Bad Boy Blaise (Wilmington Juggernauts #2)

Chapter 1

Blaise

When I fall backward onto the surface of the water, it hits with all the force of a cornerback sneaking behind my guards to sack me mid-throw. But the sting is fleeting, and then I’m sinking, sinking, sinking, alone in the muffled quiet.

It’s like that sometimes behind the scrimmage line, a thousand pounds of human flesh and protective gear pushing me down, but my work is done, I am over. There’s nothing but me and my silence.

They told me not to open my eyes underwater.

They said they didn’t want me to have bloodshot eyes.

The contract was clear that airbrushing would happen, one of the photos from this spread is going on a billboard in Times Square, but they said my eyes have to be untouched.

People will get suspicious if they catch that my eyes have been photoshopped.

People will think I showed up high or drunk to the photoshoot.

The fact that I’ve never failed a single one of the thousand drug tests I’ve been subjected to and haven’t gotten worse than tipsy since my little uh-oh last year at the Wilmington Juggernauts’ inaugural Kickoff Gala won’t matter. I’m just trouble.

I open my eyes and stare up at the sun through five feet of water. Fuck it. I’m in a goddamn tee shirt like a nerd, for shit’s sake. What more do they want?

Up on the deck, they’re on a tight schedule.

They’re waiting for me to surface. They’re always waiting for me to surface, always have been.

Since the first day Gammy took me to the community pool, and the pasty white kids in their nerdy tee shirts said kids like me couldn’t swim, so I showed them how good I was at it.

I was too little to understand they were bullying me, and they were too little to understand that the shit they regurgitated from their racist parents was racist bully shit.

They thought I was going to drown in that pool, and then they were mad I didn’t because I made liars out of their parents.

So I swam from them as I swim now, rolling underwater and darting to the opposite end, just to feel that freedom.

I was too behind from years of my parents not caring about me and too distracted by the world around me to pass even the easiest classes back then, but I could fucking swim.

And I could run. And I could throw a ball with one hand and a fist with the other.

And I could get away with crazy shit because Gammy felt sorry for me since I didn’t fit into my parents’ jet-setting lives.

I swim to the end of the pool, enjoying the feel of it on my freshly waxed body. Not that I waxed for this. In fact, the photographer made a comment about it, like it was a bad choice. But my days of pre-season freedom are about to end. I have this one last weekend to enjoy myself.

I’m not about to get in trouble for having a hairy ass tonight.

The moment I surface, the camera is back on me, snapping photos as I skim the surface, in no rush to exit the water.

I hear the click, click, click of the shutter as though it’s right in my face, even though it’s yards away on the deck, and as much as I want to do laps, just ignore everything that’s going on and swim laps, I stare that camera down.

It stares right back at me, and as I make my way to the ladder at the deep end, the photographer walks steady steps backwards to capture me, but I don’t care about the photographer.

She is nothing. Another blip in my life, another tool to use, another cog in the machine.

It is only me and that camera, and I know what that camera wants.

I dip under the surface one last time, making sure that the water streams from me as I haul my weight up the ladder.

It sluices down my face and runs out of my hair, ruining its natural shape, but that’s a problem for the hairstylist I scheduled for directly after this.

My shirt — the stupidest shirt in all of humanity — and shorts cling to every muscle.

The bright sunlight highlights every curve and bulge for the camera.

This is all I am, all the world wants from me. I’m a body. But I’m a perfect body, and few people can say that about themselves.

Once my feet hit the cement, I brave the Wilmington Jugs censorship hags’ wrath by lifting the hem of my soaked shirt, peeling it off my stomach to wipe some of the water off my face.

I drop the shirt back down, and it adheres to me again.

Honestly, the drenched white cotton might show off my abs better anyway. Let the camera get its fill.

From one of the shaded lounge chairs on the deck, Deb Barrows from SportSource Weekly clears her throat. “You had a tumultuous first year with the Wilmington Juggernauts. How do you feel about ending the season ten and seven?”

