” He dipped his head and kissed her to punctuate his lack of a problem with that. “It’s just the idea of you in black leather with a whip.”

  “Reid.”

  That was said to censor, except she pushed her breast into his hand and gripped the back of his neck.

  “You, in anything or nothing, Zarley. I was your biggest fan before, let’s face it, I’m totally your groupie now.”

  She laughed. “Well, groupie, kinky for me could be with a blindfold or restraints.”

  “Who’s wearing them, you or me?”

  “Either. Both. Or it could be sex with a third person.”

  Brain freeze without the aid of anything cold. Did she mean another woman? Another man? “Have you had a threesome?”

  “No.”

  She pulled away, turned her back but snuggled into him. She already knew he was aroused; he couldn’t not grind that arousal into her ass. “But you’re saying—”

  “There’ll be homework.

  Talk about leave a man hanging. “Dang. What kind of homework?” Sex homework. How could that be a bad thing?

  “You have to work on your fantasies.”

  He kissed her shoulder and cupped her breast. It was Sunday sometime in the early afternoon. He was naked. In bed with a glorious woman he’d been obsessed with, who’d been happy to take the lead, initiate him into the world of sex and didn’t make him feel like he was out of sync. He didn’t need a random fantasy. “This—”

  “No. This was your start. Now you’re in on the game, I want to hear what you dream about, what would really get you off, but before we get to that, I have an obligation to continue the basic sexual education of Reid.” She tipped her head back to look at him. “I don’t know your last name?”

  “McGrath.”

  “Halveston.”

  He kissed Zarley Halveston and wondered how he’d ever been satisfied to know her as simply Lux.

  She broke the kiss. “In the continuing sexual education of Reid McGrath, the next lesson is doggie style.”

  He groaned and clutched her a little tighter. Zarley on her hands and knees on stage was an impossibly cock-pricking image. He’d never once imagined himself there with her.

  “You’re going to need to let me get to up for this to work.”

  He hauled her into his body, and in some mad gymnastics move he must have learned from her by osmosis, he flipped Zarley to her hands and knees and knelt behind her.

  She turned her head and laughed, then wriggled back and sat over his bent thighs. “I do like an eager student.”

  It was an automatic response; his hands simply went to her body, scanning her skin, searching for something that might have changed in the last thirty seconds. Maybe she’d slipped him a drug, fed it to him on her tongue, painted it on his skin with her lips, massaged it into his blood stream with her hands. He couldn’t stop touching her.

  She leaned back into him, her head going to his chest. “There are lots of advantages to doggie style.”

  He could cup both her breasts this way, explore the soft weight of her, tease both her nipples. He could—

  “Pay attention, Reid.”

  He paid close attention to how she twitched when he smoothed a hand down her belly and jerked when he slid his fingers between her legs.

  “Oh. Straight to the top of the class.”

  But his attention span was in serious danger of being stretched so far it snapped when he slipped a finger inside her, and she ground back against him. Her hair, her smell, the way she moved, the sounds she made. Was it always like this between two people who barely knew each other? No wonder men lost their heads over women. If he’d known this, he’d never have had the presence of mind, the focus, to build Plus.

  Maybe he could make her come this way. He wanted to, but it wasn’t enough, he was greedy, and she was his consolation prize. He withdrew his fingers and put a hand to her back, easing her forward onto her hands, running his up her legs and over her pert muscular ass. The advantages of doggie were tactile and rudely demanding. He couldn’t not stare at her bared to him like this. He couldn’t not put his thumb to her clit and roll it.

  “Reid.”

  He couldn’t not line himself up with her, shaking so hard he misaligned twice before easing through her slickness into the hot sweet sheath of her and expelling a choked breath. This was different. Crazy, good different.

  “You’re so deep, so deep.”

  And he could use both hands still. He groaned like he’d been wounded when she bent her elbows to the bed and shoved back at him.

  “Fuck me, hard and fast.”

  He was wounded. Fatally. Zarley changed his life, made him a new one built from feelings he hadn’t known existed. Where he’d wanted nothing but the intellectual challenge of work, now he wanted deeper, faster, harder, the sharp release of sex, and the zinging, defiant gift of this woman.

  Again, and again and again.

  He gripped her hips and fucked her like an engine of need designed with one purpose, building the pleasure in both of them until they boiled over.

