Chapter 17

Erik

“I won’t be long,” Blue says as she starts to open the door to my Vette to exit.

“I’ll come in,” I tell her, also reaching for my handle.

“You don’t have to,” she replies quickly, and starts to push out of the car.

We’d just taken Billy back to the Cresson in the rented van. After we got him settled in, we Ubered back to the arena to get my car from the players’ parking lot and from there we came to her house so she could pack some clothes.

She’s coming to stay at my place for a few days.

Four to be exact, which is when we leave for the next away game.

Four nights with Blue in my house, whereby I don’t plan on leaving the bed except for practice, a home game we have on Monday, and perhaps to accompany Blue to visit Billy.

I reach out to grab her arm before she can escape the car. She turns to look at me over her shoulder. “Don’t you want me to come in?”

She grins at me. “Of course you can come in, but my place is a dump and the interior of your car is far nicer. I just thought you might want to stay out—”

I put my hand over her mouth to shut her up. “Don’t do that.”

She mumbles something under my hand so I move it. She repeats, “Do what?”

“Belittle anything that is you,” I tell her. “Your home in this specific example. I don’t give a shit what your house looks like, and in fact, we can stay here for the next four days if you want.”

Blue’s eyes turn warm as she crawls back into the car, right across the console to kiss me. “You’re sweet. And I appreciate you saying that. But we’re staying at your house because you have a pool and a fancy coffee maker.”

“That makes sense.” I grab her behind the neck and pull her to me for another kiss.

After a few moments of making out, we make our way into her house. I follow her back to her bedroom, plopping down on her bed while she packs up.

“You won’t need much in the way of clothes,” I tell her as she roots around in her closet. “But feel free to bring as much sexy lingerie as you want.”

Blue snorts and comes out of the closet holding a few pairs of jeans and some shirts in one hand, a rolling overnight suitcase in another. She places it on the bed and folds the clothes in there. She moves to a dresser drawer and I’m pleased to see her pulling out scraps of lace in midnight blue, pale pink, white, and yellow.

She tosses a handful of bras and panties at me and nods at the suitcase.

I refold them and place them in gently, the yellow actually being my favorite.

Blue returns to the closet as she says, “It was really nice of your friends to come to Dave & Buster’s with us today. Billy had such a great time.”

“I was glad to see Tacker come with us,” I tell her, my eyes pinned to her ass as she bends over to nab some shoes. “He’s sort of antisocial outside of the locker room. But he was really good with Billy, wasn’t he?”

Turning to face me, Blue smiles knowingly. “He’s got experience. His fiancée’s older brother had muscular dystrophy.”

“He told you that?” I ask in surprise.

“Yeah. I found him easy to talk to.”

“Huh,” I mutter as I consider this. Tacker is easy to talk to as long as you’re talking hockey. But the few times I’ve tried to engage him, he’s been pretty closed off.

Blue grabs the suitcase from the bed and I follow her out of her room. She crosses the hall into the bathroom and puts it on the sink. She then starts throwing in stuff from underneath like lotions and shampoo. She bags up her makeup and tosses it in. Pulling out a drawer, she nabs her toothbrush and toothpaste. She starts to shut the drawer but I reach out and grab at it, pulling it back out.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say as I grab a silk pouch. “What’s this?”

Blue rolls her eyes at me as I open it up, and as I suspected find an impressively large vibrator with a small appendage on the front. I flick the switch and it hums nicely.

“I doubt we’ll need that,” she says dryly as she starts to zip up her case.

My hand flies out and grabs the zipper out of her hand, opening the top back up. I turn the vibrator off, put it back in the silk pouch and lay it gently on top of the other items. “We will so need this.”

Blue cocks an eyebrow at me, crossing her arms over her chest. “Need help getting me there, huh?”

“Not the first few times,” I reply with a wink. “But after that, that vibrator will come in handy.”

I’m pleased to see her eyes dilate a little as a tiny breath wafts out of her mouth. “Oh. Well, okay.”

Laughing, I close the suitcase and carry it out of the bathroom. Blue heads into the kitchen and grabs a small watering can from under the sink. “Let me just water my plants really quick.”

She hits one in the kitchen window and then heads into the living room. I lean on her counter, my eyes catching on a massive pile of mail, some of which has been opened and some of which hasn’t.

“Um…have a little procrastination problem with your mail?” I ask her as I poke at the stack which promptly tips over.

Blue looks over her shoulder briefly while she pours water into a plant in front of the living room window. “Sort of. I have all my bills on auto draft so most of that’s junk. I get through it when I can.”

“Well come get through it now,” I tell her as she heads back into the kitchen. “You’re messing with my slight OCD nature.”

“You don’t have an OCD bone in your body,” she retorts.

