Lord Have Mercy (Southern Gentleman 2)

I kicked the covers so that they were over both of us, then curled one leg up and situated it to lay over his lower thighs. When I was comfortable, I threw my arm around his upper body and snuggled in even deeper.

“Now that you’re comfortable,” he rumbled. “Tell me what was really on your mind when I came back into the room.”

I thought about that for a long moment, then decided to hell with it.

If he wanted to know, I wasn’t going to keep it from him.

That wasn’t the way a relationship worked.

“I don’t like doing gym stuff,” I admitted.

“You don’t like working out, or you don’t like doing owner duties?” he asked carefully.

“Both,” I admitted. “I loved the first six-week session that I went to. It was tough as hell, but there wasn’t a bunch of heavy weight-lifting, which I’m not all that in to. But that’s not what has me concerned right now.”

“What does?” he rumbled beneath me.

“All this gym stuff is slowly making me want to blow my head off,” I told him bluntly. “I’m tired of whining people that can’t make their gym monthly payments wanting a discount. I’m even more tired of getting up and getting all the meal prep orders ready to distribute. Then getting called when the food isn’t to their liking seeing as I wasn’t the one who made it.” I paused. “I also don’t like getting up as early as I am…”

He squeezed me tighter. “I put you in a spot that you couldn’t get out of.”

I shook my head. “No. I thought I could handle it, and I can’t. I don’t like doing it. I’m inherently lazy by nature, and you having to get up and participate in all this is definitely not something that I find appealing any longer.”

He pulled me impossibly closer, and I melted into his body even more.

My hand ran up and down his side, and I wondered how hard he had to work to maintain his abs even when he wasn’t able to work out the lower half of his body.

“I don’t think that I told you how much you mean to me lately,” he said into the dark.

I closed my eyes and smiled.

“You tell me, baby,” I promised him.

“You may think that I tell you, but I probably don’t,” he rumbled. “What woman would go and get a second job at a gym that she doesn’t even get paid for? What woman would help a man take a bath because that man couldn’t do it all by himself? What woman would stay when there were only good reasons to go?”

I swallowed hard, and through a lump in my throat I said, “A woman that loves her man.”

He let out a long breath. “I’ll talk to Carmichael and I’ll get someone to take over the morning shift for you. You’ve done enough…way more than you ever wanted to.” He paused. “I’ll also be taking over more shifts. Now that I can technically walk, I should be able to make my way inside a gym and sit on one of the rolling chairs from my office. I can even teach classes.”

I agreed with him.

I blew out a relieved breath, then stretched up so that I could reach his mouth with my lips.

“I love you, Flintstone.”

His hand fell to my ass, and he squeezed it lightly as he said, “You better.”

When our mouths met, I meant it to only be a peck on the lips.

What it ended up being was a heated kiss that rocked me to my core.

Granted, I hadn’t had sex with the man in well over eight weeks.

Broken ribs weren’t conducive with sex.

But now those ribs were fairly healed, and his hand was roaming around to the crack of my ass, and I started to feel a flame being fanned to life deep inside of me.

He wasn’t even touching me inappropriately, and my mind was going crazy.

I dropped down a little more solidly on top of him and straddled his thigh as I deepened the kiss.

It went from ‘this is really nice’ to ‘this is getting out of control’ in about two seconds flat.

“If you’re going to stop this,” he growled against my lips, pulling away only slightly. “Then you better do it now, because if I get to the point where I stick my dick inside of you, you’re not getting away until I finish.”

I giggled.

“I’m not that mean, Flint,” I told him, sitting up and straddling his hard thigh.

Seconds later my shirt was gone, and my breasts fell free of their confines.

His hands went to my sides and traveled up my chest and stopped just underneath the heaving swells.

“I want to fuck your tits,” he said gruffly. “I want to fuck everything.”

I shivered at his words.

“Let’s just focus on my pussy for today, shall we?” I said softly. “Because I’m honestly just as deprived as you are, and I’m needy.”