I flashed him a jerky smile but made my way toward the table to start putting things on my plate. Sure enough, there were three black bean burger patties piled onto a dish and I took one to put between hamburger buns, adding more things from the multiple dishes on the table. Egg-less potato salad, leafy lettuce, and skewered pineapple.
I started to walk around the three people still serving themselves, heading toward a patch of nearly dead grass to plop down on, but a hand reached out to grab the back of my bare knee.
"Sit right here," the low smooth tone I'd heard so much of over the last few weeks said to me.
Looking over my shoulder, Dex sat on the end of the picnic table bench, straddling it. His legs were wide, his food set on the table, and while he'd taken up more room than one man his size genuinely needed, it still wasn't enough space for two people.
"I can just sit on the ground." I smiled at him.
But he was watching me with those intense eyes. If watching could be considered that simple when there seemed to be a million different things going on in his head. Dex was staring and I didn't understand why. He'd looked at me in that way a few times before but this time was different. It's like he multiplied the look by a hundred. When he dropped his eyes down to my chest—which unfortunately had my dress sticking to my wet bathing suit—I had to gulp.
"I made room." He looked back up at me. "Sit."
Oh sweet mother.
He wasn't going to let it go, and I guess I must have not really wanted to sit on the grass because I sighed. And then set my plate down right next to his. The only way to fit without having an entire butt cheek hanging off the edge was to straddle the bench, too.
My butt pretty much snuggled safely between Dex's thighs, our quads lined up.
We were sitting way too close. If I were to slouch, my back would hit his chest. I'm positive that if I took a deep breath, I'd touch him that way too. The denim of his jeans practically hugging my bare thighs almost made me make some kind of noise.
It was too much.
I breathed a little too deeply and my shoulder blades touched Dex's pecs. Crap.
You can do this, Ris. You can sit with a man like this. It's just Dex.
But that was the problem—it was Dex.
I swear on my life that his hips move forward just an inch. But an inch was an inch that bumped the seam of his pants, the cradle of his groin, smoothly against my rear.
I shivered.
When I looked over my shoulder as I reached for my black bean burger, his face was right there. And it was tight—so damn tight.
I smiled at him nervously, but Dex didn't smile back.
He stared at my face, his food untouched, and I had no clue what the heck was going on with him.
"Do you want me to move?" I whispered. I could see his mom looking at us from across the table. She wasn't even trying to play her gaze off.
He still said nothing.
Okay. "Charlie," I whispered again in a sing-song voice, trying to draw him out of whatever thought he was lost in.
But still, nothing.
All right. His mom kept watching us and I started to feel weird again.
I tried to get up. My butt was maybe just an inch off the bench when his warm hand landed on my outer thigh, the thumb on the inside and all four of his long fingers curled over the outside of my leg, and he pushed me back down gently.
"You're fine there." His voice was way too low.
I finally managed to nod my head and force a bite of black bean burger into my mouth to give me something else to do besides look at him, or focus on the heat of his body.
Because honestly, my stomach was doing flip-flops at our proximity. At the feel of that long, sinewy body practically cocooning mine. Sweet baby lord.
I mean, we’d been pretty close when he hugged me the other night but this was completely different.
“So, Iris, what’s your little brother up to?” Dex’s mom asked abruptly.
“He’s in the Army in Japan.”
She lifted up her eyebrows. ”Japan? That’s fancy. You been up to visit him?”
“Not yet.” Especially not when I couldn’t even reach him on the phone. “Hopefully one day soon.”
“You should, life’s short.” Debra winked.
I smiled at her and nodded. “I should start saving up for a plane ticket.”
One of the women I recognized from Mayhem tisked. “Girl, just find yourself a sugar daddy to pay for that.”
Did Dex just grunt?
“Pretty girl like you, I bet you could find a man like that,” she snapped her fingers.
Debra barked out a laugh that was eerily similar to her son’s. “Don’t listen to her. She’s always trying to talk everybody into finding sugar daddies.”
“That’s true,” Dex’s sister threw in. “But if you listen to Ma, she’ll tell you to find a good man that likes you, has good credit and a steady job.”
Debra nodded enthusiastically, pointing at two men standing up. “Yeah, and ya listened to me. See how well my advice worked out for you two?”
The Mayhem woman snorted, cutting me a look. “I still think you should find a sugar daddy.”
“Would you quit with that mess?” Debra huffed.
Something traced the curve of my shoulder, breaking my attention away from the women.
“Ignore ‘em.” It was Dex’s fingertip running over the strap of my bathing suit top. ”Like your bathing suit.” He drew a line down my shoulder blade.
And then he shuffled forward another inch, bringing his lower body even closer to mine. The fingers on my leg tightened, his thighs closing in on mine. Was that a grumble?
His finger made a line back up, slowly, and my stomach fluttered in recognition of his touch. “Eat, baby,” he muttered.
Oh hell. I was still holding the burger in my hand, mid-air after the last bite. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye and smiled.
I'd maybe chewed three times before two thoughts hit me simultaneously. I was eating a black bean burger because his sisters had found out I was a vegetarian. And Dex's hand was still on my thigh.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You’re kind of a nerd.”
I shifted on the couch, deepening my cross-legged position on one end to look at Dex better. He was sitting with his ass in the opposite corner in loose basketball shorts, one leg extended straight out so that his bare foot was just a few inches from nudging my knee. His other foot was perpendicular to it, and he had a bottle of water squished between him and the couch.
Had I mentioned how attractive Dex’s feet were?
Maybe I’d been expecting athlete’s foot or a serious fungal infection and overgrown toenails to explain why I was so entranced by his long feet and neatly trimmed toenails. Even his freaking Morton’s toe was kind of endearing.
What was wrong with me?
Everything. That was the truth.
After a long afternoon at the lake, in the sun, I didn’t have a doubt my hair was in a million different directions and I might have a slight sunburn on my nose. We'd left after Hannah opened her presents, both of us hugging his mom goodbye while I just waved at his sisters and the other MC members. Neither one of us had talked much after eating—and by eating I meant that I'd thoughtlessly chewed while staring at the ink-stained fingers on my thigh the entire time.
“I don’t know if that’s a compliment or an insult,” I told him.
He tossed his head back. Yeah, he was definitely attractive. Smoking hot, level one million attractive. “Babe, you go to the library, you read romance books with a big ass smile on your face. You still say cool, and I just heard you recitin’ each line from the movie.”