“True,” I agree with a shrug and use my finger to drag out an interesting-looking invitation which is sitting atop an envelope that had been ripped open at the top. I see the postmark was from two weeks ago. She’s such a procrastinator.

My curiosity is piqued by the fancy gold lettering on the front that says “You’ve Been Formally Invited to.”

I figure a wedding so I open it up.

Blue glances at me, doesn’t seem to be irritated I’m nosing around and walks to the sink to pour the rest of the water out of the can.

The inside lists information for a gathering of her high school classmates at a local country club here. I hold it up and wave it. “High school reunion?”

“Not really,” she says dismissively. “I graduated eight years ago and we’ll have an official reunion at ten years. But one of my classmates has a yearly gathering.”

“Are you going to go?” I ask as I look at the information again. It’s next Saturday.

“No way,” she replies with a grimace, and a little bit of bitterness.

“Why not?”

“Because the woman putting that party on—Christina Hodgins—is the leader of the mean girls, and she’s just as unpleasant to be around now as she was then. She only throws this party every year to look down her nose at those of us that weren’t popular enough to run with her crowd and to brag how well she married up.”

“Wait a minute,” I ask as I lean my elbows on the counter. “You weren’t in the popular crowd in high school? I just find that really hard to believe.”

I mean…Blue is gorgeous, outgoing, kind, smart, funny. She should be the most popular girl ever.

Blue laughs and leans on the opposite side of the counter from me. She takes the invitation from my hand and looks at it a moment before lifting her eyes to me. “Remind me to find some old photos of me in high school. I didn’t quite look the same and was an easy mark for Christina and her bullies.”

“How so?”

“Well,” she drawls with shrug. “I was ugly.”

“Doubt it,” I cut in dryly.

“Gangly, bad teeth covered in braces and a distinctly nerdy love for the chess club,” she replies.

“Really?” I ask, wrinkling my nose and trying to imagine Blue looking like that. I just can’t.

She laughs again, seemingly comfortable with her awkward phase. “I sort of transformed at the end of my senior year. I sprouted big boobs, the braces came off, and my skin cleared up. But that didn’t make me popular. In fact, it made it worse because boys became interested in me and that threatened Christina and her crew. They turned even meaner. It was not a fun time in high school.”

It’s a hard concept for me to understand. I was popular in high school and a jock. I didn’t overtly bully anyone but I was a cocky son of a bitch and I’m sure I wasn’t nice to everyone. Still, I never tried to hurt someone over something as stupid as looks or social standing, and neither did my friends.

“It’s one of the reasons I went to LA,” Blue adds on. “I sort of wanted to prove that I was worthy enough to hang with the beautiful people. Shallow and vain, right?”

“You were fucking eighteen years old, Blue,” I admonish her. “I’d say that speaks to your immaturity more than anything. And you are one of the least vain women I’ve ever met. You don’t even wear makeup unless you’re working.”

She just stares at me, and I think this might be the first time she’s been validated—in a way—over some early life choices. She has to realize we all do stupid shit when we’re younger.

“Thanks for saying that.” Her smile is small, but grateful.

“We’re going,” I tell her as I snatch the invitation back from her hand and tap it on the counter.

“No way,” she exclaims and tries to snatch it back.

“Yes way,” I counter. “And you’re going to walk in there with a famous hockey player on your arm, looking more beautiful than any creature in the world, and you’re going to look down your nose at this Christina woman.”

“Erik…that’s stupid and petty.”

I ignore her words even if she’s right. “We’ll go shopping. Expensive haute couture dress, jewels, fancy handbag, and designer shoes, preferably with a strap around your ankle because that is sexy as fuck. And—”

“Erik,” Blue interrupts my ramblings. “You don’t have to do something like that for me. Trust me…my hurt feelings have long heeled from the things done to me in high school.”

“Yeah, but I’m recently pissed off about this so we’re going. No arguments.”

Blue opens her mouth to say something and I hold a palm out to her. “Say one word and I’ll find something else to occupy your mouth.”

Her lips twitch and her eyes sparkle with playfulness. “You’d like that wouldn’t you?”

“Well, fuck yeah I’d like that,” I tell her truthfully.

“Come here then,” she murmurs and crooks her finger at me.

My cock immediately responds and I round the kitchen counter quickly. She grins at me and tugs at my belt, releasing it from the buckle with much-appreciated efficiency. On the contrary, she undoes my zipper with aching slowness.

When her hand reaches in and wraps around me, my legs wobble for a moment.

When Blue goes to her knees and takes me in her mouth, I have to put my palms on the counter for balance because my head swims with a pleasure that’s almost incapacitating.

When this stunning creature takes me into the back of her throat, I close my eyes and thank the heavens above for bringing her back into my life.