Power Bottom

A Chicago Titans Novel
by Jace Wilder

📚 Free with Kindle Unlimited

Pairing: M/M
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Grumpy/Sunshine, Age Gap (34/22), Forced Proximity, Size Difference, Power Bottom, Teammates to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Praise Kink, Hurt/Comfort

He’s 6’5″ of pure power—and he’s on his knees for a man a foot shorter.

Axel Thorne is The Anvil—the NHL’s most feared enforcer. At thirty-four, he’s spent thirteen years hiding who he really is. No connections. No complications. No one gets close. His secret has kept him safe, but it’s also kept him utterly alone.

Nico Valenti is everything Axel hates: loud, flashy, and way too pretty for his own good. The twenty-two-year-old rookie has been out since sixteen, and he’s never met a closet he couldn’t pick. When Coach assigns them as roommates for the road trip from hell, the tension between them reaches a breaking point.

One night changes everything.

Axel has spent his whole career being the wall. The protector. The immovable force. But Nico makes him want to surrender—to drop to his knees and let someone else take control. And Nico, who’s used to being underestimated, discovers he’s exactly the dominant force Axel has been craving.

But the NHL isn’t ready for them. When a devastating article threatens to expose everything, Axel does what he’s always done—he runs. Now Nico has to decide: let the man he loves self-destruct, or fight for a future neither of them dared to imagine.

Because sometimes the biggest man on the ice needs someone small enough to reach his heart.

Power Bottom is a high-heat MM hockey romance featuring a gentle giant who submits to a pocket-sized powerhouse, forced proximity that ignites, a grovel that will make you cry, and a happily ever after that’s worth the wait. Contains explicit content, praise kink, size difference appreciation, and two men learning that surrender isn’t weakness—it’s trust.

⚠️ Content Notes

This book contains explicit M/M sexual content including: power exchange dynamics, praise kink, size difference, possessive behavior, and detailed intimate scenes. Also includes: thirteen years of internalized shame, injury/recovery, coming out journey, and one spectacular grovel. All content is between consenting adults. Guaranteed HEA.

📖 Read Chapter One Free

Chapter One: Heavy Lifting

The weight room at midnight was the closest thing Axel Thorne had to a church.

He loaded another forty-five onto the bar, the iron clang echoing off concrete walls. Three hundred and fifteen pounds. A warm-up for most guys his size, but he wasn’t here for the numbers tonight. He was here for the silence.

The Titans’ practice facility was a ghost town after hours—security guards doing their rounds, maybe a trainer catching up on paperwork, but otherwise empty. Just the way Axel liked it. No cameras. No reporters shouting questions about the upcoming season. No rookies trying to prove themselves by getting in his face.

No one expecting him to be The Anvil.

He settled under the bar, gripped cold steel, and let his mind go blank. Press. Hold. Lower. The rhythm was meditation, each rep pushing out the noise that had been building in his skull for weeks.

Tomorrow was the first day of training camp. His fourteenth training camp in the NHL, if you were counting. Axel tried not to count. The numbers were getting harder to ignore—the grey creeping into his beard, the extra twenty minutes he needed in the morning just to get his joints moving, the way the sports media had started using words like “twilight” and “final chapter” when they talked about him.

Then the door banged open.

Music hit first—some pop song with a thumping bass line. Then came the voice, singing along off-key, followed by the actual human being who apparently had no concept of gym etiquette or basic social awareness.

Nico Valenti was smaller than Axel expected.

Five-seven, maybe five-eight, built like a greyhound—all fast-twitch muscle and kinetic energy. He was wearing a tank top that showed off a full sleeve tattoo on his left arm, geometric patterns crawling from shoulder to wrist.

He hadn’t noticed Axel in the corner. Or if he had, he didn’t care.

Axel stood, grabbed his towel, and started toward the door.

“Oh shit—hey!” Footsteps behind him, quick and light. “Didn’t see you lurking back there, Grandpa. You trying to give me a heart attack?”

Axel stopped. Turned slowly. The kid was grinning up at him, one earbud dangling, head tilted like a curious bird.

“You’re Thorne, right? The Anvil?” The kid stuck out his hand. “Nico Valenti. I got called up today. Guess we’re teammates now.”

Axel looked at the outstretched hand. Looked at the grin. Looked at everything about this kid that screamed too young, too pretty, too fucking much.

He didn’t shake.

“Practice is at nine,” Axel said. “Don’t be late.”

He turned and walked away.

“Strong silent type,” the kid called after him. “I dig it. Nice to meet you too, big guy.”

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