Hard Spot Saloon Series by Raleigh Ruebins – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read

Hard Spot Saloon Series by Raleigh Ruebins – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.ilovenovels.com Sat, 30 Aug 2025 08:41:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 http://www.ilovenovels.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/favicon.png Hard Spot Saloon Series by Raleigh Ruebins – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.ilovenovels.com 32 32 Touchdown Tennessee (Hard Spot Saloon #4) Read Online Raleigh Ruebins http://www.ilovenovels.com/touchdown-tennessee-hard-spot-saloon-4-read-online-raleigh-ruebins Sat, 30 Aug 2025 08:41:37 +0000 http://www.ilovenovels.com/touchdown-tennessee-hard-spot-saloon-4-read-online-raleigh-ruebins Genre: M-M Romance Authors: Raleigh Ruebins Series: Hard Spot Saloon Series by Raleigh Ruebins
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Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70294 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)

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The goal? Get close to the college football star.
The assignment? Write an article for the college paper about him, just in time for homecoming.
The problem? I slept with the egotistical jock on day one… and I hate how good he was.

I’m a college senior with a darker past than most people will ever endure.
I don’t like anybody. I don’t trust them, either.
I write articles that bite, and get the best interviews out of people that the TNU college paper has ever seen.
Cocky? No. I just know what I’m good at.

Andrew Peachel is out and proud, and he knows he's a college football god.
But there’s more behind his golden-boy, dimples-and-muscles, himbo perfect image.
I have an all-access pass to follow him anywhere.
Everywhere.
And I bring him to his knees on night one.

In public, he acts like I’m the enemy.
In bed, he demands I give him more.

He’s bossy. Cockier than me. A problem.
But when he responds by becoming obsessed with me, how can I resist?

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

CHAPTER 1

ANDREW

The football was like an arrow aimed straight at me.

And that is a perfect fucking pass.

Linford had been tapped into some sort of magic all game.

And I was off my game, for the first time in months, getting caught out and fucked over since the first quarter.

One thing in particular felt different, this game.

And I could feel it in the air.

I lunged to the right, watching the football like it was prey headed right into my grasp. I wasn’t going to miss it again.

I’d fumbled the last pass, and that was the last one I was willing to let slip away.

The football is mine.

And mine only.

I pulled in a sharp breath of air through my nostrils. The bright lights surrounding the field glinted in my eyes as I looked up, but I didn’t lose sight of that ball.

They’re all watching.

Everyone up in the stands, and…

Him.

That one person watching me tonight whose eyes had been digging under my skin for the whole game.

Someone who wasn’t on the team.

The definition of an outsider.

Gray Gilman was the smartest, cockiest asshole in all of TNU, from what I had heard.

And he was writing an article about me. About the TNU Tempests football team, really, but I’d felt his eyes on me for the entire game. The senior year head writer for the TNU school paper was known for writing scandalous articles.

He wrote the type of articles that could absolutely destroy someone’s reputation.

And as the star senior player on the Tempests and Coach’s favorite?

The last fucking thing I needed in life right now was some exaggerated, scandalous article written about me by a guy who couldn’t wipe that smug look off of his face on the sidelines.

Pay.

Attention.

To the damn.

Football.

As I bolted further to the right on the field, hanging back just a little to make sure the football came right at me, I could feel his gaze on me.

Do you like what you see?

Does it get you off, seeing just how good I am with a ball?

There’s a whole fucking lot more where this comes from. Soak it in.

The football slammed into me like a bullseye, right in the pocket I made with my hands and my chest.

Finally.

I took off for the endzone, my thighs building up fire as I ran.

This was what I was made for. The crowd was already going wild by the time the football touched me, but I had dozens of yards to run now. I kept my head up, focused forward.

Eye on that prize.

I kept my breathing even, my lungs heating up as I ran for it.

I saw the line of the end zone coming closer with each footfall as I ran.

I could taste the touchdown about to happen right in front of me. I could hear the crowd getting ready to explode.

Please, give me something good tonight.

Something good for this cocky bastard to write about.

The past few weeks of my life had been… punishing.

I hated keeping secrets, but I had been hooking up with Coach’s son Danny, so that was the first boulder on my back.

Then Danny cheated on me. Multiple times.

Then I’d discovered Danny cheating on me, in a bar, with a blond guy who rubbed it right in my face, saying something to me I couldn’t forgive.

That’s when I’d gotten too drunk and made the first big mistake of my life.

