Offensive Behavior

“I should shave.”

She wanted him now. “No time.” She wiggled left and he moved right. “Oh, you’re on my hair.” He adjusted. That was worse. “You’re still on my hair.”

He rolled them, clumsily, pulling her hair again, and her elbow conked his chin. “Sorry.”

“Move your arm, Flygirl.”

“I can’t get—”

“Shift up the bed.”

“Ow. My hair.”

“Jesus.”

“Is that your—oh.”

“Fuck.”

“Stop.” She sandwiched his face between her hands, his eyes were narrowed with impatience and his body was rigid. Not from the first had they been so out of sync.

“That was horrible.” He said that as if it was an outbreak of Ebola, a plague of locusts. “What was that?”

“That was bad timing sex.”

“Wasn’t on the frigging list.” He was mad. “Tops off a douchebag of a day.”

She snorted.

“Not fuckin’ funny.” He tried to kiss her but got teeth and that was funny. He muttered ouch in her mouth then tried to pin her hands to the mattress at the same time as she tried to move up the bed and kneed him in the ribs. At which point she laughed so hard she wheezed.

It went from awkward awful to a wrestling contest in a heartbeat. He dropped his body weight on her but not quick enough, she squirmed and got an arm and a leg clear. He put his teeth to her shoulder and she bucked. He gripped, rolled and flipped them and they laughed together, all the stress of the last twenty-four hours burning off like excess calories.

But she wasn’t done with him. He copped a pillow in the face while she tried to get out from under his bulk, squirming and laughing and not playing fair with elbows and knees. He fought back going in for the tickle, dirty, dirty trick. He’d pay if she could catch a breath. She kicked and squirmed and he bear growled. The bedcl

othes were a trap and Reid was the weight of unexpected emotion that made her feel like she could fly even buried underneath him.

“Get off, you big oaf.”

“Yield, pipsqueak.”

Yield. Like this was a video game. Like she was doing that ever. She scrabbled for a pillow, got it raised, ready to bop him and he attacked her side with the scruff of his cheek. She dropped her arm to push him away and there was a loud crash and complete darkness. She gasped and they both went still.

“Knew I didn’t need lamps in here,” he said.

That might’ve been the moment. One leg stuck in the sheet, one wrapped over his hip. A hand to his head, the other wedged underneath him. She was on her own hair, uncomfortable, the itchy heat of beard rash on her neck. His heartbeat was between her legs, his face tucked into her side, his soft hair between her fingers. Her calf was going to cramp and she’d just broken his uber-expensive bedside lamp.

There was nowhere else in the world she wanted to be. No one else she wanted to be with and it made her eyes sting with tears.

“Shit, Reid.”

“It’s a stupid lamp.” He lifted up, crawled over her and turned its matched partner on. But she didn’t mean the lamp.

“Flygirl, what’s wrong?” A hitch of concern in his voice, he pulled her into his chest. “Did I hurt you?”

If hurt was discovering how much she wanted him. If it was knowing he felt deeply for her and that in this rumpled bed was the start of a different thing; greater, truer, mucking with the fabric of who she was, then she was bleeding out.

She eased into his lap, crossed her legs behind his hips. “I love that you want to take me to Paris.”