Lord Have Mercy (Southern Gentleman 2)

His eyes finally dipped as he trailed his gaze down the length of my belly, and I saw a flare of need cross his face for only the briefest of seconds before he was able to bank the emotion.

But I’d seen it, and I knew that I could get him back for teasing me so annoyingly.

With it being as hot in the gym as it was, I could easily get away with taking my shirt off.

Plus, since he took off his shirt, I should be able to take off mine.

I had a cute belly. It wasn’t super toned, but it wasn’t something that showed rolls until I sat down and hunched forward to eat a taco. Meaning when I took it off, I wasn’t self-conscious in the least.

The same couldn’t be said for my ass and thighs, but with the fabric that I’d wiggled my way into compressing them so nicely, I didn’t look half bad.

And, apparently, Flint agreed with me.

His eyes went electric before he backed away from me and said, “Get water.”

I turned back to Raleigh, who was staring at her brother across the room. “He’s annoying me.”

I tugged on her wrist and pulled her to where our waters were sitting side by side and said, “Why?”

“Because he’s flirting with the girls instead of helping. If he’s not going to help, he doesn’t need to be here,” she explained.

I snorted. “You don’t want him here because you don’t want him to video how awful you look doing all this shit.”

Raleigh shrugged. “That, too.”

I placed my bottle down on the railing above the bench and turned just in time to hear Flint say, “Y’all ready?”

Enthusiastic yesses filled the air, and only one ‘fuck.’ That fuck belonged to me.

And so began the next ten minutes. The worst ten minutes of my life.

At first, it wasn’t too bad.

Then the squats started.

Followed shortly by a row on a rowing machine that I was fairly sure was invented by the devil.

Moments after finishing that, we started to do a thing called burpees. Those burpees were the beginning of the end.

By the time I finished my last four -hundred-meter run, I was practically crawling across the finish line.

“Get here, Presley!” Flint yelled.

I looked up and saw that I was only a few feet away from the ‘finish line’ which was a goddamn X.

That was where I would die.

I just knew it.

But I made it there.

I also made it about a foot past the X off to the side and collapsed in a heap right next to Raleigh who’d only finished a minute ahead of me.

‘Finished’ being a really loose term. She gave up on doing it the ‘correct’ way and moved to ‘girl’ push-ups—or so Flint called them—when you were down on your knees. I, on the other hand, managed to stay up on my toes for the entire fifteen push-ups. However, I was regretting it now that my arms were screaming at me in pain.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be fat?” I panted, vomit threatening to roll up my throat.

“I think Ezra would love me fat,” she admitted. “I think we can just call it quits.”

Elation poured through me.

“I quit!”

Flint, who I hadn’t realized had sat down next to me, leaned over me, his sweat dripping onto my chest and face as he said, “You’re not quitting, Presley. You’re going to stick this out because nobody likes a quitter.”

With that, him and his dripping sweat were gone, and I was left staring up at a ceiling as I tried to breathe for two reasons now. One, I’d most definitely liked the way it felt to have Flint hovering over the top of my body. Two, because I’d literally given it all that I had and was about to throw up.

I got up as fast as I could force my legs to move, and walked straight outside and threw up in his stupid potted plants.

“I’m sorry,” a woman said softly. “He’s not normally so confrontational. You should see him with the kids when he teaches their class. No joke, he’s so good with them. I’m not sure what got into him.”

I smiled thinly at the soft-spoken woman, then offered her my hand. “What’s your name?”

She smiled back. “Carmichael.”

I blinked. “That’s a man’s name.”

She snickered. “Everyone calls me Mikey. But then people will ask what it’s short for, and then I’ll just have to tell you the rest of the story anyway.”

I blinked. “My name is Camryn. I don’t like my name.”

Her mouth opened. “Me neither!”

I grinned.

Just then, a pissed off looking Flint walked by, followed shortly by Croft, who had a massive ball of some sort on his shoulder.

Both men were shirtless, and surprisingly, my eyes didn’t automatically go to Croft like they would’ve a long time ago. They went to the angry man that made my blood boil and made me want to smack him across the mouth.