I’d clocked Danny’s new blond boytoy in the jaw.

Mistake, mistake, mistake.

All of that needed to be kept very, very secret. Which meant that as of tonight, it was now my full-time job to keep Gray Gilman from finding out a single shred of that information.

Something went cold in my chest.

No. Right now my job was to run this fucking football. Get the touchdown, no matter what.

I sucked in air and pushed harder, trying to dig deep and run faster to the end zone.

I was less than twenty yards off now.

So close.

It was already mine.

And then my next mistake came up on my right.

No shot.

He can’t fucking be there.

I was too close to Dev Bailey, Kansas University’s best cornerback. He’d gained on me, and I’d been doing the one thing I knew I shouldn’t do: thinking too much. So distracted by one guy, sitting on the sidelines, watching my every move.

The blood in my veins changed rapidly, going from stone cold to molten hot.

Like desperation.

Like shame.

Out here on this field was the one place where the rest of the world should melt away, but for all of tonight’s game, I’d been focused on something else, and pure, red-hot anger was barreling at me like a semi truck named Dev Bailey. My own distraction was about to cost me the touchdown.

I thought I had a clean path on the field. But there was no avoiding it now.

I was about to be tackled.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, already thrown off-kilter. How could I not have seen him?

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Bad Cowboy Tennessee (Hard Spot Saloon #3) Read Online Raleigh Ruebins http://www.ilovenovels.com/bad-cowboy-tennessee-hard-spot-saloon-3-read-online-raleigh-ruebins Mon, 30 Jun 2025 19:07:08 +0000 http://www.ilovenovels.com/bad-cowboy-tennessee-hard-spot-saloon-3-read-online-raleigh-ruebins Genre: Contemporary, Dark, M-M Romance Authors: Raleigh Ruebins Series: Hard Spot Saloon Series by Raleigh Ruebins
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Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 88262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >89

He’s not just a cowboy. He’s a monster, with his sights on me.
He’s also my sister's boyfriend.
Until they break up on the first night he’s in town…
…And suddenly I’m the one with a very bad, very wrong cowboy on my hands.

Draven Lyons is the heir to the wealthiest Montana ranch dynasty.
He’s also a walking red flag, carrying a violent past filled with blood.
Letting him touch me was the first mistake.
Enjoying it was even worse.

I’m straight, but now he’s making me want things.
And it ends up with me pinned against a wall. My lips up against his ear. Begging him for more, especially when it hurts.
Telling Draven about my online stalker was the next mistake.

So what if my online videos make men want me? It’s just business.
Now Draven’s following me in the name of protection.
But his own dark secrets torment me. What happened back in Montana? Why is he still here in Tennessee, hiding out in my small town? And why does he want a frat boy bartender like me?

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Part One

Roses

Chapter 1

Max

Something was off.

Maybe it was the crowd at the bar.

Drunker than usual. More depraved than usual.

Within the first hour of my regular bartending shift down at the Hard Spot, I’d seen enough.

Mascara running down cheeks.

A guy passed out on the back patio.

A man dick deep in somebody else’s mouth, too, before I politely separated the two of them in one of our bathroom stalls.

I was pretty sure I was going to see blood spill by the end of the night.

I leaned against the cool wood surface of the back of the bar, collecting my to-do list inside my head:

Restock the bottom-shelf vodkas.

Check on the patio, which is probably littered with empty pint glasses.

Probably about time to sweep the bathroom stalls again for any more active penetration, too.

The plan had been to sneak some time to film a quickie video for my online channel tonight between rushes. The Cocktail Bro was my baby, and my followers had come to expect regular updates and recipes.

I wanted to give it to them.

I wished I had time to record a dozen videos a day, but with the state of the bar tonight…

So much for having time to film anything.

Firstly: people needed their alcohol. The music was loud in here, and I could feel eyes on me as more groups filed in through the front doors and sidled up to the bar, waiting for drinks.

I gave myself ten seconds to take a breather before plunging back in, heading over to another mob of college guys awaiting a round of green apple vodka shots.

“The rum thing,” a girl called out to me from the other side of the bar, hiccuping. “Can I get another rum thing? You’re cute.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Like, really cute. I’d fuck you.”

I nodded. “Here is one rum thing, and a tall water. I recommend it.”

Before I became a bartender I didn’t know that the job description included being a therapist, a babysitter, and a constant referee. Sometimes I felt like I was behind the bar to act as a pure, blank canvas for people to paint their sins on.

