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.

He didn’t say anything. He only kept looking at me as if he hadn’t seen me in less clothing plenty of times, even thought that made me sound like a nudist. I twitched. “What? I dress up sometimes. Birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s.” I pulled on the hem of the light dress that almost reached my knees… if I hunched over and yanked.

His gaze slid back up to my face after watching me fiddle with the skirt and he blinked, slow, slow, slow. “You have make-up on.”

“I wear make-up.” Not much but enough.

“No heels?” He glanced at my feet, which were in a pair of black suede ankle boots my parents had bought me for my birthday a couple years ago.

“Trust me, you’d end up spending the night peeling me off the floor or laughing when I walk around like a newborn baby giraffe.” I smiled at him.

His eyes flicked up to mine and a small smile cracked the corners of his mouth. “You’re good at everything.”

I snorted. “I wish. I’ll make you a list later at all the things I’m horrible at.” I grabbed my purse off the corner of the bed and pulled it over my head. “Are you ready to go?”