Frog by Mary Calmes (read along books TXT) 📗

last thing Cy’s brother said to me.

“My family loved you,” Cy said as we pulled away from the curb, glancing over at me for a second before he headed down the long, winding hill.

I grunted. “They were just bein’ polite.”

“No,” Carolyn corrected me from the seat behind me. “Our family is never polite, and remember what Brett and that guy Ross said about you.”

“Wait, what?” Cy asked, his voice rising as he turned again to look at me, brows furrowed. “Tell me what was said.”

“It don’t matter none.” I soothed him, hand on his thigh, squeezing before I leaned sideways and kissed him. “Get us home.”

He growled, which was adorable.

Once we were there, Cy driving well through pouring rain, Carolyn and the boys came in to have dinner, which ended up being spaghetti and garlic bread, salad and wine. I let Tristan have a sip from my glass because he had learned in class, from one of the girls who did her country report on Italy, that there, kids drank wine from an early age. I had no idea, but Cy agreed with him so he got to have a swallow of my Chianti. He decided to stick with milk.

The kids didn’t want to leave, but Carolyn insisted, promising them that they could definitely have a sleepover later in the week. I told them I would see them all the next morning, and Pip wrapped around my leg, so I had to carry him that way back to the SUV. It was nice that the rain had cleared, leaving a cold, crisp night. After they were gone, I was doing the dishes when Cy came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.

“Tell me what my idiot brother and his friend said.”

“Nothin’ that bears repeatin’,” I assured him, leaning sideways to kiss his cheek. “Help me dry these.”

“I normally hate stubble on a man,” he told me, his voice low and sexy, “but on you it’s so fuckin’ hot.”

“’Cause you like how it feels on your ass,” I told him.

“Jesus,” he gasped, bumping me as he jolted. “Even your voice could make me come.”

I turned off the water, wiped my hands on my jeans, and grabbed him. The second I picked him up, his long legs wrapped around my waist and his arms snaked around my neck.

“How about your full-time job is fucking me?”

I snickered as I carried him toward his bedroom. “I’d be a kept man, would I?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but I squeezed his ass at the same time, and he shuddered instead, head back, breath catching as he clutched at me.

“Cy?” I teased him as I dropped him down onto the bed.

He looked drugged as he lay there, sprawled across the comforter staring up at me. “I like pointing at you in a crowd and saying that he’s with me. I want to keep you and put a ring on your finger and come home every night to your face looking at me like I’m an idiot.”

“I never look at you like you’re an—”

“Yeah, you do. When I’ve done something particularly stupid, you do.”

“Well, of course then.” I squinted at him. “That don’t make no—”

“You’re focusing on one part of what I said to avoid the rest, and I get it, I do. But last time you left, really, Web, my heart barely survived.”

I sighed and sat down on the side of the bed. “Well then for crissakes, Cyrus, why didn’t you just tell me to go on and not stop and see you?”

“Because,” he said, sighing, tilting his head to look at me, “one of these days you are going to let me love you, and you’re going to stay.”

I opened my mouth, but he lifted his hand to hush me.

“Or maybe it’s time I looked for a job in Texas.”

It took a second, but the weight of his words finally sunk in.

“Oh hell no!” I roared at him, getting up, staring down at him. “I gotta look for work in places that don’t got no hospitals or—”

“Fine, a clinic. I could open my own.”

I lifted up my hands. “Your life is here. Your family is here. The hospital where you work, that people know you’re at, is here! You don’t just—”

“You can find work; I can find work.”

“Oh for the love of—”

“No!” he yelled at me, rolling off the bed, pulling off one of his lace-ups, because, of course, the man wore dress shoes on his days off, and flinging it at me.

I leaned out of the trajectory as he came around the bed.

“You’re the thing I don’t have, Weber Yates. You’re what I miss. You’re the part I only have when I know I can wake up in the morning and see your face.” He finished, reaching for me, wanting his hands on me.

“I will not have you hatin’ me because you can’t be a surgeon no more,” I barked back at him, lifting my head away and back so he couldn’t touch me. “Bein’ a country doctor in some clinic in a little Podunk town ain’t gonna make you happy.”

“You make me happy,” he yelled, shoving me back hard, and being that close to the bed, I lost my balance and fell.

He was on me fast, straddling my chest, knees on my arms, pinning me to the bed. And even though we were fighting, the thought crept in that it was hot being manhandled, and his cock was right there, close to my mouth, just beneath a layer of denim and cotton.

“No!”

“What no?” I asked, because he was suddenly smiling, and his voice had lost the sharp edge and was instead smooth and silky, reminding me of velvet.

“I am having a serious discussion with you! Do not gimme that look like you want to fuck me because it won’t work.”

I smiled up at him, and I saw him shiver. Never in my life had I been the hot guy or the sexy guy, but for whatever reason, I had