Usually I didn’t mind.

It was fun, and I got good tips, enough for me to keep putting money into more renovations for my barn house.

I was also good at the whole therapist-babysitter thing because being 22 and fresh out of a frat house meant that I’d had a lifetime’s worth of experience with drunk bros and learning their limits.

But tonight, I was bone-tired. On edge. Ready to take a damn breath.

When I finally got to the end of my shift, it felt like crossing the finish line of a marathon.

I gunned it home in my truck.

But I didn’t know that going back to my house wasn’t going to help at all.

It was only going to take this night from bad to catastrophically worse.

The air coming in from my driver’s side window was humid. It felt tinged with electricity like right before a storm, even though the sky was cloudless.

Tennessee weather could be unpredictable, but there were stars for miles in the black sky up above. If there was a storm coming, it wasn’t from anywhere I could see.

I got to my driveway.

Threw the truck in park.

Cut the engine.

And I made my way to my front door like I was a kid on Christmas morning.

Home.

I shut the front door behind me and let out a long breath.

Now can tonight please start feeling fucking normal?

I dropped my keys onto the little table by the front door. It was dark other than a tiny lamp I left on in the far corner. My place was just a barn, situated on the far edge of my parents’ property, but I’d retrofitted it into a living space for myself over the past year.

It was the first space that was truly all mine, and I loved this goddamn barn like it was my child.

I was in my little kitchenette by the window, raising a cold, short glass of liquor to my lips just a few minutes later.

Lemon and whiskey hit my tongue. Sour, sweet, and bitter.

Followed by the kick of the secret ingredient I’d laced into the back end of the cocktail: a splash of spiced tart plum liquor. My followers online were going to love it. I was going to name it The Sucker Punch in my next video.

I first heard a sound at my front door as I raised the glass to my lips for a second time, cutting through the quiet in my barn.

A rattling sound.

Then, a slight jingling.

I froze in place, my ears perking up like two antennae.

Not possible.

I was alone here.

At least… I should have been alone, for a radius of at least a football field around this barn.

There was no chance someone could be out there.

I put down my phone. The sound of one of my videos was still playing quietly on a loop, my voice coming out from the tinny phone speaker: “And this cocktail is like an old friend… with benefits. And that’s how we do it in Tennessee, baby.”

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Hot Ice Tennessee (Hard Spot Saloon #2) Read Online Raleigh Ruebins http://www.ilovenovels.com/hot-ice-tennessee-hard-spot-saloon-2-read-online-raleigh-ruebins Mon, 21 Apr 2025 22:18:53 +0000 http://www.ilovenovels.com/hot-ice-tennessee-hard-spot-saloon-2-read-online-raleigh-ruebins Genre: M-M Romance, Sports Authors: Raleigh Ruebins Series: Hard Spot Saloon Series by Raleigh Ruebins
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Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73094 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >76

A hockey hotshot has me wrapped around his finger…
Even after I learn his dirty secret.

Jesse is cocky, charming, tattooed, and even more possessive off the ice.

…He’s also my friend’s younger brother—which I found out like a puck to the face.

He’s too young, too popular, and he knows he has my attention. He’s a college dreamboat, with frat bros riding his jock every day. My world’s different. I spend my days outside on my ranch riding horses, and my nights at the local saloon, looking for something or someone fun.

Jesse’s more than just fun, though. I’ve been a lonely, hot mess, but my first time with a hockey player lit a fire in me I haven’t felt in too long. I got a taste, and I don’t want to stop.

I’m addicted. To his lips, his mouth, his skin on mine.

He should be off-limits, but when he gets all possessive, telling me that I’m his?

Only one word comes out of my mouth.

Yours.

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

1

MASON

First thing’s first: I didn’t know he was a hockey player.

The summer kickoff party started out perfectly innocently, or as innocent as I was capable of being, at least. I should have seen the red flags waving in the wind from a mile away, in the self-assured, confident way he sat there, sizing me up.

There was a lot I didn’t know about Jesse Sanocki yet.

Cocky ass motherfucker.

TNU’s hottest young hockey center was sitting right across from me. I didn’t know who he was yet, but he was about to witness me doing what I did best.

Making a terrible decision in front of a lot of people.

The bar was rowdy out here on the back patio. The sun had set, and the hot day had given way to the humid buzz of night. Never change, Tennessee summers.

