Power Play Boyfriends

MM Hockey Romance
by Jace Wilder

Available at your favorite retailer

Pairing: MM
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Fake Dating, Teammates to Lovers, Praise Kink, Bi Awakening, Forced Proximity, Grumpy/Sunshine, Slow Burn, Found Family, Touch Starved

Fake dating. Real feelings. No rules survived.

Jace Monroe is college hockey’s golden boy — 1.2 million TikTok followers, a smile that could sell anything, and a secret he’s kept behind the content: he’s bisexual, he’s lonely, and the only person who’s ever told him to shut up is the one person he can’t stop thinking about.

Ben Castillo is the team’s equipment manager — invisible, meticulous, and allergic to being noticed. He sharpens every blade, tapes every stick, and keeps the entire operation running from the shadows. He’s spent his whole life being essential and overlooked, and he’s fine with that. He’s fine.

When a leaked photo tanks Jace’s reputation and threatens Ben’s job, they strike a deal: fake-date to fix the narrative. Rules are written. Boundaries are set. A five-second kiss maximum is established.

The rules last about a week.

Because Jace discovers that praising Ben — publicly, specifically, in the voice that makes Ben’s hands shake — is the most addictive thing he’s ever done. And Ben discovers that being seen by someone who actually looks is the most terrifying and necessary thing he’s ever felt. And the pre-game ritual where Ben kneels to lace Jace’s skates and whispers you’ve got this, you’re good becomes the most intimate act either of them has ever shared.

But fake can’t stay fake when the touches are real, the praise hits bone-deep, and the quiet equipment manager turns out to be the loudest thing in the golden boy’s heart.

You’ll love this book if you enjoy:

✅ Fake dating to real feelings with a praise kink that will wreck you
✅ Star athlete x invisible equipment manager
✅ “We have rules” (the rules do not survive)
✅ Bi awakening + coming out on his own terms
✅ Found family hockey team with the best group chat
✅ Slow burn that DETONATES (🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ — graphic, explicit, emotional)
✅ A man who learns to be seen and a man who learns to see
✅ HEA guaranteed

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⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains explicit sexual content (graphic MM scenes), strong language, sports-related injury, homophobia from a teammate, and depictions of anxiety, self-doubt, and past emotional neglect. Intended for readers 18+.

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Chapter One: Loose Threads

The equipment room at 5:47 a.m. was the only honest place left in Ben Castillo’s life.

No one performed here. No one smiled for cameras or laughed too loud at unfunny jokes or pretended to give a shit about anyone but themselves. It was just Ben, the hum of fluorescent lights, and the sharp, clean smell of freshly cut steel.

He ran the skate blade across the sharpening stone one final time, tilting it against the light to check the edge. Perfect. Three-eighths-inch hollow, exactly how Griffin Lee liked it — deep enough for tight turns, shallow enough to keep speed through transitions. Ben set the skate in Griff’s stall and marked his clipboard.

Lee, G. — skates sharpened, new laces (left boot), extra sock tape per request.

Twenty-two players. Twenty-two sets of skates, pads, helmets, gloves, sticks, and personal quirks that would make a therapist weep. Ben knew every single one. Mads needed their pads set left-first or they’d spiral into a pre-game anxiety loop that could tank an entire period. Haverford taped his own sticks but demanded Ben re-tape them after because “yours are tighter.” Kovac went through mouth guards like candy — always chewing through them during TV timeouts — so Ben kept three backups in a Ziploc in the bench drawer.

And then there was Monroe.

Jace Monroe didn’t have quirks. He had a lifestyle brand.

Must be nice.

The clock on the wall read 8:38 when the locker room door banged open like someone had kicked it, and the temperature in the room shifted the way it always did when Jace Monroe decided to grace everyone with his presence.

Late. Obviously.

“Good morning, you beautiful idiots!” Monroe’s voice carried the way a foghorn carries — impossible to ignore, designed to announce. He strode in with his bag slung over one shoulder and his phone already up, camera facing outward. “Who’s ready to get absolutely nasty tonight? Gameday, baby. Let’s go.”

His bag hit the bench in front of stall fourteen, and its contents erupted like a gear piñata — a glove tumbled to the floor, a sock landed on the LED ring light, his chest protector slid sideways and knocked Ben’s carefully arranged towel stack into the trash.

Ben closed his eyes. Breathed through his nose. Opened them.

“Yo, Benny.” Monroe didn’t look up from his phone. “My laces are fraying.”

Ben’s jaw tightened. “It’s Ben. And your laces are fraying because you step on them while you’re filming.”

Monroe stared at him. Then that grin spread — slow, crooked, infuriatingly charming. “You keep track of my laces?”

“I keep track of everyone’s laces. That’s my job.”

“Sounds like you pay special attention to mine.”

“I pay special attention to the ones that cost me the most time to replace.”

“I’ll re-lace you before warmups,” Ben said, already turning away. “Try not to tap dance in them until then.”

Game time. The arena was packed — a sellout, 4,200 people for a college rink, which meant the noise was a physical thing, pressing against the walls, vibrating in Ben’s chest.

He watched from the tunnel. Always the tunnel. Close enough to the bench to sprint out with replacement gear, far enough to stay invisible to cameras.

Monroe took the ice like he owned it. He was fast, unpredictable, all instinct and risk. He took lines no one else would attempt, threaded passes through coverage that shouldn’t have had gaps, and when he had the puck on his stick with speed underneath him, the whole arena held its breath.

Not Ben. Ben watched Monroe’s skate edges, the flex of his stick on one-timers, the way his left glove was starting to separate at the thumb seam. Ben was already calculating: replacement glove, size large, game-broken backup in cabinet six. I can have it to the bench in forty seconds if the seam goes.

The game ended 3–2, Monroe’s goal the winner. The locker room afterward was bedlam.

Ben didn’t watch. He was in the tunnel, kneeling on cold concrete, sorting broken sticks into repair piles. His knees ached. His hands were dry and cracking from the cold. He’d been awake for fifteen hours.

He didn’t expect them to notice. That was the thing. Expecting it would mean hoping, and hoping was just a down payment on disappointment.

Stall fourteen was, predictably, a crime scene. A sock — one single sock — draped over the LED ring light like a flag of surrender.

He picked up the sock. Because that’s what he did. He cleaned up after people who never noticed the mess they left behind.

He grabbed his bag from the equipment room, turned off the lights, and walked out into the cold.

His phone buzzed. Maya. How was the game?

We won.

And how are YOU?

He stared at the screen. The cursor blinked.

Fine.

He pocketed the phone, pulled his hoodie tighter, and walked home alone.

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Game Day — A scene TOO HOT for Amazon

Jace comes home from his first five-day road trip. Ben has been wearing his hoodie all week. The hallway doesn’t make it to the bedroom. The bedroom makes up for lost time. Five days of deprivation, the filthiest praise kink payoff in the series, and the discovery of 114 voice memos that prove Jace Monroe is just as obsessive as the man who sharpens his skates.

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