Chapter 437: The Rat and The Bunny

In the bathroom, Chloé was still having a full-on panic attack.

She was curled up in the bathtub, submerged up to her chin in vanilla-scented bubbles. Her pink hair was tied up in a messy bun that looked like it was about to fall apart at any second.

I’m naked, she thought. I’m naked in Nash Blaze’s bathroom.

Well, technically it wasn’t just "his" bathroom, but since he bought the place, it felt like his territory. Everything about the room was his.

She dipped her face under the water, blowing bubbles and trying to clear her head. She had given him her clothes, and had lost her bag, and phone. Now, she had nothing but a notebook and a tub of warm water, with Nash just on the other side of the door.

She bit her lip. It killed her that she’d waited so long for this moment, imagining herself looking like a goddess, speaking with confidence, and having him look at her with that "I want you" smirk. Instead, he’d found her sobbing on a sidewalk, soaked in sewer water, barely able to speak.

I said "N-N-N," she groaned. Two years of dreaming about him, and she’d acted like a total idiot. He probably thought she was pathetic. He probably only helped her because he felt sorry for her.

A few tears leaked into the bubbles. She stayed there, breathing in the scent of the soap, until the water started to get cold. When she finally stepped out, her skin was flushed pink and steaming. The whole room was thick with white mist.

She spotted a towel. It was a huge, fluffy white thing, but definitely not made for someone as voluptuous as her. She wrapped it around her chest, but it barely held. The fabric reached her mid-thigh, and her big breasts were practically spilling out of the top. Every time she moved, the towel strained against her round, plump ass.

She looked at herself in the foggy mirror and then at the door.

Okay. Time to go out... in a towel... in front of Nash Blaze.

Her mind immediately played a 4K high-definition movie of it: the door opening, the steam swirling around her, her wet hair clinging to her skin, and Nash sitting in the living room in just his underwear, legs crossed, looking at her with those hungry eyes.

No. No way. Absolutely not.

She paced the room three times. There was no way she was going to be that vulnerable. She stopped, thinking about Rain. What was even happening with Rain? She didn’t even want to think about it.

Then, she saw it. A white nightgown, folded neatly on a shelf, a gift from the hotel. It was long, loose, and perfect for her situation.

Genius.

If she put the nightgown, she’d come out already dressed. No towel, no awkward scene. She weighed the options for ten seconds. There were no downsides.

She dropped the towel, letting her breasts bounce freely for a moment, and slipped into the nightgown.

She noticed some soap still in her hair, so she used that as an excuse to rinse off. She drained the tub and stepped into the shower, and there, she saw a big chrome button on the faucet that said "MASSAGE." Curious, she gave the handle a tiny turn.

Rookie mistake, the water exploded out like a fire hose.

"PIIIII!"

The showerhead ripped out of her hands, whipping through the air like a snake. It slammed against the wall, the ceiling, and then smacked her right in the face. She slipped, grabbing the shower curtain for dear life, but it ripped right off the rod. The jet of water blasted her straight in the eyes. She scrambled to shut the water off, but she turned the knob the wrong way, making the pressure even stronger.

It took her forty seconds and a literal flood of water to finally kill the flow.

Silence returned, except for the dripping from the ceiling.

Chloé stood in the middle of the flooded bathroom, her pink hair plastered to her back, breathing hard. But the nightgown wasn’t a nightgown anymore; it had become a sheet of glass.

The wet fabric clung to every single curve of her body: her massive breasts with the nipples poking through the thin cotton, her flat stomach, the flare of her hips, and her round ass. And underneath? Absolutely nothing.

Oh no... this can’t be happening.

It was over. Her only decent piece of clothing had turned into a perverted outfit. She looked toward the towel rack, but the towel and her underwear were floating in the puddle on the floor.

You can’t be serious...

"Chloé?" Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.

In the living room, Nash had heard the absolute chaos unfolding in the bathroom.

"Everything okay?"

"Yes! Nothing! It’s just a faucet!"

"A faucet?" Nash repeated.

"It’s... very present!"

Nash sighed, his eyes fixed on the door. He could probably imagine the disaster inside and the cost of reparations.

"Did you break something? Open up, let me see."

"No!"

"Chloé."

She opened the door about two centimeters. Only half of her face was visible, a round, wide eye and dripping pink hair. She looked like a drowned kitten.

Nash was standing there holding his Blacklist jersey, wearing nothing but a tank top.

"This is the only dry thing I’ve got. Take it."

She wondered how he knew. It was like he could read her mind... or maybe he could see right through the door?!

"I..."

