Текст книги "Under Locke"

Автор книги: Mariana Zapata

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Two "goodnights" wafted through the room. I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep. As tired as I'd been the entire drive and walk to the room, I couldn't shut off my brain. The sound of the sink running, sheets rustling, and low murmurs kept me up. No matter how hard I tried to fall asleep, I couldn't. The light from the guys' half of the room was right smack on my face either way I lay.

At some point, the whispers and the running water stopped. The sheets shuffled once more, and I heard one sigh after the other before silence ensued. I tried to steady my breathing, and I still couldn't fall asleep.

And then, I heard it.

It started as a whisper, a hiss, a pssssssssst.

And then it grew progressively louder before the smell hit me.

But by that point, my stomach was hurting. Pure, pleasurable pain stabbed me right in the gut. And I started giggling like crazy. Crazy. Tears pooled in my eyes and I gasped.

A deep growl of a laugh mixed with mine from the other side of the room. It was Dex. Dex!

"Oh my God," I wheezed, smothering my mouth with my hand. "Did you crap your pants?"

Another bout of grumbling laughter came over Dex that made me suck in a breath.

My stomach hurt even more as I heard his wind-breaking in my imagination. The badass Dex Locke that Trip and Sonny had told me about so carefully, the one who probably beat a man for talking smack to him, was passing gas like he was on the verge of pooping his pants. And he laughed about it.

"I thought you were sleepin'," he muttered before laughing even harder. The sound was even richer, more pure in the dark room.

I pinched my nose to keep from laughing louder. It was only a miracle that Slim was a heavy sleeper and didn't wake up. "Holy moly, I want my own room."

“Go to sleep,” his gruff voice barked at the end of a laugh.

“Sleep?” I gagged so loud it was another miracle that Slim still hadn’t woken up. “How am I supposed to go to sleep after that?”

Dex groaned. “Ritz.”

My stomach hurt from how hard my muscles were cramping. “Your butt should be a weapon of mass destruction.”

Dex chuckled low, rough and sugar sweet at the same time. “Get to bed.”

I let out a long breath trying to control myself. It worked.

For about half a second.

And then I started laughing all over again, pulling the extra pillow over my face to muffle it. I really had no idea why I thought it was so funny. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been around Will the Farting Machine most of my life. His goal for the longest time had been to fart the alphabet. I mean, everyone passed gas. Everyone.

But this was Dex. My smoking biker boss that wore black on a regular basis.

I pulled the pillow away just long enough to hear him having another laughing fit as well.

So I said what came to mind. “You’re funny.”

Because he was, who would have known? My chest felt all loose and fun for the first time...in forever.

It might have been because the dark took away the intimacy of my admission but whatever. It just came out of my mouth. “I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much.”

“Me neither,” his low voice carried across the room right before I felt something hit my stomach. It was a pillow. He’d thrown a pillow at me. “Night, baby.”

I rolled over and tossed my leg over my new pillow with a snort. “Night, Charlie.”

I fell asleep with my cheeks hurting that night.

~ * ~ *

“I don’t fuck my employees, man.”

Shane shook his head, and then tilted it forward just a little. “Not even that one?”

I was trying my best to pretend that I couldn’t hear them. Like I was so wrapped up in watching Slim transfer the fresh stencil onto the customer in the chair, that I was able to zone out my boss and his friend. But I couldn’t, and a huge part of me, the sadistic part, didn’t want to.

For the last thirty minutes I’d been trying to ignore Dex and this Shane fella talk about who'd they’d seen up until that point at the convention. Up until Shane had shown up, I’d been having a good time with both of my coworkers. Dex had teased me about how I thought everything was cool while we’d walked around bringing the shop's things in.

That’s right. Dex was teasing me. Apparently our middle of the night hysterical laughing session had been a transition in the Iris/Dex battle. Who would have known? I still felt a little uneasy and unsure but it wasn’t anything like before. I’d take it. I had told myself before I wasn’t going to be pissed off at him any more, and I was going to stick to my guns and go with this new attitude for however long it lasted.

Because it wouldn’t last but I’d worry about that when the time came.

We spent the morning making our way around like zombies trying to set up the booth before opening. The people, the colors, the designs, everything in our surroundings sucked me in with the back and forth trekking from the truck.

The people and the piercings were beyond interesting. I'd seen one girl who had rows of piercings that lined up her back with streams of ribbon laced through that made it look like she was wearing a corset. Another man I’d seen setting up a table down the row from ours had tattoos all over his face. There was literally no inch of clear skin on his entire head except around his eyes. That was just the start, Slim had warned me.

