Under Locke(94)

I tossed the napkin back at him before collecting my leftovers. I opened up the fridge to put my stuff up and spotted Dex’s bottles of Nesquik lined up neatly inside. Snatching one up, I pressed the cold bottom of it to Slims’s neck as I walked past him and made my way toward the front. The office door was closed and so was the private room.



Dex was at his station with a client when I walked by. He happened to look up at the right time, so I held the bottle up and gave it a swirl, mouthing, “For you.” I tipped my head in the direction of my desk and grinned at him.



The smile that came over his face before he mouthed back, “Thanks,” made my chest constrict.



What was happening to me?



~ * ~ *



"You gonna make it all the way home?" Dex asked as we made our way out of Pins that night.



The last three hours had been painful for me to get through. Having such a fitful night of sleep the day before on top of the two hours I spent at the YMCA when Dex had dropped me off that afternoon, and then working, had paid a toll on my body. I'd caught myself falling asleep once or twice at my desk.



I nodded at him after waving goodbye to Blake. "Yeah, I'll be okay." At least I hoped so.



He gave me a weary glance like he wasn't entirely convinced I wouldn't fall off the back of his bike halfway to his house. It'd be his fault though. After I'd told him that morning that I wanted to have a swim at the Y, he'd insisted on driving me there and picking me up. It made more sense to me to drive myself there, and then work, but the man was relentless.



He had shit to do at Mayhem like always.



That shit to do was why I found myself back on his bike, bordering on delusional. So I'd blame the fact I was delusional on how I ended up in his bedroom just minutes later.



Yes, in his bed.



It’d been hard enough to keep my arms wrapped around him so that I wouldn’t fall off the bike. Dex’s warm body and the mind numbingly loud roar of his motorcycle were like a potent sleeping pill. It was only an intense fear of falling off and getting run over by a car that kept me hanging onto him for dear life through my drowsiness. The moment he parked in front of his house, my brain stopped working altogether. There weren’t any cars to run me over in his driveway, thank goodness.



I remember Dex pulling me by the hand across the circling driveway, into the house and past the living room before swiftly pushing me into his bedroom and closing the door in my face with an insistent, “You get the bed tonight.”



I wanted to argue with him, I swear I did, but when I pressed my hand to the corner of the mattress and realized it was a Tempurpedic, that thought went right back out. Just one night. At least that’s what I told myself.



Most of my clothes were stripped off, I rinsed out my mouth in his master bath, and stumbled into bed wearing just the tank top I’d worn that day and my panties. Exactly three seconds later, I was dead to the world. Hunger wasn't even a blip on my radar—nothing was.



Until the bed compressed behind me not long after I laid down.



“Dex?” I asked in a sleepy whisper. I was so tired it could have been those masked serial killers I’d been stressing about forever, and I would have stayed in bed regardless.



Something touched my shoulder. A husky voice made a sleepy sigh. “Couch sucks, babe.”



Even though I was tired as hell, I knew that there was something completely inappropriate about sleeping in the same bed as my boss regardless of how hot he was. And that I might have a bit of a—nope, I wasn't going to say it was a crush. That would make me feel like I was sixteen again. I liked him, that simple. How could I not?



I wasn’t even sure if I could really consider Dex a friend, even if I wanted to justify what was going on by saying that friends could sleep on beds together. It took everything in me to roll onto my back and tilt my head over to where he’d laid down on the other side of the mattress.



Besides the times when I'd had to share a bed with Will as kids, and that one time I messed around with my boyfriend a few years back, I'd never even been on the same bed as another guy. God, that made me feel lame.



It took all the baby scraps of will I’d stashed under my nails and tendons to sit up completely, yawning like it was morning time instead of the middle of the night. “I’ll go sleep on the couch then,” was what I told him, although I’m sure it sounded like some mutilated version of it.



His hand draped across my waist in a move that I had no doubt had been practiced many times in his life. “Stay. The bed’s big enough for the both of us,” was his brilliant answer.



It was the truth but still. He was laying in the middle so it defeated the purpose of his comment.