Pinkie Promise (Carter Ridge Book 1)

Ash pads around the side of the pool, half of our cheer squad already submerged in the hot lapping water, and she sets down another small cardboard crate of bottles. I’m laying back on a padded recliner, my large towel draped across my body covering me from the top of my chest to the apex of my thighs, adding songs to Aisling’s playlist. She sits cross-legged on the recliner next to mine, unfastening about ten thousand dollars’ worth of jewellery from her wrists.

“I needed this,” she sighs, dropping another diamond-encrusted bangle to her little pile. “Like, an excuse to hang out with some hot guys.”

As soon as Tanner mentioned that Hunter’s birthday was coming up I knew exactly what we could all do to chill out and celebrate, and luckily – seeing as my idea consisted of taking over the top floor pool at Aisling’s parents’ condo for the day – the timing had been perfect for Ash too.

After weeks of to-ing and fro-ing, she finally had enough and decided to end things with her boyfriend, so now she’s back to being sophomore-year-Ash, who was officially the hottest heartbreaker on campus.

She’s wearing a pale pink bikini that makes her golden tan pop, and her hair is scraped back into a high ponytail that ends somewhere halfway down her back. She looks like a Hollister model on summer break.

My phone blips beside Aisling’s and I smile when I see the name on the screen.

“The guys are here,” I tell her, a magical shimmer in my belly. “I should go buzz them up.”

Aisling, the hostess with the mostest, gives her ponytail a dazzling flip.

“Nu-uh,” she counters. “Today’s all about you and him, and he should be sweating about seeing you for as long as possible. I’ll buzz them in.”

She swipes a beer bottle from the crate and quickly tip-toes her way around the pool, so that she can head back to our room for a minute and let Hunter and his teammates up here.

I set a new song on the playlist and wiggle my freshly polished toes as I wait for Hunter to get himself up here.

The top floor pool is light yet somehow still cosy, like a hot-tub deck at a mountain resort. The music on our playlist mingles in with the laughter from the pool, making me feel every bit the college student that I never used to allow myself to be.

When the doors straight across from me are pushed open I shoot to my feet, clutching my towel around my body, and I begin running carefully around the side of the pool.

As soon as Hunter comes into view he shoves a hand through his hair, his eyebrows raised in surprise as he takes in his surroundings. He catches sight of me and immediately grins, striding my way before I can reach him at the door.

He scoops me into his arms, towel and all, and tucks his face into my neck, shaking his head as if he thinks that he’s dreaming.

“Happy birthday,” I whisper, clutching him tighter, while the girls in the pool behind me scream their happy birthdays at him too.

“This is way too much,” he murmurs back to me, but I can hear the smile in his voice so I know that he likes it. He pulls back so that he can look down at me and he says, “How’d I get so fuckin’ lucky?”

I preen like a spoiled kitten and then practically purr as he starts kissing my neck.

“Didn’t know y’all had a pool up here,” he admits, before placing me back on my feet and scratching roughly at the back of his hair. “Shit, I don’t have any swimwear with me, baby.”

“Why’d you think she was texting me?” Tanner interrupts, shoving his shoulder straight into Hunter’s, before reaching into the gym bag over his shoulder and slapping a pair of swim shorts into Hunter’s chest.

Hunter breathes out a startled laugh as he catches the garment. “What are these?” he asks Tanner.

“Your present. Happy birthday.”

Hunter shakes his head dazedly and then grins back at his friend, his teammates already heading to the guys’ shower area to get changed.

“How are you feeling after yesterday’s game?” I ask, as I borderline drag him towards the showers where his teammates are located.

Hunter is fully preoccupied.

Now that he’s realised that I have a towel wrapped around my body – and for a good reason too – he’s staring at the fabric like he’s trying to burn a hole through it with his eyes.

“Earth to Hunter,” I laugh. “How was your game?”

He presses himself up behind me as his eyes follow the shapes beneath the towel. “We won,” he says simply, his hands cupping around my hips.

I already knew that they’d won seeing as he’d texted me about it last night.

I also knew that he felt extremely good about the celebratory selfie I sent to him, seeing as he’d followed up his texts with a photo of his post-game body before he hit the showers.

He was not wearing a towel.

“I meant are you sore or anything,” I explain, but then suddenly I’m yelping as he hauls me up, stashing me into one of the small enclosed saunas and closing the door quickly behind us.

I burst into a fit of laughter as he grazes his teeth up my neck and then he pulls away with heated eyes as he trails his gaze hungrily down my front.

“What you got under there?” he asks, jerking his chin at my towel.

I cock a hip and taunt, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

He scrapes a hand down his jaw before resettling it on my waist.

“You wearing something that’s gonna get you in trouble?” he asks me quietly.