It was fun. Taking in all the unconventional people, imagining what kind of stories the tattoos on their bodies told. There was no doubt in my mind both Slim and Dex could sense my curiosity and excitement.

We were having a really good time.

Until Shane came in with his big, ringing words, retelling stories about how many girls he and Dex bagged every time he visited Shane's shop in Dallas. From the amount of time he'd spent with us, I figured his booth wasn't exactly busy. I’d stood up to grab Slim a new water bottle for rinsing, and that was when Shane noticed me. Leading to the question that made me wary. The same question that had me clocking in our wagon of friendly as a twelve hour truce.

Well, it’d been fun while it lasted.

I saw Dex cut me a glance out of my peripheral vision, though I’m not sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, before sighing out, “No.”

Sheesh.

“Especially not that one,” he added.

Dick!

The stab to my pride flared up my chest painfully.

Screw him for not wanting to sleep with especially me. Dick face. It's not like I wanted someone like him to add to the nonexistent list of people I'd slept with in my life.

I flicked my gaze over in their direction, catching Shane’s eyes on me, and forced a hard smile to my face. I wasn't a vain person. I was happy with myself and regardless of whether Dex thought my B cups were too small or whether my facial features weren't up to par. I had some pride. So I gritted my teeth, locked my gaze on Dex's throat and grabbed the bottled water I'd filled up hours before.

Dick. Dick. Dick. Dick. Dick.

"What's wrong with her?" the snooty little jerk asked.

Was there something wrong with me? Besides my arm, which no one friggin' knew about, I didn't think there was anything wrong with me. I wasn't going to be on the cover of a magazine anytime soon—or ever—but I didn't look like I’d gone head to head with a surgeon’s scalpel and lost.

"Nothin' besides the fact Sonny would rip your asshole outta your mouth if he saw you lookin' at her ass," Dex replied in a low laugh.

There was a low groan. "That's Son's sis?"

"The only one we know of."

God, the thought that there could be another Curt Taylor offspring in the world made me want to vomit even more than the realization that Dex didn't find me at least attractive enough to stand up for me.

Dickface.

Shane made a humming noise. "So I can't try—"

"Shut the fuck up, man," Dex groaned.

"Dude. You can't tell me you haven't thought about hittin' that."

Oh God. Was I mad or annoyed? I should feel insulted or pissed that I was being objectified, but strangely, I think I was more annoyed than anything else.

Dex's answer only fueled the part of me that was pissed off. Completely overshadowing my annoyance. "Why would I?"

And here I thought we were sort-of friends. Jerk. Slimy, moody, tiny balls. Weren't recluse spiders common in Texas? Maybe I could—

"I think we're talking too loud," Shane stated.

There was a short pause before Dex stated evenly in the same volume, “Ritz.“

I ignored him, focusing at the thought of finding a spider to bite his precious arm.

Here was this man I thought was beautiful, nearly perfect on the outside, hotter than a light bulb that had been left on all day—a bit of a dick but whatever. And he didn’t even find me attractive enough to be polite when referring to my looks. Not even a little and it made my sternum burn.

"Ritz."

Dick.

"Iris," he said that time.

I looked over my shoulder at his chin, clenching my jaw. Dick. "Yes?"

Dex waved me forward with a flick of his tattooed fingers. “Babe, come here.”

I didn’t.

“Iris, come here.”

"I'm fine over here, Char-lee," I told him. Was I trying to piss him off by calling him that? Probably.

I could see Dex shake his head in Shane’s direction before splitting the distance between us. His gaze dropped to my eye level as he rolled my chair away from Slim's vicinity for me to face him. Dex's hand reached out to tip my face. I looked up at the rafters.

"No." He pressed his fingers deep into the skin under my chin.

Touchy-feely Dex? Okay.

"No what?" I blurted out the question like a moron.

He made some sort of disapproving noise in the back of his throat. "I hate it when you look away," Dex murmured. "Quit it."

I widened my eyes but still didn't listen to him.

“Look at me," he insisted. "You pissed again?” he asked in a low voice meant only for me.

There was absolutely no hesitation in my answer. “Yes.”

He groaned. "Babe, fuckin' look at me. I like your wounded deer eyes."

Dick. I shrugged.

Dex slid his thumb down to replace the two fingers beneath my chin, and then swept it across the line of my jaw to nearly my ear. "Please."

