His eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”
“He was a roadie in the nineties. He learned a lot of useless shit from bands.”
He nodded slowly, letting this information simmer. “Gonna have to pick up the harmonica when we get home. For your dad.” He set his water bottle down on the floor between his feet, his focus never leaving me. “What else?”
I couldn’t breathe. My lungs collapsed under the weight of Dex casually vowing to honor my dad. “Hmm?”
“You were asking me questions.”
“Oh.” My brain fuzzed between static and coherent thoughts. “Right. Um.” I swallowed hard, my gaze slipping from his face to his open collar, sticking on the bit of chest hair visible. “God. This would be easier if you didn’t look like that.”
“What would be easier?”
“Thinking.”
“Ah.” His knee pressed harder into mine and I felt myself lean closer to him, as if drawn by a magnet. “So, you understand what I’ve been dealing with.”
A soft laugh whooshed out of me. “It’s different. You’re…” I waved my hand at his face and he caught it, bringing it down to the bedspread. “Gorgeous. I didn’t even shave my legs.”
He laughed and my stomach swooped at the sound. “Vi. I don’t care.”
“I know.” He’d seen me at some truly low points and stayed anyway. I mattered to him, in any state. “You’re so different than I thought you were.”
“You just…” His throat bobbed and his eyes fell to my lips. “You woke me up. I’m half convinced I was sleepwalking until you showed up.”
“Oh.” I scooted closer, closer, until my forehead touched his and I could draw his hand into my lap, holding it with both of mine. Somehow, Dex had managed to articulate this feeling. “Yeah. Awake.”
“I am so fucking awake.”
“Me too.”
He cupped my jaw, soft and reverent, tipping my head back until our mouths brushed. A taste, and then he pressed in deeper, his breaths coming quick and sharp in time with my own. I parted my lips, needing more of him, and it still wasn’t enough, so I dropped his hand and anchored myself with his shoulders, pushing myself up and over to straddle his lap.
“Is this okay?” I whispered as his hazy eyes roamed the low neckline of my dress.
“God. Yes.” He leaned in, pressing a hot, open-mouthed kiss to my neck. I arched against him, reveling in the sensation of histongue brushing over my skin, the softness of his hair slipping through my fingers, the friction of him through his pants. “Do whatever you want to me. Please.”
My laugh snagged in my throat as his hands moved over my breasts, feeling me through the thin fabric. A pathetic sound ground out of my throat and he immediately pressed kisses to the underside of my jaw, my cheek, my lips. If the elevator had been a frenzy, this was controlled chaos; we’d fall into a passionate rhythm, all tongues and panting breaths and grinding hips, and one of us would force patience. Him stilling my hips with a tight groan. Me breaking away to remember to breathe.
When his hands slipped under my dress, I gasped even before he lifted me up to lay me on the bed. He knelt between my legs, his fingers tracing an agonizing line up from my ankle. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to focus on the road when you’re in those little skirts?” he murmured, brushing his thumb across the inside of my knee and sending a bolt of lightning through my body. “Unreal. It’s unreal.”
“Didn’t know I was so distracting,” I said, voice catching on a whine as his touch brushed upward.
“Right here.” His fingers lingered at the sensitive inner skin of my thigh. “You cross your legs and your skirt slips up. I can’t believe you haven’t caught me staring.”
“Dex.” My own fingers wrapped around his wrist, urging him closer.
“I can’t stop looking.”
“Dex.” He tore his gaze up, his tongue swiping across his bottom lip. “Touch me.”
He was such a good listener. So attentive to every detail. I didn’t fully appreciate that trait until he obliged my demand without hesitation, reaching up my dress, fingers hooking the waistband of my underwear, dragging them down my legs. Isquirmed, watching his brow furrow with concentration as his hands cupped my thighs, scraping over them deliciously, and then farther to brush his thumbs over my hip bones. I shut my eyes, trying to control my breathing.
“God,” he mumbled, and then his mouth was on my thigh, a soft kiss, a gentle bite. I cried out and reached down to tangle my fingers in his hair so he wouldn’t get any crazy ideas, like stopping. “Patience is a virtue, you know.”
“What’s virtue?” I replied breathlessly, and he laughed into my skin.
The ache building between my legs graduated into something close to pain and when Dex finally brushed a featherlight finger over me, I bucked against him and let out a moan. He didn’t laugh. Didn’t tease me. He applied more pressure, abandoning his post at the hickey on my thigh to give me his full attention.He wants to know what I like, I thought just as he ran his fingers across the slickness and my mind winked out entirely.
