Under Locke (63 page)

It had to be.

He squeezed me to him, tight. “But you don’t gotta worry about anything. There’s only a few things I’ve ever given a shit about. Everything else...is seasonal, as Ma would say.” He pressed his mouth to my temple, whispering, “Then there’s you.”

Swallow, Iris. Breathe, Iris.

I was swallowed whole by emotion. By this terrifying thing that had to be love because it hurt as much as it soothed.

Lifting my knees up higher, I shifted on his lap until I could look him in the face better. His expression was tight. Wary. Maybe even a little worried? So, he wasn't a virgin. Not anywhere close to it, but that was a fact. Dex was who he was and I got a small part of him just for me. I wasn
’t going to ruin this by hanging on to the past. I didn’t want it to win.

I bet no one else got to see his spare bedroom of comic stuff. Iris 1, Hookers Pre-Iris 0.

I bopped the tip of his nose with my finger. "Okay."

He blinked those dark gem colored eyes. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

The grin that crept up over his mouth was better than Christmas morning, and the kiss he gave me afterward somehow topped that.

“I guess I should be grateful you don’t have three ex-wives running around trying to take you back, huh?”

He rolled his eyes, the creases in the corners of his eyes getting more pronounced as he smiled wider. “Ya think?”

“Yeah, I don’t know how to fight. If it came down to it, I’d have to use my keys on their faces or bite off a chunk of somebody’s ear,” I told him with a grimace.

The laugh that erupted out of him had the remaining Widows turning around to look at us like the sight of Dex laughing so loud was a UFO sighting. I swear one of the younger ones, a prospect, looked a strange mixture of scared and baffled. But I was so amused by Dex’s response, I just sat there watching him with a huge, stupid smile on my face. What else would I want to look at?

Once he finally got himself under control, Dex pulled back just enough to roam his gaze over my face. I probably looked like a wet rat taco but I didn’t care when the expression on his face was so calm and focused.  And when the corner of his mouth did that sneaky little tip up. “You’re the cutest thing I’ve ever seen, you know that?”

"Hey lovebird, you want a smoke?"

One of the older Widows sitting opposite of us chuckled, holding a pack of cigarettes in his weathered outstretched hand.

Dex shook his head, and the what-the-hell expression on the older man's face was priceless.

"No?" the Widowmaker asked incredulously.

"
She
doesn't need
to
be smellin' that shit."

The man frowned, his eyes switching back and forth between me and Dex. "You allergic or somethin', Rissy?"

Rissy. Ha.

I shook my head, smiling at him. "No. You can smoke here, I'll go find Dean or something."

The legs beneath me bounced again. "She had cancer, Lee. She doesn't need
to
be around that secondhand smoke and shit, makin' things worse."

What the hell
?

I turned my gaze over to Dex slowly. He was waiting for it though. He looked like he was ready for me to challenge him, to get upset with him for spilling the beans he'd just found out about.

And it
w
asn't like I hadn't already caught him looking at my arm each time he had the chance
, teeth gritted and all.

"What? It's true. Everybody's seen those commercials about how many people die from secondhand smoke a year. You
aren’t gonna
be riskin' yourself," he stated solidly. Dex tipped his face closer to mine, whispering, "This is family now, Ritz. You don't have to hide shit from anybody."

Lee, the older man, choked before I had a chance to process Dex's comment. "You had cancer?" He sat back in his chair, his thin legs falling open. "Fuck me. You're a goddamn kid."

"It was a long time ago," I clarified, giving Dex a nasty look.

My comment didn't help whatever was going through Lee's head because he ended up running both hands through his hair with a huff. "Well, shit." With a quick glance over at me, he shoved the pack of cigarettes into the front pocket of his vest. "Nobody smokes around you. You hear me, Dexter? No smokin' around Rissy."

This was my family? This wiry old biker that I'd spoken to maybe one other time in my life, was making demands on my behalf?

I had to curl my lips behind my teeth to stop myself from smiling like a total idiot.

Dex let out a sharp laugh. "Got it, old man."

"Old man my ass," he snipped back mindlessly. Lee dragged his hands through his hair again with a groan. "Fuck.
Cancer?
My sister died from cancer in her ass. That shit runs in my family." He turned his attention toward me, eyes wide. "Can you get tested for that or somethin'?"

I caught Dex giving me wide, amused look out of the corner of my eyes. "Well..."

Thirty minutes later, Lee had got off his chair looking way too frazzled. I think I'd scared him. But when he promised to visit his doctor for the first time in five years, I didn't feel so bad about it. Prevention, prevention, prevention.

"You ready to head home soon?" Dex asked.

I nodded. "Yeah. Let me get dressed, and then I want to tell Luther bye."