God. He got on my nerves. Tired of playing the petulant child and kind of pleased that he'd said the magic word, I finally looked at him. The expression on my face was the best blank one I could muster.

Those cobalt colored eyes shifted from one of mine to the other. Because I'd gotten to know him in my own secret way, I could see the strain on his lips. The strain that told me he was trying really hard not to be amused. “You heard what I said?”

I gritted my teeth. "I'm not deaf."

Oh yeah, he was trying not to smile.

But he forced a slow blink. "And?"

“It's fine that I'm not your cup of tea, Dex, but you don't have to be such an ass about it and tell the entire world." I swallowed. "I don't have friggin' herpes or the Black Plague."

A frown twitched his pink lips, a crease forming between his eyebrows as he looked from one eye to the other again. "Honey." His finger slipped just behind my ear.

"Please go away.”

“No.”

Of course not. I had to try a different tactic. “You're embarrassing me."

What did the asswipe do? He grinned goofy. His good mood apparent over every pore of his face. "I think you're embarrassin' me."

"Oh please," I snorted, tipping my head back out of his reach. "You're just being honest. It's fine. I'm serious. I don't like chocolate, it's kind of the same thing, right?"

His eyes widened for a moment, sweeping leisurely over my face and down to my mouth. "No. It's not, babe." His grinned flattened in a way that spelled trouble. "You don't need to be fishin' for compliments."

"I'm not fishing for compliments!" Was I?

His tongue peeked out to tap his bottom lip. "Seems like it."

What? A shiver wormed its way down my spine. A shiver that I was barely able to control until I felt something soft, hot, and feathery in my throat. “It seems you’re out of your mind.”

He raised a heavy eyebrow. “Why?”

I swallowed hard and leaned further away from him. “Where do you want me to start?”

He looked at me for a little longer than I expected before he laughed that same guttural version I secretly liked. Dex smiled, never losing eye contact even after calming down.

Something changed in his expression. Maybe not even in the contours of his face but in his eyes, something definitely changed just a little. Whatever it was, I liked it.

Plus, I wouldn't get to see much of him pretty soon. The reality that I needed to tell him what was going on made me feel guilty.

I still kind of hated him for being so damn hot.

Especially since he’d decided to let himself all hang out while at the Expo. Unlike his daily attire back in Austin that mainly consisted of t-shirts, jeans, and the occasional gingham print shirt, Dex had shed his normal attire for a black undershirt. A sleeveless black tank that let me see every inch of those cut arms beneath layers of thick ink, and a better view of the red tattoo that went from his back over his shoulder and neck to his chest.

Damn him.

Damn him to hell.

Dex looked at me for a second longer before straightening up and saying, "I’m gonna get goin’ for a while. If someone comes lookin’ for me, call.”

I nodded, knowing that I didn’t have his number but assuming that Slim did.

He paused for a minute, straightening up to his full height before leaning back down and over me. The hot heat of his skin radiated onto mine so intently the warmth of his skin seeped into my muscles. "Son would skin my balls if I let somebody take advantage of his pretty baby sister."

Oh my mother heifer.

As if that wasn't enough, I swear to Mary and Joseph I felt his bottom lip press to the skin over my right temple. "I like it when you're all cute and playful," he added.

And, it was a miracle I didn't croak when he stepped away. What in the hell was that?

When I glanced over in Shane’s direction, he was watching me curiously before taking off with Dex.

Well. That was awkward. And, and, and... holy crap. What was that about cute and playful? It made it sound like he thought of me as a puppy or something. I had to shut down my brain and push what he said out of my head.

Dex is a dick. Dex is a dick. Dex is a dick.

Gah!

I shut the thought in the back of my mind indefinitely.

Debating whether to keep watch at the table or keep my eye on Slim’s masterpiece—for the record, it seemed that everything Slim did was a masterpiece of fine lines, delicacy, and color. All the guys at Pins were really good, some better at certain things than others, but I’d always thought that Slim was the most talented. Maybe tied with Dex when he actually worked but usually he won.

After deliberating my options for a split second, I rolled my chair over to watch him tattoo the guy he had hunched over, working on an old pirate ship right smack on the middle of the man’s brawny shoulder.

I didn’t say a word as I watched him, not wanting to distract him from the man who had been all too excited to request Slim’s work an hour before.

But my friend Slim had other thoughts. His green eyes flashed up at me. “What was that about?”

"Huh?" I played stupid.

Slim pulled the gun off the customer’s skin, dabbing at the beaded blood before continuing with a shake of his head. "Since when are you guys BFFs?"