I shrug as I stroll to her, fully aware that the camera is now on my backside. “I feel like it’s a brand-new team and most of us have never played together before. The fact that we came out with a winning record is pretty fucking — freaking — good.”

“Sure, you weren’t all teammates before, but you and Gabe Shaunessy played together in both college and with the Colts, and how about Mel Cohen and Merrick Briggs? Do you think you should have connected better with them?”

It feels like a trap. Something meant to make me feel bad that we didn’t accomplish in our inaugural year what no other expansion has ever accomplished, either. I’m not falling for that trap. Words and I don’t get along, but numbers do. Stats do. The past does.

“Last year was my first year starting. Yeah, I’ve practiced with Cohen and Briggs for years, but Cohen and I had exactly seventeen minutes total on the field before the Jugs—ernauts,” I correct myself because man, do the higher-ups hate when we call the team the Jugs even though everyone else does, too.

“Merrick and I played three games together back when Grovesnor had that emergency gall bladder surgery. But that was my rookie year.”

“You lost two of those three games.”

I snap a towel off the back of a lounge chair and scrub my face dry before shaking my hair out, deliberately tilting toward Deb Barrows so I can get her perfect make-up and her spiteful little tablet wet.

“Yeah, we lost two of those three games.” I glance over my shoulder to where the camera has moved to, figuring this will be another good shot.

“This team cost a lot of money to put together. Rumor has it a lot more was paid under the table for you.”

“I know nothing about that.” Oh, all the money I got was legit. I’m the quarterback. It would have been more suspicious if they hadn’t spent buckets of money on me. But a lot of palms had to be greased to get Gabe and me together.

I need Gabe. He’s the only reason I’m worth what I am. He’s the only center I’ve ever had who can cover up the shit I’d be fucking up otherwise.

“Do you think the team is worth what was paid to pull it together?”

“Absolutely.” I reach over my shoulders to start pulling this stupid goddamn shirt off, getting it halfway up before winking at the camera, saying, “Oops, I forgot,” and pulling it back down.

I hope all these photos get in the column so the PR team can see how ridiculous it is to require I wear shirts.

I swear, one photo of my naked ass, and it’s like the whole world explodes.

“Do you think you were worth what they paid for you?”

Well now, that’s the fucking question, isn’t it?

Do I think I’m worth the money? Does management think I’m worth the money?

What does it say about me that they spent nearly as much on two-time Super Bowl MVP Dom Morales to be my second-string, snatching him right out of retirement to stand sentinel, waiting for my first big fuck-up so they can drop me for him?

No, I don’t think I’m worth what they paid for me, which is why I fuck that camera with my eyes, same as I always do, whether I’m naked or in a three-piece suit.

My football career has a shelf life, but I will milk every penny I can out of this body, and the best way to make money from nothing is notoriety.

“Looks like our time is up, Deb. I got a thing I had to postpone for this. Sorry,” I lie.

Not about the time being up or the thing I have to do. Check-in for the local anime convention started an hour ago, and I’m supposed to already be downtown so my buddy, Denny, can pick up my badge for me. Freak him out over fucking up my afro before I sneak back out to the stylist.

No, I’m lying about being sorry. Fuck Deb and everyone else telling me I gotta question if I’m good enough. If I’m not good enough at this, I’m not good enough at anything.

Denny circles me several times, scrutinizing the costume. Not that there’s much to it.

“I wish you’d asked me before you bought this,” he huffs as he attaches the thong to my pelvis — my waxed pelvis — with a tab of spirit gum to keep it from dropping the critical half-inch to my dick.

I spin in front of the mirror to check my ass out. Denny’s done a good job of coating it in the bronze shimmer he’s highlighted the rest of me in. The thigh-high boots are doing the rest of the work to frame my ass so I look more god than man.

