Praise on Ice
MM Hockey Romance
by Jace Wilder
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Pairing: MM
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Sports Psychologist x Player, Praise Kink, Pro Hockey, Slow Burn, Forbidden Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Coming Out, Found Family
A star winger in a brutal slump. The mental skills coach hired to fix him. The praise kink neither of them expected.
Landon Hayes is the face of the Philadelphia Phantoms—All-Star winger, golden boy, the guy on the billboard. But four goals in thirty games, a father who critiques him on national television, and hands that won’t stop shaking have turned the golden boy into a ghost. The team hires a mental skills coach. Landon resents it. Until he walks into the office.
Dr. Theo Laurent is a former junior goalie whose career ended with a panic attack on the ice. He rebuilt himself into one of the best sport psychologists in the country—calm, precise, devastating. His new NHL job is the culmination of everything he’s worked for. Then Landon Hayes sits in his chair, and the professional boundary Theo has never questioned becomes the only thing standing between him and the most catastrophic decision of his career.
The sessions start clinical: breathwork, visualization, reframing the voice in Landon’s head that says if you miss, everyone stops loving you. But Landon’s body responds to Theo’s praise in ways that go far beyond therapeutic—ways that make his pulse race, his skin flush, and his carefully maintained composure disintegrate. And Theo—who built his career on maintaining professional distance—can’t stop noticing.
When the tension becomes undeniable, Theo does the only ethical thing: he resigns. Walks away from his dream job so he can love Landon with clean hands. What follows is an intense, explicit, deeply emotional romance between two men who were wired for each other—one who craves praise like oxygen, and one who was born to give it.
But a jealous teammate, a gossip photographer, and Landon’s ESPN-analyst father threaten to turn their private love into a public scandal. To survive it, Landon will have to do the bravest thing he’s ever done: stand in front of the world and tell the truth.
You’ll love this book if you enjoy:
✅ MM hockey romance with real emotional depth
✅ Praise kink as both sexual dynamic and love language
✅ Slow burn that EXPLODES (🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ — graphic, explicit, emotional)
✅ Therapist x patient with a clean ethical exit
✅ Found family locker room with the best chirps
✅ A hero who learns to talk back to the voice in his head
✅ Coming out on his own terms
✅ HEA guaranteed
⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains explicit sexual content (graphic MM scenes including praise kink dynamics), strong language, depictions of parental emotional abuse, performance anxiety, and a public outing without consent. Intended for readers 18+.
📖 Read Chapter One Free
Not sure yet? Read the full first chapter right here.
Chapter One: Empty Net, Empty Tank
The puck felt wrong on his tape.
Landon Hayes couldn’t explain it better than that. For twelve years—from juniors through the show—the puck had been an extension of his hands, something he controlled without thinking, the way most people controlled their breathing.
Now his bones were liars.
Just shoot the puck.
The game was fine until it wasn’t. A turnover at the opposing blue line—their defenseman fanned on a clearing attempt, and the puck skidded straight to Landon’s tape. Breakaway.
And then the flinch. A microsecond where his brain screamed what if you miss and his hands listened. The deke was half a beat late. The goalie read it. Pad save.
Not a groan. Not a boo. Something worse—a sigh. Twenty thousand people exhaling their disappointment in unison.
Coach Morretti’s office door opened. “Hayes. A minute.”
“The organization is investing in something new this year. We’ve hired a mental skills coach—full-time, in-house. Dr. Theo Laurent.”
Landon’s jaw tightened. “A shrink.”
“Because I’m broken.”
“Because you’re important.”
His father’s face filled the screen. Rick Hayes sat behind the studio desk, performing paternal concern for the cameras. “I raised that kid to be tough. You want to get out of a slump? You don’t need a therapist. You need to want it more.”
Landon turned off the phone. His hands were shaking again.
If you miss, everyone stops loving you.
His phone buzzed. An email notification. From: Dr. Theo Laurent. Subject: Getting Started.
He always did what he was told.
That was the whole fucking problem.
Want to keep reading? The full novel is available now.
🔥 Want an EXCLUSIVE Bonus Chapter?
Good Boy — A scene TOO HOT for Amazon
Six months after the epilogue. Landon returns from a two-week charity hockey camp. Theo has been waiting—and planning. What follows is the most structured, devastating praise scene in the series… including two words Landon has waited his entire life to hear.
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