I’d learned over the last month how chatty all the guys were, well, specifically Slim and Blake. If I answered his question just remotely weird, I’d bet my first born Slim would jump to some kind of crazy conclusion that I wanted no part of. So I went with the truth. “I heard him fart last night. It kind of broke the ice.”

The little whistle he let out told me that was good enough. He snorted and raised an eyebrow before getting back to work. “That’ll do it.”

Chapter Thirteen

I was swooning. Unfortunately it wasn’t because someone had said something sweet—no one had—but because I was bone tired. After the four hours of sleep we’d gotten after the drive, then all of the running around to set up the booth, and finally the nine hours we had to work the Expo, I was crabby and swooning.

And these guys had dragged me to a bar with Dex’s friends.

Apparently no one cared that I was really tired and that I didn’t drink. They especially didn’t care that all I wanted to do was veg out on the bed in the hotel room with a meal that was more than the nachos and stale fries I had to down at the Expo. If I never saw another plate of nachos or another paper plate with over salted fries on it again, it'd be a day too soon.

“We’ll only stay for a little bit,” Slim had sworn.

That had been two hours ago. Two hours was not what I considered a little bit. Two hours was the length of a movie. A movie I could gladly be watching in our hotel room beneath the covers of the pull-out. But more than likely I’d probably be asleep the second my head hit the pillows.

“Are you okay?” Shane asked from his spot on the stool next to mine.

I shook my head, giving him a drowsy shrug afterward. “I’m exhausted.”

“I was planning on leaving in a minute. Want to catch a cab back to the hotel?” he asked.

Hmm.

I was really tired…

Not tired enough to be stupid and irresponsible though. “I’ll just wait for Slim or Dex.” Or leave by myself. That was an option I’d willingly pay extra money for to be safe and not take a chance with a stranger.

Dex had disappeared a few minutes ago, leaving the table we’d taken up in a corner. Slim was over at the other side of the bar speaking to people that he knew. It was only my antisocial ass that was still sitting in the same spot we’d been in for two hours while my two coworkers were social butterflies. The bar wasn't exactly some upscale downtown hot spot. Saying it was seedy would be an exaggeration but it wasn't somewhere I'd go by myself. So I used that as an excuse to stay where I was.

Shane shrugged, and it was at that very moment that Dex reappeared, taking his seat on the other side.

As if he could read my mind, he leaned over and sighed. “I’m too old for this shit. You ready to go?”

Hallelujah!

I nodded so quickly and grinned so widely, I knew it was the reason why Dex smiled then. “Be right back.”

He got up again and made his way over to Slim who stayed where he was. Dex said something to him before bulldozing his way back where Shane and I were. Only he'd barely covered half the distance when a man standing in his way turned around too quickly and bumped into his chest.

Spilling a small glass of alcohol all over Dex's signature black v-neck.

Obviously I couldn't hear what Dex said to the guy but from the angry lines across his forehead, it wasn't nice. The man who had spilled the drink, only a couple inches shorter than my boss but easily twenty or thirty pounds heavier in the gut, lifted up a finger and pressed the tip of it into Dex's chest.

Even I knew that was the absolute stupidest thing he could have done.

"Shit," I heard Shane mutter as his friend—my boss—lifted both hands up to shove the drunk guy back into a table. "C'mon, let's go get him. He can't get arrested again."

Oh crap.

Shane passed right by me, ticking his head over in the direction Dex was. Climbing over the chair, I followed after him, trying to peep around his figure to see what the hell Dex was doing by that point. From the stable conversations and tones around me, no one had gotten punched. Yet.

"Dex!" Shane yelled futilely. The bar was too loud to hear anything more than a foot in distance away.

I twisted around his frame to see that Dex was fisting the drunk guy's shirt, shaking him pretty violently. All over a spilled drink? Jee-zus.

Shane cut the distance between them. "Dex! Let's go!"

I happened to turn and look over my shoulder at that moment to see the big bouncers at the door fighting their way toward the small—and stupid—spectacle.

"Dex!" Shane yelled again.

This idiot was going to get arrested, and then how would Slim and I get home? Annoyed, I made my way around Shane to reach out and grab Dex's thick forearm. "The bouncers are coming." I shook his arm.

Not paying any attention to me, Dex pulled the drunk guy closer to his face.

I looked over to see that the bouncers were even closer. So I did what yia-yia used to do when Will was being a little shit. I pinched his side as hard as I could.

That got his attention.

