Offensive Behavior

“Maybe, but maybe you needed to have that happen to be who you are today.”

She groaned. “Unemployed, homeless and broke. If you’ve been reading self-help books, they’re not working.”

“I haven’t. Okay, I read one. It’s called Get Out of Your Own Way: How to Overcome your Insecurities and Limps.”

Zarley laughed. “It is not called that.”

“Close.”

“Did you buy it? I think I’m going to Paris.”

“Lord no, it’s Gavin’s. Bring me back a baguette and a cute Frenchman.”

She pressed the access code to Reid’s building. “I’ll need to borrow a big suitcase.”

Cara sa

id, “I only need a small Frenchman.”

It made her smile all the way to Reid’s door. When she let herself in she heard music. Not from the television. He wasn’t gaming. They’d spoken once today. He was avoiding his cell and computer, having set an out of office message on all his devices. She followed the sound.

Reid was on the treadmill. He was barefoot, pounding it out. He was shirtless, wearing track pants, and he was drenched with sweat. Zarley kept close to the doorjamb so she could indulge in watching him. She was more often the watched than the watcher, though she’d studied plenty of male gymnasts, their perfectly sculptured physiques on easy display at training camps and competitions, but there’d been something clinical about that.

With Cara at her side, she’d engaged in professional objectification. They’d compared the abs and pecs, triceps, lats and quads, chest expansion and skeletal structure of each of the men in the US team. Never with the intention of licking them.

Reid wasn’t built like a gymnast. Too tall, his muscles were bunched, functional not showy. He didn’t have a gymnast’s learned grace or explosive power and iron control. He could be gawky, halting, unsure of his own strength, like he hadn’t read the user instructions for his body and was still fumbling it out. But looking at him made her go tight with want. And if he’d let her, she’d lick that rivulet of sweat that ran from his collarbone, across his tattooed pec and down the ladder of his abs into the waistband of his pants. She’d tongue him dry.

And then start on making him sweat for her all over again.

When the programming on the treadmill ended he slowed and stopped. He didn’t see her till he stepped down. He was overheated but he flushed further when their eyes met.

“How long have you been here?”

“Little while.” Long enough for it to affect her heart rate. To almost forget about Lou. For her emotions to get screwed up and to feel teary.

“Did I lose time?” He dragged a towel over his face and chest. “Zarley, what happened?” He stepped in close, but didn’t touch her, aware of his state.

“Lou died.”

He forgot about being considerate and wrapped her in a slippery, smelly hug. He didn’t say anything. He scooped her up and carried her into the bathroom, where he ran the bath and held on to her as she cried the tears she hadn’t shed at Lucky’s.

When they’d undressed and she was curled against him in the warm water, he said, “Baby, who’s Lou?”

It almost made her laugh. She told him what little she knew about Lou and when she finished he was so quiet she turned her face to check he hadn’t fallen asleep.

“I know what I want to say, but I’m worried it’s the wrong thing.”

“Say it.”

He nuzzled her cheek. “Run away with me. I don’t care where we go. Vegas, Portland, your Waco waterslide, it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t have a job, my friends don’t want to know me, the media want to catch me doing something else dumbass and my girlfriend is on a break.”

It was a nice way to put it. So far he was doing well. Not turning the pressure up like she’d expected.

“Cara could stay here and take care of my plants while we’re gone.”

Now that was a genius idea. “You don’t have any plants.” She played her fingertips along Reid’s thighs, bent up out of the water either side of her own.

“I could get some.”