
The Last Play That Counts
An FF Women’s Hockey Romance
by Aurora North
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Pairing: FF (Sapphic)
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Teammates to Lovers, Opposites Attract, Secret Relationship, Forced Proximity, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn
She said “good game” every night. She meant “I love you” every time.
Zara Marks is The Wall. Boston’s starting goalie — controlled, precise, unreadable. She’s built her entire identity around discipline and silence, and she’s convinced that letting someone in means losing the thing that makes her great.
Lena Cruz is The Spark. A traded forward running from a scandal in Minnesota — loud, chaotic, magnetic. She lights up every room she walks into and destroys every rule she sets for herself. Especially the one about not falling for her goalie.
It starts with a shared hotel room. A late-night rink session. A wrist-taping ritual that becomes something sacred. What begins as on-ice chemistry becomes off-ice combustion — stolen kisses in equipment rooms, coded texts, hotel beds they shouldn’t be sharing, and a secret that grows heavier with every win.
But the hockey world is watching. A reporter is asking questions. A sportswear campaign needs Lena to be single. And Zara — The Wall, the woman who compresses every emotion into a single breath — is about to learn that some things can’t be contained. Some things aren’t meant to be stopped.
Some things are meant to be let in.
You’ll love this if you enjoy:
✓ Ice queen goalie x chaos forward (opposites attract)
✓ Teammates-to-lovers with real team dynamics
✓ Secret relationship with mounting public pressure
✓ Forced proximity on road trips and shared hotel rooms
✓ A wrist-taping ritual that becomes their love language
✓ Hurt/comfort that goes both directions
✓ A team that finds out and rallies
✓ Playoff run with everything on the line
✓ Scorching heat that escalates chapter after chapter
✓ A guaranteed HEA earned on the ice and off it
The Last Play That Counts is a 75,000-word high-heat FF women’s hockey romance featuring a stoic goalie who’s afraid to feel and a chaotic forward who won’t let her hide. Standalone. No cliffhanger. HEA guaranteed.
⚠️ Content Warning: This book contains explicit sexual content between consenting adult women, sports injuries (skate blade cut requiring stitches), parental health issues (stroke recovery), professional closeting, forced outing via leaked photo, a sportswear campaign that requires the MC to publicly identify as single, and an emotionally constipated goalie who takes 22 chapters to say “I love you.” Heat level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️. Intended for readers 18+ only.
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“Offside” — A scene TOO HOT for Amazon
Three months after the epilogue. A holiday break. An empty house. Lena finds Zara’s old goalie gear in the garage and tries on the blocker as a joke. What follows involves a workbench, a locked bedroom door, and a purchase Zara made three weeks ago that she’s been waiting for the right moment to reveal. The right moment turns out to involve a goalie glove and zero clothing.
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