Chapter 9: Our Hero is Confused

I was halfway across the top of the first set of bleachers when I smelled her. I looked over my shoulder as she came up behind me.

“Do you mind?” she asked in a bored tone.

I gestured in front of me with a sweep of my hand. “Be my guest, Princess.”

Ellery dodged around me and I whistled as I watched her run. She beat me down the stairs and onto the courts, and I heard Coach Hendrix yell, “pick up your pace, Xander! She’s smoking you!”

I trotted out, a stupid grin on my face. “I’m just enjoying the view!”

Ellery turned around, running backwards the way she’d tried to teach us, and gave me the finger. Then she turned around again and blitzed into the stairwell.

“Are you going to let her show you up like that?” yelled Coach Murphy.

I took off, closing the gap between us on the stairs, but she had smaller feet and was able to stay ahead. On the upper levels I overtook her, but she passed me on the stairs going down.

We hit the gym floor neck and neck and almost collided at the start of the next set of stairs. Ellery dodged under my arm and nipped up the stairs.

“How the hell can you do the stairs like that?” I asked when we reached the top.

“Practice.”

“What’s the matter? Can’t talk and run?” I teased.

Ellery didn’t reply, but I heard her snarl when I beat her to the stairwell. My pride was short-lived because she slid down the banister and beat me out onto the floor. By this point everyone in the gym was watching us and taking sides.

“She cheated!” I bellowed.

“What’s the matter? Can’t think and run?” she taunted.

From that moment on it was war. Pushing, shoving, elbowing, leaping, hair pulling (me) and ass slapping (her) were all employed. You could tell she’d grown up with brothers. Stair laps had never been this much fun.

Our audience started yelling encouragement and chanting “last lap” as we headed up the flight of stairs. On the first set of bleachers I deliberately slowed down and used my body to block her progress. She leapt onto the bleacher benches and ran across them like a cat.

“Oh you sneak!”

She laughed maniacally as she jumped down in front of me, beating me down the stairs by only a few steps. As we left the stairwell I reached out and grabbed her around the waist and spun her around. She screeched and our audience went berserk. She caught up to me because I was laughing and stiff-armed my left shoulder.

This knocked me off my gait. We spent the rest of the straightaway shoving each other, neither of us willing to give any ground. We eased up on the stairs, but on the final stretch of bleachers things went sideways. She tried her trick of running on the tops of the bleacher seats but I was ready.

“Not this time, Princess” I said as I grabbed her around the waist again. She yelped and tried to squirm out of my grasp, but I overcompensated to keep my hold on her and we both went down.

The crowd below gasped as we hit the ground. I took the brunt of the fall and while the wind didn’t get knocked out of me I couldn’t breathe.

The girl I had been lusting after for two months was lying on top of me. She pushed herself up with one hand giving me an eyeful of cleavage. We froze like that, both of us just staring at the other.

She licked her lips and I got so hard so fast that I thought I’d pass out. She smiled at me and as I reached up to cup her face we heard Coach Hendrix call out.

“Are you guys okay?”

I groaned and she yelled back “we’re fine! But I think Alexander hit his head.” She held a finger to my lips to keep me from arguing.

“Okay, well, come on down, and get him some ice.” Noise resumed in the gym and she climbed off of me, looking as annoyed by the interruption as I felt.

“Sit up slowly. With all that blood diverted from your brain you could faint.”

“Nice,” I groused, but followed her instructions, wincing as I did so. “Crap.” I put my hand to the back of my head. “You weren’t kidding.”

“Let me have a look.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Shut up and let me look at it.”

I huffed with annoyance, but moved my hand so she could see. Her fingers teased my hair out of the way as she felt my scalp. My scalp and spine began to tingle.

“Lee was right, you do have magic fingers.”

“Why were you discussing my fingers?” she asked in an amused tone.

“We were discussing you. You’ve got to admit that the arrangement with you and the team is, shall we say, unconventional.”

She laughed and the sound made me harder. “Coach Hendrix uses every weapon in his arsenal.”

“So you’re a weapon, huh?”

