Offensive Behavior

“You like me, I know this.”

He turned back to look for Zarley, too many people, she was too far away and the lighting was low. The woman still had his arm. “I’m going to my girlfriend.”

“I think she is not wanting you. That man, he is the Master. He seduces everyone.”

What the ever-loving . . . “That man she’s with?”

“Yes, darling. She will go fuck with him if she wants prize.”

The crowd shifted and he could see Zarley with a champagne glass in her hand. He laughed. “No. She’s mine.” Then he lost her again.

The woman rubbed herself against his side and he turned to extract himself from her grip. She pushed her body, bared breasts into his chest, her arm around his back. “All contest girls they do this, fuck with Master. You could have me. She does not need to know.”

All the contest girls . . . Pain in his chest. “What’s going on here?”

“Your girlfriend has forgotten you. I would be good to you.”

Boxed in by people around them and the bar, he couldn’t easily step away. He found Zarley again, the Master fucker had his arm over her shoulders. There were other people in the private section now and she looked like she was having a good time at a party he wasn’t invited to. He felt forgotten and yet she wouldn’t be here without him, and he had a woman he didn’t know, and didn’t want to know, all up in his face offering him everything.

“Look—” Marja’s finger on his chin. This was getting old.

“Darling, I will kiss you and then you will know.”

“Know what?”

“What it is to be with a real woman, not skinny baby girl with flat chest.”

He lifted a hand to hold her off. She caught it and placed it on her boob. Warm and firm and so much of it, not like Zarley, more than fit in the palm of his hand, in the span of his fingers, soft, warm. His thumb brushed her nipple and Marja moaned as she pressed her mouth to his.

For a second, two, he went with it, opened his mouth to her, squeezed her tit. Zarley had abandoned him and Marja was hot and willing.

Fuuuck. He got his hands to her waist and shoved her away. “Don’t touch me again.”

They’d made a scene. Marja turned her back on him. Thank Christ. He looked for Zarley as he made his way to the roped-off bar, but she was gone. And so was the Master.

She wouldn’t. She wanted to win, but not that way. He put his hand over his face and pinched his temples. She’d slept around, had a lot of casual sex, that’s how they’d started. Would she sleep with that fucker? Maybe she already had, he’d never know. He’d fucking kissed Marja, and he hadn’t wanted to until she started it, but he’d done it anyway, he’d felt her up.

His brain was going to explode.

He waited at another bar with his eyes on the door he knew led to the performer’s dressing rooms. There was a singer and then a magician on the main stage. And no sign of Zarley. Thinking he’d missed her, he went to club’s reception, where he’d paid an outrageous guest fee to be admitted. She wasn’t waiting there. But she arrived soon after, dressed in her street clothes, with her hair still wild and the cat’s ears on. That man with her.

They’d walked in here holding hands, both of them nervous and excited. Stopping in this foyer to kiss. He’d carried Zarley’s bag.

She gave him a cold look that hit him square in the center of his confused state, somewhere south of the rigid ball of guilt and anger in his gut. What just happened?

“Thank you, Andre.”

So the fucker had a proper name to go with his ridiculous title and his bare chest. Zarley kissed Andre on the cheek as he signaled a doorman to open the front door for her. She went through it without a glance in Reid’s direction.

On the street he said her name, but she shouldered her bag and walked on toward the apartment. At least he knew where she was going. He strode up beside her. “Zarley.”

She stopped abruptly and he stepped past, had to turn back to face her, and when he did his confused state hardened to outright incredulity. She was furious.

She. Was. Furious.

But she’d left him and gone off with that fucking playboy.

“What the fuck, Zarley?”