Harrisburg Railers Box Set 1

by R J Scott

  Brady cleared his throat. “Both of his brothers are very happy not only that Ten is following his heart and is the bravest, and now happiest, person we know, but also that he’s the third best player in the NHL.”

  The journalists laughed and some took photos of Brady with his hands at his sides, his Boston logo front and center.

  As soon as the chuckling died down, someone jumped in with another question.

  “There are no protocols for an out player in the NHL. Ten, how do you think the league will react?” asked the writer for SportsWide, a pushy young guy who always got way too close to the players in post-game interviews. I’d identified him as an issue, and I could see Ten’s expression changing subtly.

  “I hope the league will stand by their push for inclusivity and will support our honesty,” Ten said.

  Clearly that wasn’t enough.

  “How will they stop fans wanting you off the team?” Idiot Writer persisted.

  “They can try,” Felix muttered under his breath. The journalists closest to the owner of the team all looked at him pointedly. He stood up, right there and then, and gave an impromptu speech that had me going hot with worry. “I have spoken to the league, to the owners of the teams in both conferences; this is an issue that will have the entire league’s full support.”

  “So you’re saying it is an issue?” the moron asked.

  Where was Stan when you needed him to carry someone out of a room?

  Felix wasn’t cowed. He looked at the journalist pointedly. “As far as the league is concerned, a person’s sexual preference is a non-issue.”

  Well, that shut him down. Of course it was an issue—no one in their right mind would assume every fan would embrace this change, or would willingly support a team that had a gay player. Not one person here was naive, but those simple words were enough to change the mood in the room from possibly confrontational if they followed the thought process of that reporter, to supportive.

  The questions flew, and with every answer the mood lightened even more. This was a happy occasion, positive, and Ten and Jared, when they left, were both smiling hard.

  And through it all, Adler had his hand on my back, and I reveled in the heat of him.

  I was on a high—the presser had gone well, the soundbites would be amazing, the photos good, and I knew I would be fielding requests for interviews with Jared and Ten now.

  My role was far from over, but I could relax slightly.

  So that was why I moved back a step until I was closer to Adler, and how, after the room emptied and it was just me and him still there, I knew what I really wanted. Post interviews could wait.

  I wanted Adler. Right the hell now.

  Ten

  Adler

  I turned to look at Layton, thinking that maybe I’d toss out something glib about more coffee and see if he’d actually-maybe-possibly go with me for a real coffee. Hell, maybe I could sweet-talk him into saying it was a date. He’d been receptive to my touches during the presser. If I was lucky, I might be able to sneak in another kiss. Talk about something my taste buds would enjoy. I bet he tasted fantastic. A sexy combination of man and coffee beans…

  He leaned in a bit, his chest lightly brushing mine. My breath hitched as his cologne and the feel of his lean, hard body mingled. His gaze darted from my mouth to the two doors leading out of the press room. My focus was wholly on Layton, because holy shit he was sending out vibes that my cock was receiving loud and clear.

  He wet his lips, a nervous habit that turned me right on. A group of loud males walked past the door to our left. A bit of the fire in those pewter depths disappeared.

  “Can I talk to you in my office?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I followed him, trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. It must have been something. Why else would he want to see me alone? Shit. Had my mouth engaged without me knowing it? We rounded a corner, my longer legs pushing to keep up with Layton’s hurried pace. Dammit. I must have really hosed something up. That look I thought was desire must have been anger.

  “Lockhart, you knuckle-dragging hoser,” Brady Rowe shouted when he spied us coming. He’d been talking with a small group of Railers. Layton skidded to a stop in front of me. I walked up to stand at his side. He was unreadable now.

  “Rowe.” I slapped my hand into Brady’s. He was a big guy, like me, and one hell of a defenseman. “How go things in Bean Town?”

  “I can’t complain. I was shocked to read you’d been traded.” He gave Layton a polite nod of the head.

  “Such is life in the salary cap era. It’s their loss. I’m enjoying things here. You meet Layton Foxx yet? He’s the Railers social media troubleshooting guru. He was the one that set this whole press thing up.”

