Enemy Territory

Ryan Hale has hated Viktor Rusakov for six years, and he has the scar tissue to prove it. Four fights, a playoff brawl, and a rivalry the whole league treats as must-see television. Denver's hot-tempered defenseman doesn't need a reason to despise Seattle's star forward. He has six years of them.

Then a sponsor mixer turns into a hallway argument that turns into something neither man planned on, and "once" stops being true almost immediately. Viktor is controlled where Ryan is reckless, calm where Ryan burns hot, and quietly certain of exactly one thing: loving someone and trying to beat them are not opposites, no matter how hard Ryan insists they have to be. When the two teams draw each other in the first round of the playoffs, they agree to one hard rule and one hard secret. Nothing said off the ice will ever touch what happens on it. Nobody finds out until they're ready to tell them.

But hiding costs more than either man budgeted for, and the closer the series gets to its final game, the harder it gets to keep pretending loyalty to a team and love for a rival can be kept in separate rooms. Ryan is going to have to decide whether the walls he's built to protect his locker room are actually protecting anything at all, or just protecting him from admitting what he wants.

A high-heat, enemies-to-lovers MM sports romance about the man who mistook fear for loyalty and the rival who finally taught him the difference, set against the most personal playoff series either of them has ever played, with a guaranteed happily ever after.