School and Rock (Raptors Book 5)

by RJ Scott

  “Was she okay on the plane?” I asked as I bent to listen to her breathe.

  “Yeah, she was quite good. She’s a really pleasant baby.”

  I grinned at him. He seemed looser now, less skittish than he had been. “Thanks for coming with us. I love knowing she’s here. And you can hang out with the WAGs before and during the game.”

  “I have no idea how hockey works, but I’m excited to watch a game.”

  I pulled the thin blanket up to Maddie’s chin then straightened. “I’ll give you a crash course. Want to chill on the balcony and watch a Dallas night settle on the city?”

  “I’m not sure that will be appropriate.”

  He was so buttoned up. It turned me on I cannot lie. “Joe…”

  “Joseph.”

  “Joseph,” I corrected. “It’ll be fine. She’s sound asleep five feet from where we’ll be. I promise not to ravage you. This time.” I gave him a randy wink which made his cheeks pinken.

  He sized me up, mentally running over something before nodding softly. I grabbed two diet colas from the small fridge then pushed the sliding door open. All that fine Dallas heat slapped me in the face when I walked out onto the tiny slab of cement. We sat on the balcony as there were no chairs out here, leaving the door cracked so we could hear Madeline when she woke up.

  “So, tell me about being a planetary scientist first, then I’ll fill you in on hockey,” I said, stretching out my legs and crossing them at the ankle. “Being a musician kind of explains itself.”

  “Okay, well, planetary science is the study of planets, moons, and systems.” He took a swig of his soda.

  I watched his throat work as he swallowed. He’d certainly grown way more attractive over the past two days. Not only was he Mr. Science Dork Sexy but he was really nice and utterly devoted to Madeline. Seeing him fuss over my daughter was incredibly sexy.

  Woah, where did that thought come from? Joseph is her nanny and Maddie is my priority.

  “I’m close to graduating though, and hope, when I’ve done a ton more studying past just a bachelor’s degree, to someday secure a position in either the astronomy or physics department at the University of Arizona.”

  “Right in Tucson, nice.” He nodded. “You’ll love my grandmother. She’s all into the stars too. Like she can tell you your sign just by how you answer a couple of questions.”

  He looked at me in horror. “You know that astronomy and astrology are two vastly different things.”

  “Yeah, sure, I knew that.”

  He shot me a sideways glance then did this funny thing where he sucked his lower lip in and nipped at it. I’d caught him doing it several times, when he was deep in thought, and each time I saw it I nearly reached over to thumb his lip and free it.

  Well, shit.

  “That sounded snooty. I’m sorry. Natalie tells me I get that superior tone a lot.”

  “Nah, it’s cool. No offense taken. I kind of did a slow curl through college, surfing along on my hockey skills while working on a music composition degree.”

  “Ah a jock music major.”

  “I hear the sneer in there. Your girlfriend Natalie is right.”

  He choked on his sip of cola. “No, Natalie is my sister. Did you not see the full background check that Simon ran?”

  “No, just that you passed his checks, but he said that you live with her and her daughter, correct?”

  “Right. Emma is my niece. She’s five.” He smiled in a loving way that spoke of how much he cared for his family.

  “So, tell me about space. Is it truly the final frontier?”

  His laughter startled me. “You’re the oddest person ever.”

  I bowed, leaning forward, letting my brow touch my kneecaps. When I sat up Joe’s pretty eyes were wide.

  “Goalies are limber,” I informed him with a salacious wink that made his cheeks flush deep pink. A sight that looked hella good on him.

  “Yeah, I see that. So, uhm…”

  “Space. We were talking about heavenly bodies.”

  His gaze flickered over me as he fumbled around some doofy explanation about supernovas and why they were hard to see here in our Milky Way galaxy because of space dust. I was content to let him ramble on as the sun set. Odd as it may have seemed I’d never felt more settled than I did sitting on a slab of concrete with a big nerd at my side and my daughter making soft cooing noises as she woke. I could get used to this…

  The following morning I woke with a smile on my face despite the alarm on my phone chiming at six a.m. sharp. Rolling to my side, I studied the door that separated my suite from Joe’s. Last night had been something special. Joe was… well, he was incredibly uptight and fact-based, which I found cute as hell while being somewhat irritating. Most of the people I hung out with were more free-spirited. My summers with the Furballs were spent roaming up and down the West Coast engaging in what I imagined Joe would term hedonistic pursuits. My winters with the Raptors, while not as overtly decadent, also included a lot of sex. Not rock star levels of debauchery but there was a lot of sexual energy. Hockey players acted on their urges. They might’ve looked all clean-cut, but when a team rolled into a city and picked a bar, there was fucking afoot.

