Offensive Behavior

How would he ever hold on to her?

This wasn’t the kind of club where lust drunk men threw money at the stage, or tucked a bill into a thong. Here they paid a significant membership fee and flew in from all over the world, and the dancers were paid a professional salary. Didn’t make the men who watched Zarley any more civilized. He had to uncurl his fists when his hand cramped.

Much as he loved her on that stage, the two minutes forty-five couldn’t pass quickly enough. He wanted her back by his side where he didn’t have to worry she’d be lured away by someone more put together than he was, who hadn’t loused up his career and had a better fix on the future.

It was a relief when she left the stage. He relaxed enough to drink his bourbon, enough not to be sure he didn’t bump the woman beside him with his elbow.

“Excuse me.” He held up a hand. “I’m sorry.”

“You are not so sorry, I think.” She was tall, blonde and very curvy.

“I bumped you. It was an accident.” He moved his stool to give her more room at the bar and she took it, turning her body to face him. The tits had to be fake. The thing she wore didn’t have any structure, two pieces of fabric falling over her boobs. When she picked up her drink, it gaped and he got an eyeful of raised coffee-colored nipple. Jesus.

“No accident. Fate.” She had a heavy accent. He couldn’t pick it. She put her hand on his forearm. He wanted to rip it away.

“Can I help you with something?”

“You are tourist. Americano. Businessman?”

“Yes.” He extracted his arm. Not so much the businessman part anymore.

“My name is Marja. I am from Poland.”

“Owen Reid.” That’d do. Her name probably wasn’t Marja. How long would it be before Zarley was back?

“You looking for some fun in Paris?”

He smiled. “I’ve found it, thanks.”

“But you are all alone, Owen.”

“Not anymore.”

Marja did a pantomime of looking around. “I don’t see girlfriend.”

“She danced on stage tonight.”

“Ah. She is skinny stripper?”

“She’s a dancer.” But closer to a stripper than he’d ever seen her and the shock of that loitered inside his body. He wanted out of here, he wanted the Zarley he knew naked in his arms.

Marja waggled her fingers over her head. “She is with the ears, no? I see you watch her special. But she is no better than me. She is only baby girl.”

Reid finished his drink, made a deliberate move of putting the empty glass back on the bar. “Look Marja, I’m waiting for my girlfriend, okay.”

“Okay, I am very sorry for your trouble.”

Whatever. And finally Zarley was here with some guy in a suit, make that half a suit. Oh God, she was so naked, it felt ruder than when she was on the stage, this walking around where other people were fully dressed, mostly. Why didn’t she change first? Where was she going?

“I only wish to make you happy, Owen.”

“What?”

Marja was all up in his space, warm breath in his ear. “You are darling man, here alone. I only think to make you not sad.”

Zarl

ey stood with that man in a private closed-off section of another bar. This place was set up like a circus with three main stages and three main bars, plus table seating and balconies and who knows what else. Reid got up to go to Zarley and the woman pulled on his arm. He turned to shake her off. Her whole breast was exposed.