Page 26

CHAPTER 26

ROUX

I ’m muttering the formula for the difference quotient while I leave the math building. Maybe if I put it on repeat, I’ll commit that shit to memory. Then again, I still need to know what a, h, and f stand for. I think I’ve already forgotten. Remember when math just had an X you needed to solve for? I miss those days.

For some reason, I remember that b is the y-intercept, which is redundant since there’s no b in the difference quotient. Wait… Where was I in chanting it?

“M equals f, parenthesis a plus h, close parenthesis minus f, parenthesis a, close parenthesis, over parenthesis a plus h, close parenthesis, minus a. Equals…” Fuck. I forgot what’s after the second equals. It’s pretty much the mumbo jumbo I just said, but there’s something simplified about it, right?

I strongly dislike math. When am I ever going to need to know this shit off the top of my head? There are now computer programs that can solve this crap for you. Why do I need to know?

I push open the door to my dorm building and jog up the stairs to the second floor. We have actual keys to our dorms, but our IDs give us access to certain buildings and rooms too. Like the labs, for example. You need special permission to access some labs because of the chemicals and the expensive equipment. It’s pretty cool that they’ve made access easy for everyone involved.

In a lot of ways, RDU is very innovative with technology. Between the app and the access, there’s no worry about keys getting lost and having to change locks. There’s no worry about people who shouldn’t be here having access to you via the app.

I feel safer here. I’m not sure that the changes are huge enough to prevent someone like Trevor from preying on students here, but it feels more secure. I suppose that’s half the point.

Booker is on the couch when I step into our dorm. The dorms I’ve been in before are your typical college dorms—a single room with two-to-three people sharing this small space with bunk beds, practically on top of each other the entire time. I’ve been lucky and have only had to share with a single person at Marley and Longwood.

This feels like I’m in an apartment. Without laundry. It’s still a pain in the ass to wash my laundry in the laundry room. It’s time consuming, too. You can’t forget that shit, or it’s going to end up on top of the dryers or the folding tables. Then you start over.

Your best bet is to wait there to make sure no one fucks with your laundry.

Also, there’s no kitchen. Which isn’t a bad thing. I imagine that there might be a lot of property damage if you installed full-on kitchens in the dorms. That’s not to say there isn’t a full kitchen at all. On the first floor, there’s a really nice one with a five-burner stove and a really big island. There’s even a double oven built into the wall.

There’s also a couple common areas on the first floor. Plus, the building has a handful of study nooks on all three floors. It’s a nice building, and it looks relatively new. Either that, or it’s kept up with well .

“Hey,” I say as I step in. Booker glances up from his phone and offers me a smile. “What’re you watching?”

“Did you know one of the school sponsors is a porn star?”

Did I know that? I shrug. Maybe Alka’s said something about it. I wonder if Oscar knows this porn star.

I drop beside him on the couch, and he hands me his phone. My breath is nearly punched from my lungs when I see my boyfriend on the screen. There’s a part of me that wants to give his phone back. I don’t want to see this.

But as I’m watching, I realize that he looks very different. No, that’s not right. He looks the same, but there’s something about him that’s different. There’s no doubt in my mind that that’s Oscar, but he’s… different.

Yes, repetitive, but I can’t think of another word.

Booker points at Oscar. “That one. Honey Sin. He’s the donor. He’s your coach’s husband too.”

I glance at him. “You’re just figuring this out?”

He laughs. “When someone tells you that a porn star is one of the school’s large sponsors, you don’t believe them right away. Sex is still shameful . No one does it… says the middle child of nine kids.”

“Holy hell,” I say, handing him back his phone.

“Yep. We just popped into existence. The world is full of Virgin Marys. No sex involved.”

I snort and get to my feet. “I read a story once where the only way that you could have a child is if the governing body approved it, and then you were implanted with an embryo of someone from the past who’d died. So the population always stays at the same relative number, and the people keep being born over and over again.”