  So yeah, I lived among the sexually liberated. I had been raised to enjoy that side of myself. Alchemy felt that sexuality was a good thing, something to be celebrated and enjoyed whenever the urge struck. I got that urge a lot. And I usually acted on it. There was never a lack of willing partners. I did my best to be safe. I took PrEp daily and used condoms. Sure, that little girl in the room next door may have suggested that I failed to boot up as often as I should have. Given my faulty condom use, it was a wonder that Maddie Boo was the first kid to arrive on my doorstep.

  Yeah, I know. “But what about diseases!” Well, true, there are some nasties out there, but until the last year or so I’d not given it much thought. I guess I thought I was bulletproof. That’s the curse and joy of youth, right?

  Thinking of her, and Joe, made me itchy to see them, so I rolled out of bed, bent to touch my toes, pulled on a bright yellow robe with green mango slices, and slid into the adjoining suite. I paused at the sound of someone singing softly and the smell of fresh lime on the air. Grinning like a fool, I snuck over to the playpen. Maddie was sleeping, her little lips sucking air, her cheeks round and pink. I bent down to touch her hair. It was soft as puppy fur. When Joe hit a high note in the worst cover of “She Blinded Me With Science” I’d ever heard, I sniggered then tiptoed to the bathroom door, intent on flinging it open then joining in on the chorus just to watch him freak out. I found the door cracked, obviously so he could hear Madeline if she fussed. And that was where my plan to jam with the manny fell apart.

  Joe stood behind a glass shower door, the steam doing little to shield his naked body from my sight. His truly horrendous singing voice became white noise, like the sound of the water beating down on his lean body and the thumping of my heart in my ears. Damn, the man was fine. Lean, yes, perhaps even a little on the skinny side. He lacked the massive thighs and bubble ass of my fellow hockey players, but then again, he was a scientist, not a jock. His legs were long, his waist trim, and his shoulders wide enough to make that nice masculine V-shape. I pushed the door open just a bit more to clear the clouds of steam out, hoping to get a better look. My cock sprang back to life, hardening as my gaze latched onto his tight little ass. Fuck, but I loved a man with a little ass. He was lost in his shampooing, his butt cheeks scrubbing the shower door, wiping the steam away to show me two pert dimpled orbs. Oh fuck, the things I could do to and with an ass like that. I could spread those cheeks wide and bury my face between them, tease his puckered hole with my tongue until he dropped that repressed science dude persona and begged me to fuck him. Yeah, I bet once that man let go he was a wild one in bed. Biting and scratching, clawing at my back as I eased my dick into him inch by inch…

  He needed to turn around. To show me his cock and balls and add a little more fuel t
o the fire that was already snapping in my veins.

  I was so intent on his trying to get a view of his dick that when the water slowed then stopped, it didn’t register at first. The sound of the shower door rolling open snapped me out of my sexual stupor. I shot back to my room like a kid caught peeping at the neighbor’s teenage daughter.

  Back to the door of my suite, heart hammering in my chest, dick stiff as a fire poker, I sniggered nervously, jazzed at the rush of nearly being caught. Then the misty image of Joe behind that foggy glass rose up. Shit, but he was a sexy, compact package. Smaller than me but nicely made. Knowing it was all kinds of wrong, I nonetheless let my hand skim down over my chest. My dick jumped when I took it in hand. With a soft grunt I pressed my thumbnail into the slit. A droplet of pre-cum beaded. Eyes now slipping shut, I brought that tiny bead to my tongue and lapped it clean. What would Joe taste like? Salty? Bitter? I sucked on my thumb as I stroked my dick, my orgasm hitting me so quickly I barely had time to gather a handful of robe and shove it into my mouth. I shot all over my palm, hot, thick ropes of cum that seeped between my fingers then dripped to the floor. My lungs were working serious OT as I fucked my hand like a maniac, a hot, wispy vision of Joe lying under me as I pounded him into an elliptical orbit or whatever the shit he had been going on about last night.

