Blue
NATHANIEL
If our head coach possessed even a single creative brain cell, he kept it under lock and key like the Pentagon. I snagged the last alibi pass of the afternoon and swallowed the bile that had been rising in my throat for the past two hours.
As a tight end at this school, I was basically nothing more than an overqualified, obscenely expensive piece of decor. Our offense was a textbook one-man show for the wide receivers, orchestrated by a man whose playbook probably dated back to the Stone Age.
I owed my entire scholarship to the fact that I was in the starting lineup—but for that to matter, Coach Mulhouse actually had to put me on the field.
After our last loud disagreement over his antiquated tactics, he’d promptly banished me to the bench. I was replaced by a compliant freshman who nodded along obediently and never talked back.
Probably for the best. Before I lost my temper completely and drove the man headfirst into the turf.
In the locker room, I hurled my helmet into my bag, making the metal of the lockers slam and rattle.
“He’s getting replaced,” Jax muttered beside me, pulling his soaking wet jersey over his head. “I just heard the PR guy cursing out in the hallway. Family reasons, that’s the official story.”
“A blessing for the team,” I grumbled, ripping open the Velcro straps of my shoulder pads. I was a goddamn ex-basketball player. They’d lured me off the court and onto the grass with a fat scholarship to carry balls instead of dribbling them. And now? I was rotting away on the bench.
“If that guy is still standing on the sidelines next week, I’m throwing the scholarship away and heading back to the gym. At least no one cracks my skull open while I’m riding the pine there.”
“If you hit another full house at poker tonight, I’m throwing something away, too,” Jax countered with a crooked grin.
“Just shuffle the cards properly,” I snapped back. But the grin felt good. Poker was honest, at least. You get your hand and you play it out. No coach talking back or blocking your best moves. “Anyway, I hope the deck shows you some love tonight. You’ve been playing like you’re blind lately.”
Ten minutes later, we stepped out into a grey, utterly merciless autumn storm. The drizzle from the afternoon had upgraded into a full-blown cloudburst, whipping the wind freezing-cold against our faces with every pump of the pedals.
Arriving at the team house, we lugged our bikes up the porch. Jax cursed, wiping wet hair from his forehead, his shivering fingers fumbling the key into the front door lock. He pushed the handle down, the door swung open, and in that exact split second, something slipped right past us into the house.
Jax and I stared at each other for a fraction of a second, completely bewildered, before following the unexpected guest into the hallway. The door clicked shut behind us.
We both saw instantly that this tiny figure posed absolutely no threat. But what we saw left us completely speechless.
She was wearing a soaking wet, way-too-short silver sequin dress. As if that wasn’t absurd enough for a casual Tuesday night, a neon blue wig on top of her head. The woman looked like she’d escaped directly from the set of a low-budget sci-fi movie. She might as well have hung a sign around her neck that read: Easy Prey.
She was shaking all over. She stared anxiously out the narrow window next to the door, completely ignoring the fact that we were gaping at her.
Normally, my standard routine kicks in around an attractive woman—the charming look, the deeper register in the voice, the calculated question about what she’s doing later.
The wet scrap of sequins clung to her like a second skin, leaving damn little to the imagination. My brain registered it instantly, but surprisingly, my body switched into an entirely different mode.
There was a raw, naked panic in her eyes that made me pause. It was a completely new experience for me to meet a woman, and I just wanted to make sure she was safe.
Jax and I exchanged a quick look. I took the lead. Had she even realized she’d just burst into a house populated entirely by football players?
“There are dry clothes upstairs,” I said, addressing her. “The dryer down here will take care of the rest of your things.”
She shot a surprised look over her shoulder, but immediately locked her eyes back on the driveway outside. “Don’t think I’ll need it.”
“We also have a few spare beds. Fresh sheets. And if you’re really scared, I’ll even volunteer as your personal bodyguard,” I kept talking when she didn’t respond. My arrogant grin was firmly in place, but my gut was throwing major red flags. The spare room definitely hadn’t been cleaned since the last party, but she didn’t need to know that.
“Bacon and eggs for breakfast?” she suddenly shot back, without taking her eyes off the window.
“I make them every day, Blue,” Jax grinned. She didn’t react at all, just kept peering cautiously out the window.
She was in serious trouble. I certainly wasn’t about to let her disappear back into the rain that easily.
“You can find dry clothes and a baseball bat on the second floor. We can borrow Jax’s car keys. I’ll drive you,” I pushed.
“No, you don’t,” Jax cut in. “She’s staying right here. And don’t touch my keys, you’re a shitty driver.”
Our bickering finally drew her full attention.
“I’ll call an Uber. I’m leaving right away,” she said hastily, taking a physical step back toward the door.
“Okay. But in dry clothes,” I commanded. I stepped up to her, gently caught her by the elbow, and turned her toward the stairs. “Come on.”
I led the way. Behind me, I heard her hesitant footsteps on the stairs, significantly slower than mine.
“Thank you,” she whispered, barely audible. Everything inside my chest tightened. Yeah, she was definitely running from someone.
Reaching the top, I pointed to my open bedroom door, but stayed out in the hallway myself. “The closet is on the right. Take whatever you need before you catch your death of cold.”
“Seriously?” she asked, eyeing me with deep suspicion.
