Ruthless Love (Ash and Innocence 1)

I scooped her up, carrying her with one arm under her knees and the other under her arms. She shot me a somewhat annoyed look but didn’t struggle as I started walking her toward my house.

“You sure you can carry me the whole way? I’m not exactly light.”

“You weigh like eighty pounds. I think I’ll manage.”

“I’m a hundred and ten pounds.”

“Do you weigh yourself with or without the chair?”

“Asshole,” she muttered.

I found myself grinning as we headed down the path to my house. Logan, Cassian, Gage, and a couple girls from school had come over about an hour ago. I was doing fine until Haisley showed up and started trying to talk to me about “us” again. I lasted through roughly two minutes of that before I ducked out back and headed to pick up Wheels. Granted, I hadn’t expected to literally pick her up, but I wasn’t complaining.

The way I was carrying her meant her ass was bouncing against my stomach with every step. All it did was add fuel to the flames. That, and the way she smelled. I caught myself trying to catch as much of the scent as I could, breathing a little deeper than usual as we walked. She smelled girly as hell, but there was a touch of something else underneath. I thought it might be the way her skin smelled, because it reminded of me of when we’d kissed, except just a little more faint.

“This is going to be so embarrassing,” she complained as I climbed the front steps.

“Here,” I said, setting her down carefully on her feet. I put my arm around her back, supporting her as discreetly as I could. “Does that work?”

She had to lean into my side a little but seemed to be doing okay with it.

Everyone was sitting in the living room with drinks, laughing about something. Except Haisley was standing by the back window with a look on her face that said she’d been watching to see where I went, and already knew I was about to come in with Wheels—Kennedy—in tow.

The conversation halted for a second when everyone noticed us.

“Sup, Kennedy?” Logan asked.

She waved, pressing her lips together in an awkward smile. “Tristan… He uh—”

“It’s cool,” Gage said. “We’re playing Saucy Suits. Want in?”

“I’ve never played.” Kennedy’s voice was laced with hesitation.

“She’s good,” I said.

I noticed the way Cassian’s eyes lit up. “She doesn’t even know the rules. How does she know she doesn’t want to play?”

“She’s good,” I said again, more firmly this time.

“What are the rules?” Kennedy asked.

I clenched my teeth together.

“We split the cards up,” Gage said. “There’s eight of us. Four guys, four girls. So we’d have one card of each suit in both piles. Everyone draws a card, then we vote on something ‘saucy’ to do. Once we’re done voting, you figure out who you’ve got to do it with. Pretty simple.”

Kennedy shook her head. “I don’t think that sounds like my kind of game.”

“We’ll play later,” Gage said. “Maybe you’ll change your mind after a couple beers.”

I held onto her a little tighter. I had no intention of letting her play Saucy Suits. There was a one in four chance she’d end up with me, and a three in four chance she’d wind up with Gage, Cassian, or Logan. Each of those made my stomach clench in different ways.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go get you a chair with some wheels.”

Kennedy rolled her eyes. “Does this mean you’re going to start calling me wheels again?”

“I made a promise,” I said. “For tonight, you’re Kennedy.” And you’re fucking mine.23KennedyIn the history of my life, tonight already qualified as my most wild and reckless by a long shot. Actually, it probably hit that mark well before I literally jumped off the roof and trusted Tristan to catch me. Now I was at a small, exclusive party with the most popular guys and girls in the school.

I wasn’t the type to actually care about that kind of thing, but I’d watched enough teen drama shows to know how insane this all was. Add that to the fact that I was being wheeled around the house by Tristan while sitting on an office chair, and the insanity just kept on going. Once again, Tristan grabbed a couple beers for us and popped the caps on the countertop with a casual bump of his palm.

I took one from him, smiling and sipping it. I wasn’t even sure the beers from earlier were out of my system yet, so I planned to take it slow. I’d just sip enough to blend in, but not enough to get drunk.

“You don’t have to play that game with them,” Tristan said.

“Saucy Suits?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s just this stupid thing Gage came up with.”

“You’ve played it before though, haven’t you?”

Tristan looked down, then lifted one of his shoulders in acknowledgment. “Like I said, it’s stupid.”