  After my cock stopped pulsing, I spit out my robe and gazed down on the mess I’d made of myself.

  “Well, this is a new jam, Penn.” I sighed then padded into the bathroom to shower off the evidence of my lust for my Manny.

  “… see Mike Millerbeck going on about Boston?”

  “Oh yeah, he’s a dick. Like how can they plug up a hole the size of Brady Rowe? You lose your captain, you lose the heart and soul of your team.”

  Vlad clutched his chest. “I am touched to know that you all love me so deeply.”

  “Ryker, any word on your uncle?” Alex asked.

  Two conversations crossed each other. “Yeah, we love you like we love herpes, Vlad,” Alex pointed out.

  “He’s not my uncle, Henry, he’s… well, maybe he is my uncle?” Ryker was so confused.

  “He’s your father’s brother. Oh, hold on, I got to take this call. It’s Sebastian.” Alex stepped to one side to take the call, but Ryker kept on pondering.

  “Tennant’s not my father, Alex, he’s my stepfather so Brady is like… my step-uncle? Is that even a thing? Colorado! Heads up!”

  A soccer ball slapped me in the forehead with enough force to jolt the odd fizzing I-Have-A-New-Crush feeling out of my brain. The small group of Raptors gathered in the hallway outside our dressing room all stared at me. I cried out and did a death drop that any drag queen would be proud of. They all started laughing.

  “Okay, enough theatrics. Are we playing soccer or are we auditioning for RuPaul’s Drag Race?” Vlad asked.

  I sat up. Russians were always so serious about shit.

  “I’d date RuPaul,” Henry said after he fetched the ball and returned with it.

  “Yeah, we know you like glitzy guys,” Ryker teased, knocking the ball out of Henry’s grip then kicking it to Alex. Henry blushed rose-red but didn’t deny it. Vlad eyeballed me as I sat there on the floor with my legs in a lotus. “I prefer farm boys.”

  Everyone made farm animal sounds. Ryker whipped the ball at Alex and the soccer game morphed into this wild game of dodge ball. I rolled to the left to avoid being cracked with the ball yet again after clucking like a chicken. Alex dove behind a passing equipment manager, mooing all the way. Vlad, being Vlad, rolled his eyes and padded off to go find Tate who was conspicuously absent from our little bonding moment. Scrabbling down the hall on hands and knees, I slid into a bathroom, got to my feet, and turned around to find two women gaping at me. Both were about twenty, dressed in short shorts and crop tops in the Dallas colors. One was blonde, one a redhead, and both reacted the same way when they spied me. Long thick lashes lowered and they sighed suggestively.

  “Sorry, ladies,” I said as I got to my feet and tossed my hair from my face. “Irate teammate with a soccer ball of death.”

  Both cheerleaders giggled. “I hope you’re not hurt. It would be a pity to have a face like yours bruised up by a stupid soccer ball,” Redhead with Big Jugs cooed.

  “Yeah, you have such a pretty face,” Blonde with Big Jugs whispered.

  Okay, so yeah, this was a nice development. Two hours until game time, two clearly-into-me cheerleaders, one stall. Yep. Getting a hot piece in a bathroom would scour away the seedy attraction to my manny. Right?

  “Maybe we should hide in that stall? Just in case?” I offered with all kinds of chivalrous decorum.

  They both nodded. The door flew open and Ryker barreled into the ladies room with a bloody soccer ball and a roar. The cheerleaders screamed and ran out. I ducked into the stall, laughing madly. The ball ricocheted off the ceiling into the stall, splashing down in the toilet.

  “Well fuck,” I heard Madsen grumble. I fished it out, threw the door open, and threw it at his face. The impact was quite satisfying if I dared to say so myself.

  “You asshole,” Ryker spat, toilet water sprayed over his handsome face. A short battle broke out over possession of the black and white ball until Vlad stormed in, wrested the ball from us, called us immature something cows in Russian, and stalked off to be sullen and stoic with Tate, wherever he was hiding. “He’s in a mood.”

  We padded to the sink to wash the toilet water off our hands and his face. When I tried to help with the soap, Ryker swatted my hands away.