  TWELVE

  Damned if Zarley didn’t make a decent sex educator. Damned if Reid wasn’t the most adaptable, intuitive, appreciative student. He didn’t ask if he could hold her after round two, doggie style went into hyper-drive and exploded around them in a noisy frenzy of almost wild enough to break something sex, he folded her into his sweaty body and held her till their aftershocks stopped rippling and their breathing settled.

  Lust made him a little clumsy and he didn’t know his own strength. When he’d lifted her over his shoulder, charged into the bedroom and thrown her on the bed, Zarley wanted to kick and scream and bounce about from the pure fun of it. No one had ever thrown her around like that, all her partners had worried she was too small, that they’d crush her, or they expected her to be the one leaping about.

  Reid had looked so intense, as if he’d acted on impulse and it had drained his battery, and all she could think about was how he’d managed to stay so separate, avoiding entanglements for so long.

  He wasn’t avoiding them now. He was awkwardly enthusiastic and she’d have bruises to show for it, and she didn’t bruise easily, but they were nothing compared to how he made her feel. She hadn’t been excited about a man in a long time and experienced men had failed to get her revved up like Reid did. Not all orgasms were equal and not all men made them a combination of a roaring good time and earnest sweetness.

  Not any other man did that. Not since Dalton. But then, she’d long worn rose-colored glasses where it came to Dalton and with each passing year there was little sense in not seeing that relationship for what it was. Her first, her best, her most complicated, a pulled muscle in her heart that might never entirely heal.

  No other man had gotten under her skin, inside her head since Dalton, until right now, lying in this bed, in the arms of a man she barely knew.

  What was she going to do with Reid? He was a virtual stranger, holding her like he had no incentive to let go. It wasn’t just his cock that had gone deep inside her. Sober, drunk only on sex, he intrigued her.

  He owned this empty palace of stone and glass, but he lived in it like he was camping. He rode a bike and didn’t own a car. He had a refrigerator full of home-cooked Indian food, but sugar satchels from McDonald’s in the world’s ugliest bowl. He had words tattooed on his chest and a lost look in his eyes. He was disarmingly honest, joyfully self-conscious, but quick to snap off a command and expect compliance.

  The first part, the honesty, she still needed to test outside of the bedroom. That last part was every coach she’d ever trained under. They gave commands and expected rigorous, unquestioning obedience. The best of them, the only one she’d loved, Costin Dobregneau, had a sense of humor and knew what to do with a gymnast struggling against the physics of her body, her age and the expectations placed on her, who refused to show fear even as it threatened to devour her ligament by ligament.
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br />   Reid had a sense of humor, but she had to test that too.

  She had to test everything about him if she intended to stick around. And she intended to stick around, for now at least, until the gloss of him started to fade, or he got demanding. This was still most certainly a thing, but a thing without a set expiry date.

  Reid kissed the back of her neck. Give him a few more minutes and he could probably go for round three. “What are you thinking?”

  “Not thinking.” He found her hand and threaded their fingers together. “You wrecked my brain.”

  Why did holding his hand please her so much? “That bad.”

  “Will be if it’s permanent.” His stomach grumbled. “At least my gut still works.”

  “You should probably feed me.” Did he still have a refrigerator full of Indian food? Lego men holding his computer cables?

  “I should.”

  He snuggled that much closer and it made her smile, but she was starving and she badly wanted a shower and she needed to check her messages, text Cara. “Are you worried about what happens if we leave this bed?”

  “I don’t have any clue about how things work. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be cool and let you go back to your life, or if I’m flayed by the sex or, yeah, I’m one hopelessly confused guy, so figured I’d keep you in bed where it’s warm and comfortable and I don’t have to admit I’ve never fed a woman lunch without there being a waiter around.”

  She was the adult here and adults planned, established parameters and made people feel safe. “Would you like me to stay the night?”

  “Yes. But I might want you to stay all the nights there are and I don’t know where that’s coming from. We don’t know each other.”

  “As far as the rules of a thing go, that’s okay. We get to know each other and we either like what we see or the thing,” she shrugged, she didn’t have a good way to close out that thought. There hadn’t been a night with a man that wasn’t fueled by some kind of stimulant in a very long time. “The thing stops being fun.”