Pucking Around with Fate
They were supposed to be on the same team.
Santos Khyle arrived in Seattle as the Soul Reapers' most anticipated rookie in years, a natural-born scorer with something to prove and a chip on his shoulder the size of a regulation puck. Gunner Jäger had been tearing up the ice as the team's feared enforcer for two seasons, and he had zero interest in sharing his spotlight with some orange-haired twenty-one year old who looked at him like he was a problem to be managed.
From the moment they met, it was war.
On the ice, they were a disaster. Off it, they were worse. Screaming matches in corridors. Fists through locker room walls. A live on-air brawl that made every highlight reel in North America and earned them both a suspension, a lecture from their furious coach, and the undivided attention of the entire hockey world.
Nobody could stand to watch them together.
Nobody could look away either.
Because underneath the fury and the bruises and the months of spectacular mutual destruction, something else was building. Something neither of them had language for yet. Something that felt uncomfortably like the only fight either of them was actually afraid to lose.
The Soul Reapers are one playoff run away from everything. Gunner and Khyle are one honest conversation away from falling apart completely.
Or maybe, just maybe, from finally figuring out what they are to each other.
Pucking Up the Ice is a slow burn MM romance set in the brutal and beautiful world of professional hockey. It contains explicit language, on-ice violence, emotional gut punches, two men who are absolutely terrible at feelings, and a love story that had to break everything before it could build something worth keeping.
Ler
Chapter: Half Trying To ImpressPOV: GunnerGunner swallowed back a real grunt of pain.Somewhere in between shifting gears and checking his mirror and changing lanes, Khyle's bony little elbow had whipped out and drilled into Gunner's shoulder like he was breaking cement. He didn't pull his punches. The pain was bright and sharp, but it was funny. With Khyle on his side now, Gunner found he respected that about him even more.Gunner feigned injury as he was driven off of his prey with a very effective push. Hell, Khyle had practically drilled a hole in his shoulder. He knew the little prick had power, but sometimes he forgot just how much sting he could pack into a hit. He could ignore the fact that the pain he felt in his shoulder gave him a strange sense of excitement. But he couldn't help but chuckle at the twist of discomfort on Khyle's face and those reddened cheeks. And the eyes he gave Gunner, they were almost enough to rip a person to shreds. It gave him a pleasant shiver, but still. It was just a bit of fu
Última atualização: 2026-06-26
Chapter: Moves Like JägerPOV: KhyleAfter wading through twenty very technical minutes of mandatory new car talk, Gunner firing question upon question at Khyle until he directed him to the manual that was in the glove compartment, the atmosphere mellowed and thoughts turned to idle conversation.About the cold. And the car."Heated seats are the best, eh?""Yeah, pretty sweet.""My old car, she didn't have that. And you fucking miss it on a day like today. Get in your car, and the seat's like a park bench."Khyle chuckled. He'd never thought of it like that, but that was true. Khyle looked over when Gunner didn't say anything else for a full ten seconds, worried that he might be into or up to something Khyle wouldn't want to know about.He was casually flipping through Khyle's pack of CDs, ones he'd had for years but hadn't had the luxury of listening to for a few months in his old beater with its broken CD player.Khyle let the enforcer occupy himself for a few moments, enjoying just being. He found himself
Última atualização: 2026-06-23
Chapter: New RidePOV: Dual, Khyle and GunnerHe lifted the key fob and hit the button, and his car chirped back at them, the sound echoing off the cement walls of the structure around them, confusing the senses. Gunner, though, turned his head toward the sound. But his expression quickly became annoyed, like he was thoroughly stuck on a crossword puzzle."Where's your jalopy?" he frowned. Khyle felt his eye twitch, but the typical slight against his car was forgotten in the next instant, and he nodded toward the space ahead, feeling a small upward pull on the side of his sore lip."You're standing in front of it."Gunner seemed to take a moment to process where he was supposed to be looking. Khyle pressed another button, and an engine fired up. Blue eyes widened, first in surprise, then amazement. Not that the car in front of him was the most expensive thing on the road. But it was admittedly as nice as his own. Better maybe. Except that this one apparently belonged to Santos."Get outta here!" he bar
