Page 47 of Pinkie Promise

“This isn’t the time,” I whisper.

“Good a time as any,” he replies, lifting himself up onto one elbow so that his bicep is brushing against my cheek.

“I hate talking about bad stuff,” I admit. “I want to only talk about nice stuff when I’m with you.”

He smiles warmly and his eyes crinkle at the corners. “Jesus, you’re cute. But I can handle it, Fallon.”

“Another time,” I insist. “I do have some kind of good news too though.”

He grins. “Hit me.”

I smack his left pec and he smirks down at me.

“You know what I meant, bad girl,” he murmurs, stroking one of his hands firmly down my back until he’s tightly gripping a handful of my ass. Something hard suddenly flexes against my belly.

“So I’m not allowed to do the actual competitions with the cheer team anymore, and I can’t get a sports grant for next year either,” I reiterate, “but I can still do… like, the stuff that isn’t legit. The stuff that’s just for fun, I mean. There’s a whole separate squad for, uh, college events and things? And Aisling told me about one that I might be the perfect flyer for… if I canget over the wholeI’m scared because I had two concussionsthing by the time that it rolls around.”

I’m being vague deliberately but Hunter seems to be following well enough.

“So I’m gonna get to see you perform?” he asks. His eyes move down over my belly and the hand on my behind grips harder.

I swallow hard, not knowing the answer to that question just yet. “I haven’t done any lifts since concussion number two, and I’ve been too nervous to do any practice that wasn’t just a one-on-one with Ash. Plus I need to convince myself that I’m not going to fall again. I think… I think that I’m going to stay at the condo over Christmas break to train, although I’m not sure if it’ll be any use seeing as I’ll be doing it all on my own anyway.”

“I’ll train with you.”

His words come instantaneously.

“I’m sorry, what?” I ask him, completely disbelieving what I just heard.

“I’ll train with you,” he repeats. “I’ll stay over during the winter break so that you’re ready for the next semester.”

I blink up at him, confused. “But you don’t know the routines.”

He laughs out loud and rolls off my body, onto his back. I immediately want him back on top of me, the weight and the heat of him a comforting shield that I previously didn’t realise I couldn’t live without.

“I ain’t doing the routines,” he says, grinning down at me. “I’ll just be on hand so that when you have to do your lifts and jumps there’ll be someone there to practice the positions with. The cheer positions,” he adds on quickly, his cheeks suddenly flushing. “You know what I mean.”

I roll onto my side so that I can look up at his face. His profile is unbelievably handsome, his jaw strong and his skintanned. I think that the perfect way to describe him would be ‘rough-around-the-edges hot’. He has long black eyelashes and a masculine shadow of stubble, as if he’s recently shaved but it’s already growing back.

I let my eyes wander over the huge swells of his pecs and I have the most curious urge to tease his nipple with the tip of my tongue.

I’ve never been this close, physically or emotionally, with a man before, and, ironically, we haven’t even done anything yet. I test the waters by snuggling my face against his bicep. He instantly lifts his arm up over my head and slides it around me, crushing me against his chest.

I can’t resist. I give his nipple the tiniest flick with my tongue and he throws his free hand over his eyes, laughing and groaning at the same time.

“Are we going back outside to party with all of your tall attractive friends, or can we kiss properly now?” I mumble against his pec.

“Tall attractive friends?” he repeats, dropping the hand from his face so that he can stare down at me. “Which one do you like? Who do I have to kill?”

He rolls onto his side so that now I’m staring directly into the cavern between his pecs, and they’re large and firm and smell divine. He tangles his fingers up in my hair and rubs his other hand over my hip.

“I need to tell you something,” he says to me, tilting my head backwards so that he can stare down into my eyes. “After you, you know, say yes to me helping you out with your cheer stuff.”

I give him one of my rare small smiles and it makes him pull me tighter against him.

“No way are you going to follow through on that,” I say to him, “but it’s the thought that counts so, theoretically, I say yes.”

His frown is so deep that it makes my smile waver. “Fallon, of course I’ll follow through. I’m not making you promises with the intentions of breaking them.” He presses a kiss to my forehead and then another to my cheek. “You can trust me, I’m gonna prove it to you. I’m gonna help you all winter long.”

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