He swung those bright blue eyes over to me, jaw clenched, mouth grim.

I pinched him again. "Don't get arrested, you friggin' behemoth. C'mon."

Dex blinked twice. He glared at me for a moment before whatever anger or frustration he was feeling melted away in the blink of an eye. He nodded stiffly once, dropping both hands to his sides. With a glance behind my head, he cocked his head in the direction of the exit. Dex gestured me over to him, eyeing the door as his sign that we should get going. Shane followed behind me until we got to Dex, who maneuvered me in front of him as we made our way outside. By some miracle, we caught a taxi in complete silence almost immediately.

Shane slid in first, and as I started to duck to sit in the middle because that was the way we had ridden over with Slim, Dex's hand on my arm stopped me. "Me first."

Okay.

I slid in after him, listening to Shane give the driver the name of our hotel.

Heat hit the side of my face almost immediately.

"Did you call me a behemoth?"

I tilted my head just a little to see that Dex's muscular body was angled toward me, his legs spread wider than necessary, his thigh pressing into mine as his mouth lingered way too close. "What?" I breathed out.

His lips twitched. "You called me a behemoth." I swear the corner of his mouth tilted up.

"Oh." I grinned because yeah, I had. "I did."

Shane's head peeked over Dex's shoulder. "Did you pinch him or was I imagining that?"

At the reminder, Dex started pulling up the side of his shirt where I'd gotten him. All I could see in the dark cab was the sleek outline of his lateral muscles rippling.

I think my mouth watered a little before I caught myself and snapped my eyes over to Shane. "He wasn't listening."

“Don’t think anybody’s ever pinched me in my life,” Dex claimed with a frown.

"You weren't listening!" I insisted.

“I’m gonna have a goddamn bruise. From you,” he pointed out the obvious.

"Bro," Shane hummed. "You know your ass can't be getting into trouble again."

I wanted to ask him if he was still under probation. I mean, he'd lost his mind over some guy accidentally spilling a drink on him. What wouldn't make him lose his mind?

Almost as if he was reading my mind, Dex made an irritated noise in his throat. "He spilled shit on me."

I snickered and mumbled under my breath, "Wearing a black shirt." Like that was noticeable.

I must have spoken too loudly because Dex's head snapped around to look me in the face.

With a one-shoulder shrug, I twisted my body to look out the window. "Just saying. Spray a little Resolve on it and it's fine. You didn't need to get your panties in a wad."

Shane snorted.

Dex grunted but I ignored him and settled my forehead against the window of the cab, listening to Shane strike up a conversation about having watched The Avengers recently. I’d overheard from Slim that Dex's first tattoo had been a Captain America shield somewhere on him. Where exactly it was located, I had no clue.

To be honest, I thought that was sort of cute.

Big, bad Dex with his inked up arms, black bike, the f-bomb dropping dick in a motorcycle club… liked superheroes? Unreal.

So all right, it was pretty friggin’ cute.

I pulled out a twenty dollar bill from my purse to pay for the trip when Dex pushed my hand away and nudged me out of the cab. I felt like a drunken prostitute on the way through the hotel lobby and up the elevator with the two friends. Shane said bye on his floor while we went up silently to the twelfth floor.

We were about halfway down the hall when I remembered something Dex had said at the bar about being too old. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-three,” he answered.

I stopped walking and stared at him. Thirty-three? I guess it made sense. He had his own business. A business that had been open for six years, so it wasn’t like he could have been too much younger despite the fact that his looks landed him somewhere in his mid twenties instead of early thirties.

“Huh,” I huffed, taking in the lean frame in a fitted shirt. “You don’t look like you’re thirty.”

Dex shot me a sidelong look that could have passed as a smile. “I feel like it most of the time."

Neither one of us said anything else as we made it into the room. I grabbed my pajamas and ducked into the bathroom to shower the smell of sweat from the bar off and get ready for bed. By the time I made it back out, Dex was sitting on the edge of the mattress in basketball shorts and a t-shirt with a bottle of lotion between his legs, one hand massaging his opposite arm.

“Are you putting lotion on?” I asked.

Those true blue eyes flickered up to mine. “Yeah. It preserves the colors. See?” He slid the sleeve of his t-shirt up to his shoulder, pointing at the solid shiny black ink of his right arm. “Gotta be careful with all this black. I don’t want it lookin’ gray in a few years.”

“Oh,” was my brilliant response. I blinked. “How many do you have?”

Dex smiled, that slow creeping smile that I recognized as a sign that he was amused. “Only five.” He watched me standing there for a minute longer. “Wanna see 'em?”