  I peeked at Layton as I spoke to Brady. He looked uncertain trapped between two hulking hockey players. Not the first time I’d seen his discomfort. Why was the man so skittish? It worried me to see reserve on his handsome face. I wanted to see him only smiling. I’d work on that.

  “Ten speaks highly of you, Layton.” Brady shoved his big mitt at Layton, who grabbed it and gave it a quick shake, then released it. Yeah, the man was really looking hemmed in. That concerned me for reasons I didn’t dare to explore right now.

  “I noticed that you and Baby Brother are starting to click on ice.” Brady folded his arms over that big old Boston emblem he so proudly wore.

  “Ten is an amazing center. Great eyes and soft hands. Reads a play five seconds before the other losers on the ice do.”

  “Which means you’re always scrambling to catch up,” he teased.

  “Not unlike you. Defenseman are known to be a little slow, you know, up here.” I tapped my temple.

  “Speaking of slow, did you see that shit blowing up about Greg Davies down in the ECHL?”

  “Dude, that man has issues. When he played in Columbus with me for that year, he was always wheeling chicks that I thought looked way too young to be—”

  “Wait,” Layton slid into the hockey talk. “This man ran over a woman with a wheel?”

  Brady and I laughed. “Nah, wheeling means trying to pick up chicks,” Brady explained.

  “Hockey has a language all its own,” Layton said, then pulled out his iPad to type something into it.

  “Yeah, it does. So, look, I have a couple of hours before I have to head back to Boston. Want to meet up with me, Ten and Jared for some lunch? I guess a lot of the Railers are going too.”

  Hooking up with the guys and Brady sounded good. Much better than getting chewed out for some stupid social media gaffe I hadn’t even been aware of making. But Layton looked set.

  “Give me thirty minutes.”

  “Cool. We’ll be hanging around talking to the press and shit. Layton, nice to meet you.” Brady smiled, then went off to do his “I’m a Proud Brother of a Gay Man” thing.

  Layton took off at a clip that I had to jog to match. He blew into his little office. I stepped in after him feeling like a dog about to get whipped for stealing a pork chop from a plate left on the floor. I mean, whatever I’d said, he should know better than to give me access to a pork chop. I was making no sense now. How had I got from Layton to pig meat? I needed to reel my rambling thoughts back in.

  “You okay with me closing the door?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  I gave it a soft nudge, and it slowly drifted shut. “Okay, so here’s the thing,” I opened, “whatever it is that I did or said, I will apologize for it. Just write up some Tweets or something and I’ll send them right out.”

  He made a lap around his desk, his eyes flickering from me to the door. “Lock that.”

  “Huh?”

  “Lock the door.” He stood behind his desk, smoky eyes afire. Christ. I must have really screwed the pooch. Damn pork chops.

  Adler, dude, enough with the dogs and chops already.

  I did as he’d asked. He walked around his desk, his gaze locked with mine, came right at me, grabbed my he
ad with both hands, and pulled my mouth to his. The instant my lips settled on his, something shifted. The Earth’s tectonic plates slid dangerously. The planet listed to the left, then came back. Layton tongued the seam of my mouth, his fingers firm on my skull. Right then I knew that whatever was happening at the core of the Earth would engulf us both. I grabbed him and slung him against the door, ravenous for more of him.

  He grunted at the impact. The huff of moist breath over my face only fanned the fire. I slapped my hands against the door, his dark head resting on the wood as my fingers spread and I leaned in to him. My gaze was with his. A flare of something that had nothing to do with magma, earthquakes or lust overtook the passion in his gaze.

  He was scared. Of me. Of being cornered or crowded. Okay, right. That was why he’d looked like a rabbit cornered by a couple of hounds when Brady and I had had him boxed in.