She murmured a noise of agreement. “In a sense. We better go before they start making jokes about which head you hurt.”

“Oh my god!”

“What? Did you really think that after the free throw drill during tryouts that I didn’t have a dirty mind? Besides I know you were about to make one yourself.”

I opened my mouth to defend myself, but couldn’t. I was about to make one. I settled for scowling at her.

“You’re cute when you sulk, but you’re sexier when you don’t. Need any help getting up?” Her voice was coy and her eyes glinted with mischief.

“I never need help with that,” I growled as I got to my feet and invaded her personal space, “especially around you.” I expected her to step back, blush, or put her hands up in a defensive posture between us.

That’s how women normally respond when I pull out dominant predator mode. I did not expect her to shift her weight so that her thigh pressed into my crotch.

“Are you ever going to do anything about that?” she purred.

My eyes went wide with surprise. “Do you want me to?”

She closed her eyes in frustration and when she opened them she glared at me. “You’re impossible,” she snapped before walking away.

“What did I say?” I asked as I trotted after her. “Hey Ellery! Stop.”

She stopped half way down the first flight of stairs. “It isn’t what you say. It’s what you do or don’t do.” She resumed walking down the stairs, but paused on the landing. “Hold onto the banister.”

“I’m good, it’s just a bump. What do I dooooo?” The stairwell tilted and I grabbed the railing. She made an irritated noise and stomped back up to me.

“You really need to start listening to me.” Her voice softened. “Hold my hand and don’t let go of the railing.”

She eased me down the stairs, my head swimming. I was so queasy that I couldn’t even enjoy touching her. We stopped on the landing and I threw her a questioning look.

“You’ll be okay. It’s the stairs combined with where you hit your head. It’s fucking with your equilibrium.”

“I didn’t know you had such a potty mouth.”

“The amount of things you don’t know about me could fill volumes.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Some other time. Put your hand on my shoulder and we’ll get you down.” We descended the rest of the stairs one at a time, pausing at one point so that I could dry heave.

“This wouldn’t have happened if you were taking care of yourself,” she admonished me.

“This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t tried to cheat,” I retorted.

She laughed her musical laugh before saying, “not falling, which was totally your fault, but the dizziness. Your healing factor is sluggish.”

I couldn’t say anything as she led me back onto the gym floor. I was rattled, but even in that state I knew better than to start questioning her about Shifter business in front of everybody. She led me into the trainer’s room and pointed at a chair.

“Sit. Stay,” she ordered as she fetched two bottles of water from a mini fridge. “Drink” she said as she nudged one into my hands. I ripped the cap off and took a swing.

“Look, I don’t know what you think you know, but there’s nothing wrong with me,” I said after I’d swallowed.

“Are you sure?” Her eyes found my green ones and I felt like I was under a microscope. “There’s nothing you need?”

What I needed was her on her knees in front of me with my cock in her mouth, but I wasn’t stupid enough to say that. Instead I said “the ice pack would be nice.”

Her face contorted with hurt and anger, not at all what I was expecting considering we were having a good time. Ellery took a deep breath and without a word stalked over to the ice chest, yanked out an ice pack and threw it into my lap.

“Hey! What was that for?” But she didn’t respond; she just stormed out of the trainer’s room.

“Gods damn it,” I muttered as I stood, upgrading it to “gods fucking damn it” as the room swayed. I put the ice pack on my head and walked back to the gym. When I got there Ellery was having what looked like an argument with Coach Murphy in the coach’s office.

I could see them through the window, but even with my acute hearing I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I tried to turn my focus back to practice but then he reached out and rubbed her arms, causing some of the anger to leave her face.

I put a claw through my water bottle. The last time I had shifted without meaning to had been when I was thirteen and yet my claws had come out three times in the last month without conscious thought on my part. When I looked back up she had on her coat and was headed out the door.

“Is she coming back?” I asked Coach Murphy when he walked past me.

If we’re lucky,” he replied and headed back onto the court. She didn’t come back and that night I ran through our woods for two hours trying to get her out of my system. It didn’t work.