I’m so glad I was wrong.
Dex flops down onto my bed. He puts a hand under his head and closes his eyes, looking completely at ease in my bedroom, the salt lamp casting a warm orange glow across his face.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell him, then quickly slip off the bed and head into the bathroom.
Once the door closes, I let out a breath, and a few more tears slide down my cheeks before I quickly swipe them away. I want to sob and wrap myself around his body, to have him hold me until I know he’s not going anywhere. But I can’t do that. Crying is just going to scare him away, and I barely have him as is.
I quickly pee, then grab a washcloth and wet it down with warm water. After washing his cum off my thigh, I check my face in the mirror. My freckled cheeks are flushed, and my brown eyes are tinged with a touch of redness from the alcohol and tears. My hair is mussed, so I quickly run a hand over it while brushing my teeth. When there’s no other way to bide time, I take a breath, steady myself, and head back into my bedroom.
Dex is partially under the covers now, his chest still exposed, and when I walk into the room, he reaches out for me.
“Come on,” he whispers.
And I slip back into his arms like it’s where I belong.
He holds me against his chest, his breathing slow and even, and I trace the ink swirling across his skin.
“Do your tattoos mean something?” I ask, my voice low and heavy with sleepy satisfaction.
Dex chuckles, and the sound is a rumble beneath my ear. “Some of them.”
“How about this one?” I glide my hand over a sword running down the middle of his sternum.
When he opens one eye to see which tattoo I’m referring to, he smirks. “I can’t tell you.”
“What?” I sit up a little to look at him. “Why?”
“Because it’s lame.”
“Lame?”
His eyes are closed again, but he’s smiling, and it just makes me want to know even more.
Feeling bold, I swing a leg over his body and push myself up so I’m straddling him. Beneath me, his dick pulses, and he opens his eyes.
“Tell me,” I whisper, drawing both hands down his chest, across the sword, and to where the point ends just above his navel. “Please?”
Dex rolls his eyes and sighs, but he’s smiling. “I told you, I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you’d never see me the same.”
I arch a brow in irritation.
In one smooth movement, Dex wraps an arm around my waist and flips me onto the mattress so he’s on top. “You can’t give me that look,” he says, burying his face in my neck again and kissing me. “You’re too fucking cute.”
“Tell me!” I squeal, wriggling and laughing until he finally stops the ticklish kisses.
“Okay, but you have to promise not to tell anyone.” His blue eyes stare into mine, deadly serious.
I hold up a pinky. “I pinky promise.”
His lips pull into a smirk. “You’re such a dork,” he says, but he wraps his pinky around mine anyway. “Okay . . . It’s the sword from Shadow Odyssey.”
My eyes go wide, and my mouth falls open.
“No way!” I study the tattoo a bit more carefully, but it’s so dim in here, it’s hard to make out all the details on the hilt of the sword. “That’s one of my favorite games.”
Dex smiles and shakes his head. “I should’ve known.”
He falls back onto the bed, then pulls me down next to him, and I laugh as my head hits the pillow. His arm wraps around me, strong and sure. I cuddle against him, finding a spot just under his chin for my head.
“I can’t believe you play Shadow Odyssey,” I whisper into the darkness, then giggle sleepily.
“I fuckin’ wasted the Shadow Council,” he says, one hand trailing slowly across my low back, and I grin.
He really did play the game. And somehow, knowing that makes me curl a bit closer to him.
I find myself starting to drift off, his lips in my hair, his breathing a calming sound that whisks me into peaceful darkness.
chapter 15
THE NEXT MORNING, I’M IN the kitchen eating fresh strawberries out of a bowl and scratching Margot behind the ear when my bedroom door cracks open and Dex steps out, clad in his jeans and nothing else. When I woke up early this morning, I folded his clothes and placed them on my dresser for him, then slipped out and closed the door so I wouldn’t wake him.
Now he’s padding into the kitchen, barefoot and shirtless and way too sexy for a man who just rolled out of bed.
“Good morning,” I say, already fully awake, and he yawns as he settles himself into a chair at my tiny kitchen table. “You want coffee?”