"Just take it."

She reached out a wet arm through the gap, grabbed the jersey, and closed the door.

She stood there, frozen. She looked at the fabric in her hands. It was Nash’s jersey, with his number on the back, the one he was wearing, maybe even the one from the match. And the smell... the smell of his sweat, something warm, savage, and masculine. It made her head spin.

His smell. The smell of Nash Blaze.

She stared at the jersey for a few seconds, then let her inner demon take over: she buried her nose in the fabric. One second. Two. Actually, nine seconds. She told herself she was just checking if it was actually sweat, but she was breathing him in.

I can’t put this on. I can’t wear this. Against my skin. With nothing underneath. No... it’ll kill me.

She tried to put it on anyway. She lifted it over her head. Then pulled it down. Lifted it. Pulled it down again.

After five minutes, she finally walked out of the bathroom.

Nash, who had been waiting in the armchair, looked up. Chloé was standing in the doorway, the wet nightgown clinging to every single curve of her body, holding the jersey tight against her chest with both arms.

She wasn’t wearing it.

He kept his gaze on her face. Honestly, she was a total smoke-show, a walking piece of erotic art. But Nash was used to being around "body hazards", women like Zayela, Victoria, Jaz, or Sarra. When you’re surrounded by goddesses every day, seeing a cute girl like Chloé didn’t really make his blood boil or his dick twitch. Not yet, anyway.

"I can’t," she mumbled, looking away.

"Alright," Nash replied, totally chill.

"N-no, I mean... I’d get it dirty! I mean, it’s already... it smells... no! It’s great! It’s very clean!" She was practically drowning on thin air.

"Chloé."

"Yes?"

"Whatever you want. Just come sit down."

He didn’t push it. He didn’t make a big deal out of the shirt or the jersey. He just shifted the conversation, acting like everything was normal.

She trotted over to the couch and sat on the very edge, knees clamped tight together. She held the jersey in her arms, hugging it against her chest without even realizing it, her chin resting on the fabric. Nash noticed she was taking deep breaths, literally smelling him through the clothes. He watched her for a moment, it was kind of hot, seeing her so worked up over his scent.

"Hey," he said softly. "What’s going on?"

"Nothing! Absolutely nothing!"

"Chloé."

She opened her mouth to lie, but nothing came out. Then, like a dam breaking, everything just poured out of her.

"I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, I’m just pathetic!" Her voice cracked, and she sounded like she was about to cry. "I’ve waited months for this! Months! I watched every single one of your games, I have a whole binder on you with color-coded tabs, I practiced what I was going to say the whole drive here! I had a whole line ready, with a joke, and then you showed up and..." She buried her face in her hands. "I just said ’N-N-N’. I’m an analyst! I speak four languages! And I stuttered like an idiot to you."

There was a long silence.

"A binder?" Nash asked, a smirk playing on his lips.

"...With colored tabs," she whispered.

Nash leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

"Chloé. Look at me."

She slowly peeled her fingers away from her face.

"You don’t have to be perfect around me. Honestly, if you’d come at me with some rehearsed line, a fake commercial smile, and a joke about rebounds, I would’ve found it boring. It would’ve felt fake." He smiled, and this time it was genuine. "I way prefer the girl who stutters. It means this actually mattered to you."

Chloé stared at him, her eyes shimmering, cheeks damp with tears.

"...Do you think I’m ridiculous?"

"I think you’re a girl who spent months preparing for something she really cared about." He shrugged. "I can relate to that."

She let out a little laugh, which turned into a hiccup, and then a long, shaking sigh of relief. She wiped her cheeks with a tissue he grabbed from the coffee table.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"No problem."

She took a deep breath. For the first time in an hour, the lump in her throat was gone.

"Are you hungry?"

"No... yes... a little."

"I’ll order something."

He called room service and ordered three different dishes without even asking what she liked. When he hung up, he sank back into his chair, legs stretched out, looking at her with that calm, effortless confidence that drives people crazy.

"Alright," he said. "We’ve got all night. Let’s make use of it. Tell me what you actually do."

"What?"

"Your job. Analyst. I don’t know anything about it."

"Oh." She blinked, surprised. "Well... okay."

She cleared her throat. And then, almost without realizing it, she started talking.

At first, she was careful, using short sentences and watching her tone. She explained how she’d worked for the Juggernauts for two years, collecting data on opposing players, tracking fatigue curves, shooting accuracy, and reaction speeds. Nash listened without interrupting, his head tilted slightly.

