Offensive Behavior

“I did tell you I was loaded.”

“But you need to think about a payoff in some unspecified future, or in about an hour’s time.” She shoved the controller at him. “Play to win, Reid, because fantasies don’t come cheap, but they could come tonight.”

He’d played this game hundreds of times but he’d never played it sitting beside a woman who’d made him hard while she negotiated terms that would make him harder. There was no justice in that. He had her beat in fifteen minutes but she didn’t know it yet, so he played it out another fifteen while he tried to construct a fantasy that was less lame than asking her to let him curl around her and fall asleep beside her again.

When she got smashed by a dragon’s tail, she snatched the controller from his hand and straddled his lap. “Name your fantasy.”

Her cheeks were pinked, an eyebrow quirked. She knew he’d set her up. She knelt across his outstretched legs with her hands on her hips. She wasn’t wearing a bra under that white t-shirt. Jesus, his fantasy was having her here, glaring at him like he’d disappoint her if he didn’t demand a naked lap dance.

“You, just you, doing whatever you want to do with me.”

She made a tsk sound. “Did you pickle all your ambition at Lucky’s?”

“You doing whatever you want to do with me has worked out pretty goddamn well so far, I don’t see any reason to change a good thing.”

She stood. “Next time we play I will take you down.”

Next time. Sweet, sweet words. But yeah, she’d never beat him at Dark Souls.

She fiddled about on his TV until she got streaming music, then searched for something she liked. Female singer, soft piano.

She pointed to a spot on the floor facing the empty dining room. “Sit there and don’t move.” She looked at the ceiling.

He went to the spot and sat cross-legged. “What—?”

“And don’t talk unless I speak to you.”

And she’d called him bossy.

She stood in front of him and stretched her arms over her head, then went palms flat to the floor with her legs straight, forehead tucked into her knees. She stood and bent one knee and took her foot by the hand and stretched that leg straight up near her ear. He’d seen her do this on the pole, under lights in her costumes. But here, in the space that should house a dining table she did it without anything to hold on to. She did the same thing with the other leg and when she released her foot and returned it to the floor she bounced up and down, hopping from leg to leg, shaking herself all over, easing her neck side to side. This wasn’t a dance, it was just the warm-up, and she wasn’t smiling, but he was already tense.

Then she pulled her t-shirt off.

His breath caught. He’d seen her naked more times than not today and still the sight of her bare breasts got him worked up. They were a gentle swell, round and plump under his hands, but firm like another muscle on her body and tipped with bubblegum-colored nipples. When the pants went the way of the t-shirt and she stood before him in candy pink panties, his throat dried and he coughed. There wasn’t much material in those panties. Whatever she was planning to do to him was about to get real.

He caught a line in the song about never wanting anything so much.

She turned a cartwheel and he laughed it was such a mood change. She did it again but without putting her hands down and again in the other direction, so fast and sure he didn’t have time to wonder if she might brain herself on his stone floor until she was standing on her hands, her body a perfectly straight, sure form.

And the singer sang about falling into gravity.

Zarley arched her back, her head lifting, one leg reaching forward, the other back, that knee bent so her pointed toe tipped the messy bun on her head. She held that position steady, like a snapped photograph.

“You’re incredible.”

For that he got a flicker of a smile, before she rotated her hips and split her legs at either side, her back arched, her eyes on him. Every movement violently slow, and God, he wanted to stand in front of her and run his hands along her legs to the bunched muscle of her ass and feel the power of her infinite control. She held that position longer than he thought possible in such a rock solid way, he knew he’d underestimated how strong she was. Then she bent both knees so her feet touched her shoulders before going to the floor in a complete back bend and straightening up to stand.

“If your ceiling was higher, I could do more.”

“If my ceiling was higher, you doing more would undo me.”

She smiled. That was clearly her point, then she forgot he existed and performed for herself, bending and twisting, turning and reaching, slowly, with exactness and deliberate, sustained suspension, every filament of her body in perfect tune with her will.

What he saw was the genetics that gave her compact stature and form, the talent that resided in her body, but what he craved, what made him feel almost sick with desire was the iron discipline, the determination and single-mindedness that lead her to master these skills.

She stood on her hands again and he realized he was on his knees, ready to crawl to her. Zarley was showing off her body, but she was letting him inside her brain and his need to touch her made his gut ache and his chest burn.

She caught sight of him and brought her feet to the ground and stood. “Do you like what you see?”