“That’s disturbing,” Booker says.

“It is,” I agree. “Yet somehow, I don’t doubt there are governments willing to do that if they could figure out how to make procreation not optional.”

“I mean, that’s an easy fix. You sterilize every male born. Without swimmers, there’s no pregnancy,” Booker points out. “Also, it’s not like governments haven’t tried forms of this in the past. There was eugenics during the fifties. Was it the fifties? Anyway, where they were performing involuntary sterilizations on those whose genetic material wasn’t good enough to remain in society. In a way, a mandate on how many kids you can have is another form of that. It’s population control, at any rate.”

“I think Hitler had a program where they encouraged people with certain characteristics to breed in controlled environments so he could create the perfect Aryan race—while simultaneously slaughtering those he thought were contaminating the Earth.”

“It’s scary to think about. His reach was actually really incredible. He accomplished so damn much, it’s truly a thing of nightmares,” Booker says.

I nod in agreement as I drop my bag inside my door. There’s a pause in our conversation before Booker says, “How did we get on this topic? It’s weird to go from porn to the Holocaust.”

Laughter bursts out of me. “I have no idea. I think sex was involved, but yeah, that’s a weird chain to follow.”

My phone pings, and I reach for it, grinning when I see Alka’s name.

Alka

My office?

I send a thumbs up and put my phone back in my pocket. “Be back in a bit.”

“Practice?” he asks, his attention once more back on his screen.

“Not yet but yeah.” I pause to determine whether I should bring my change of clothes. Yeah. Just in case. Then I don’t have to come back here and risk being late. That’s not the best impression to give to your coach boyfriend.

I dig out clean practice clothes, make sure my cleats are in the bag, and dump in a couple bottles of water on my way past the mini fridge. They’re bottles that I refill constantly. I can’t fit any of my reusable water bottles into the tiny ass fridge, so I keep filling up plastic ones then dumping them into my bigger, insulated one.

Call me weird, but I like my water cold. It’s not the end of the world if it’s not, but I definitely prefer it this way. Hmm. I wonder if I can order a bigger mini fridge. They make ones that look just like normal-sized refrigerators but smaller. Like for a camper as opposed to a hotel room.

I’ll look into that.

With my gym bag over my shoulder, I head across campus to the athletic building. While I make it a point to pay extra attention to those around, I also walk the fine line of trying not to look suspicious. I’m not sure I succeed. Most of the time, I have my phone out so I can appear carefree as I mindlessly scroll along my feed in The Pride Room app.

The doors to the building are usually left unlocked throughout the day. I stop in the locker room and shove my bag into my locker before peeking down the hall that leads to Alka’s office. There aren’t any sounds. I only have to pass two doors on the way. One of them is open with the lights off. The other is closed, and I can’t tell if there’s someone in there or not.

Taking a breath, I start down the hall and remind myself that it’s not unreasonable for an athlete to stop by their coach’s office. Maybe I have a question. Maybe he wants to talk to me about something.

The way my heart thunders in anticipation and my cock chubs, I think the idea that someone could come around the corner as I knock on Alka’s door is exhilarating. I’m enjoying the risk a little too much.

I make it to his door without incident and knock. The sound of his feet on the linoleum floor gets closer, and the door opens. He smiles, and my stomach flips.

Alka takes a step back to let me in before shutting the door, then I’m on him. My arms twine around his neck as I seal my mouth to his. He hums into my mouth, his hands dragging down from the backs of my shoulders, my ribs, my waist, my ass. He roughly pulls me against him as our kiss, which hadn’t started out sweet and PG at all anyway, gets deeper. Wetter. A bit sloppy and frantic. Like I haven’t touched him in ages, which is a gross exaggeration. This morning, I went to his house earlier than usual so I could be with both of them for a few minutes. We kissed. Some three-way kiss that can be more comical than anything else at times.

