Page 14 of Puck Shots (Love The Game #6)

Eli

C osmo invited me to hang out with his hockey friends again and I didn’t hesitate this time.

Partly because I know what to expect now, and partly because, after the last time, I looked up ice hockey online and now have a general understanding of the rules.

More than that, though, after watching them on the ice, I can totally see how I could apply hockey to my final physics project of the year.

If Cosmo and his friends don’t mind being my guinea pigs, I could video them doing their plays and tricks on the ice, then analyze the tapes, and make suggestions based on the physics of their movements to improve the trick or action in some way.

It’s a lot of work and it rests entirely on getting them to agree to help me, but it could be mutually beneficial; they would basically have a free movement coach.

I think that’s what they are called. I don’t really care what the job might be, it’s the first project I thought of that I’m actually excited about.

Everything else was just more of the same stuff I already know. This is something new for me, too.

“So I would need to get some close-up video of you performing the moves, and then after analyzing the movements of what you are trying to do versus what you are doing, I can come back with the suggested adjustments to the moves you make so that you nail the play…or whatever.”

Luka, Micky, and Chang sit across from me, their gazes blinking between Cosmo and I and back. I turn to Cosmo.

“Did I use too much science talk. You know what I am suggesting, don’t you?” I ask as he leans back in the booth and crosses his arms over his chest with a satisfied grin.

“See, boys, I told you he’s going to make us the kings of the ice this year.”

“We’re in,” they each say, and I can hardly believe it.

“There is just one problem,” I say as my cheeks grow warm.

“What?” Luka asks.

“I don’t know how to skate.”

Cosmo puts his hand on my shoulder, sending electricity coursing through my body.

“You will soon.”

***

“I told you the guys would be up for it,” Cosmo says later as we’re walking back to the house.

We’ve started taking the long way without even thinking.

This way, the path wraps behind Greek row on our house side and follows along the edge of the woods.

The woods I find myself taking walks in less and less the more time I spend with Cosmo.

“It’s a bit cold out tonight,” he says, and I wrap my arms around myself.

“Yeah, I should have worn a jacket like you,” I reply, and then he starts stripping off his jacket,

“Here, you can wear mine.”

“Then you’ll be cold.”

“Okay, we can share it then,” he says, stepping so close our sides touch as he wraps the coat around my back.

The warmth of him fills me like a hug, and I reach up to hold it at the shoulder so he can lower his arm, but when he does, it rests against mine and it’s like the static in the air between our hands is teasing me to turn my palm out to take his hand in mine.

I can’t, though, because this is not a date and he is not my boyfriend and this is a purely platonic walk by the woods.

I can’t mess this friendship up. The only reason I have any chance of making it through pledge-a-palooza, as they call it in the Kappa Omicron Kappa house, is because of Cosmo.

Being in this house, having a place I can belong, people I can call friends for the next four years, hell, maybe for life, is too important to go blowing my chances over what’s probably some silly crush.

He’s the first and only guy who’s even remotely seemed interested, but he’s probably just being nice. I’m a favor for his brother after all.

That reminder helps to settle my nerves, and I shove the hand between us into my pocket.

“It was a clever idea of the university to install these solar lights through the tree line. It illuminates them so well, no one could be jumping out of the woods to kidnap us without us seeing them first.”

“You think about people trying to kidnap you often?” he asks with a chuckle, and I love the way it sounds, like the sound of wind chimes, light and happy and full of joy.

“Only when I’m walking by a wooded area, or along a deserted road, or sometimes when I’m walking along the beach, if it’s a cloudy day and I’m by the dunes, you know, not where all the people are swimming.”

“Well, rest assured, I’ll protect you from any would-be kidnappers.”

“You would?” I ask, turning my head to face him. Dumb idea because now my eyes are locked on his bright blue-gray stare, and I spot several tiny golden flecks that seem to glisten in the moonlight like glitter.

“Of course. We’re friends,” he says, and the cold hits hard and fast, and I turn my gaze back to the path ahead.

