A Deeper Blue Read online

  As though to prove it, she jumped on the end of my bed before I could even get in it. I shook my head with a faint smile. Blue liked her to sleep in her own bed, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. I fell into bed with the comforting weight of Waffles settled somewhere around my feet.

  CHAPTER 2

  Blue

  I LISTENED with half an ear as the pilot welcomed us to Miami and relayed vital information regarding the temperature—still hot as the bottom of a skillet. I shrugged off my hoodie and folded it over my arm. Judging by the captain’s report, I could probably just chuck it in the garbage on my way out of the airport.

  As we waited on the tarmac for the seat belt sign to go off, I tried to still my fingers as I tapped a rapid tattoo on my thigh. Evan Ivanovich, my closest friend on the Outlaws team and a hard-nosed defensive lineman, occupied most of our shared armrest as he blathered on. I wasn’t gonna lie. I had no idea what he was going on about, but I tried to rearrange my expression into something more animated.

  I had been away for over four days, and I wanted several things—to get home, to see Kelly, and to get laid. In that order. If I was lucky, I might even fit in showering, eating, and sleeping, but I wasn’t going to be greedy. None of those activities involved listening to Ivanovich go on about… what the hell was he talking about?

  The seat belt sign dinged, and I had my seat belt unbuckled by the time it stopped. I stood and reached into the overhead to grab my bag. I packed light—one Nike duffel that was probably a hair too big to be a carry-on.

  “So what do you think?”

  I glanced down to find Ivanovich still seated, looking at me quizzically. I blinked. “About what?”

  “About what I said.” That didn’t help me one whit. “Can I come and talk to the kids, or what?”

  “The kids where?”

  “At your camp, Montgomery. Camp Bluegrass. Jesus.” His tone sounded annoyed, but his eyes sparkled. He was very aware of why I suddenly had the comprehension skills of a head of lettuce. He had a wife waiting for him at home, and it had been a very long four and half days.

  The nonprofit camp I created several years ago was a pet project of mine and something very close to my heart. A lot of the players volunteered their time there when they could, but we could always use more.

  “Yes, fine, whatever.” Realizing how ungracious I sounded, I tried again. “We can always use motivational speakers. We’d love to have you, and the kids would lose their shit. Maybe you could even toss the ball around with them for a little while. I’ll set it up with my assistant.”

  “And what about the other thing?”

  “Yeah. Sounds good,” I said impatiently.

  At that point I realized I better end our conversation because I had no idea what I was agreeing to or what the hell Ivanovich had said. As far as I knew, I could’ve just promised him my firstborn.

  “So you would like to wear matching plaid skirts tomorrow?” He blinked at me, his eyes wide and innocent.

  I sighed. “Fuck you, Evan.”

  I couldn’t be too annoyed with him. Over the past year, he’d more than proven he had my back. He knew about me and Kelly, and he hadn’t told anyone, not even his wife… supposedly. I knew how close they were, and I found that part a little hard to believe, but he’d sworn on a stack that he hadn’t. So yeah, he was more than supportive, in his own overbearing way.

  He smiled. “You in some sort of hurry?”

  “Something like that.”

  His smile widened. “Anyone I know?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Good night, E.”

  I didn’t think it was possible for me to shoulder my bag or disembark from the plane any faster. Ivanovich chuckled but didn’t say anything about the virtual smoke under my heels, probably because he was a decent human being and didn’t want to embarrass me. Our cornerback and all-around pain in my ass, Austin Warner, felt no such compunction.

  “She must have a great ass,” he yelled after me like an idiot.

  He was right about half of that. She was very much a he, but he damn sure did have a fantastic ass. I didn’t correct him as I hustled on.

  I tried to shake off that guilty feeling, but by the time I left the airport, my face was set in definitive scowl lines. It was the worst kind of guilt—the self-inflicted kind. I might’ve offered to come out a year earlier, when Kelly and I first got together, but over time, the idea had lost some of its appeal. I almost wished Kelly would just call me on it, just make the decision for me and stop being so goddamned patient and understanding. Then there was the other part of me, the selfish, subhuman part of me I kept buried, that was happy not to rock the boat.