No.

Who was I kidding?  I nodded anyway.

He slid forward on the edge of the bed, his hands dropping to his knees before he started yanking up the material on one side of his shorts. Heavy muscle filled in his thigh covered in black ink. A tattoo that looked like the outline of a sugar skull—the ones I'd studied in my Mexican Folk Art class in high school—stamped his leg. The letters 'WMC' and 1974 were tattooed in individual banners directly below the figure with loose, almost loopy lettering.

“This is my club piece,” he explained.

My eyes were glued to the huge skull that wrapped around the side of his thick thigh. “Why'd you do your thigh?" My Dad and Sonny had theirs on their arms. I'd caught the bottom of Trip's on his back.

Dex shrugged. “I had other plans.”

I coughed. "So... where are the rest of your tattoos?"

Oh boy.

His mouth slowly melted into a smile, that unblinking gaze absorbing everything in its path—me. After a minute, he sat up and held his arms out in front of him. “You’ve seen these.”

I had but not in great detail and not without checking them out on the sly.

“What are they though?” I asked him, genuinely curious.

Dex looked down at them. “Different ideas I came up with.” Flexing his right wrist, and his left, he looked up again and shrugged. "Sometimes I'll get ideas from random shit I see. Like this one,” he held out the arm with the configuration of fading triangles. “Went to the planetarium with my niece and I just couldn’t get it out of my head.”

He then held up his other arm, the one with the wing wrapped around it. “Other times I'll dream of stuff."

But it was more than that. He dreamed of things that looked angelic? I had dreams of zombies chasing me and breaking into houses, not things like his. Not landscapes of abstract colors. Then again, maybe an artist had thoughts like those and I definitely wasn't an artist.

He started tugging his shirt up and over his head, and I had to physically tell myself not to say anything stupid because I’d gone brain dead. All I could think of while watching Dex sitting there with his bright, beautiful tattoos and his equally beautiful but tired face, was that the world was unfair.

“This was my first one,” he said, pointing to the infamous Captain America shield on his left pectoral while I ogled his six-pack instead. Or was it an eight-pack?

“And this is Uriel,” he explained, pointing at a huge red octopus that wrapped over from his back to the right side of his chest. The same one I’d seen framed in his office. Shirtless, I could tell that the red I'd seen on his neck was a tentacle so detailed it almost looked alive.

Uriel was forgotten the moment I saw his flat, dark nipples.  I didn’t think anyone could blame me for caring less about his tattoos when I could use my eyes to visually molest the definition of his bare chest and the two friggin’ rings he had through his nipples.

“You don’t like ‘em?” he asked.

I couldn't remember how to speak.

“Uh…”  I blinked, searching for those things called words and sentences that people had been using for millennia to communicate. “Wah… why Uriel?” I somehow managed to ask.

But really, I was still looking at his upper body and not at Uriel, his red octopus, specifically.

And as hot as Dex was, when he smiled broadly it was enough for me to tear my eyes away from the dream he was half-naked. Because Dex’s smile was the nicest I’d ever seen. It was wide and genuine and playful and so rare. And it made my insides flare.

“It's my favorite animal,” he answered casually.

“An octopus?” I’d figured he’d go for something different. Way different. Maybe a tiger? A dragon?

Dex nodded, not disturbed at all about my confusion. “They're smarter than people think,” he explained. “They know how to problem solve. They’re curious little fuckers—“

“And they squirt ink,” I told him with an understanding laugh, though I had no doubt he knew that already.

Another glorious smile lit his face. "Exactly.”

“Huh.” Feeling just a little like a jackass, I smiled back. “That’s pretty perfect.”

He shrugged, just a hint of color on his tan cheeks. “It’s all right.”

“It’s really cool.”

Dex grinned even wider. “Ritz—“

“Why do you call me that?” I finally asked him after more than a month of silently letting him get away with it.

Another slow smile welcomed me. “That day you got hired? Sonny called to rip me a new one, I couldn’t hear him well when he called you Ris. I thought he called you Ritz. By the time I figured it out,” he shrugged, “I’d already gotten it stuck in my head.”

Another brilliant response. “Oh.”

When neither one of us said anything, and suddenly uncomfortable, I walked over to the pullout bed I'd left a mess and fell onto it. Yanking the covers up and over my body with a yawn. I could hear Dex settling onto his bed, the springs on the mattress creaking under his weight, the sheets shuffling every which way.

“Dex?”