Offensive Behavior (Sidelined #1)

by Ainslie Paton

  He took it and didn’t let go. “Hello Zarley, pleased to meet you. I’m your number one fan.”

  “But you’re going to drop me home and then we’re never going to see each other again, because you’re a man of your word and all you wanted was a meal with me, right?”

  He scrunched his eyes closed. “I’m an idiot.” Then he locked on again.

  “You are an idiot. We have a thing. You should’ve at least tried to kiss me.”

  “You wouldn’t let me buy you a meal alone. You might hurt me if I tried to kiss you.”

  “You’d have to take that risk.”

  “Why didn’t you tell them you rescued me?

  “There are a lot of things I don’t tell them.”

  He still had her hand, his thumb rolled across her knuckles. He called, “Park us somewhere quiet. I’ll take it from here.”

  The car cruised to a stop, so early Sunday morning the city was a ghost town. The driver got out with a nod to Reid before he walked off.

  Zarley put her hand on Reid’s thigh. “Bold move, Back Booth.”

  He toyed with a strand of her hair. “When I’m not an unemployed bum, I’m known for my bold moves.”

  “I probably need some convincing of that, since you haven’t made a move on me yet.”

  He squeezed her hand. “I want to kiss you, but I’m scared if I start I won’t want to stop.”

  “That’s kinda how it’s supposed to go.”

  “Zarley.” He said it like a warning.

  Who was this man who’d seen her close to naked, had her alone in his car, knew she was dead keen, and hadn’t tried to jump her? “You can kiss me, Reid.”

  He closed his eyes. “You’re sure?”

  His hesitancy was unbelievably endearing. If it wasn’t lust she saw in his blue-gray eyes with their flecks of orange, she might’ve hesitated too. She inched closer, tipped her head up and touched her lips to his.

  His eyes flared wide and his whole body jerked, his arm coming off the back of the seat and rounding her, but he didn’t press them together and he didn’t take the kiss and run with it.

  So she did.

  She took a handful of his shirt and brought her body into his, her other hand going to his face, and she kissed him again, loving the way his breath caught, his arm closed on her and his muscles locked. This time he kissed back, but closed-mouthed, tentative as if the action held some primitive requirement for restraint, as if he wasn’t sure what came next.

  And what came next was glorious.

  He groaned. It sounded like it came from the soles of his boots and surged through him, blasting past internal organs and external reticence. It was a tortured sound of longing and it entered her body with the flash of a heat wave. It changed everything. It made her want him not for the sport of it, but for the complications of what they might be together.

  She opened her mouth and licked across his lip and he did it again, groaned like he was in pain. His hand came up to the back of her head, fingers tight on her scalp as if he needed an anchor while she pressed his mouth and he opened to her.

  They kissed, with a frantic energy that zinged through her pinpointing all her hot zones, her throat, her nipples, her thighs, her clit with shocking accuracy, but it was Reid who trembled.

  She broke the kiss. “Are you okay?” She put her hand to his forehead, his eyes were wild, the pupils huge. “Do you feel sick again?”

  He took a shuddery breath. “I’m good.” His voice was low and rough and he tipped her to fasten his lips on her neck. “But you?” He tipped her again into the cradle of his arm so he could open his mouth on her throat. “This is okay for you? With me, with tinted windows, getting a room?”

  He said that even as she rearranged him, straddled his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. What wasn’t he getting here? “I want this, Reid. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

  He palmed her ass and pulled her closer so she grazed his erection. His head fell back into the seat. “Oh fuck, if this is sickness, kill me now.”

  She had a second to appreciate the fact she’d wrecked him and they were both fully dressed and there’d been no tongue. She slipped her hoodie off and tried to steady her breathing, but he looked at her as if she was the first meal of a starving man. Like he wanted to make a mess devouring her but knew that might not be good for him. That was—that was—ahh, like winning an important competition, like gold.

  “The way I feel, this won’t be pretty, Flygirl.”

  Flygirl. She opened her knees and rolled her hips. “Show me.”

  He bound her, a hand on her ass cheek and one at her neck and he kissed her with the same stubborn craft he’d used to get her here, a potent mix of fumbling and confidence, as if he was drunk on her, didn’t know his own strength and had no concept of where this was going.

  There was nothing careful or charming about it, he was insistent and demanding and it was so much more than she’d expected. It was making out to the power of ten. Every single judge giving them that perfect score. She rocked her hips and he thrust and they stopped kissing to pant, foreheads pressed together, until without warning he flipped her to her back on the seat and held himself over her.

  “You are gonna kill me.”

  She put her hand to his face, and he turned his head to kiss her palm. “What a way to go, huh? Take me home to your empty apartment so we can both die with our clothes off.”

  “You want that?”

  “Yeah, you crazy man.” She started on the buttons of his shirt. She was the crazy one, desperate to get her hands on his skin.

  “But you need sleep.”

  There was that tight-packed set of abs she’d felt through the cotton. “I’m not tired.” She pushed his shirt open, and a shiver went through him, but he still held himself away.

  “You’re married.” Had to be what his hesitancy was about. A wife stashed somewhere. Crap.