  “Yeah, Tate’s stressing being back in Dallas or something,” I said as I gathered up a handful of foam and splatted it to my hair. “Thanks for scaring those two cheerleaders off with your maniacal Braveheart slash Wilson the Bloody Ball entrance. Dick.”

  “Hashtag sorry not sorry.” Ryker grinned as he toweled off his hands.

  “Two hot chicks in a stall would have eased my troubled mind,” I mumbled while working my now soapy hair up into a Mohawk. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Yes, the bloody handprint on the ball was real blood. Alex ran into a doorjamb.”

  I snorted. “Loser.” Ryker sniggered then lobbed his ball of wet paper towels into the trash. “No, I was going to ask, when you met Jacob did you know right off that he was someone special?”

  His gaze moved from the trash to me. “We didn’t get along well at the beginning. But even so there was this intangible thing between us. I always thought he was hot but there were some big issues we had to work out.”

  “So say like if he had worked for you in some domestic capacity…” I focused on my soapy hawk.

  “C, are you crushing on your manny?” Ryker enquired.

  I shrugged. Ryker snorted loudly. “Define ‘crushing.’ If crushing means you jerk off to wondering what his spunk tastes like then yeah, I’m crushing.”

  “Dude! No, I just… stop. That is far too much information.” I chuckled then flattened down my hair to start anew. Ryker walked up beside me. We were of similar heights and weights. He was much more of a dreamy young TV star though. I was hard-ass rocker goalie weirdness. “Is Joe into guys?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Well, you might want to find out. Could make a difference in how things go.”

  Some older woman in a dark tracksuit and a lanyard slammed into the bathroom. “Get out now, you disgusting perverts!” she snarled and pointed at the door. Ah, the cheerleader mom or whatever they were called. The Raptors didn’t have cheerleaders. We should’ve, though. Guys and girls in tight shorts and skimpy tops skipping around the barn would’ve been fun.

  We slunk past her like a couple of whipped dogs, smirks well-hidden until we were clear of the bathroom door. Then we hightailed back to our dressing room, Wilson tucked under Ryker’s arm and my mind packed full of Joe thoughts that really needed thinking. But that would have to be later. Right now, I was expected on the ice and I had to be one hundred percent hockey.

  Eight
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br />   Joseph

  When Colorado asked me to stand by the glass, holding his tiny daughter, just for luck, I made a pointed comment about the physics of skating. But, I didn’t embellish the comment by elaborating on the implausible notion of luck. In fact, I was proud of the new me who didn’t even mention that a small baby barely exerted any pull on local objects, let alone through whatever the glass was made of. Apparently, Maddie was Colorado’s good luck charm, and he had to do a complicated fist-bump-spin-splits-bend thing in front of her to make that luck work.

  As he finished the good luck thing, I got an up-close look at Colorado the professional goalie. To be honest, the only thing I could see was his head, the rest was covered in pads and uniform, a combination of red and gold, with the bird on the front which I thought was a raptor.

  What breed of raptor it was I couldn’t tell, but it was definitely supposed to be some kind of bird, with its talons improbably holding a non-proportionally-sized hockey stick. It looked kind of fierce, and to be honest, so did Colorado. He was fixed and focused and as soon as he blew Maddie a kiss, he was gone, heading around his half of the ice and only moved when she woke up startled as a puck hit the glass right by us and the crash of it was startling and loud. I didn’t see who had hit so close but I did see Colorado belt up the ice to a fellow player in gold and red and sit on them, so I guess that was what goalie-dads did best.

  “We should go now,” Simon suggested, and stepped back to clear anyone behind me.

  It seemed as if when he wasn’t watching Colorado to stop him messing up, he’d taken to watching out for me and Colorado’s precious baby. Maddie was restless, and I got the sense she was about to lose her cool, so I covered her ears and rocked her as we took the team elevator up to the box. I should’ve sung her a lullaby or something, but in the end I decided to do what I did for Emma. Sometimes it wasn’t music, it could have been physics, with the right cadence in my voice, and right now it was Newton’s third law. “So, Maddie, whenever one object exerts a force on a second object, the second exerts an equal and opposite force on the first. This explains why players push their skates backwards in order for the ice to push them forward.”