Page 35 of Pinkie Promise

My mind fills her blank spaces with terrible, awful things.

“Yeah, I want to,” I rumble and she finally meets my eyes, just as a staff member closes the door and the lights lower into blackness.

The air between us gets a hundred degrees hotter.

The trailers start to play on the screen but all that I can focus on is what’s happening in my peripheral vision. Namely, Fallon’s chest rising and falling in double time as she lets out these shaky little exhales, like she’s as nervous and excited as I am. I shove a hand through my hair and try to calm the hell down.

Focus on the trailers. Just focus on the trailers.

A small rustling sound breaks through my lust and I take a wary glance down to see Fallon poking around in one of the candy bags. I can’t help but smile when she looks up at me, silently offering me some of her candy.

I lean closer so that I don’t have to raise my voice over the trailers. “I got them for you, Fallon,” I murmur.

“You don’t like movie snacks?” she asks, looking a little hurt.

The movie snack that I want is sitting right next to me. I’ll do anything that Fallon wants me to though so I breathe out a laugh and shove my hand in the bag, but before I pull it back out the bag tears down the front completely, and in the next second Fallon has a lap full of Jelly Babies.

“Shit,” I grunt, instantly pulling my hand back from Fallon’s lap.

“Sorry!” she says, her voice high-pitched. “I guess you won’t want to eat any now.”

I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek. I’ve never wanted to eat a Jelly Baby so much in my damn life.

She drops them back into the broken bag and then lets out a nervous laugh as she tucks some hair behind her ear.

“Sorry,” she whispers again, and then she curls up on the seat, her small shoulder resting gently against mine.

The movie starts and I stare blankly at the screen, my chest pumping heavily as I try to keep my shoulders still. But every small shift of Fallon’s body has my abdomen flexing, the need to just get her up on me almost making me sweat.

By the time that we reach the film’s one and only make-out scene I’m ready to go into cardiac arrest.

“Are you okay?” Fallon whispers, probably because I’m no longer looking at the screen. I do not need a thirty-foot by fifty-foot reminder of what I want to be doing to the girl who is curled up right next to me.

Bracing myself, I look down at her and she’s gotten so cosy up against my bicep that her cheeks have flushed with warmth.

I run a palm down my thigh.She’s flushed withmywarmth.

My eyes drop to her lips and I imagine giving in. Gripping a hand in the back of her hair and pulling her gently up to meet me, whilst sliding my other palm beneath her jumper and squeezing a rough palm around her–

“Hunter?” she whispers.

I clear my throat and look away. I’m not going to get one minute of sleep tonight.

“The photo you took of yourself,” I suddenly rasp. Yeah, I’ve just gone from one stupidly hot subject to another stupidly hot subject.

“What?” she asks, her attention split between me and the movie playing out in front of us.

“My favourite photo? On your, uh, page? It’s the one you took of yourself. You’re in your bed” – hang on, I hope tofuckthat she took it in her own bed – “and you’re wearing this sort of flimsy-strapped tank top, and your hair is all…” I swallow hard. “Uh,thick against the pillow, and you have this kind of secret smile going on, and–”

Something small and soft reaches my hand, enveloping it in warmth although the tips of her fingers are still cold. I flip my palm so that it’s facing upright and the second that her touch resettles I lock my fingers right through hers, squeezing her gently before looking back down at her. Her attention is all on me now and hell if that doesn’t make me the happiest guy on the planet.

“I don’t do this a lot,” I murmur, quiet and honest.

She gives me a teasing smile. “What, hold hands?”

I breathe out a laugh. “I never hold hands. What I mean is I don’t…” I look down at our interlaced fingers, hers spread obscenely wide due to the thickness of my digits. The sight of it, the comparison between us, catches me off guard and I distractedly murmur, “You’re really small.”

She glances down at our hands and brushes her pinkie against my knuckle. “Sorry,” she says. “I know it’s weird.”

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