  I shifted myself to the side a bit, let my hands drop, lowered myself a few inches to get us on the same eye level, and nipped gently at his lower lip. I rolled my hips to hopefully entice him back into the moment.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  I sucked on that lush lip of his, nothing touching him but my cock as it bumped over his hip bone. We both sucked in a short breath. I felt one hand settle on my side, then the other, as I toyed with his open mouth and rubbed against him.

  “You make me wild,” I confessed when his fingertips slid under my jacket. I pressed my fingers into fists to keep from being grabby.

  “Same here,” he replied, then yanked the back of my dress shirt free from my pants.

  His hands slipped under the cotton fabric, his fingers bouncing off each rib. A rumble rolled from me. I covered his mouth with mine, probed as deeply as I could, eager for him to respond. He did, and it was glorious. His tongue stroked mine, inciting me to a frenzy. I pulled away from the kiss. He chased it, his grip on my ribs tightening. I let him catch my lips. He purred lightly when I lapped at his open mouth. Seemed he liked that, so I kept doing it, tonguing his lips and the corner of his mouth as he licked at my rapidly moving tongue.

  “God, Adler,” he moaned.

  Something inside my brain broke hearing him hotly calling my name. I kissed him hard, my teeth skimming his. He grew a bit wild after that kiss. He shoved me and I instantly backed off. I didn’t want to see anything but white-hot lust in those beautiful eyes of his.

  “I’m sorry,” I huffed. He shook his head, and then went to his knees, tugging at me to turn me. My shoulder blades kissed the locked door. “Shit, shit, shit,” I growled when my fly was opened and my cock freed in one smooth-as-hell move.

  Looking down. Nope. Should not have done that, but I had. Seeing him on his knees, his steely eyes heavy lidded as he took me into his mouth, almost did me in.

  “Slow, Layton, please.”

  He bobbed his head but did not go slow. He sucked me hard and fast, using that tongue of his in ways that had me gasping and whimpering his name within seconds. God, he was good. So good…

  “Layton… shit!”

  I kept my eyes on him as I came. I dug my fingernails into the doorframe. He pulled me over the edge faster than any man ever had. He grabbed the silver-blue handkerchief from his breast pocket and spat into it, his gaze averted.

  “You okay?” I asked between shudders and pants. He nodded, then got to one knee and pushed to his feet. He seemed uneasy now, his handkerchief wadded in his hand.

  “I’m sorry… about this.” He waved the handkerchief around.

  “Dude, you’re not the only man who doesn’t swallow,” I replied as I straightened back up to my normal height. He threw me a look that screamed that he thought I was placating him. “Seriously. Shit, I don’t always, not all the time. It’s fine.”

  I reached out to touch his cheek. He drew back a bit, then stepped closer, his eyes roaming over my face.

  “Think I can do the same for you?” I cupped his cheek, then ran my thumb over his bottom lip. Man, his mouth was a work of art.

  He looked like he was about to agree, and I was desperate to get my hands on him.

  A knock on the door and an accompanying, heavily accented “Layton?” from Stan was enough to shake us free of the cloud of arousal that hung around us.

  “Give me a moment,” Layton called back.

  “Lunch,” Stan added.

  “I brought my own,” Layton said, all the while staring right at me. What was it with Stan? He seemed to be way too interested in what Layton was eating.

  A very distinct sentence in Russian—saying what, who knew?—and then everything was quiet.

  I looked at Layton with my most hopeful expression, but he shook his head. The moment was gone.

  “You sure? I mean, you obviously need some relief, and I would love to get you into my mouth, among other things.”

  “No, no, not now. Later, maybe. Okay?”

  “Sure, yeah, whenever you’re okay for it.” We were back to anxious Layton and sorely confused Alder status, which sucked. “Maybe we can go meet the guys?”

  Oh-kay. That look was a for-sure no.

  “Coffee, then? You and me? You do owe me a klatch.”

  “I have to watch social media, the phones…”

  “You can take an hour; bring your phone.”

  He fumbled around for a reply. “I have to, uh… do something with this before we go.” He lifted the hand holding the dirty handkerchief. No shit, I nearly jumped for joy just hearing him say he’d have coffee with me.

