Offensive Behavior

“Oh sure. She’s great. She’s changing to go on again.”

Silence.

“So, I wondered—”

“Goodnight, Kathryn.”

Reid disconnected and Kathryn blew out a breath. “Holy shit. That was cold. You like that guy?”

A whole lot more now that it didn’t seem as though he was going to move on too soon for her liking. She twanged Kathryn’s bra star. “He grows on you.”

The other dancer rolled her eyes. “Calcium grows on you.”

And that’s how the next few days played out. She went to college. Did her homework. Helped Cara apply for jobs. She danced at Lucky’s and she thought about Reid. A whole lot too much.

On Friday between class and Lucky’s she sent him a picture of her elbow. There was a long silence during which she was consumed with anxiety, as if she’d risked so much more than a not very erotic part of her arm on his continued affection.

Alone in the apartment, she was scrubbing the bathroom floor when her cell peeped. He sent a picture of his bare knee. Oh, this was fun. She responded with a shot of her collarbone. She got the cut of his hip, out of focus but it would do. Her belly button got his chest, with tattoo. Her pointed toes, his flexed bicep. She upped the stakes. The curve of her breast with her hand over her nipple got a badly framed shot of the side of his butt. She wondered if that was because his hands were unsteady, if he’d rather be doing something else with them.

She could stop there. She should stop. Cara had a point. This was a dumb thing to do with a guy you’d known for two minutes and picked up in a dive bar where he was attempting to drink himself stupid. Who wasn’t good with people, or photography it seemed.

But she’d already stripped off and that was a waste of good undressing time and Reid had too, she’d be a prick-tease

if she didn’t deliver. This cooling off, think-music period was meant to be for him, but she couldn’t remember being so hyped about a man, about the thought of having sex. Not since Dalton, and then part of the attraction had been about their whole relationship being forbidden, secret, not a good idea. To hell with whether Reid was a good idea or not, he was the best idea she’d had for a long time.

She could manage a full frontal in the mirror on the back of Cara’s bedroom door. She took the shot but before she could send it her cell pinged. Not a picture, a text. It said. I bought furniture. It made her smile.

It pinged again. I want to spread you over the dining table and make a meal of you.

Oh.

And again. I thought about you nonstop.

She did a little dance, nothing sexy, all elbows and knees and cartoonish bopping on the way back to the bathroom where she’d dropped her clothes. Her cell pinged again and she had to race back to Cara’s bedroom in her underwear to get it.

I’ve never jacked off so much in my life as I have waiting for you.

Oh for that, for that, he got the full frontal. But he got in first. A ping. A picture. Her heart cartwheeled. He’d sent her a shot of his fist wrapped around his erect dick. Her mouth went dry. The shot was badly framed but the subject matter was stunningly clear, from the thick blue vein traversing his length to the engorged, reddened tip. His knuckles were white, his stomach hollowed out. Oh. She put her hand between her legs. She should’ve asked for video. He was making himself come.

And that’s how Cara found her. In Cara’s bedroom in front of the mirror. In her underwear. Flushed, mouth open, phone in one hand, the other halfway to helping her join Reid.

She was in so deep, so very gloriously deep.

FIFTEEN

The percentage chance of not screwing up with Zarley was so low as to be technically irrelevant. It was so low as to make the furniture Reid had a store decorator choose redundant. What was he going to do with a dining table and ten chairs, with a bigger sofa, with six kitchen stools?

He had lamps, for fuck’s sake. He’d never owned a lamp in his life, unless you counted the one over his desk at college, and that’d been left behind by the room’s previous occupant. He had bedside tables, two of them, at least they made sense. He had somewhere to put his clock, the tablet he took to bed, that wasn’t the floor. He had an entrance hall table with a big glass bowl on it and a hall runner. He had a coffee table and a rug in front of the TV.

He drew the line at art. The decorator had wanted him to buy a centerpiece for the dining table, stuff for the walls, but he had the whole bay at the window and if he had Zarley in his life, he had all the things he could possibly ever want to look at.

He stood in his furnished apartment and thought about the fact he should’ve bought art. He’d just sent Zarley a picture of his cock, when all she’d showed him was body parts with no sexual menace, an elbow, a belly button, the sweet curve of her breast. He’d asked for stimulation and he’d taken it to extreme. He’d screwed this new thing up in less than a week.

He looked at his cell. No new flashing lights. Nothing he’d missed when he’d thrown himself in the shower and indulged in another fantasy of her before the reality of what he’d done kicked in. He called up a number, waited for it to connect, got a cautious hello.

“I’ve done something dumb.”

“I’m going to say this once, Reid, only once. I can’t talk to you about anything to do with Plus. And certainly nothing to do with Ziggurat.”