I swallow a little and then whisper, “I hope so.”

His eyes burn into mine. “Show me, baby.”

I peek out of the steamed-up window to check that no-one will be able to see in, his guys already changed into their swimwear and joining the cheer girls on the other side of the pool, and then I look up at Hunter as I finally open up my towel.

“Happy birthday.”

Hunter arches his neck backwards, taut muscles rolling dangerously in the thick column of his throat. His eyes roam across my breasts spilling out over my lilac bikini top.

Then he lifts a hand to the back of his neck and rips his shirt clean off.

“What’re you doing?” I squeak, going wide-eyed as he flicks open his jeans with one stroke of his thumb.

“Getting changed,” he explains, making a little clothes heap on the floor.

I let out a shaky breath as he strips off his pants and boxers, his stance unabashedly confident as he bares himself to me.

He gives me a good ten seconds of staring time before he finally swipes the shorts off the floor and pulls them up his quads. When he finally drags me into his arms I fall limply against his chest.

“Gonna keep you pressed up against me just like this, baby,” he tells me. “No-one else is gonna see what you had on for me under that towel.”

I giggle as he collects the rest of his clothes using his free hand and then he shoves open the sauna room door, my front still up against his torso as he walks us from the room. He tosses his clothes roughly in the vicinity of the guy’s shower area before heaving me up by my ass and carrying me over to the edge of the pool.

Hunter sets himself down and I extrapolate my legs from their straddle on his waist, slipping quickly into the pool and grinning when the water sloshes warm and wet around my chin.

He steps in after me and I burst out laughing at the fact that the water doesn’t even cover his pecs.

The size difference between us makes my heart feel warm and fuzzy.

“So damn tiny,” he murmurs, his smile-creases giving me butterflies.

Wanting to play, I decide to tease him a little.

“Oh no, you’re too big for me!” I exclaim in dramatic mock-horror, holding the back of my hand to my forehead like a damsel about to faint. “Whatever will I do?”

He laughs and grabs my waist beneath the loudly splattering water, making me scream in delight as he restrains me from swimming away from him.

He presses a hard kiss to my cheek as I squirm against his hold and then he bites into my neck as he murmurs, “You’ll take it.”

My body grows slack under his forearms and I feel him smirk against my skin. He gives my breasts a rough squeeze under the water before taking my hand like a gentleman, and leading me over to where our friends are lounging.

I hear the loud slapping sound of feet hitting the wet tiles behind us and I turn my head slightly to catch Tanner finally leaving the shower room. His eyes are locked in on Aisling and there’s a hard set to his bristled jaw.

She flicks her ponytail antagonistically and calls out over the blasting music, “Took a while to find a pair of shorts that are small enough for you, huh?”

He gives her a humourless smirk before smoothly heaving his body down into the water.

Even Ash, who has made a point of publically hating on Tanner since our freshman year, can’t help but stare at his gigantic body.

Like Hunter, Tanner is pure home-grown Carter Ridge brawn.

Tan skin, swollen pecs, and abdominal muscles that are thick with brute force. He notices me looking, rolls his shoulders, and winks.

Good Lord.

I quickly turn back to Hunter who looks ready for murder, and he kisses me hard on the forehead before mouthing some choice words at his roommate.

Ash stares at Tanner’s chest until he raises his eyebrows at her. Then she lifts her chin in defiance and turns her back to him completely.

He reaches around her to grab her beer and then he moves in behind her so that he can murmur against her cheek.

“If you’re tryin’ to insult me by giving me your back, I’ll have you know that it’s my favourite position.”

Ash snaps her head around to face him and he doesn’t back away an inch.

“Actually, I remember,” she hisses, snatching back her bottle before moving quickly to the other side of our circle.

Uh, what?

I stare open-mouthed at Ash and she gives me an I’ll explain later eye roll.

WHAT? No! I need those details now!

How the hell can I have lived with her for these past few years and have not known that she previously got with the guy that she hates?

I go to make a beeline for her but Hunter wraps his forearm over my belly, tugging me back against his hardened groin. I release a small yelp that has him grunting against my ear.

“Y’all can talk tomorrow,” he murmurs. “Today you’re all mine.”

I turn my head so that I can look back at him and he strokes his other hand up my throat.

“Not just today,” I whisper back to him, smiling when his eyes go black and sparkly.

Not wanting to get too sentimental in front of his teammates I change the subject and ask, “Where’s your other friend?” The water sloshes around me as I twist in the pool looking for Winter’s boyfriend, twining my arms protectively around the back of Hunter’s neck. “Caden, right? The guy from the South?”

Hunter tentatively touches the bun wobbling on top of my head.

