Hard Composite
A Chicago Vanguards Novel
by Chase Power
📖 Free with Kindle Unlimited
Pairing: MM
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Age Gap (42/24), Grumpy/Brat, Praise Kink, D/s Dynamics, Hurt/Comfort, Forbidden Romance
He’s spent fifteen years keeping his distance. One panic attack in an empty gym is about to change everything.
Garrett Holt is the Chicago Vanguards’ equipment manager—a former player whose career ended on a stretcher eighteen years ago. He’s built his life around precision, control, and keeping everyone at arm’s length. Especially the players. Especially the ones who look at him like he’s the answer to a question they don’t know how to ask.
Ezra Kaine is the team’s golden boy—number one draft pick, twelve-million-dollar contract, and enough anxiety to drown in. He’s spent his whole life chasing approval he’ll never get, and the noise in his head is getting louder every day. Until one midnight breakdown brings him face-to-face with the grumpy equipment manager who won’t let him spiral.
When Holt’s commanding voice cuts through Ezra’s panic, something shifts. Something dangerous. Something neither of them can ignore.
What starts as stolen moments in The Cage—Holt’s chain-link domain beneath the arena—becomes an addiction neither can quit. Ezra needs Holt’s control like oxygen. And Holt? He’s been running from connection for fifteen years, but the brat in the expensive suits makes him want things he’d sworn he’d never want again.
But secrets don’t stay buried forever. When a leaked photo threatens to expose everything, Holt makes a choice that could destroy them both—or finally set them free.
Hard Composite is a 50,000-word MM hockey romance featuring an 18-year age gap, scorching D/s dynamics, a grumpy equipment manager who finally lets himself want, a golden boy who needs permission to breathe, and a guaranteed HEA. First in the Chicago Vanguards series.
🏒 Tropes You’ll Love 🏒
👴👶 Age Gap (42/24)
Eighteen years, a lifetime of experience, and zero patience for bratty rookies. Until this one.
😤 Grumpy/Brat
He growls. He provokes. They combust.
💜 Praise Kink
“Good boy” hits different from the man who never gives compliments.
⛓️ D/s Dynamics
Structure, control, and surrender as anxiety management.
🚫 Forbidden Romance
Staff and player. Secret and scandal. Everything to lose.
💔 Hurt/Comfort
Two broken people learning to hold each other together.
Content Notes
This book contains explicit MM sexual content including D/s dynamics, praise kink, and intense emotional scenes. Additional content includes: anxiety and panic attacks (depicted with care), parental emotional abuse (referenced), workplace power dynamics, and a protective age-gap relationship. Reader discretion advised. 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Read Chapter One Free
Chapter One: The Cage
The fluorescent lights buzzed like dying insects.
Garrett Holt had worked beneath the United Center for fifteen years, and he’d never once asked maintenance to fix that sound. Other people found it irritating. Holt found it honest. The buzz meant the building was empty, the players were gone, and he could finally do his job without some twenty-three-year-old millionaire asking if his stick was “cursed” or his skates were “haunted” or whatever superstitious bullshit they’d dreamed up this week.
Eleven-fourteen PM. The ice was dark upstairs. The last security guard had waved goodnight an hour ago. And Holt was exactly where he wanted to be: alone in The Cage, stitching a blown seam on Volkov’s goalie pad while classic rock played low on a speaker older than half the roster.
The Cage wasn’t its official name. The official name was Equipment Storage and Repair, Room B-12. But everyone called it The Cage because that’s what it looked like—chain-link walls from floor to ceiling, separating Holt’s domain from the concrete corridor outside.
He was reaching for his wire cutters when he heard footsteps.
Not security. Security wore rubber-soled boots that squeaked on the concrete. These footsteps clicked. Expensive shoes. Designer, probably. The kind of shoes that cost more than Holt’s truck payment.
He didn’t look up.
“We’re closed.”
“The sign says Equipment Storage.” The voice was light, almost musical, with an undercurrent of something brittle. “I have equipment that needs storing. Or—no, wait. Repairing. Definitely repairing.”
Holt set down the goalie pad. Removed his glasses. And finally looked at the figure standing on the other side of the chain-link door.
Ezra Kaine.
Of course it was.
* * *
Keep reading to discover what happens when the grumpy equipment manager meets the golden boy who needs permission to breathe…
🔥 Exclusive Bonus Content 🔥
Want the scene that was TOO HOT for Amazon?
Get the exclusive extended scene from their playoff victory—when Holt finally takes Ezra apart in The Cage with the Stanley Cup sitting three feet away. Praise kink, D/s intensity, and a celebration neither of them will ever forget.
More from Chase Power
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is this book part of a series?
Hard Composite is the first book in the Chicago Vanguards series but is a complete standalone with an HEA (happily ever after). No cliffhangers! Future books will feature other players from the team, including Marcus Webb and Dmitri Volkov.
How spicy is this book?
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ — This is a 5/5 heat level book with explicit MM content. Features include D/s dynamics, praise kink, possessive dirty talk, and enough steam to melt the ice.
What’s “hard composite” mean?
Hard composite refers to the material hockey sticks are made from—and serves as a metaphor for Holt himself: tough exterior, engineered for performance, but ultimately designed to flex under the right pressure.
Is there a happily ever after?
Yes! Holt and Ezra get their HEA complete with a one-year-later epilogue, domestic bliss, and playoff victory celebrations.