Offensive Behavior

He could cup both her breasts this way, explore the soft weight of her, tease both her nipples. He could—

“Pay attention, Reid.”

He paid close attention to how she twitched when he smoothed a hand down her belly and jerked when he slid his fingers between her legs.

“Oh. Straight to the top of the class.”

But his attention span was in serious danger of being stretched so far it snapped when he slipped a finger inside her, and she ground back against him. Her hair, her smell, the way she moved, the sounds she made. Was it always like this between two people who barely knew each other? No wonder men lost their heads over women. If he’d known this, he’d never have had the presence of mind, the focus, to build Plus.

Maybe he could make her come this way. He wanted to, but it wasn’t enough, he was greedy, and she was his consolation prize. He withdrew his fingers and put a hand to her back, easing her forward onto her hands, running his up her legs and over her pert muscular ass. The advantages of doggie were tactile and rudely demanding. He couldn’t not stare at her bared to him like this. He couldn’t not put his thumb to her clit and roll it.

“Reid.”

He couldn’t not line himself up with her, shaking so hard he misaligned twice before easing through her slickness into the hot sweet sheath of her and expelling a choked breath. This was different. Crazy, good different.

“You’re so deep, so deep.”

And he could use both hands still. He groaned like he’d been wounded when she bent her elbows to the bed and shoved back at him.

“Fuck me, hard and fast.”

He was wounded. Fatally. Zarley changed his life, made him a new one built from feelings he hadn’t known existed. Where he’d wanted nothing but the intellectual challenge of work, now he wanted deeper, faster, harder, the sharp release of sex, and the zinging, defiant gift of this woman.

Again, and again and again.

He gripped her hips and fucked her like an engine of need designed with one purpose, building the pleasure in both of them until they boiled over.

TWELVE

Damned if Zarley didn’t make a decent sex educator. Damned if Reid wasn’t the most adaptable, intuitive, appreciative student. He didn’t ask if he could hold her after round two, doggie style went into hyper-drive and exploded around them in a noisy frenzy of almost wild enough to break something sex, he folded her into his sweaty body and held her till their aftershocks stopped rippling and their breathing settled.

Lust made him a little clumsy and he didn’t know his own strength. When he’d lifted her over his shoulder, charged into the bedroom and thrown her on the bed, Zarley wanted to kick and scream and bounce about from the pure fun of it. No one had ever thrown her around like that, all her partners had worried she was too small, that they’d crush her, or they expected her to be the one leaping about.

Reid had looked so intense, as if he’d acted on impulse and it had drained his battery, and all she could think about was how he’d managed to stay so separate, avoiding entanglements for so long.

He wasn’t avoiding them now. He was awkwardly enthusiastic and she’d have bruises to show for it, and she didn’t bruise easily, but they were nothing compared to how he made her feel. She hadn’t been excited about a man in a long time and experienced men had failed to get her revved up like Reid did. Not all orgasms were equal and not all men made them a combination of a roaring good time and earnest sweetness.

Not any other man did that. Not since Dalton. But then, she’d long worn rose-colored glasses where it came to Dalton and with each passing year there was little sense in not seeing that relationship for what it was. Her first, her best, her most complicated, a pulled muscle in her heart that might never entirely heal.

No other man had gotten under her skin, inside her head since Dalton, until right now, lying in this bed, in the arms of a man she barely knew.

What was she going to do with Reid? He was a virtual stranger, holding her like he had no incentive to let go. It wasn’t just his cock that had gone deep inside her. Sober, drunk only on sex, he intrigued her.

He owned this empty palace of stone and glass, but he lived in it like he was camping. He rode a bike and didn’t own a car. He had a refrigerator full of home-cooked Indian food, but sugar satchels from McDonald’s in the world’s ugliest bowl. He had words tattooed on his chest and a lost look in his eyes. He was disarmingly honest, joyfully self-conscious, but quick to snap off a command and expect compliance.

The first part, the honesty, she still needed to test outside of the bedroom. That last part was every coach she’d ever trained under. They gave commands and expected rigorous, unquestioning obedience. The best of them, the only one she’d loved, Costin Dobregneau, had a sense of humor and knew what to do with a gymnast struggling against the physics of her body, her age and the expectations placed on her, who refused to show fear even as it threatened to devour her ligament by ligament.

Reid had a sense of humor, but she had to test that too.

She had to test everything about him if she intended to stick around. And she intended to stick around, for now at least, until the gloss of him started to fade, or he got demanding. This was still most certainly a thing, but a thing without a set expiry date.

Reid kissed the back of her neck. Give him a few more minutes and he could probably go for round three. “What are you thinking?”

“Not thinking.” He found her hand and threaded their fingers together. “You wrecked my brain.”

Why did holding his hand please her so much? “That bad.”