Under Locke (52 page)

Damn it.

It was my turn to sigh into the sofa cushion smashing my face so that I wouldn't make an embarrassing noise. "I get it—but getting yelled at like that was so embarrassing."

He groaned this sound that was pure guilt. "Yeah, I know.
”

I didn’t say anything, earning a low grumble.

“
Won
’t do it again,
" he added in that silky voice that wasn
’t accustomed to apologies.

“I think you’ve said that before.”

The same sound made its way out of him. “Babe, I’ll try my best as long as you don’t lie to me again.”

His damn honesty got me every single time. I sighed a little more exaggerated than what was necessary, remembering the callous tone he’d used.
"You sounded like you hated me," I admitted, pushing my face deeper into the sofa back.

Dex's hand reached up to pull me back, tipping my face over to see his. His gaze was strong, intent. "Don't ever think that. I might get pissed and I might take shit out on you but that—never. Never fuckin' ever, you hear me?"

His face was solemn and honest. Truth stamped onto the lines of his lips and the placement of his eyelids.

"I looked all over the city for you, Ritz. You think I'd do that for anybody else?"

Him? No. No way. And the reality of that made me happier than it probably should.

The sheer emotion that I felt from Dex, the worry, the need, the repent, was so foreign. And I was so broken in tiny ways that it made me feel small, more needy than I liked. I still didn
’t understand this, understand him, but maybe I never would.

“Hey...what happened to your face?”

A low little growl curled its way through his throat. Ahh, hell. It was probably something related to me. “Let’s just say somebody else thought they could get away with sayin’ the same type of shit you do.”

It was my whole ‘go fuck yourself’ spiel. I knew it. “Was it one of the club members?”

His answer was another tiny warning growl.

Yup, it’d been someone in the room with us. Oh well. If Dex thought I was going to change my mind and apologize for saying that to him, he had another thing coming. 

"We good?" he whispered into my neck.

"Yeah." I nodded. "We're good."

"Good. Good." His hips moved restlessly behind me, tipping forward in a jerky motion that felt like he was trying to get situated on the couch better.

Only the issue was that we didn't fit. It was too narrow even when we were on our sides. So it came to no surprise when he didn't stop squirming.

"I don't think this is gonna work, Ritz," he finally said after what felt like a shimmy against my butt that drove me face-first into the cushion.

I groaned my response.

He grunted, then he shifted, then he grunted again. "Fuck, this sucks."

With a frustrated huff, the heat of his body disappeared before I felt his fingers sneak into my armpits and pull me back. "C'mon."

"What?" I asked him as he kept pulling, dragging me off the couch. I planted my feet on the floor and pushed up to standing.

"My bed."

My joints locked. "Umm..." Laying down on the couch had seemed okay, but laying on the bed seemed like a whole different league.

And he knew it because he rolled his eyes and tagged my hand with his. "Babe, quit thinkin' about it."

"Ah...."

Dex thread
ed
his fingers through mine, pulling me. "What's botherin' you?"

How about everything? Lying in bed with a shirtless Dex? The way my ovaries had been overheating lately? Holy crap. It wasn't like I could tell him that. It'd be like throwing chum into shark-infested water.

"I've never—" I gulped. 

"You never what?" he
grumbled
out the words.

Lord. I dug a finger into his rib cage, looking up at his tense face. "I've never slept in the same bed with a guy, Charlie. Besides you that other time."

He did one of the last things I coul
d ha
ve expected. Dex stared at me for a moment before dropping his head back and huffing at the ceiling. "You're killin' me, babe. You are fuckin' killin' me here."

Dex tugged at my hand as he lowered his chin to look me in the eye. His free hand came up to grasp my chin. His expression was clear and serious. "We won't do anythin' you don't want. Promise. Just sleep."

Oh man. I nodded at him loosely, trusting him implicitly. "Okay." My breathing hitched a little.
“I don’t do this with all my friends, you know?”

It was the
sugary
smile he gave me next that
had
me crawling into bed with him, even with my nerves all over the place. I mean, you only live once. And this was
him
. Someone who care
d
about me as much as I cared about him. I trusted him.

And in that moment I wasn't scared or worried as I followed him to bed. But as we laid down, with all the anxious nerves in the universe pooling in my belly, he touched my forehead with his fingertips in the dark and
murmured
,
“You gotta get it straight, babe. This ain’t just friendship to me.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

There was something most definitely on my ass.

And my back.

And my neck.

It was definitely the thing on my ass that had woken me up. I usually wasn’t much of a dreamer when I slept, so when I felt that unfamiliar warmth kneading my bare ass cheek, I knew it wasn’t a dream.

One thing I was sure of: I was on Dex’s bed and the sheets were down to my waist.

