Cy moved in, calm as you please, until he was right before me.
Reaching over, my lips parted and my mouth fell open in a stunned gape. Instead of leaning in to kiss me, like I’d stupidly expected, he leaned over, turned off the water, then plucked the glass from my hand as I stood there still as a gape mouthed statue, and set the glass on the counter beside the sink.
There he went, giving me that look again. He was so close and he smelled so damn good… I just wanted to- This wasn’t normal, was it?
“What’s wrong with me?” I muttered absently to myself.
Cy’s arms came around me to settle behind me loosely. I jumped, so deep in my head it startled me. There he went with that chest rattling rumbling again.
Holy frick, I couldn’t think when he did that.
My hand lifted and then fell on his chest.
My intention was to push him away but instead I found my hand curling into his shirt as if I meant to drag him closer at any moment.
Cy’s gaze followed mine, scanning my hand on his person, then my face. That sexy little half smile he’d been sporting widened until the fool was sporting a shit eating grin.
“It’s not funny,” I muttered, glaring at my hand. I should want to move it but I didn’t. I didn’t move it and I didn’t want to, to be perfectly honest.
I liked his warmth, the way he felt. If anything, what I really wanted to do was lean into him more and curl up in his arms.
“What not funny?” His voice was low, soft. I felt it like a caress. He leaned in closer, bringing more of his scent with him.
“You’re not,” I grumbled with a frown, even as he smoothed a hand up my back, pressed, and brought me closer to him.
“Not try to be funny,” he murmured, his voice all low and deep and- That was his hand sliding down, right into my back pocket of my jeans. The letter! He did not!
“Oh- No, you don’t!” I snapped, jerking out of his arms to hastily retreat across to the other side of the kitchen.
Cy didn’t fight me, staying near the sink as I rushed to put some distance between us.
Reaching into my back pocket, feeling that tell-tale crinkle, I ripped it out of the back pocket of my jeans with a snarl.
He muttered with a shrug of his shoulders, “No care you with Elm. Want-” right as I burst out with, “You- You sleazy asshole! I can’t believe you’d stoop this low!”
Cy paused, whatever he was going to say, mid sentence, and slowly closed his mouth.
“What do you mean, you don’t care I was with Elm?” My face reddened and I growled, “What did he do, run home and tell you?!”
“What mean Cy stoop low?” he muttered, finally looking more like the grumbly ass I’d grown up with.
“My thing first, mama’s little errand boy!” Waving the envelope around in the air wildly, I pointed it at him.
“Smell,” he grunted out.
“Smell what?” My brow puckered in confusion. What was he talking about?
With a long, drawn out sigh, Cy gave me a look and grumbled, “Can smell Elm on Pru. No care. Still want you.” With a snuffling chuff, he tapped the side of his nose for emphasis.
My mouth opened, closed, opened, then closed again. I did a little blinking as his words slapped me about the face. He cansmell… Elm on me?
“Bullshit,” I burst out.
Cy frowned until it looked like he was squinting. “True,” he got out between what sounded like half grunts, like they were stuck in his throat.
“Bull,” I argued. “You’re just covering your ass because Elm told you and you weren’t supposed to tell me!” That made way more sense than the smell thing. Humans can’t smell other people on people like that. That’s such a weird thing to say. It was obviously bull crap he’d concocted on the fly. “Just like you kissing me just so you can distract and sneak deliver your mama’s damn envelope!” Lifting the envelope to wave it about again, it was rather belatedly that I realized that was not in fact Sunny’s bubbly handwriting across it but a thin, scribbling scrawl, and the envelope was a more blue-blue, like Cy’s eyes, than the dark blue of Sunny’s envelope.
“That you think?!” Cy grabbed the envelope from my hand with a snarl and stormed towards the back door.
