“It’s a good movie,” I tried to justify it. I’d seen all of the boy wizard’s movies at least three times each.
Dex smiled, his smoky, intent gaze smug. “Babe, you’re the cutest fuckin’ nerd I’ve ever met.”
My chest did this thing...I don’t even know how to describe it, it was like a seizure-type thing...for all of a split second before I squashed it down. The cute-ground was somewhere I didn't need to go. No, siree. No way. “You like Firefly. That’s pretty nerdy.” I learned this after going through his DVDs while he made tacos. Another major anomaly in his armor. I mean, seriously? He seemed like the type to try and beat up the nerdy kids that liked those types of shows.
“It’s good,” he shrugged. “But you're still a little dork.”
“You have a Captain America shield tattooed on your chest.” He didn’t need to know I actually found that incredibly hot. I gave him an obnoxious wink. "You win."
Oh bloody hell. I was flirting, wasn’t I?
“He’s the shit,” he answered simply, completely unfazed by my claims to his nerd-dom and the dreamy look I worried had funelled its way onto my heart—and face, unfortunately.
I was full of crap but I wasn't going to do down without at least a fight. “Next thing I know you’re going to tell me you have a comic book collection."
"I do." Without any hesitation, he hooked his thumb to his left. “In my spare bedroom.”
Was he joking? “You’re lying.”
Dex shook his head, returning my earlier smile. When this man was in a good mood...God. It was unfair. Totally, completely unfair to be around him. “Wanna see?”
And it was that question, that had me in his underused spare bedroom minutes later.
I'd read too many books where men had that secret bedroom that seconded as a play room for the kinky, or hell, an operations room for some secret society they belonged to. So when Dex opened the closed door to the room I'd yet to see, it wasn't at all what I was expecting.
There were bright, pure white light bulbs in the ceiling fan, lamps in two corners of the room flooding the space with illumination. A drafting desk very similar to the one back at Pins was pushed up against the wall with the windows. There were large bookshelves filled with books and pristine plastic wrapped comic books. Vintage action figures were settled on shelves that dotted all of the walls where there wasn't posters or more framed artwork. Artwork that looked like Dex's heavy-handed style on kohl.
The frame closest to me looked like an original dark superhero. A black cape billowed behind a massive, muscular man with eyes that looked haunted.
"Did you do this one?" I asked him.
"Mmhmm," he answered right before I felt the warm length of his body just behind me. "That's one of my earliest drawings."
"It's so good," I told him honestly, taking in the sweep of heavy lines around the character. I wanted to turn around but he was too close, and it was easier to play opossum than to face Dex Locke. "You should start your own comic book."
"Thanks, babe." He paused. "I used to want to back when I was a kid, but... shit doesn't always work out that way, you know?" There were no truer words that could have been said for me to understand completely.
"Oh, I know." I blew out a breath. "Stuff happens."
"Shit happens," he laughed darkly.
I tried to look at him out of the corner of my eye but I couldn't. "And here you are, a successful business man."
Dex snorted but it wasn't exactly in amusement. "If my juvie parole officer could see me now."
"You got in trouble when you were young, too?" I don't know why I asked. Like so many other things, this was Dex. It made more sense than not.
"’Course I did. Spent six months in boot camp when I was seventeen," he sounded a little too proud of it.
I smiled even though he couldn't see it. "For what?"
"What do you think?"
"Jaywalking?" I laughed.
"No."
I turned my head to look at him over my shoulder. “Indecent exposure?”
All he did was stare at me for the longest moment in history in response. When I snickered, he blinked, one side of his mouth tipping up just barely.
“I don’t think I’ve ever let anybody gimme as much grief as you do.”
“Thank you?”
He grunted.
“Okay, no gay prostituting for you. What else then? Were you shanking freshman in school?” I really had no idea. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about him getting into fistfights with a teacher.
The other side of his mouth tipped up high right before he snorted, the sound was so close to my ear I could feel the heat of his lips and skin. "Graffiti."
"Oh." The teenage graffiti artist who turned into a tattoo artist? Perfect. As I did the math in my head, I realized that his dad's crap must have been almost immediately after he'd gotten in trouble. "And then?"
He shrugged. "Nothin’ much. I was still a shit when I got out."
Like that wasn't still the case. Ha.
"I got in trouble again almost right after I got out. That's why I got stuck with the whole five year sentence at county."
And at some point between that period of time, the tiger had changed his stripes but it'd been a little too late. From graffiti to assault. I couldn't have been attracted to a man that had gone to jail for unpaid traffic fines—and once I thought about it, that seemed really lame. Who would want to have feelings for a guy like that?
"The good thing is your big behemoth butt hasn't gotten in trouble again, and now you aren't defacing public buildings." At that, I lifted both of my eyebrows quickly.
I could tell his was in a good mood considering the conversation. "I found a better canvas, you know." He touched the back of the hand I had loose at my side with his index finger. "A permanent one."
Oh boy. I suddenly felt like I couldn't breathe deeply. I had to settle for a shaky smile at the small physical contact. "And it all started because of your comics."
His hand moved away as he reached up to put a hand on the side of the frame, caging me in on one side. "If it wasn't for all this shit, I wouldn't have a damn thing."
Which was true. What else would he have done if he hadn't gotten seduced into art by his comic books? It'd brought his gift to life, I figured.
"I wish I was half as talented at anything as you are at art," I sighed. "But I'm not good at anything."
Two hands planted themselves on my shoulders. "I'm sure you're good at somethin', babe."
I snorted. "Nothing useful."
"Babe." He said the nickname in a slithering tone, part admonishing, part sigh.
“It’s fine. It’s not too late to learn to be good at something, right?”
The heat on my back intensified as he took a step closer to me, his long fingers dug into my tissues. “I was your age when I got out of jail, Ritz. You got time to figure shit out.” He didn't say anything else after that little pep talk. He just stood there, massaging my shoulders for long moments until he squeezed them tightly once and stepped back. "Lemme show you somethin’."
I shook off the dreamy haze his hands put me under and tried to focus on something other than his out-of-the-blue affection. Dex opened a creaky closet door while I looked over one of the big bookshelves that had collectible action figures on it still in their packaging.
"Here we go," he murmured, throwing a cardboard lid onto the floor. He smiled up at me as he held out a comic book I didn't recognize. Tightly restrained excitement vibrated through his bones. "Look, this is the first one Ma ever bought me."
I took his offering with the widest smile I could muster when he grinned at me like he'd won the lottery.
And it was that smile that had me plastered on the ground next to him for an hour, going through an impressive selection of comic books that Dex explained he’d collected through his early teen years. He was so painstakingly careful with each item he showed me, so serious explaining the editions and their value, that I ate it all up like a starved woman on the floor with him.