  He recoiled. “No. Fuck, no.”

  “You have a girlfriend.” That’s why he’d stopped. He shook his head, hair falling in his eyes. “Then why?”

  “I shouldn’t. You have to . . . It wouldn’t be fair.”

  She scrambled out from under him. “What are you saying?”

  “I have a problem and I need to solve it and that’s not on you. I couldn’t do that to you.”

  “You’re not clean.” She sighed. She’d been too carried away to think about that, and she knew better.

  He did the unexpected. He gave a bitter laugh. “I’m a goddamn virgin.” He sat in the seat with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

  She said, “Quit fooling around,” even as she knew he wasn’t. He’d kissed her like Dalton Connors had kissed her in the barn at the orchard when they were fourteen. Like the world only started when their lips met and might end if they stopped. And hers had.

  “I’m twenty-eight years old. I’ve been to college and I had my own business and I’ve never been inside a woman. The last time any of me was inside any part of woman, and I’m talking my tongue in her mouth, I was a senior in high school.”

  She swung her legs into the foot-well of the car and sat beside him. She wanted to touch him but she didn’t know if he’d want that.

  “You got through college a virgin?” How was that possible? Not if he looked like he did now. He’d buttoned his shirt, but she’d seen a flash of ink.

  “I got through college never leaving the computer lab. I started my business in college. I barely even dated. It’s no wonder I’m useless with people, I’m fucking unnatural.”

  Oh, this man. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Do you want to have sex?”

  He turned his head and they locked eyes. “I want it now like I want oxygen to breathe.”

  “With me?”

  “With you, oh God, yes, please, with you.”

  He opened his arm and she tucked her face into his chest. “So . . .?”

  He wrapped her closer. “No. I should’ve sorted this years
ago. I need to hire a professional and work all the clumsy out and maybe then you might want me.”

  How it had to sting for him to tell her that, and how awful he thought it was the kind of chore he could handle by putting it on his to-do list and paying someone to take care of it.

  “I want you.”

  He brought her chin up so he could see her eyes. “You can’t possibly. I could hurt you, and it won’t be any fun for you.”

  “You won’t hurt me.”

  He brushed his thumb over her bottom lip. “You’re tiny and I’m not in control.”

  “I’m strong and flexible and you know it. I understand what you’re saying and I want to be with you. I want to be your first.”

  “I’m going to explode the minute you touch me.”

  “I’d like to see that.”

  He shook his head. He was miserable with shame and indecision.

  “And then when we do it a second time, you won’t come so quick and by the third time you’ll—”

  He stopped her mouth with a too-hard kiss that pinched her lip and made her cling to him.

  And now she trembled too.

  NINE

  Reid wasn’t fit to drive. Not with Zarley sitting in the seat beside him. Not with the way she watched him. It’d been a while since he’d driven a car, and rarely one this nice. They’d be a road statistic if they were on his bike, and her body pressed into his back, her arms around him, her thighs—

  “Red.”

  He stomped on the brake and the car jerked to a stop at the red light of an empty intersection. “Shit, sorry.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. We have all day, and nothing bad is going to happen.”

  He wasn’t five, but that’s the way she was speaking to him and okay, that made it better, because why didn’t she take the various chances he kept handing her to embarrass him, and why was she still here?

  “Talk to me. Tell me why you never,” she hesitated and then said, “took care of this. Not that it’s a problem, it’s not a problem. Everyone has a first time, and it’s totally fine that you never got around to it, it’s just that you’re not the kind of man I expected—”

  “To be so hard up.”

  “That’s a compliment.”

  He grunted. “I don’t have a deep-seated dislike of women.” The light went green and he drove through. “I’m not a closet homosexual. I didn’t have a traumatic first encounter where I failed to get it up or anything. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Then you don’t have to. It’s enough that you want me now.”

  He risked a look at her. “No, no, no. You cannot be that cool.”

  “Having sex before I was ready for the consequences screwed up my life.”

  “You’re not talking about a broken heart, are you?” There’d been a tone in her voice that wasn’t storytelling, it was regret.

  “No, the whole catastrophe.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “I know. And it’s not sexy.”

  “Any more sexy than me here with you, on the way to have actual sex in my actual bed and I might drive into the bay.”

  “Who said anything about your bed?”

  He gripped the wheel. “Jesus, do you want me to rear-end something?”

  “I want you to relax.”

  “Like that’s happening any time soon.” It was a good thing the traffic was light. He really needed to be out of this car or focus on something other than the fact she was just there, across the console, watching him. “I had my heart broken at sixteen. I thought Dana Masters was the stars in the sky. I thought we’d grow up and build a life together. I had no idea I was her practice warm-up for Iggy Nelson.”

  “Iggy was your best friend.”

  “Since day care.”

  “She wouldn’t sleep with you, but she went with Iggy.”

  “Rode him like a bit-torrent stream. Strung me out like a line of broken code.” He hadn’t thought about Dana and Iggy for a long time. Long enough for it to be fine print in his life. Too long ago to still sting. But it did. He’d never failed at anything he’d worked for, set his heart on, except Dana Masters.