[+8% Affection, +5% Trust (Active Listening)]

He saw the system lines pop up, but he ignored them. Yeah, he was here for a quest and this helped, but for once, he was actually interested in the topic of the debate.

"You’ve always done this? The stats stuff?"

"No." She smiled, the first real smile he’d seen. "Before, I just watched basketball."

"Basketball?"

"Real basketball." She blushed a bit. "The kind from before Breakball. With the normal rules, without... without those weird tactics where girls show their p-p-private parts and the tactital fouls that the ref just lets happen. There are still archives of the old style in some libraries, but nobody cares about them. I spent my whole adolescence studying them."

Nash sat up in his chair.

"Seriously?"

"Yes. I even..." She hesitated. "It might sound weird."

"No, tell me."

"I have CDs of old games. Finals, semi-finals, even regular season games that no one watches. Sixty-three of them, so far. I keep them in a shoebox, organized by year."

She waited for his reaction. She’d seen it a thousand times: a polite little laugh, a "oh, okay," and then the person looks away.

"Sixty-three," Nash repeated. "What’s the oldest final you have?"

She blinked.

"Excuse me?"

"The oldest one. The one that’s probably forty years older than us. In black and white?"

"...Yes." Her voice was barely a whisper. "I have one in black and white. The Harbor Kings against the Mihalton Wolves. The image jumps all the time, the sound is terrible, but..."

"No way... and you can see the movements? There’s sound?!"

"Yes!"

She sat up straight, a spark lighting up her eyes.

"You... are you actually interested? Not just being polite?"

"Why wouldn’t I be?"

"Because usually, everyone doesn’t give a crap." She squeezed the jersey against her. "When I talk about it, people look at me like some grandma who collects stamps. ’Old basketball is boring’ this, ’It lacks intensity’ that. Snow falls asleep after ten minutes. Only Rain... Rain watched them with me sometimes. But Rain watches everything, he hardly says anything... though he knows his stuff too." She looked down. "I didn’t think you would... You’re Nash Blaze. You play the craziest Breakball in the league. I didn’t expect..."

"Chloé." He leaned forward again, elbows on his knees. "Breakball is cool. But a good All-Star Game? That interests me more than half the games we play now."

She froze for a second. Then, her face lit up instantly, like a stadium when the floodlights hit.

"So... do you know the pick and roll?"

"A little."

"A little?! But that’s the basis of everything!"

She started talking. Fast at first, then louder and louder, her hands moving, her eyes glowing. She explained how a player sets a screen to free up the ball handler, then dives toward the basket, and how the handler has three choices: shoot, pass to the pivot, or keep dribbling. The defense has to decide in a second. And that’s the genius part, because...

She stopped abruptly.

"Sorry. I’m getting carried away."

"No, keep going." Nash was smiling. "That’s stuff I do without even thinking about it. I never knew it had a name."

"You do that?"

"Every game."

"I know." She smiled, turning bright red. "I’ve seen it."

"Give me an example," he said. "One game. The craziest one you’ve ever seen."

"The craziest?" Her eyes widened. "You’re not asking this seriously. I could talk about this for six hours."

"We’ve got all night."

"Fine. Okay." She fidgeted on the couch like a little kid. "The Weston Rangers, Eastern Conference Finals. At halftime, they were down by twenty-two. Twenty-two! Their point guard, Callahan, already had three fouls, their shooting guard was getting destroyed by a twenty-year-old, and the coach looked like a zombie. Then, in the second half, he changes everything. He benches his two best scorers. He puts in five small, fast players who run everywhere, and he tells them one thing: we take every single rebound."

"Every single one?"

"Every one. Forty-one offensive rebounds in just the second half. Forty-one! They miss, they get it back; they miss, they get it back. They wore the other team down until they were literally panting. And then, the final play... Callahan does a double crossover, leaps over the center, and just... boom."

Nash let out a whistle.

"Damn. I want to see that."

"I’ll lend you the CD," she said, then suddenly froze and blushed deep red. "I mean... if you want. It’s at my place."

"Then you’re keeping it for me. I gotta see that... Ah, shit, now I feel like I’ve been spoiled."

She looked at him, mouth slightly open, as if he had just promised her the world.

"Okay. I’ll keep it for you..."

Nash felt a little tingle in the corner of his vision. One line, then two, then three.

[+6% Affection; +4% Trust]

He didn’t even look at them. He didn’t even care anymore. He wasn’t trying to take the quest anymore; he was just talking to her. He was talking like he would with Kai or Lina, no calculations, no triggers, just naturally chatting.