  As I pulled onto his street, I knuckled the garage button in my console. I might be confused about a lot of things, but I was never confused about us. If I ever doubted, I could just bottle the feeling of pulling into the garage after all that time away. Tension ebbed from my body as though I had pulled an actual plug.

  I left my bag in the car and headed inside, the cool air a blast in my face after the sweltering heat of the garage. I tossed my keys in the bowl on the hall table and kicked the door behind me with one booted foot. I was barely in the doorway when I heard a slight whuffing noise coming from behind me, and I squatted down to give our dog a little lovin’.

  “Hey, girl.” She blinked up at me, brown eyes large and liquid. “How’s my Waffles?”

  She licked her lips nervously. We still had to guess most of her history, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to glean she was still a little intimidated by my size and the sound of my voice.

  “That’s okay,” I murmured as I scratched her ears. She leaned into my touch and held herself away from me all at the same time. “We have plenty of time to get used to each other, don’t we, girl?”

  For my understanding, she sidestepped another inch closer and thumped her tail against my pant leg.

  I clipped on her leash and took her for a quick jaunt around the block, most of which she spent trying to tug her way back to the house. My Fitbit barely had a chance to register that I was moving before she started to whine. I let us back in, and she finally showed some hustle. Her black nails clicked on the hardwood as she scurried for her bed.

  I chuckled and headed for the kitchen, where I stood in front of the fridge for a few minutes with the door propped open as I snacked on this and that. The contents of the fridge always got more interesting when I wasn’t there to monitor it, and I made a note to purge it the next day. But until then, there was cake.

  I nibbled on a piece. The salted caramel flavor lit up my taste buds, and before I knew it, I’d eaten half the slice. I shrugged and polished it off. Then I sniffed a couple of takeout containers and finished them off as well.

  I drank some cranberry juice straight from the container as Waffles watched me reproachfully. I pointed at her. “Squeal on me, and we’ll be doing an extra circuit around the neighborhood tomorrow morning.”

  She burrowed her nose in the plush corner of her bed.

  I shut down the downstairs lights, checked the locks—all of those late-night things—and headed up. Even though I planned on waking Kelly up, I made my way into the room quietly. I wanted to wake him up slowly—maybe with my tongue—and not by tripping on a fucking ottoman, which I’d done before. Three times.

  The room was way too small, but it made up for it in a big way. It contained my favorite person in the world. That went a long way to redeeming a room I had to edge around the bed sideways in. I shucked my clothing, tossed it near the laundry hamper, and gingerly eased into bed.

  My hands had a mind of their own as they traversed the smooth slope of his exposed skin down the smooth column of his neck and over the defined muscles of his shoulders. I pressed a lingering kiss to the back of his neck, even as I stroked his back. He smelled clean, and his skin was soft and sleep warmed.

  I heard a faint groan. “Tired,” he murmured sleepily.

  “You been asleep long?”

/>   “Maybecouplehor.”

  I snickered. “You wanna translate that?”

  “Maybe a couple hours. Then this chatty monkey came in and wouldn’t be quiet.”

  Chatty monkey was about to get chattier. “Where were you? I called when we were boarding the plane.”

  “Club was really loud.” His voice was muffled from his face being half-buried in the pillow. “I still don’t think my ears have recovered.”

  Club? I tried not to be annoyed, but damn. He was out at the club while I was busy convincing Warner and Ivanovich to take the red-eye instead of our scheduled flight tomorrow night just so I could see him sooner.

  “You didn’t mention going to the club,” I finally said. “I thought you were hanging out here and working on… your thing.”

  “My thing? Do you even know what I’m working on?”

  “Yes,” I insisted. “Some sort of academic-speech thing.” Despite what his amused tone insinuated, I did listen.

