Pinkie Promise (Carter Ridge Book 1)

This is bad. This is real bad.

I can barely see, let alone walk straight, so when the guys push me through the doors to Rodeo Bar I blindly hand Tanner another wad of tens so that he can grab the team our tenth round to celebrate over.

Winning our first home game of the season always means celebrating hard on home turf, but tonight it’s turned into a captain’s initiation. Which isn’t usually a problem except for the fact that, one, I have work at 8am tomorrow and, two, I’m the captain. We started out at the hockey house so that the guys who aren’t twenty-one yet could drink with us, but it’s been a few hours since then so now we’re off campus and drinking Carter Ridge dry.

“Where the fuck are we?” one of our defence-men asks, his jaw so slack that he looks like he’s dislocated it. There’s a chick somewhere to the right riding a mechanical bull and I have zero intentions of watching her work it. I don’t want to get hot and bothered in public just because I haven’t been… unloading the way that I need to.

But there’s a chance that things might be different this year.

I shift heavily on my seat as my mind strays to a certain cheerleader. Those big taunting eyes. That petite waist that I could span both of my palms around. I let my vision cloud over until the neon lights behind the counter are a big red blur, and I picture seeing her at our next game, wondering if she’ll want to see me again.

“Keep it in your pants, man.” Tanner grimaces over to one of our teammates as he sets the beers on the table, four in each hand gripped by the stems. “Waitress is bringing the rest,” Tanner slurs as he thrusts another bottle into my fist.

I take a long pull of the liquid, and then shove myself to my feet. “I’ll get them,” I decide, taking another drink from the bottle as I wonder if Fallon will let me watch her cheer. Then again, considering how hard I get at just the thought of her, maybe watching her high-kick in a mini-skirt isn’t such a good idea.

I readjust the situation getting heavy in my jeans as I trudge roughly between the tables. Jesus, it’s dark in here. I finish off my beer and slide it onto a table before raking a hand through my hair and momentarily closing my eyes.

That feels good. That feels way better. And with my eyes closed I can pretend, even for the briefest moment, that Fallon is–

My body smacks into something small and soft, and my eyes fly open just as I hear her squeal. I lock my forearms tight behind her, shoving her upwards before she hits the floor. Her head smacks off my pecs and I hear a little moan of anguish.

Then I look down to see who I just crashed into.

I must be way drunker than I originally thought.

“We have got to stop meeting like this,” Fallon says breathlessly, her hands gripping into my shoulders and her lips mere inches from mine.

She’s really here. In a chicks-dancing-on-the-tables bull-riding dive bar.

And so am I.

I’m way too drunk for any of this to make sense. Why am I here? And why the hell is she here?

Was this the job that she was talking about? This was what she wanted to spend her year doing?

Not happening. That is not fucking happening.

“Fallon,” I grit out. “What the hell are you doing here?”

When she starts wiggling in my arms I realise that I’ve still got her crushed against my pecs, but if she thinks that I’m gonna expose the little outfit that I can feel beneath my fingers to this bar’s clientele, then she can well and truly think again. I walk her to a side-booth at the corner of the room and then I pull away slightly, finally revealing what she’s wearing.

“Oh Jesus,” I say hoarsely. So much for not needing to beat one out in public.

I think I stare down at her tits for three minutes straight, the little strip of her bare belly making my hands flex into her back. She looks small and soft and like exactly what I’ve been waiting for, but then her little gasps finally penetrate my lust-fog and my eyes shoot back to hers.

“What?” I grunt. How the hell is she this pretty?

“You’re… it’s… you need to…”

I blink down at her. “Huh?”

“It’s on my belly,” she whisper-pants, her irises going black. “I know that you’re drunk but–”

The second that I realise what she’s talking about I almost lose my damn mind. I’m fully-erect and I’m embedding it straight into her stomach, a chick who barely knows me and is in the middle of a damn shift.

Which brings me back to my original question.

“Fallon, why are you in here?” I ask, dropping a palm onto the dark table behind her to stop myself from falling over. The movement causes me to thrust against her, and a sound leaves her throat at the sensation of being impaled.

“I-I’m working, this is my new–”

Suddenly she pauses and the fingers on my shoulders begin biting in harder.

“Why are you here?” she demands, eyes narrowed and blazing.

Hell if I know. I lift and drop a shoulder and then vaguely say, “Hockey.”

Her eyes narrow even further. “So this is what you do after your games, is it? Come to a place like this for a little post-game relief?”

I can’t think straight and my balance is getting worse by the second. I see a patron needing to squeeze between us and the rammed table behind me so I clutch Fallon tighter, pinning our hips tight against the table’s edge.

Her eyes roll into the back of her head.