I was up on the table, standing on my hands for a few seconds before a crowd started forming around me in a circle. Everything in my field of view was upside-down as I managed to hold myself in a handstand on the wooden outdoor table, pint glasses and pitchers of beer surrounding me, with two strangers holding each of my legs up for support.

“Is he really going to do it?” somebody said. Heads on the patio turned toward me, one by one.

“Another keg stand,” my friend Kane grumbled, making his rounds on the patio, picking up empty glasses.

“Well, I’m not doing it from a keg,” I said, trying to act like it was easy to talk upside-down. I watched Kane’s disapproving stare. “And I haven’t done one of these in months.”

“One keg stand a year would be too much,” Kane said. “You know what? Zero keg stands would be even better.”

Kane owned this bar. The Hard Spot was his baby. I wouldn’t dream of doing shit like this unless I knew that deep down, he got a kick out of it, too.

The bar was busier than usual. Music bumped with plenty of bass, and the early summer cicadas chittered in the night air surrounding the patio like they were cheering me on, too. Tonight was the summer kickoff party, otherwise known as the perfect time for me to chug a monster of a cocktail upside-down. You know how the Little Mermaid wanted to be where the people are? That was essentially me, other than a few small details like being a cock-thirsty cowboy instead of a mermaid with a pretty voice.

This was my happy place. Getting people to quit dwelling on whatever was shitty in their lives, let loose, and have a damn good night.

There was so much I was running from, too.

Let’s all forget together. I’ll raise my glass to that.

The brooding, dark-haired guy was still sitting across from me, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here.

Why did he look determined to be alone, even sitting in a crowd?

Watch me change your mind.

“Keep him safe,” Kane warned the guys holding my legs before he went back inside the bar. I steadied my palms on the smooth wooden table beneath me. One of the guys had kindly poured my headbanger cocktail—rum, energy drink, whiskey, beer, and cider—into a big bottle for easy access, because if I was going to chug upside down, I sure as fuck didn’t want to do it from a glass.

Someone touched the cold rim of the bottle to my lips. I kept my hands steady on the patio table, my palms pressed against the smooth wood planks.

“Ready to roll?” the guy asked.

“Born ready,” I replied, my arms already starting to burn. “Let’s go.”

The crowd clapped and cheered. The whole outdoor patio was watching now. The guy tipped the bottle upward and the cold drink started to flow. I’d done a few keg stands in my day, but this cocktail was a level up from that, burning at my throat the moment I started to drink.

I chugged. And chugged. The liquor mixture burned at my throat and the inside of my nose, but I wasn’t going to stop for anything, even though I quickly realized what a bad idea this was. A bottle is a lot to drink at once in any situation, but when it’s pouring fast out of some stranger’s hand and you’re upside-down, too?

That shit feels like a goddamn firehose unloading right onto your tongue.

I kept my hands steady as my arms started to burn from the handstand. One of the guys holding my left leg swayed a little, and for a second I was worried I’d lose balance.

Don’t stop.

We keep going.

Push it. Feel the burn.

Right as I thought my arms couldn’t take it anymore, the end of the drink hit my mouth. Cold remnants dribbled down my cheek and neck, and the guy took the bottle away from my lips and bellowed out to the people watching.

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Best Friends Tennessee (Hard Spot Saloon #1) Read Online Raleigh Ruebins http://www.ilovenovels.com/best-friends-tennessee-hard-spot-saloon-1-read-online-raleigh-ruebins Sun, 02 Mar 2025 13:35:07 +0000 http://www.ilovenovels.com/best-friends-tennessee-hard-spot-saloon-1-read-online-raleigh-ruebins Genre: Contemporary, M-M Romance Authors: Raleigh Ruebins Series: Hard Spot Saloon Series by Raleigh Ruebins
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Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 71651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >74

I’m not attracted to men.
But I’ll break all my own rules for my best friend.

One thing is true about Ori he hates small town Tennessee. We were always I played football, he was in art class. I was straight, he was gay. I was popular in school, he never fit in. He fled to the city the moment we graduated.

It ain’t perfect here, but I love our country home. I missed Ori like hell, but now he’s back, living in my guest room after years apart.

Best friends reunited, right? …Like hell.

He says I’m too Tennessee for him now. So what if I love the local saloon, volunteer with horses, and wear a Stetson hat? I want a white-picket-fence life, and he wants all things casual. When I try to show him how good it can be here, he tells me to back off.

But I’ll check his cocky attitude when he calls me stubborn. He pushes? I push back.

I’ve got him up against the wall within 24 hours.