Última atualização: 2026-06-21
Chapter: PMSPOV: Dual, Khyle and GunnerKhyle winced, grimacing as well when Gunner scuffed his hair and slung a heavy arm around his shoulders, practically dragging him into a walk. They weren't going running today. Khyle had declared a day off. Besides, he knew Gunner would have worked out already. He was aware of his habits, and he knew the man was anal about keeping himself up to par, and then some.Instead, he had some stuff to drop off at the local animal shelter, worn blankets from his dad's clinic, things of that nature. Gunner had, almost too agreeably, been all in on Khyle's morning plans. He'd said he had a few old towels to add to the donation pile, even though the ones in his hand looked suspiciously brand new.Khyle scowled back at him. Everything from his own general discomfort to Gunner's many faces, it was all throwing him off his determined stride and into a willful state of petulance he couldn't seem to reel back in."What's that supposed to mean?" he shot back. "You think I lo
Última atualização: 2026-06-20
Chapter: War WoundsPOV: GunnerThe skin of Khyle's lip was warm and soft.He only wanted to see what damage Khyle had done to himself last night. And before he knew what had possessed him, he'd reached out and taken Khyle's chin in his hand. It was nothing, really. They were a physical bunch, and close contact with another guy on the team was as normal as taking a piss, nothing at all, but.As soon as he felt that hot skin burning under his fingertips, sinking into his palm, he felt something about himself letting go. Maybe it started before that. He wasn't sure. But Gunner's eyes slit in concentration, and almost like an afterthought, he felt himself slipping somewhere.Until he felt the vibration run through his fingers when those lips moved.Distantly, he heard a low voice. And he blinked slowly as if waking from a fog dream.It sounded vaguely annoyed. That was never a good sign."You know, some people just ask."The world suddenly got brighter, the late-morning sun breaking through the clouds above
Última atualização: 2026-06-19
Chapter: His MarkPOV: Dual, Khyle and Gunner"Yo, Santos. For such a pretty boy, you took that stick to the face like a boss."The thin January air curled like cold steel around their breath on this Canadian-est of days. The storm had dragged a cold snap in its wake. A large man, his appearance smooth and controlled, an unlikely contrast to his feral and often savage nature, moved toward a deceptively leaner but equally tempered and eruptive male as the two took stock of each other for the first time in what felt like weeks.In reality, it had been little more than a day and a half.Pretty boy raised an irritated eyebrow before the flesh between his rich brown eyes rumpled into the deeper version of his trademark scowl. He choked on a nameless sound and took in cold air as he opened his mouth, at first intent on coming up with something as deeply scathing as pretty boy. Something Gunner could suck on.But last night's texting debacle was on the shortlist in his mind. And regardless of Gunner's stupid
Última atualização: 2026-06-18
Chapter: The Truth SpellPOV: Chase SterlingHelena is furious.Not the quiet disappointed version of furious that she usually manages. The actual version, which I have seen exactly twice in my life, once when I was eight and broke something in her New Orleans kitchen that belonged to her grandmother, and once now, standing in my penthouse at nine in the morning with the Vegas photographs on every screen and her hands flat on my kitchen counter."The party," she says."I know," I say."You went to her bachelorette party," she says."I was at the hotel," I say."Chase.""I know," I say.She looks at me with the dark eyes and the silver-streaked hair and the twenty-three years of this specific exhaustion on her face, and then she does something I was not expecting, which is she reaches into the bag she carries and she takes out a small vial and she sets it on the kitchen counter between us.I look at it.Clear liquid. No label. The kind of container that could contain anything."What is that," I say."Something
Última atualização: 2026-06-26
Chapter: Bachelorette Party DisasterPOV: Vivian AshfordMarcus books the penthouse suite at the Aria for the whole weekend, which is the kind of gesture that sounds generous and functions as control, because a weekend in a suite Marcus paid for in a city Marcus chose for a party Marcus organized means that the entire event exists within Marcus's architecture, and I understood that when he offered and I said yes anyway because I did not have the energy to plan my own bachelorette party and someone offering to do it felt like relief.That was a month ago.Now I am standing on the balcony of the suite at eleven on a Friday night with a champagne glass and the Las Vegas skyline doing its excessive, beautiful thing below me, and inside there are twelve women I like to varying degrees and a DJ Marcus also hired, and the whole thing is very loud and very expensive and feels nothing like me.Sienna finds me on the balcony.She leans on the railing beside me and looks at the city and doesn't say anything, which is one of her bet