He squeezed my shoulder and let me up, passing me the shorts and shirt I'd had on earlier.

I said goodbye to a few people that were around, especially Lee, but didn't see Dean raising hell anywhere. Damn it. I liked that kid.

Luther was standing in his kitchen with a few others when we made our way out. I wasn't that affectionate with people I didn't know well, and Luther was one of those. But I couldn't help but give him a quick side-hug when we were close enough.

"I just wanted to tell you thanks for helping to look for my dad," I told him discreetly, taking a step back into Dex's space.

He didn't seem like the type that smiled often. The rough lines of his face told a story about a man that had been in a biker club before it had gone legal. A man that had lost someone he loved because of a collective of mistakes.

But this man was also Trip's father. He had to have some of that idiot's heart.

The crinkle in his eyes confirmed that for me. "Sweetheart, I did better than that for y
ou
. My buddy spotted him yesterday."

Chapter Thirty-Three

"I don't think it's going to fit."

I wheezed, way too eager from having to keep it together at Luther's house two days before. "That's what she said!"

"Goddamn it, Ris." Slim
shook
his head and laughed, almost dropping the new thermal fax we'd put together just a minute before. "These arms weren't made for heavy labor, you can't be making me laugh when I'm carrying stuff."

Eyeing him out of the corner of my eye, I grabbed the other side of the machine. "Doesn't it only weigh about ten pounds?"

"Don't worry about it," he huffed. "Move that kit over a little more and it'll fit."

I pushed over the set of inks on the counter he'd been referring to and watched as he slid the thermal fax into place. It'd gotten to be a pain running back and forth to the kitchen when one of the guys needed a stencil done, so I might have been a little too excited about ordering a new machine with the intention of putting it in the front when the old one pooped out.

"You wanna break in the new machine?" Slim asked, his back to me.

"I still don't know what I'd want," I explained, referring to the tattoo.

He looked over his shoulder, fluttering those ginger-blonde eyelashes. "The dragon is waiting for you when you're ready."

He meant the dragon that blew rainbo
w.

“Would it hurt?” I asked him like a wimp
, taking a seat on the nearest chair.

Slim bit his lip and made a face that said
yeah, it's gonna friggin' hurt
. “Well, yeah. A little.” Ef me. "But you're tough. You can handle it."

The story of my life. Shit.

I found my voice. “I'm still thinking about it, Michaelangelo.”

He let out a resigned sigh. "All right there, grandma."

Blake’s head popped up over the divider of my reception desk and his station. There was nothing scheduled for the next hour and at the last minute, I'd asked Blake to man the desk while we set up the new equipment. His head wrinkled as he narrowed his eyes at what we were doing.

“Does Dex know you want to get a tattoo?” he asked carefully.

"He heard us talk about it the other day," I answered him vaguely. The day they all found out about my arm.

Blake barked out a laugh. It might have been the first laugh I'd heard from him in a week. He still seemed stressed out of his mind about
Seth
, but now that he'd told us, it had hopefully taken a weight off his shoulders.

"I don't know why the hell you're bothering, Slim. You know he's not gonna let any of us pop her cherry."

I almost,
almost
wheezed at his offhand comment
as a memory of the night before—when Dex had stripped my clothes off, laid down flat on his back and pulled me over to straddle his face—swamped me. That was probably the greatest fifteen minutes of my life. And the fifteen or thirty minutes that followed after that, when he’d turned me around and made me appreciate a certain number with a six and a nine in it...well, let’s just say that I was racking up fun new experiences really quickly.

Hallelujah!

"Whatever," Slim drawled. "Maybe he'll let me do this on him instead. You know I've been bugging him about letting me finish up his other side."

"The other side of his
chest
?" I asked.

Both of them raised their eyebrows in mock amusement but it was the damn redhead that cracked a smile. "Oh, you know all about hi
s ink
now, huh?"

Any resemblance of a smile on my fa
c
e disappeared. "Shut up."

"What happened to Miss
Nothing-is-Going-to-Happen?"

"I hope you forget to put sunscreen on the next time you spend any time outside," I deadpanned.

Slim shook his head with a laugh. “Uh huh. I bet you know all about those piercings now too, don't ya, Ris?”

I made a face. "Keep it up."

"Next thing you know, you're gonna have 'Property of Dex' tattooed on your back," he
mused
.

There was no way in hell I’d ever get a man’s name tattooed on me. "Dream on, sucker."

Blake held up his hands in surrender. "I wouldn't hold it past him."

Yeah, I wouldn't either once I thought about it. That sneaky dick would do it to me in secret the first chance he got.

And yet...

Strangely, I was only about ninety percent against it.

Not that it would ever happen, especially if I couldn't even decide on a small tattoo to get first.