It’s a full-on fight, but it turns into… something else. A craving. Some twisted need to be close to him.

Being physical with him was what I missed most, but we were never physical like this before.

…He sure doesn’t mind how country I am when he’s in my bed.

Now I can’t get enough. But if he won’t commit to anyone, why would he with me? And how can I show him exactly how deep I’m willing to go?

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

1

ORI

They say you can never really go home. Well, try telling that to the state of Tennessee… Or to Finn Hardy.

Do you ever get the feeling that you’re kind of trying to get hurt?

Not in a fun, spank-me, toss-me-in-bed kind of way. That type of hurt is just another fun night.

More like the kind of hurt where you’re pushing ninety miles an hour in your old beat-up blue Volkswagen with your ass glued to the driver’s seat, winding through Tennessee country roads with golden sunlight filtering through tall trees… and you want to take a bulldozer to every acre of it?

I let my foot off the gas before the needle on the dash reached 100.

The car lurched a little before it slowed. I sucked in a slow breath, squinting at my rearview mirror. The last thing I needed was a face full of rage from a Tennessee cop, and the old car couldn’t take it, anyway.

Maybe I wouldn’t bulldoze the whole state of Tennessee.

A lot of people say they’d never move back to their hometown, but I’d really meant it when I said it—I was 18 when I left, 24 now, and it had taken a whole lot to make me break that promise.

The Beetle rattled as I hit a bump in the road. A big blue sign at the side of the road whizzed by: Bestens, Tennessee, 6 miles.

A pit of dread formed in my stomach.

I was going to see my best friend soon.

How could things have gotten so bad with Finn that I was even dreading seeing him? Most people didn’t want to flee the moment they were in the same town as their childhood best friend, but I was already plotting my escape route in real-time.

“One year or less,” I said out loud to no one.

I vowed not to spend more time than that back in Tennessee. I repeated it now because I needed to remind myself of it, too.

But home was unfortunately the best option right now.

Even when it didn’t feel like home.

I pulled up outside Finn’s house a few minutes later, my chest twisting itself into knots as I looked outside.

I cut the engine and stayed put in the driver’s seat, staring at the front of the house through my sunglasses. I waited one minute, which became two minutes, then three. The longer I stayed parked in my car, the more it felt like a time bomb was ticking inside me, waiting to blow.

Finn’s house was a Tennessee bungalow DIY work-in-progress surrounded by oak and hackberry trees. From my car I could already see at least three projects Finn had going on: a pair of weeding gloves draped above the edge of the flower bed, some fresh two-by-fours in a stack, and a bag of fertilizer resting on one edge of the driveway.

He’d even tacked a horseshoe underneath the light on the front porch, like he was trying to signal to the whole neighborhood: trust me, a real Tennessee guy lives here. I’m just like y’all.

Which was true.

Finn really did fit in here.

That had always been the biggest difference between us.

I shifted my ass on the driver's seat, knowing I was stalling by now. I didn’t want the road trip to be over, because that meant I’d really done it, and I was really back.

And I sure as fuck wasn’t ready to see him.

But the ruby-red front door of Finn’s house finally swung open, and the decision was made for me. I held my breath, the time bomb inside me coming to a pause.

Finn’s broad figure filled the doorframe.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said under my breath, pushing down my sunglasses.

He was actually wearing a cowboy hat. Since when did he start wearing cowboy hats for anything other than a costume?

“That hunk of metal made it all the way from California?” Finn asked, approaching the Beetle as I got out. “How do you even still fit in that thing?”

I sucked in a breath and shutting the driver’s side door behind me. Finn had always thought any vehicle other than a truck was too small.

We’d always had very different tastes in cars, clothes, music… everything, pretty much.

But when we were kids, somehow it seemed to matter less.

I ignored the fire in my veins. I stretched my arms up high above my head, loosening my muscles after the long trip.

“We can’t all be pickup truck-driving country boys like you,” I said, looking him up and down. “What’s with the hat?”

He tipped the front of it toward me. “I don’t know. Stetson hats are cool.”

“You look like the dollar-store version of a young Clint Eastwood.” I could tell he was biting back a smile, even as he lifted a hand to flip me off. “Save that shit for Halloween,” I told him.

I’d been lying. Kind of.

Finn did look good, even if the country-boy thing was the polar opposite of my style, and every move he made confused me these days. His build was still as muscular as it had been in high school—he needed to stay fit working as a massage therapist.

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