I'd fallen asleep on top of them. I knew that without a doubt. Blinking away what felt like a coma, I looked over my shoulder to see what the hell was on me.

I shouldn’t have been surprised.

The lump under the sheet was connected to a ropey forearm, which then connected to a wide bicep with an impressive amount of definition even when it wasn’t being flexed.

Dex’s friggin’ hand was underneath my panties, palming my bare butt cheek.

Just sleep, he said?

I tried to roll over but that something on my back was heavy and solid, telling me that it was Dex’s chest, crushing me. So whatever was on my neck had to be part of Dex’s anatomy.

Holy moly.

What in the hell had I been thinking agreeing to sleep with him?

You were thinking that you liked him. That you trusted him.

If he wasn't a Widow I probably wouldn't be so scared, right? My gut knew the answer was a loud yes. Was that all really that held me back from him? It wasn't his temper, I could deal with that unless he yelled at me. Dex—Charlie—was so much more than his appearance gave him credit for. He was like aloe vera, rough and prickly on the outside, but the inside held all the gooey goodness.

He'd probably roll his eyes if I ever said that aloud—but it was true.

Which was why I was trying to be cool about his long fingers cupping my butt. And his breath on my neck.

When I tried to slide out from underneath him, the hand on my butt swept over to my side to hold me down. “Where you goin’?” Dex asked through sleep strained vocal chords.

I froze, whispering, “Bathroom.”

He yawned, his fingers flexing. “Liar. Go back to sleep,” he mumbled, already nuzzling back into that sweet spot of flesh between my hairline and shoulder. More awake now than before, I could clearly feel the warmth of his mouth millimeters away from me.

“Dex,” I whispered.

His hand moved across my back to slide completely under the cotton of my panties again, his thumb rubbing a lazy circle on the skin beneath it.

“Dex!” Yeah, that didn't sound convincing at all.

“Please go back to sleep.” The heat of his mouth only intensified by a ratio of a thousand to one as he mumbled in reply. My poor body couldn’t handle having big, warm Dex cuddling up to me.

“I’ll go sleep on the couch.”

He growled a response, making me break into goose bumps.

“Dex, c’mon.” I tried to plead but didn’t budge an inch.

He didn’t say anything, his thumb just continued its languid circles right smack in the middle of my cheek. If anything, I think his upper body got even closer to mine. “Relax, bab
e
,” he finally mumbled.

Like that was going to happen. My entire body was tense. Telling myself that this wasn’t right was like fighting the pull of the ocean’s tide. It felt unnatural. “I can't.“

"You can." Dex's smooth palm cupped my cheek and I sucked in a breath. Why the hell was I fighting this?

“I don't know what I'm doing," I blurted out, slamming my eyes shut.

His chuckle was smooth and dark. "I know, my sweet baby."

I shoul
d ha
ve just given up living after that. Living, fighting, existing. All of it.

Before
I
realized what he was doing, his hand was out of my panties, the weight of his body was peeled off my back. Two large, familiar hands clasped onto my ankles immediately afterward, flipping me onto my back.

And then he was over me.

On his hands and knees, his beautiful, rugged face full of thick, black stubble was right there. Supple lips, Crayola Blue eyes and Uriel all greeted me.

If all that wasn't enough to grip my spine, he was shirtless. His smooth,
sunkissed
skin was taut over hard, carefully crafted muscles he worked on most of the week in his
home
gym. But
t
hen he loomed over me, without the rust of a new friendship like it'd been in Austin. Hell, it wasn
’t the same from the week before after his niece’s birthday party
…

Oh boy. Oh. Boy.

I’d seen him shirtless
not too long ago
and it didn’t matter at all because his upper body was one of those things that got better every time I saw it.

The first thing I noticed again were the small stainless steel hoops through his perfect, dark nipples. Little nipples on a muscular chest and above a
flawlessly ridged
six-pack. A six-pack that led to th
e
sweet
slabs
of v-shaped muscles that disappeared beneath black boxers
...
that did
nothing
hide to the massive tent his groin was
pitching
.

And then I remembered he had his dick pierced.

How the hell I didn’t pass out would be an unsolved mystery. What wasn’t an unsolved mystery was why my mouth went dry
.
I’m sure that I stopped breathing. Any man or woman woul
d ha
ve done the same.

Dex was… better than anything I'd ever seen on print or television. I could even say celestial if he didn't look like he'd work for the devil instead of the good guys. The dark and colorful lines that spanned nearly all of his upper body heightened his hauntingly ethereal beauty. Over the course of the last couple of months, I’d never seen him wearing anything less than jeans and a t-shirt at all times besides our stint in Houston and the other time we slept in bed together.