Offensive Behavior

He took a breath and held it. Why was she asking him these difficult questions? Couldn’t she see he was riding a roller coaster and scared of the rattles, trying not to piss himself.

She nudged his knee and stepped between his legs, her hand spearing though his hair shoving his head back. “Don’t look so worried.”

“There’s more than a decade of heaving male sexual frustration sitting here. I want this so badly I feel like I’m going to choke on it.”

She gave his head a shake. “You won’t.”

He was five kinds of too hot, ten kinds of nervous. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, or how to stop looking at her like she was every lonely night extinguished forever. Part of him wanted to throw her on the bed, rip her clothes off and fuck them both screaming into the next century. That part of him was made from three thousand, six hundred and fifty days’ worth of denial, substitution and regret, and it frightened him how those feelings roared inside him.

“I’ve got you.”

Someone needed to. He gripped the end of the bed. “I think I love you, Flygirl.” He closed his eyes, so dumb. “But then I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” He waited for her hand to move, the sound of her shoes leaving the room. What could she possibly want with him? He should end this before it got more embarrassing.

He got her lips instead. A kiss to start a global meltdown in his chest, and then the sound of her shoes dropping to the floor detonated in his stomach, bringing swirling discomfort.

He opened his eyes to see her shrug out of her hoodie and pull her tank over her head. She unbuttoned her jeans, sliding the zip down, then bending to take her socks off, giving a cute little hop when one stuck, before easing her jeans down and stepping out of them. It wasn’t a striptease. It wasn’t done to please him. She was just a woman getting undressed to have a shower.

He lost the power to swallow. She stood there, close enough to grab, in mismatched underwear, her hair a nest of tangles from his hands, her face and chest flushed, and just like this, she was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

She put her hands behind her back and unclipped her bra, let it fall down her arms and drop to the floor. “Keep breathing, Back Booth. In, out, in, out.”

He knew things about her body even before he saw it bared like this. She was compact, with well-defined long muscles. Her feet turned out like a ballerina’s, her calves were prominent, her thighs strong. She had narrow hips and a flat abdomen, but obvious obliques and abs. Now he saw they led up to firm, round breasts with bubblegum pink nipples that made his palms itch. He wanted to run his nose over the muscle delta in her arm and press his face into her prominent collarbone.

She hooked her thumbs into her pants and bent forward to drag them down her legs. No hair. He hissed like a basketball losing air.

“I’d undress you but I think it might be detrimental to your health right now. Count to a hundred, then get undressed and come get me. Try not to have a heart attack before that.”

When she turned and walked into the bathroom he almost did. He rolled back onto the bed and closed his eyes. Get it the fuck together, McGrath. This isn’t a capital raising, it’s not a listing or fighting off a pre-emptive take over, it’s not work. This is a gorgeous woman who’s into you, maybe as much as you’re into her, at least tonight anyway, and she deserves some fucking coherence, not a bumbling overexcited boy.

The shower water was running and he could see Zarley through the glass screen. There were those dimples at the base of her spine, made for his fingers to sit in, his tongue to explore. Wet, her hair hung almost to her waist. On autopilot, he shed his clothes, watching as she tipped her face to the spray. Never. This was simply never a thing he’d expected to happen.

He palmed his dick, squeezed, wiped the wetness away with his thumb. He was a Mentos Mint dropped in a Coke bottle, about to fizz over and explode.

Ninety-nine. One hundred.

Coming, prematurely, ready or not.

TEN

Zarley almost tripped over her own sock. She was a girl who danced in her underwear for money, but getting naked in front of Reid for fun was the singularly most ungraceful thing she’d ever done.

And she was the one in control here.

It was the way he looked at her, as if the bottom would fall out of his world if he couldn’t have her. As if he expected her to reject him and her rejection would slice him into tiny fragments of worthlessness. He had no need to worry on that account. She hadn’t been so turned on since Dalton and their trysts in the barn and that was all teenage hormones, trial and error, and breaking the rules. This was proper adult raging lust, she knew exactly what she was doing, and it threatened to turn her inside out.

There was no door to Reid’s shower, only a glass wall to contain the water that fell straight from the lowered ceiling. He stepped in behind her but didn’t touch her. She knew he was scared to. She took a step back and he groaned, his arms banding her body, his hands coming up to cup her breasts, his head down, lips to her neck, where he sucked the water from her skin.

He was big and warm and overwhelmed, and he made her feel overcome too.

What she’d seen of his chest when she’d unbuttoned his shirt, what she’d felt through his clothes told her he was well built, muscle grafted onto a lean form, economical without being showy, simple masculinity that wasn’t about vain athleticism or physical labor but won from deliberate effort, with less thought to its appeal than its functionality.

That was so hot.

She grasped his arms and arched against him. Everything about him from his nervous energy to his astonishing honesty had her aching. And she wanted to make it good for him, like Dalton had made it good for her, but with none of the blind fumbling silences, the need for secrecy and the lasting pain.

She pushed back into Reid until he stepped into the tiled wall. Hand or mouth, what would he want, what could he take? She soaped her hands and turned to face him, ran the soap down her own body and then dropped it and ran her soapy hands down his. Oh, he felt fine, all contained careless strength and effortless beauty. And yes there was ink, words written across his pec. She’d trace it, learn it later, but what caught her eye was the word alone.

He wasn’t alone now.