“Caden doesn’t come to stuff like this when his girlfriend isn’t in town. He’s real traditional.”

“Kinda thinking that he might not be the only one who’s real traditional,” I say quietly, pursing my lips to hide my smile when Hunter meets my eyes.

“You got that right,” he grins, and he hauls me up against his middle. I wrap myself around him tighter, laughing when he presses a kiss over my breast. “You know, I went to see my baby siblings this morning. Got me thinking about some real traditional stuff that I wanna do with you.” He smirks to himself and then adds, “Well, to you.”

I gasp as he teases my nipple, hard beneath my bikini, with his teeth.

He jerks his chin at me and murmurs, “Let’s make a baby.”

I lose all control of my limbs and he slides his hand down the back of my bikini bottoms.

But just as he’s about to dip down and kiss me I feel something large press right up against my back.

I jerk at the feeling and twist my head to find Tanner towering over me, his eyes boring straight into mine.

Hunter’s hand grips into me harder and I press my front up against his pecs, eliciting a satisfied sound from deep in his chest.

“What the hell’s she doin’?” Tanner asks me, unfazed by the fact that I’m now the jam in a hockey player sandwich.

I blink up at him in confusion. “W-what are you talking about?” I ask.

He jerks his head to his left, and I try not to go cross-eyed as Hunter presses hungry kisses over my cleavage.

I glance over in the direction that Tanner is gesturing towards and I breathe out a light “hmmm” as I watch a two-hundred-pound hockey player wrap Aisling up in his arms.

“Care to explain?” he asks quietly, the vulnerability in his voice recapturing my attention.

We share a long look that has my heart aching for him.

“I thought Ash had a boyfriend,” he says. “Why the hell’s she lettin’ Tristan grind on her from the back?”

I wince and swallow. “Ash broke up with her boyfriend.”

Tanner’s eyebrows skyrocket.

“Come again?”

“Please don’t make it a big deal,” I whisper desperately, slapping my palm over his mouth before he can say anything else.

He narrows his eyes on me and folds his arms over his chest.

“I guess she’s just hard-launching the fact that she is now very much single. She’s been so low up until today, she deserves a little relief.”

Tanner removes my hand from his mouth and says, “Trust me, Fallon, I can give her relief.”

I choke on thin air because I have no idea how to respond to that.

But to my surprise, Tanner doesn’t spend the rest of the afternoon trying to one-up Ash by flirting with our friends. Instead, he fully turns his back to the group and starts a detailed conversation with Hunter about the NCAA Tournament games, ahead of the coveted Frozen Four final that they’ve been working towards.

Hunter holds me gently by my belly, his front against my back, and he rests his chin over my shoulder, slowly scraping his stubble back and forth over my skin.

By the time that Hunter is on his second bottle of beer my skin is so affectionately sensitised that I’m thinking, maybe I could make a baby.

He takes a pull on the beer and then holds the bottle in front of my lips, giving me a small baby sip and then smiling at me like I did a good job.

“I missed you this week,” I tell him, scrunching up my nose at how insecure that sounds.

He places his bottle beside the pool and then cups my cheeks with both of his hands. “Yeah?” he asks.

I nod my head and his chest swells with satisfaction.

“I missed you too,” he says, his voice low and deep. “Thought you were needing space or something.”

My cheeks turn crimson as I mutter, “I thought that you would have needed space.”

He stares at me for a long moment before shoving a hand through his fringe. Water droplets trickle down his pecs and my brain goes a little fuzzy.

“Baby,” he murmurs, massaging his thumbs up my jaw, “are you tellin’ me that you thought I needed space, so you decided to give me space, even though, in reality, neither one of us wanted space?”

A dimple pops in my cheek as I scrunch my nose up even harder.

“Baby,” he laughs, before leaning down so that he can kiss me. I whimper quietly at his affection but it’s so loud in here that only Hunter hears it. “It’s okay, baby, we’ll make up for all of the time apart. And we’re going to keep on doing that until you know that this is a forever thing.” He presses a small kiss to the tip of my nose, his rigid dick digging roughly into my belly.

“Is that a promise?” I ask breathlessly, enchanted by the words that he’s just spoken.

Something about hearing him say the word forever makes my soul shimmer and sparkle, like it’s finally kindling to its twin flame.

Handsome creases appear in his tan cheeks at the exact second that Aisling puts on one of our favourite songs.

I squeal and spin around to face her and she flashes me a sinful grin, knowing that we’re about to sing the whole condo down.

Hunter lifts me higher in his arms so that I can wrap my legs around his waist, and he gives me an adoring smile as I squish my body against his.

“Yeah baby, I promise,” he murmurs, before leaning back so that he can watch me sing.

His grin grows even wider and I feel my whole heart burst.