  “Is that code for creating a complex and challenging proposal on the study of nuclear and applied science so I’ll be chosen as the keynote speaker at the upcoming physics conference? A conference where the best and brightest in the field will gather in some fancy hotel conference room and silently judge me? A speech that, if I do well, could possibly be the final push I need to achieve tenure?”

  My tone was indignant. “That’s pretty much what I said.”

  He chuckled. “I was working, and then I got bored. All the topics they could pick, and they have us writing about new trends in nuclear physics applications and technology. Dynamical systems and irreversibility would be a little more my speed, but what are you gonna do? I mean, when you think about the sheer complexity involved—”

  “Kelly?” I loved my little Einstein, but there was no stopping him when he got rambling.

  “Hmm?”

  “The club?”

  “Oh. Right.” He paused as he tried to redirect his train of thought. “Well, we decided to go as a last-minute kind of thing.”

  “We?”

  “Connor came by. He’s making sure my speech at least follows the basic rules of English.” He yawned. “He was also kind enough to let me read my intro to him six times. And by kind enough, I mean he gritted his teeth through the first five and threw popcorn at me during the final recitation.”

  So they’d worked together all night and then headed to the club? Wow, I didn’t know what to be jealous about first. I knew he and Connor were just coworkers and good friends. Connor could even be considered a great friend to me. He certainly had the ammunition to upset my world, and he hadn’t used it.

  But he’d also had a sexual relationship with Kelly in the past, and no matter how brief it was, I couldn’t forget it. I didn’t have to wonder if he and Kelly were attracted to each other, because the answer was yes. And I didn’t have to wonder if they’d ever crossed their friendship boundaries and fooled around, because the answer was yes.

  I tried not to feed into the jealousy. Most of my uncertainty stemmed from the fact that Kelly didn’t understand his own fucking appeal. He didn’t seem to see how other guys responded to him. It was a different world for me, seeing men on the other side of the hunt. Now that I was actually paying attention, it was infuriating to watch those fools try to mack on Kelly, who didn’t seem to realize that blushing while saying no was not enough of a fucking deterrent. To some of them, those douchebag types, a nice refusal just meant “Hey, I’m shy. Keep trying.”

  Those bastards were aggressive. And even though Kelly could handle himself, sometimes it was all I could do not to plant my fist in some smiling motherfucker’s face as he offered to buy my boyfriend a drink. But I wasn’t allowed to show how irritated I was, especially since I couldn’t publicly lay claim to him. I couldn’t eat my cake and have it too.

  I didn’t say anything about the jealous feelings rioting in my head, mostly because I had a feeling I’d stretched his patience thin enough with the Carly situation. And that “It’s not you I don’t trust, it’s them” wasn’t going to go over very well. I rubbed my hand down his back, determined not to say anything.

  I forgot that he knew me as well as I knew him, and I’d been a little too silent a little too long. “Blue,” he said warningly. For the first time since I’d come home, he sounded wide-awake.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I can feel your disapproval.”

  He might feel it, but I wasn’t going to put voice to it. Football camp had already started for the rookies. The vets started next week, and my schedule was going to get insane. Even though they were holding camp at the facility and we were staying at a nearby hotel, I wouldn’t be able to leave. Well, it wasn’t like I’d be a prisoner, but it would be frowned upon. And by frowned upon, I mean Coach would passive-aggressively punish me on the field the next day. Staying in the hotel together was supposed to foster bonding and demonstrate our commitment as a team, and none of that involved going home to be with your significant other.

  I flat-out refused to spend any of the little time we had left rehashing old arguments.

  “Yeah?” I took his hand and put it where I wanted it most. “What else can you feel?”

  His chuckle was muffled in the pillow as he gamely slid his hand up and down my dick. “I don’t know… an angry banana?”

  “You’re a funny guy.”

  He turned his head to the side, and I watched his expressive face as he fisted my dick. I knew his face as well as I knew my own—the sly curve of his shapely mouth, the slightly winged shape of his eyebrows—which he absolutely did pluck, even though he said he didn’t—the glint of a thin silver hoop at the edge of the left one, the long sweep of his dark lashes against high, creamy cheekbones, and the delicate three studs down the length of his ear. I loved everything about his face, everything about him. I kept hoping the intensity of that love would fade, just for my sanity’s sake, but it hadn’t.