I gave her my best smile. It worked.
She scurried past me and pulled the door shut. The sharp click of the lock echoed in the hallway. I leaned against the wall and waited. After just a minute of total silence, I grew restless. Not a single sound of rustling fabric reached the hallway.
Without wasting time, I knocked. “Everything okay in there?”
“Technically, yes. But the damn zipper on the dress is stuck,” came a helpless, muffled voice from inside. It didn’t sound like an act.
“Should I save the dress, or do you need a weapon to shred it?”
“I don’t care. I am never wearing this piece of garbage again,” she huffed. I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’ll get the kitchen scissors.”
“Good idea, hurry up!” she called out.
Luckily, there was always a pair lying around in the kitchen since Jax loved to collect, cut out, and paste printed newspaper articles about us into a literal scrapbook.
Seconds later, I was back in front of my bedroom door. “Can I come in?”
“I tried to rip the rag, but it’s stuck to my bra,” she growled.
I took that as a yes and pushed the handle down. When I walked in, she was tugging violently at the silver fabric, turning her back toward me.
“You have to cut the bra. They are completely tangled together,” she instructed, completely matter-of-fact.
Normally, undressing a woman was like breathing to me—routine, effortless, a well-rehearsed, charming little game. But as I stepped closer, scissors in hand, I felt a sudden, violent jolt of electricity that caught me completely off guard. My heart hammered all the way up to my throat.
“Where exactly should I start?”
“Doesn’t matter, just get this thing off!” she cursed.
“All right. I’ll buy you a new bra.” My fingers briefly brushed the cold skin of her back, and an unexpected heat surged straight through my veins.
“Just cut. In case you checked out my tits earlier, nothing is bouncing around without it anyway.” She was completely, bizarrely unfazed.
I grinned as I precisely cut through the fabric. “I did. And believe me, I’m an expert in the field. They are absolutely perfect.”
The clasp was gone, but the dress still held it in a death grip. “Should I try to separate the fabric? The dress is going to suffer, though.”
“Screw the dress. Just pull it over my shoulders,” she said to my surprise, raising her arms.
I had met a lot of women in my life, but none had thrown me off my game as fast as this one. Normally, I stayed in absolute control. She was rewriting the rules entirely.
“Everything?” I double-checked, my voice dropping a notch lower than usual.
She rolled her eyes and let out a soft, sharp laugh. “I doubt we’ll get this thing off any other way, football star.”
The scissors hit the floor with a dull thud. My hands slid down to her hips. I gathered the wet, heavy fabric inch by inch, pulling it up to the hem. A perfectly toned, tight ass came into view as the dress cleared her legs. I swallowed hard, the bravado suddenly feeling very thin. “Ready?”
“Always. As long as you have a warm hoodie for me.”
“I do,” I murmured.
I moved my hands further up her curves, instinctively holding my breath as I pulled the tight fabric completely over her shoulders and finally over her head. The silver thing lay in my hand like hunted game.
“Something warm would be really good right now,” she muttered. She crossed her arms over her chest, as if she had only just realized her sudden nakedness in a stranger’s room.
She looked up at me over her shoulder. Was it the ridiculous blue hair or her eyes that made this entire moment feel so surreal?
Then, a wicked, sharp smile suddenly played on her lips as she caught my gaze, a brilliant mask snapping right back into place.
“Unless, of course... You want to keep undressing me?” Okay. Those words definitely went straight into my cock.
“Nice try, Blue,” I murmured, managing a grin with sheer effort as I threw my heaviest, oversized grey hoodie over her head. “But for tonight, you’re on the safe side. My ego can’t handle another defeat.”
She vanished almost entirely into the fabric, rolling the sleeves up three times, suddenly looking ridiculously innocent.
The suspicion in her eyes had given way to a dull, infinite exhaustion. She didn’t even fight it when I tucked her into bed.
I left her my room, murmuring something about “I’m sleeping on the couch, Jax is watching the front door,” and closed the door from the outside.
I spent half the night on the sagging sofa in the living room, staring at the ceiling and listening for the slightest sound. Nothing. Only the monotonous drumming of the rain against the windowpanes. Sometime around two in the morning, my brain finally seemed to grasp that it needed sleep.
When the first noises from the kitchen woke me, every bone in my body ached. Cursing quietly, I scrambled up and headed up the stairs to check on our blue-clad enigma.
The bedroom door was slightly ajar. A bad sign.
I pushed it open. The bed was made. Almost militarily precise, as if no one had ever slept here. The bright blue wig lay on my bed. It glinted in the harsh morning light like a dead pet.
There was no sign of the silver sequin dress. She had bolted into the pouring rain at five in the morning, dressed in her party gear
I stepped up to the bed and picked up the wig. Beneath it lay a small, narrow strip of paper. No phone number. No name. Just a single sentence in a fast, almost panicked handwriting:
Thanks for the hoodie. Don’t look for me.
I stared at the paper, my fingers tightening around it. A dry, humorless laugh escaped my throat. Don’t look for me.
As if I would ever chase after a woman. I didn’t even know who she was.
I threw the stupid blue hair into the wastebasket, stuffed the note into my pocket, and swore to myself that I’d forget the whole thing before I even turned on the coffee maker.