The food arrived, and Chloé dove into it with an appetite that surprised both of them. She demolished her fries, then started stealing Nash’s, then his dessert, apologizing with every bite, her cheeks stuffed. It should have been awkward, but to Nash, it was actually adorable.

They ate in the living room, plates resting on the coffee table. She sat cross-legged on the couch, Nash’s jersey draped over her knees. Every few sentences, she’d discreetly bury her nose in the fabric, sniffing him as if checking for something.

"Right," he said, popping a fry into his mouth. "Important question. Greatest player of all time."

Chloé put her fork down. She took a long breath, like she was about to dive into a pool.

"You really want to open this Pandora’s box?"

"I’m hungry and I’ve got the night. Let’s go."

"Alright... Callahan."

"Again? Just because of those blind passes?"

"He had the best vision I’ve ever seen. He’d slice through the back, through three defenders, before his teammates even realized they were open. Kind of like you, but... he had these passes that..." She waved her hands, searching for the words. "Passes that didn’t even exist back then, you know? Everyone else played based on what they saw. He played based on what was going to happen."

"But his defense was like an open door."

"...True." She grimaced. "He basically didn’t have legs. Anyone could drive right past him. But nobody had more class to make up for it."

"For me, it’s Mercer."

She let out a little shriek.

"Jalen Mercer?! The scorer?"

"The guy who takes the last shot."

"The guy who takes the last shot misses the last shot forty percent of the time!"

"And the guys who don’t take it miss it a hundred percent of the time."

She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. Nash burst out laughing.

"Okay, okay. Touché," she chuckled. "But look at his defensive stats. He had zero interest in defending. He thought basketball was only played on the other side of the court."

"But when he had the ball in money time..."

"...he was magnificent. Yeah." She sighed, defeated. "That final shot, the one at the buzzer from the logo... I’ve watched it like a hundred times."

"I actually want to see it now, just to get an idea."

"You’ll love it." She leaned in closer, her voice dropping. "And you know what I noticed? Your change of pace before the drive, when you drop your left shoulder... Mercer did the exact same thing in the Foxes’ final. Exactly the same, down to the centimeter."

Nash stopped chewing. What? How serious was she about taking notes about his game? At first, he thought her obsession was just cute, but now... she was potentially a future opponent, and she had studied his style that closely?

"I’ve never noticed that."

"You invented it on your own?"

"I think so."

"That’s insane." She looked at him like he was some rare animal. "Two guys separated by forty years, doing the same move without ever knowing each other."

"What about Fontaine?" he asked, keeping the conversation going. "The Surgeon. He shot ninety-four percent from the free-throw line, right?"

"Dario Fontaine! Ninety-four, yes. He never dunked in his life; he called it ’circus acts.’ He was slow, he couldn’t jump, he played with a glass knee... and he’d drop forty points looking like a damn accountant. I love that guy." She laughed. "He had nothing, but everything he did, he did perfectly."

"That’s kind of my dream."

"You want to play like an accountant?"

"I want to play like a guy who never misses."

"Then you need a free-throw coach," she said seriously, before breaking into a laugh of her own.

They were talking like two old friends at a bar, interrupting each other, laughing, arguing about legends who had been dead for half a century. Chloé had completely forgotten her clothing issues; Nash had completely forgotten his mission. They were just two people obsessed with basketball, and the conversation wouldn’t stop.

"Wait, wait!" Chloé said, dropping her fork. "I noted something about this. Mercer’s change of pace, I drew a diagram, I have to show you!"

She felt around the cushions, lifted the jersey, looked under her legs.

"Where is my notebook?"

"On the table," Nash said, his mouth full of food.

"Ah!"

The notebook was too far to reach while sitting. She climbed to her knees on the couch, right by the armrest, and leaned forward over the chair, one arm stretching for the notebook while the other gripped the backrest to keep her balance.

Nash was right below her, sitting on the floor, and he committed the mistake of looking up. The nightgown she was wearing slid up. With her on her knees, thighs spread wide and leaning forward, the angle gave Nash a perfect, spectacular view.

Her bare ass, round, plump, and perfectly toned. The top of her thighs. And right there, between them, the pink, smooth slit of her pussy, just inches above his plate.

Damn.

"Wait, it’s kind of stuck under the corner..." she said, stretching further, which only made the view even better.

Nash swallowed his food, took a sip of water, and looked at the ceiling for a second, then looked back at his plate.

He hadn’t asked for this, she didn’t know she was doing it neither. She was just searching for her notebook, talking to herself, completely unaware that she was offering a man a front-row seat to her naked cunt.

This girl is a danger to herself, Nash thought, a smirk on his face.