“If this place is so damn bad, then what the hell do you think that you’re doing here, Fallon?”

“I need a job, Hunter. Something that rich hockey boys wouldn’t understand.”

“I’ll help you get a job. It doesn’t have to be something like this.”

“Why not? Seems like you’re into it.”

I duck down to her level and look her hard in the eyes. “You keep this job and I’ll be here every night, baby.”

She tries to shove me off of her but I hold her tighter. God, it feels so good to just hold her. I drop my forehead to her shoulder and swear that I almost fall asleep.

“Hunter,” she whispers, maybe realising how gone I am. “You still need to… to…” She squirms her belly a little so that I’ll understand what she’s talking about.

I groan into her neck as my erection thumps against her. “That’s not helping, baby.”

“Oh God, d-don’t call me that, I’m not your… your baby,” she whispers frantically, and she starts steering us away from the booth. I don’t know where we’re going but I’ll happily go along with it if it means that I get to stay wrapped all over her.

I pull back and everything is spinning. She’s the one thing that I can focus on in this neon red blur.

“You could be,” I rasp, hooking my forearms around her neck from behind. She ignores everything that I’m saying to her and throws apologetic smiles to the tables we weave through, clearly steering me towards the front door.

When I catch a guy smiling back at her I promise him a long slow death with my eyes.

I’m aware that she’s trying to politely kick me out but, without knowing it, she’s actually taken me back to the hockey table. Most of the guys have stilled on their seats, jaws in their laps as they watch Fallon’s colleague going to town on the bull. Tanner’s on his phone and he glances up as soon as he senses us.

He raises his eyebrows at Fallon and she grits out, “Don’t. Even. Ask.”

“I wanna get you a different job,” I murmur, resting my stubble-coated jaw in the soft curve of her neck. “I can tell that this is what had you stressin’ last week.”

“Stop it,” she hisses. “I need you out of here, now.”

“Why?” I ask, pulling her around so that I can look down at her. “Let me take care of you.”

“You don’t even know me,” she says desperately. “I can’t lose focus right now, Hunter. I have too much going on to let myself have a distraction–”

“Jesus Christ, Ford. I told you: no boyfriends.”

Fallon claws her way out of my arms and I steady myself on the table behind us. She has a pleading expression on her face as she walks over to the woman who just called her Ford.

“He’s not my boyfriend, I swear–”

“That is not what it looks like, Ford.”

“I’m trying to get them out of here, but they’re–”

“You’re trying to get rid of my clients?”

Fallon’s hands fly up to her hair and she looks frantically around.

The sight of her looking so small, alone, and out of her depth punches through my alcohol haze and clenches something tight in my chest. I shove myself off the table and plant myself behind her like a damn tree.

“Everything alright over here?” I ask, hooking my fingers through the belt-loops of Fallon’s denim skirt.

“Swell,” the older woman deadpans, and then her eyes flash back to Fallon. “Look, I don’t think that this is the fit for you. I’ll pay you for tonight but… I want this shift to be your first and your last.”

Fallon keels forward slightly and I rein her in by the loops.

“Are you – firing me – on my – first shift?” she gasps.

The other woman looks up at me and the guys who have all congregated around Fallon.

“I don’t hire students. This is literally why. Your boyfriend here? He looks like he wants to murder me. Take this as a compliment when I say: you do not fit in here.”

Without another word she turns around and leaves us. I hear one of the guys mutter something about an Uber back to a frat house and the guys begin draining the rest of their drinks.

Fallon hasn’t moved a muscle and she’s staring unseeingly straight ahead. For the briefest moment I swear she whispers, “I never fit in anywhere.”

“Fallon,” I begin, trying to twist her around to face me.

She flashes me a drop dead glare over her shoulder and I remove my hands immediately from her skirt.

“Did I just get her fired?” I ask Tanner as Fallon storms away, one palm rubbing down my jaw and the other gripping the back of my neck. “Did I just… get her fucking fired?”

Tanner winces and avoids my eyes as we lumber over to the entrance.

“I need you to do something for me,” I say to him as I crane my neck for one last look at Fallon. “I need you to do something for me because I’m not gonna remember this tomorrow. I need you to tell me to get Fallon a job.”

“How’re you gonna get her a job?” Tanner asks, rolling his eyes.

He clearly doesn’t understand the kind of obsessive psycho that he’s dealing with.

“I’ve got it covered,” I rumble vaguely. “Don’t worry about the little details.”

Tanner pulls his phone out of his pocket and ten seconds later mine is vibrating. I check the screen and it reads: you fucked up and got your gf fired. fix it, loser.

“Jesus Christ. Thanks I guess.”

We hunch down into the Uber and he slides his phone back into his pocket, smirking. “Any time.”