  “Give it here.” I opened my hand. Eyebrows knotted, he dropped the dirty square into my palm. I crammed it into my pocket, then reached around him. “Here, let me fix you up.”

  He watched as I opened the box and took out the perfectly folded handkerchief with the rainbow edging. I stepped close, eyes holding his, and slid the silky gift into his pocket.

  “Now you look all sorts of hot.” I plucked at the hankie, adjusting it a bit. He stole a kiss. It was nothing like the others we had shared, but it was just as powerful.

  “Thanks for not being put off,” he said.

  “Thanks for finally taking my gift.”

  I let him step in to me. He began tucking my shirt back into place, his gaze flitting to touch mine several times as he worked on getting me presentable. Seemed that was his lot in life. Making Adler Lockhart presentable to the world. Lucky me.

  “I’m, ah… what happened with us? I’m not sure about anything right now,” he murmured as he tucked.

  “I am. I’m sure we’re going to get some coffee and celebrate you rocking the shit out of that presser. We might even get wild and have a muffin with our coffee.” I gave him a wink, and he smiled. Pretty much right then I knew I’d fallen for him. When a man’s little shy smile makes you feel like you lassoed the sun? You’re already in freefall.

  I drove us to this tiny little coffee shop about ten blocks from the barn. There were no hockey players in sight. Layton seemed okay with the place, although I felt cramped. It was tiny and trendy with little tables and retro seats that I knew would not hold my gigantic self.

  “Are you going to sit down?” Layton asked as I stood balancing my coffee and a blueberry muffin.

  “You think that spindly chair will hold me?”

  He appraised it while cutting his muffin into four neat quarters. “It should. Things that look weak are sometimes stronger than you think.”

  “Wow, that was deep,” I murmured, and cautiously lowered my weight downward. “Was that about chairs or you?”

  He lifted his gaze from muffin-readying to me. “Both, maybe,” he admitted.

  “That’s cool. So, here’s the thing, okay. I like you. And I think you like me.”

  “Maybe.”

  I chuckled at his aloof reply. “That wild blowjob in your office suggests that you find me somewhat adorable.”

  “You’re like an Irish setter,” he blurted out, then returned to fussing over his muffin.

  “You mean I’m bouncy, beautifully ging
er, and I tend to bark before I think?” He gave me a coy smile, and what do you know, there was the sun again, shining into my soul. I was so done for. “Okay, I accept that. You always cut your muffin?”

  “It’s easier to keep under control that way.”

  He shook out a paper napkin with the coffee shop logo on it and placed it on his lap. I peeled the paper off my muffin and shoved the whole thing into my mouth. His eyes grew as round as the plate his quartered muffin sat on.

  “This is how I control things,” I managed to say around all the muffin.

  He shook his head, then picked up one slice of his cranberry muffin. “That explains a lot,” he said dryly, then nibbled on the edge of his muffin. It took me four tries to swallow. When I was able to breathe, I washed the glob of dough down with some really good coffee.

  “Okay, so back to the thing,” I said. “I like you and you like me. No, don’t quibble. I’m still wobbly from the oral sex you perpetrated upon me.”

  He might have blushed just a little. A couple of women walked past us, chattering about kids. They sat down by the window. We’d chosen a more secluded spot by the counter. Layton had asked me to take the seat by the wall. He was checking his phone, his expression changing from smiling to angry and back again as quick as you could say internet idiots.

  “I think we should date,” I told him.

  “You’re not out,” he keenly pointed out, placed his cell on the table, then took a tiny bite of muffin. “And even if you were, I’m not sure we should see each other. It’s not professional.”

  “Okay, yeah, I’m not out, but I could be. I could reach over this table, grab you by the scruff of the neck, and kiss you right here in front of everyone walking up and down Susquehanna Street. Then I’d be out and that would be that.”

  “And I’d be left handling a situation that could be blown up into all the players on the Railers team turning gay overnight.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You know it’s true. And there would still be the fact that I work for the Railers management and you’re a player.”