  He had created quite a rhythm with those clever fingers at that point, and I finally knocked his hand away with a groan. I rolled him on his back and kneeled between his thighs, which spread almost automatically to accommodate me. God knew he’d had enough practice by then. We were like two sex-crazed animals sometimes. Our sex life was comprised of a strange kind of greedy math—the more we had, the more we fucking wanted.

  I looked down his body at what was entirely, wholly mine—long, beautifully shaped legs with strong thighs that held me easily, a stomach he bemoaned because it was a little soft, but I secretly liked it. I would never, ever, even under threat of torture, admit I enjoyed watching that little bit of softness jiggle when I fucked him.

  He would put a hit out on me within the hour.

  I rubbed my hand over his stomach just then, and the creamy softness of his skin blushed in the wake of my hand like a magical human watercolor. He glared at me. “I’ve taken up jogging, you know. Just ask Waffles.”

  I tried not to smile. I knew better than to question him about his exercising habits when he’d named our dog after a breakfast food. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  I leaned down then, when he would’ve kept talking and maybe gotten us in the world’s stupidest argument—it had happened before—and took his mouth with mine. Everything was just right—the slide of his tongue against mine, the scrape of his tongue ring against my teeth, the vague taste of minty toothpaste that hadn’t yet dissipated.

  I kissed him softly for a while, just enjoying his mouth and the softness of his lips against mine. I’d flown over two thousand miles for that moment—worth every mile. My mouth quirked then, just thinking of how sentimental he’d accuse me of being if I said something that fucking sappy out loud.

  “What’re you smiling about?” he murmured against my mouth, and I pulled back and sat on my haunches.

  “You.”

  I didn’t clarify any further. That was all I needed to say.

  He watched me, unsmiling and intense, as I drizzled lub
e on my fingers and prepared him, working and scissoring my fingers. “Gotta have you,” I muttered. “Gotta get inside you.”

  Then I was sliding inside him, all the way in, and it was fucking unbelievable. I’d never been gladder that we’d stopped using condoms—sex with condoms had been fantastic, but this… this was something else entirely. I don’t know how much of it was actually tied to the physical condom itself and how much of it was because the lack of one meant that we trusted each other. No matter who knew and who we had to hide it from, we were committed. It was real…. We were real.

  I was seated so deep that I was almost afraid to breathe. If he made me stop, made me pull out right then, I was pretty sure I would die.

  “S’ good,” he slurred, almost drunk with it. “Now fuck me.”

  “I am.”

  “Do it,” he goaded me. “Hard.”

  What started out as romantic and easy had turned dark and dirty and sweaty. The room was silent except for the sound of our skin slapping together, the rhythmic rocking of the headboard against the wall, and our harsh breathing. I tried to remember a time when my happiness wasn’t tied to being buried in Kelly’s tight ass, but I came up blank.

  I groaned as he reached up and played with my nipples, pinching them and rubbing them between his clever fingers. He tweaked the left one hard, and it went straight to my nuts.

  “Fuck, Kelly. You have no… fucking idea….”

  I knew I wasn’t going to last that long. I never did with Kelly. Suddenly I, Britton Montgomery, the guy who used to have crazy stamina, was a two-pump chump. Okay, maybe not two, but shit, it had only been a couple minutes at best, and I was ready to burst.

  I watched the changing expressions on his face to make sure he wanted it as hard as I was giving it to him. I shouldn’t have worried. His ass canted up as he suddenly started meeting me thrust for thrust. I braced myself and tried to angle my strokes just right. He taught me there was more to being a good top than just hammering away at it—mostly because he was a bossy fucking bottom who had no problem telling me how he wanted it. If I could just find that…. I must’ve hit it just right, because he went rigid and let out a wail. He dug his fingers into my thigh.