I nailed the cosplay, from the prosthetic brow Denny applied at the salon so my hair stylist could shape my hair around it all the way down to the six-inch platforms that put me at a hair’s breadth below seven feet. “What are you talking about? I look exactly like Jiujiukun.”

Denny’s glare says he disagrees with me, but seriously, I’ve got the afro, the weird winged brow thing, the chest halter, the thong, the boots.

All the Mokushiroku things. And it’s an ultra-obscure anime.

Even at Wilmington Ani-Con, I’ll be lucky if ten percent of the people who take my picture actually know what show I’m from.

I like it best that way. I don’t get to be anonymous nearly as often as I’d like.

People talk to me like a normal person pretending to be something great instead of the face of a ten-billion-dollar sports franchise, revered and reviled in equal measure.

I tell people I’m a plumber if they ask. God help everyone who’s ever asked me for actual plumbing advice.

Denny hooks the back of my thong and snaps it along my asscrack.

“There’s this girl I’ve worked with a couple times,” he says, and I’m assuming he means on a movie set.

I met him in the bathroom at a BDSM masquerade where I was fighting hell with my mask and about to bail on the event entirely.

I really didn’t want to get fired for getting recognized in a dungeon, because my mask fell while I was doing whatever weird shit I happened to get into.

I’m down for anything, I don’t give a fuck. You want to be whipped? You want to whip me? You want to link our wrists together with rubber bands and attempt to escape each other while comically snapping back together every time? Whatever, let’s roll.

Denny saved my ass with this spirit gum shit, but I couldn’t exactly hide who I was from him when my face is plastered on billboards all over the city.

He’s been cool since then, though. He might actually be my friend.

Awkward as fuck and gay as all hell, but we hang out and watch anime or even the drag stuff and have a great time.

It’s cool having a friend who’s not into football.

“She’s a costumer,” he continues. “Makes some really nice stuff.”

I look down at the gold thong with just enough fabric for me to hot glue a cup inside it to make a codpiece — with the help of Denny’s spirit gum — and the boots he made me walk in every day for two months so I don’t roll my ankle and ruin the season. “This isn’t exactly a fancy costume.”

“No, but she could have made a proper codpiece and rigged it so it wasn’t all lumpy in the back.”

I flare my nostrils as I look once again in the mirror, and sure, okay, it’s not perfect.

The fabric has a lot of elastic in it, but it’s on the loose side.

I wouldn’t call it weirdly lumpy, but I see what he’s talking about.

“Man, you know what my schedule is like. I’m not flying a costumer in to measure my dick just so I get a better fitting codpiece. ”

Denny snorts, hiding the sound with the spray of an aerosol can that emits a slightly sticky spray smelling of alcohol and vanilla.

Dive club stripper. It evaporates the moment it touches my skin, and when I wipe my hand over the dark matte cream Denny used to contour my bicep, the makeup stays in place. Neat.

“She’s local. Lives right in Wilmington. And she’s always looking for extra work. I think she’s got a sick relative or something. Really sweet girl, though. And her work is top-notch. Like, Emerson Michaels insists she makes every one of his costumes regardless of which movie it is.”

“Sounds dope.” I have no idea who Emerson Michaels is. Not good with names. Gotta remember too many already. Whole freaking team plus every other team I’ve ever played for. The way Denny says it, I’m sure he’s well known, but not by me.

“If you want anything made for next year’s con, just let me know, and I’ll get you her contact info. You can tell her I sent you.”

“For what, a good deal? Man, I have more money than God.”

“Nah, so she’ll put up with your shit and come bitching to me about how much she hates you.”

“I’m very lovable.” When I want to be.

“When you want to be.” Denny looks at his phone. “It’s seven. Maybe you should hang in the room until the decency rules drop at ten.”

“My dick is covered,” I point out. And everything is glued down well enough that it’s not escaping. I can be just some random underdressed guy in go-go boots. It’s my greatest dream.

Denny spritzes my back once more. “At least you waxed your ass for this.”

“You should see my balls.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”