Remembering it makes me moan. Yes, comical, but I fucking love it. I push Alka backward until his ass meets the edge of his desk and drop my hand down his front to grip him through his pants. Thank fuck he’s always as hard as I am.

Alka doesn’t stop me when I reach my hand into his pants, wrapping it around his cock and awkwardly stroking him. Maybe I’m not just turned on because we’re sneaking around, though that’s fucking hot. Maybe it’s also not just me remembering our three-way kiss. Images of Oscar on the screen flood my mind as if he’s here.

Pulling my mouth from his, I stare into his eyes as I push his pants down to just under his balls. I tuck the elastic of his sports pants under his balls to keep them from getting in the way. He’s so damn turned on. I love this look on him.

Looking down at his red, hard cock, I spit to give us a little bit of lube before jerking him. Alka groans, letting his head fall back. I lean in again as I stroke him and kiss his neck, licking and sucking and biting. “I saw Honey Sin on screen,” I say.

Alka shivers. “Yeah?”

“It’s not him at all, is it?”

He shakes his head. “No.” He grunts when I stop to spit again. “Different,” he says. His hand grips the back of my head as he pulls my mouth to him and kisses me hard. I jerk him as hard and as punishingly as he kisses me.

There’s a knock on the door that makes us jump, and it opens a second later. I freeze then quickly back away. Alka gets to his feet and turns his back on the door while the man stands there, staring, his eyes wide.

With Alka’s back to the door so he can put his junk away, it’s just me staring at this guy. I’ve seen him before. An athletic trainer, I think.

There’s a noise beyond the door that makes him look down the hall. He sways before stepping inside and shutting the door just as Alka turns around. I grab my obviously hard dick through my pants in a feeble attempt at hiding my hard-on.

“It’s not what you think,” Alka says.

The man raises his eyebrow. “I think I just saw you two getting it on,” he says with a smirk.

Alka sighs. “Yes. That part is what you think. I mean, this isn’t some quid-pro-quo thing. It’s not like that.”

He’s still smirking.

“Lock the door,” Alka says.

He does so.

“This is Rub—” Alka shakes his head. “Roux.”

“He’s one of your players, no?”

Alka scowls at him then looks at me. “This is Declan Whitaker, one of the department’s athletic trainers and a friend, I think , though right now I’m questioning that.”

Declan grins.

Alka looks at him again. “We met over the summer on Kala. We didn’t know we’d meet at school again. We thought it’d be a long-distance thing. Obviously, we left out some key details when exchanging personal information because he’s here, and… I’m not willing to stop seeing him.”

Declan shrugs. “Okay.”

I wait, my eyes moving between them. “That’s it? Okay?”

Declan looks at me, his smile climbing. “Sorry. Did you need more enthusiasm? That’s great!”

Alka snorts while I narrow my eyes. He reaches for me, wraps his arm around my waist, and pulls me against him. “He’s not going to say anything. ”

“He didn’t say that,” I point out.

“I’m not going to say anything,” Declan says aloud, his expression implying that he does so to appease me.

“Trust me,” Alka murmurs, kissing my cheek by my ear. “Go. I’ll see you at practice. Okay?”

I take a breath, studying Declan. I don’t know this man, but Alka does. He’s right. I need to trust him. Pressing my lips together, I nod. “Yeah. See you at practice.” I kiss him in return then head for the door. Declan moves aside, still wearing that irritating smirk as I unlock the door and leave the office.

There’s no one in the hall, for which I’m glad. I’m sure I look both flushed and irritated. Also, my dick hasn’t quite gotten the memo that playtime is over.

I wander out of the building and onto the soccer pitch. Maybe I should have brought a ball. Oh, look. There’s one right there.

Maybe I should have played the lottery. As I make my way to the soccer ball leaning against the goal post, I look around, waiting for a lottery ticket to appear like the ball did. No such luck. I’m not sure it’d be a winner anyway.

We got caught. What if Alka doesn’t know Declan as well as he thinks he does? What then?