Última atualização: 2026-06-26
Chapter: Brothers at WarPOV: Ethan BeckettI give myself one night.One night to be angry without doing anything about it, which is the discipline I have developed over seven years of journalism, the practice of letting the emotion move through before acting on it, because the actions you take from anger are never the right ones.One night is what I give myself and one night is what I take, and in the morning I put on my jacket and I go to Sterling Tower.The lobby security recognizes me because I have been here enough times in the past year that my face is in their system, and I walk past them without stopping because I am not going to give anyone in this building the opportunity to make a call that results in me being asked to leave before I get to the forty-fourth floor.I take the elevator.I walk through the glass and chrome of the forty-fourth floor with the specific quality of someone who has made a decision and is executing it.Chase's assistant stands up."Mr. Beckett, you don't have an appointment—
Última atualização: 2026-06-25
Chapter: The Takeover AttemptPOV: Ethan BeckettThe magazine is called Meridian, which is not the Sterling subsidiary, different word, and I have been writing for it since I was twenty-three and it gave me my first real investigative platform, and the editor who hired me, a woman named Joan, took a chance on a kid from Iowa with a chip on his shoulder and a nose for stories that matter, and I have been loyal to it the way you are loyal to the first place that believed in you.I find out about the acquisition on a Tuesday, not from Joan, not from the editorial team, from a financial journalist I know who texts me at seven in the morning: Heads up. Heard something about your magazine's parent company. You might want to look into it.I look into it.It takes about forty minutes.Meridian Media Group, which owns four publications including mine, sold a controlling stake to a holding company called Northbrook Capital three weeks ago. Northbrook Capital was incorporated in Delaware eighteen months ago. Its registered a
Última atualização: 2026-06-25
Chapter: Engagement AnnouncementPOV: Chase SterlingThe push notification comes at nine-seventeen during a board meeting about the Hartley acquisition, which has finally moved into its final phase, and I look at my phone under the table because I have the habit of checking notifications during meetings and which I should stop doing and have not stopped doing.The notification is from a news app.It has her name in it.And Ethan's.And the word engaged.I look at it for a moment that is longer than the length of a notification glance, long enough that Bernard notices and stops talking mid-sentence, and I put the phone face-down on the table and I look at the acquisition documents in front of me and I breathe."Continue," I say.Bernard continues.I look at the acquisition documents.I read the same sentence four times without absorbing it.Bernard finishes his section and hands to the CFO and the CFO begins and I am sitting at the head of this table with ten people in this room and the push notification face-down bes
Última atualização: 2026-06-24
Chapter: Ethan ProposesPOV: Vivian AshfordEthan books the rooftop without telling me what it is for, which should have been a signal, but Ethan takes me to dinner sometimes just because he knows I have not eaten properly and he is that kind of person, and I did not read the signal because I was not looking for it.The rooftop is beautiful. March in New York has finally decided to be almost spring, the kind of evening where the cold is thin enough that a coat handles it, and the city is doing its thing below us, and there are candles on the table and the skyline is glowing the way it does when the light is exactly right, and I sit down and I look at it and I think, for one genuinely good moment, that everything is going to be okay.Then I look at Ethan's face.He has the expression he gets when he has decided something and is going to say it and has been rehearsing how to say it, which is different from the journalist's face and the friend's face, more exposed than either."Ethan," I say."Let me say it," h
Última atualização: 2026-06-23
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