  Until now.

  “So what, you didn’t bounce back, knock Iggy out and prowl around campus with a neon sign over your head saying, I can keep it up all night, do me?”

  “Not helping.” He whacked the blinker on with more force than was necessary. “I did knock Iggy out and then l swore off wasting my time on manipulative chicks and locked myself in the computer lab.”

  “For years?”

  “It’s not like I was the only one. It’s the jocks that get all the radical action, not the computer geeks. Hey, I was full of ambition and power lifting and angry young man and that keeps you warm at night.”

  “Okay, but after college, there was no one who tempted you?”

  “You know this conversation, which is a hideous personal embarrassment, has done nothing to deflate my erection. That’s a compliment.”

  “You know if you don’t stop driving like we’re in a funeral procession, I will jump you before we get to your apartment.”

  “And you wanted me to relax.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, I do, because there’s no hurry.”

  “For you.” Was it possible for your zipper to do you harm? Cut off vital blood flow. It felt like it was possible. “I’m years behind the action.”

  “And why is that again?”

  He pushed a breath out. Facing nervous stockholders had been easier. “Because I was busy. I didn’t meet anyone I didn’t work with, which made them off limits, and I was building a business that was all guts and glory, and it took every minute of every day not to lose it. When I got finance, I had a lot of people watching me, waiting for me to screw up and I couldn’t afford the distraction. There was precious little leisure time where I didn’t want to sleep.” He’d had a textbook all work and no play life, and in the leftover space, there was a hollowness that was best not contemplated.

  “And did I mention I’m socially awkward and since sex is the most intimate of acts, it simply hasn’t been my go-to.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  He couldn’t answer that easily, the loss of Plus was too raw and the realization of a life he liked without it, too uncertain. What he’d given up for it loomed large. “Some days I wonder.”

  “I understand that.”

  “You do?” The apartment building was up ahead. Thirty seconds to safety. So why did his left leg have the shakes?

  “I was a competition gymnast. I lived and breathed gymnastics. I just started being busier than a twenty-four hour day younger than you did.”

  “How old?”

  “Thirteen. I left home, billeted near my coach. I finished school by correspondence.”

  “What’s the lifespan of a professional gymnast?”

  “Eighteen, absolute tops. That’s when I retired.”

  So young. And fuck, how old was she now? Eighteen, still. Nineteen, a decade between them. Holy shit, this couldn’t happen.

  The scanner wouldn’t recognize the plate of the hire car, which is why they were stopped in the drive. He had to remember the override code to get the shutter up and all he could think about was Zarley being too young.

  “You were retired before I started college.”

  “Pretty much.”

  He tried typing the code on the pedestal keypad and plugged it in wrongly. “How old are you now?”

  “Chill, I’m old enough to be here with you.”

  He punched in the number again and the shutter went up. “How old?” He couldn’t drive in if she was too young.

  “I’m twenty-three.”

  Green light. Five years between them. She wasn’t a kid. He drove forward and headed for his space. “What happened?”

  “You should be asking what’s going to happen.”

  “W-w-what is going to happen?” Apart from Zarley climbing over the console and into his lap.

  “
You’re going to stop worrying you’re too virgin for me, too old for me, and turn the ignition off. Then you’re going to take my hand, get out of the car, kiss me in the elevator, feel me up outside your door, and then—”

  He put his hand over her mouth, then replaced it with his lips. The taste of her, the feel of her in his arms, the idea that she was going to let him fuck her, it stopped all rational thought. This is why he’d stayed away from women, they were bad for business, they could short-circuit your brain.

  He had to re-park the car so it was in the space properly, then he got the ignition off, the door open, Zarley’s hand in his. He kissed her while they waited for the elevator and when they got inside she climbed his body like he was her pole, wrapped her legs around his hips and they kissed through his head spins, forgetting to press his floor number, and the twelve-story ride to the end of his self-imposed abstinence.

  This is really happening.

  The need of it sat in his chest like lung disease, rippled through his body like a power overload. His awareness had narrowed to the flickering tease of her hands and bright sharp sounds she made as they kissed. The end of days was on her tongue and salvation was between her legs and he didn’t know if he was worthy.

  He got them out of the elevator and into the apartment without stopping to put her down. She didn’t need him to hold her in any case, his gymnast, his dancer, the girl who could fly and was teaching him to soar with every sucking kiss and flex of her pelvis.

  Yanking on his hair slowed him up. “Take a breath, Back Booth, you’re going to blow a fuse.”

  “Ow. What?” No way. No stopping. No more waiting. She laughed and put her feet down, lowering her big canvas bag off her shoulder. They were in his living room. There wasn’t enough air in here.

  She stepped away, made gentling motions with her hands. “You don’t want it to be this quick.”

  “Fuck, yeah I do.” He’d left the front door open. Maybe he was freaking her out. “Sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. But I was going home from work. I didn’t take a shower. I want to.”

  He stalked across the room and closed the door. “Ah, okay. It’s, um, through, er.”

  She held her hand out. “I know where your bathroom is. I didn’t say I wanted to shower alone.”