“Sure, friends. I’d totally protect you, too,” I say, picking up my pace a little and he has to quicken his step to keep up. “I think you could do a lot more damage to a would-be kidnapper with your hockey skates than I could with a book and video camera, so maybe you should walk on the inside?”

He nudges me gently with his elbow.

“Books are heavy.”

“True, the physics one for this semester is as thick as my arm.”

“You’ve read it already, though, haven’t you?”

“Maybe.”

In truth, I read it before I even arrived, and it was one of the heavy bricks of a book I brought with me, too.

My personal version has all my notes scribed in the margins, along with tiny diagrams and ideas for folded fidgets.

That’s what I call the little things I fold out of drink bottle labels I pull off.

I started tearing them off as a way to channel my nervous energy, and one day, I was just folding the label over and over again, and then when I looked down, it sort of looked like a penguin.

After that, I actually tried to make something with it.

I’m not as nervous as I used to be but there are more than a few of my little fidgets hiding around the house.

I added one to the lacrosse net after Cosmo filled it with butterflies.

A butterfly was actually one of the first things I taught myself to fold, so it was quick, and I don’t think anyone noticed.

So I guess I wasn’t really just taking the heat for him with Sam, seeing as I technically participated, too. The memory brings a smile to my lips.

“Do you think your physics project can help me be faster?” he asks, voice softer, unsure maybe. Is he worried?

“Maybe. I mean, you’re already pretty fast. Much faster and you’ll break the sound barrier.”

He won’t, like it would be impossible to skate that fast, unless you were like tied to a nuclear-powered rocket maybe, but then you would be all dead from the pressure of it and, well, you see how my brain works when it gets going. Super fun science geek, right?

“I guess, but I need to be more than fast out there if I’m going to get drafted.”

“And that’s what you want?”

“That’s what every hockey player wants. Fuck, to play in the NHL is my dream, but it’s also…” he trails off, and I don’t speak, allowing him the silence to find his own words. “It’s a lot of pressure, too, you know?”

“I bet it is.”

“It’s like that’s all I am to them sometimes. Here comes The Flash, fastest guy on the ice. Like that’s all I can be. Maybe they’re right. I mean, why would they be impressed by anything else? You know what? Just once, I’d like to be the smart one.”

The shield of his bravado has slipped, and he’s more real in this moment than in any other I’ve spent with him. He’s put so much pressure on himself.

“You don’t have to be impressive to be worth knowing, Cos,” I say, and the second the shortened name is out of my mouth, I regret it. Who am I to give him a nickname? He has a nickname.

“You sure about that, E?” His lips are quirked up on one side in that cheeky fucking grin again, and it’s nice to see the joy returning to his eyes.

“Positive. You haven’t impressed me once and I like you.” I laugh.

He stops, and I’m pulled back a little by the jacket. He turns to me deadpan.

“Jerk.”

I shrug. “I’m just keeping it realistic.”

“Real.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No, the saying is keeping it real.”

“Oops, I guess there goes my last hope of impressing you then?” I reply with my cheeks burning under his stare.

“You impress me all the time.”

“Really?” I ask, my chest full, like it’s been blown up like a balloon to the point it just might burst if he says one more thing like that to me.

“You’re like the smartest person I’ve ever met, plus you’re kind. You sat through that whole dinner pretending to be interested in every story the guys told about a sport you don’t even watch.”

“I had fun,” I say, my glasses slipping down my nose a little. Before I can reach up with my free hand, he swaps his grip on his jacket and pushes them up slowly with his index finger.

“There, that’s better,” he says before his tongue peeks out and swipes over his lower lip.

Is he flirting? Is this what flirting looks like?

I’ve never been flirted with, but I’m about thirty percent sure this might be flirting.

What should I do? He’s still looking at me, those piercing blue-gray eyes locked on mine, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth.

If he was flirting and was going to kiss me, he’d have done it by now, right? Fuck.

“So,” he says, sucking in a breath and turning forward. We start walking again. “Dinner didn’t scare you off trying your program?”

“Not in the slightest. If anything, I think I have a way better understanding of the game now, and after I watch you a few more times and take some clear video, I’m sure I will pick it up.”

“I’m sure you will. I’m sure you can do anything you put your mind to.”

