Under Locke (24 page)

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?”

“Yeah?” he answered.

I yawned again, rolling to my side. "If you feel another Northern wind coming on tonight, aim it the other way, will you?"

The laugh that blasted out of him put a smile on my face as I fell asleep.

Chapter Fourteen

By the end of the second day at the expo, I would have bartered my first born for some sort of cloaking spell that made me invisible to douche bags.

My brief
conversations with the drunkards that stumbled
to the booth with one hand wrapped around a beer bottle and another shoved down the front of their pants
usually all went along the lines of:

"So if I get this expensive ass tattoo, do I get you for free?"

"No."

"How about a kiss?"

"No."

"Just a little one."

"No."

"A hand—"

The time Dex was around when a guy started going down that route had ended with Dex grumbling out, "Fuck off."

Oh Jesus.

He didn
’t even spare a glance behind him to see the man who was bothering me, but apparently, the drunk idiot didn’t even need to see his face to get the message.

“Dex!” I hissed at him for being so rude when the guy only partially deserved it.

“Babe,” he responded, completely unapologetic and not giving half a shit. Then again, when did he?  If I thought he’d pay attention, I’d try to give him a lesson in being polite.

Pointless, right?

The
n there was
Shane. Shane who came over every chance he got and what felt like every chance he didn't have. If I wouldn't have heard so much about him sleeping around with random women the day before, I would
ha
ve sworn he had a man crush on Dex.

Maybe he did.

He must have warmed up to me after the night before because he'd make his way to the counter and look me right in the face or down at my chest. Blatantly.

Like there was anything there to look at.

It had first started off with him, smiling, and leaning in. "
Can I see your ink
?"

Before we left Austin, I'd been mentally prepared for how hot and humid the city would be when I'd stuffed elbow-length sweaters and cardigans into my duffel bag. Neither one of the guys had said anything but I didn't want it to be completely obvious to a crowd
of body art lovers
, that my skin was naked.

"I don't have any," I told him in a low voice.

He totally didn't believe me at all because he frowned
but mysteriously
let the question go. "Got a boyfriend?"

I'd been busy organizing
invoices
from the day before, so I only bothered to glance up at him before shaking my head. "Nope."

"You really aren't fooling around with Dexter?"

"Nope."

"I don't believe it."

He left and came back a couple hours later, this time Dex had run to the bathroom between appointments. Slim was busy with a client and I'd been sitting there, people-watching.

The first thing Shane did was tilt his chin up. "You sure you aren't...?"

Wanting to hide my irritation because
Jesus
! How many more times did he have to kill my self-esteem by reminding me that a man that looked like black sin on tan skin didn't like me in that way? There was only so much my pride could handle.

"Nope." I popped the last consonant to emphasize the fact that I wasn't and would never ever sleep with my boss.

“I don’t get it,” he murmured like he was trying to disprove a mathematical theorem.

A groaned sigh managed to escape from my mouth. “I’m not his type.” Okay, wrong thing to say. I amended my words as quickly as I could. “He’s not my type.”

The noise he made in response sounded like a mixture of a hiccup and a snicker.
“You need glasses?” His eyes drifted to my cleavage again.
"
H
e threatened to break my fingers if I made a move on you. We
’ve never had a problem sharing before...
"

There went my appetite.

Before he had the chance to make my stomach roll, I spotted Dex coming down the aisle, wiping his hands on his jeans as his eyes locked in on Shane's form. The minute he was within speaking distance, he darted his
gaze
over to me. His gaze dipped down to my collarbones in annoyance.

"Babe, button up your fuckin' sweater. Everybody can see your tits like that."

Holy crap.