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“What?” I asked when he didn’t say anything.
Nothing.
The German tipped his head back and closed his eyes, his fingers going for the bridge of his nose. One inhale, one exhale. Another inhale, one more exhale. What the hell was wrong with him?
“Rey, are you okay?”
One eye opened as his chest puffed. “Stop talking about sex.”
Jeez. “Okay. Sorry. I didn’t take you to be a prude.”
He choked, his other eye opening. But did he say a word? No, he didn’t.
I sat there waiting for him to make another comment, but nothing came out of his mouth. I really hadn’t taken him as a person who would get offended so easily. The ‘s’ word hadn’t even come out of my mouth, much less anything raunchier. So I didn’t completely understand why he was getting so bent out of shape.
When he continued to say nothing and he kept looking at the support for the bottom of the top bunk bed, I fidgeted. “Can I see your tattoo now?” He’d been a little too secretive about it, and I’d been wondering what the hell he was hiding all day.
Mr. Secret’s chin moved just a tiny bit to the side before he nodded almost belligerently. Setting his tablet flat on the bed, he arranged his body to the side and carefully pulled the sleeve of his undershirt up. Where less than forty-eight hours ago there had been a tattoo nearly as old as me, a cross, it had been covered as if by magic with the outline of a bird. It was a beautiful, regal-looking bird.
“A Phoenix,” Kulti explained like he could read my mind.
“I can’t even see your old one at all,” I told him, still inspecting the great, beautiful wings and the eccentric-looking crest on its head. “This is amazing, Rey.” I wanted to touch it but the skin was still a little irritated, and I didn’t want to be the one to accidentally scratch it and mess it up before it was healed. “Seriously, way better than that cross you had before. What made you decide to get that?”
The German eyed me as he scooted back into place and tugged his shirtsleeve back down. “Someone told me I can’t take back what I’ve done, but what I do from now on is what matters. It seemed fitting.”
Damn it. I hated when he actually listened to me, but I smiled anyway and dropped the subject when he didn’t meet my eyes. All right. “Are you ready to go to bed?”
“I’m going to stay up and watch a movie on here,” he explained, gesturing to his tablet. With the bed above shadowing half of everything below, I couldn’t see his face well. “Would you want to watch it?”
Was I sleepy? Yes. But…
“Sure, at least until I start to fall asleep,” I agreed.
He slid over all of half an inch and angled his upper body toward me. Well. Scooting in next to him close enough so that our elbows were touching, Kulti propped the tablet back onto his bent knees as I tucked the hem of my shirt between my thighs. It had ridden up but it wasn’t like he could see my underwear, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen just as much of my legs practically every other day we’d hung out. I fixed the pillow behind my back and eased onto the bed so that my shoulder touched his bicep.
“What are we watching?” I asked.
Apparently the man wasn’t a cheapskate because we didn’t go with a Netflix movie; instead he bought a digital copy of some newly released suspense thriller.
I’d guess that I probably made it twenty minutes into the movie before I fell asleep. With his body heat on one side, even through the barrier of the sheet he had pulled over himself and the comfortable bed beneath me, I was out.
I woke up to find that my bent knees had fallen over and were resting on Kulti’s hip, my shirt had somehow ridden up past my hips leaving my underwear out for anyone to see. My hands were crossed over my chest and tucked into my armpits, and the entire right side of my body was huddled into the left side of the German.
I sat up and gave him a sleepy yawn. “I’m going to bed.” I squeezed his bent knee before throwing my legs over the side. “Goodnight, Rey.”
“Sweet dreams.”
Sweet dreams? Had that really just come out of his mouth? I think I might have fallen asleep with a smile on my face thinking of him using those words.
“You’re wearing a dress.”
I turned around and frowned, my hands smoothing down the front of the blue sundress I’d put on five minutes before. “Yes.” It was going to be bad enough when my parents saw my outfit. They acted like they’d never seen me in anything besides sweat pants or shorts.
Now I had to hear it from the German too.
He stood in the doorway in the same jeans he’d had on when we left for Austin. He’d added a black checkered and blue shirt and his tennis shoes.
I smiled.
