Page 77 of Pinkie Promise

“Did you… get me your jersey?” she asks, squealing when I lean forward and kiss at her neck. There are no words to describe how good it feels to know that your girl is excited to have your name on her back.

“Got in touch with the company that stocks Carter U and asked for them to do me a custom one,” I murmur, sucking at her skin when she tightens her arms around my shoulders. “Didn’t know if they’d be able to but turns out they could.”

“Hunter, this is so…”

I lift up from her neck and she’s shimmering with happiness.

I clear my throat, pleased. “Next one,” I tell her.

She carefully places her new jersey to the side and gets to work on unwrapping the second box. When she rips it open she inhales a happy gasp.

“You bought me skates?” she whispers, beaming up at me with the most amazing look in her eyes. “You got me skates, so that we can skate together?”

I try to scrub away the heat from my neck. Fallon gives me a little smile as she strokes at the pretty lilac laces.

“You like ’em?” I ask gruffly.

“Yeah, I like them,” she says with a grin, lifting one of them tentatively from the box so that she can get a better look at it.

They’re a figure skating type of boot rather than the ice hockey type, but I can tell from the way she’s handling them that they’re slightly heavier than she expected. You can get lightweight figure skating boots but I wanted to make sure that Fallon had the most secure and comfortable skate that I could find.

“Purple,” she adds, giving me a prolonged look as she toys with the laces that I got custom done for her.

I grunt and nod. Yeah, okay, I’ve noticed her favourite colour.

“I’m hoping they’re gonna fit,” I say, even though I’m positive that they will. I saw her shoe size during the first time that she ever came into my bedroom, when she kicked off her high heels before we’d started fooling around on my sheets. The memory has my lids getting heavy and my palms massaging her harder.

She replaces the lid on the box and gives me a shy smile before she leans up to reward me with a kiss on the cheek. Like we’re in damn middle school. Laughing, I use one hand to replace the box in the backseat while using my other hand to grip the back of her neck and pull her up for a real kiss. She loops her arms around my shoulders and lets me slant her open, stroking my tongue around hers as my thigh muscles begin to flex.

“What if I’m no good?” she whispers suddenly, pulling back a millimetre so that she can flash her eyes in the direction of the box. “I mean, skating for fun isn’t as dangerous as ice hockey but I’ve seen the accidents that people can get themselves into.”

I move a hand to her throat so that I can rub my thumb up her jaw.

“I’m not gonna let go of you,” I tell her, meaning those words in every way that they can be interpreted. I want her to experience the thrill of gliding seamlessly over the ice, but I also want to be right behind her, holding her steady. Holding her, period.

To be honest I’m betting that she’s going to be a natural on the ice, although I can’t deny that I’m going to enjoy her clutching onto me as she first gets a feel for it.

“Thanks,” she says quietly, smiling when I dip down to kiss her neck.

“I missed you,” I murmur gruffly. “So freakin’ much.”

I heard that forced proximity was the thing that made a guy fall for a girl, but it turns out that forced distancing makes things a million times worse.

“Oh,” she breathes, blushing as she smiles. She pats at one of her earmuffs and teases, “How ever did you cope?”

I breathe out a laugh and scrape her pussy straight up my lap, wiping that smug little expression right off her face.

“Take a wild guess, baby.”

She lets out a shaky breath and I press a kiss against her temple.

“Are you gonna let this – us – happen this semester?” I ask her quietly as the air in the truck grows warmer, more intimate. “Gonna be my girlfriend?”

Last term she was so busy stressing about her future, constantly putting measures in place so that she could achieve her goals. But I’m hoping that now her grant application is submitted and her role with her new cheer team will be starting up, she’ll have the freedom to make time for herself. To make time for her needs.

Needs that I’m hungry to fulfil.

It’s a conversation that doesn’t usually happen, this laying down of the fine print so that we’re both on the same page, but it’s one that I need us to have before I take this to the next level. I already know that I want her. I just need to know that she wants me too.

---