Except kiss him. I had that on my mind multiple times tonight and not once did I try to actually kiss him. Urgh, why am I such a dork?

We walk the rest of the way home in silence, and when we reach the back door, he heads upstairs to his attic, but not before looping past Reginals Ducksworth, the old portrait hanging just inside the doorway, to give him a curt nod like he does every time he walks inside the frat house.

I return to my air bed in the rec room with the other pledges, wishing I was following him up the stairs, too. And then as I drift off to sleep, I’m welcomed by the vision in my mind, picking right up where he and I left off.

We’re back outside, near the back door, and he lets the coat fall from his shoulders and wraps it better around me.

“There, that’s more like it. You should wear it to bed, then you can spend the day smelling of me. That should keep the other guys away.”

“Why would you want to do that?” I ask, dipping my chin, but then the edge of his finger is under it, guiding my head up to look into those perfect blue-gray eyes. They sparkle, and his whole face is warmed by an orange full moon.

“I think you know why,” he says, and then he leans in close and kisses me. His warm mouth presses hard against mine as his other hand reaches around to the small of my back and pulls me closer.

My cock thickens as it wedges against his hard length. Only the thin fabric of our pants between us. I hold his sides and slide my palms around to his back, under the hem of his shirt and up the hot smooth skin of his back.

He pulls away for a moment.

“Come with me,” he whispers, and then we’re running up the stairs, my hand firmly in his grasp, heart pounding in my ears.

His room doesn’t look like this, I think as he pulls me through the door.

The attic space normally set up with two beds is set up only for one, a double-sized bed sitting under a giant round window to my right.

I know it’s wrong. That his room doesn’t look like this, but he’s stripping off his shirt, walking backwards toward the bed, bathed in moonlight through the window, the rays highlighting every curve of his muscled chest, and I let my brain disregard the truth.

That this has to be a dream and just go with it.

“You look like you want to eat me,” he says, tossing his shirt to the floor.

“Maybe I do,” I reply, and he smirks that cheeky fucking grin and drops his pants. His thick, hard cock springs free.

“It’s all yours,” he replies, and I really, really don’t care that his room is different, or that I’m sure the moon was white tonight.

My brain is trying to tell me this isn’t real.

It’s a dream, but his cock feels real enough in my hand, and as I drop to my knees and wrap my lips around him, dream or not, I am so fucking gone.

I suck him deep into my throat, grabbing his perfect, tight ass with one hand to help thrust him deeper. He moans my name in a breathy rasp, and I reach down, freeing my throbbing cock and working it in time with my mouth moving over him.

“Fuck, you look so sexy sucking my cock,” he says, fingers sweeping my hair behind my ear. “I bet you’d look just as hot grinding on it.”

I come off him with a pop sound and stand, pressing my hands against his chest and pushing him back until he falls back on the bed.

“Let’s find out,” I say, and then he positions himself perfectly on the bed, and I climb onto the mattress, straddling his legs and kissing his salty skin as I make my way up his body until I’m perfectly positioned.

He reaches between us, swirling his fingers, slick and coated with lube that I didn’t even see him grab, around my entrance, then pushing them easily inside like I’ve been ready for him this whole time.

He coats himself, and then I come down on his hard, thick cock.

The delightful sting giving way quickly to the perfect pressure of him filling me. His fingers grip my outer thighs.

“Fuck yeah,” he groans.

“As good as you expected?” I ask in a sultry tone, rising and coming down on him again.

“Oh hell yeah,” he groans, hands moving around to cup my ass as he lifts himself to sit.

My hard cock leaking, wedged between us, and then he’s lifting me up and letting gravity help pull me back down on him, and I’m moaning and groaning until my cock pulses, spilling between us, and he arches his back, hips thrusting up hard as his orgasm hits, too.

I open my eyes, body covered in sweat, breaths coming heavy and spent.

Thankfully, the room is still dark, and the other pledges appear to be sleeping soundly on their mattresses.

Holy fuck that was hot, I think, climbing from my bed and quietly grabbing a fresh set of pajamas and a new set of sheets.