Showing results by author "Joan Amanda Raymond" in All Categories

Bex Kowalski-Hunt has never been afraid of new ice. When the PWHL calls her name, Bex packs her life and moves to Chicago with her wife, Cam —a true crime podcaster who uproots her entire world without complaint. It’s a sacrifice Bex can’t ignore. So when Cam tells her she’s attracted to a woman she’s met—a Pilsen muralist named Nico Vasquez—Bex does something that surprises them both. She says yes. Not the yes that means “I’ll accept this.” The actual yes. The yes she has to earn. What follows is a year of building—on the ice and off it. As Bex’s game sharpens and ...

She's tired of being the girl they leave. Maren Lindqvist has a problem. As the star forward for her college hockey team, she's confident, focused, unstoppable on the ice. But her love life? A series of pretty girls who use her to experiment, to feel wild for a night, to have a story to tell their boyfriends in the morning. She's always the adventure, never the destination. After yet another girl leaves her feeling hollow and used, Maren makes a decision: no more parties, no more hookups, no more hoping this time will be different. She just needs space to figure out who she is when she's ...

She was hired to photograph them. She never expected to see so much more. Brandi Lesson has spent two years as the team photographer for the Carolina Tempest, capturing professional women's hockey players in action. She's good at her job—maybe too good. When the team asks her to shoot a charity calendar featuring artistic nude portraits, she agrees to do whatever it takes to make her subjects comfortable. Even if that means taking off her own clothes. What starts as a professional equalizer becomes something more as Brandi discovers that vulnerability goes both ways. Session by session, ...

Two women. One minor league hockey team. A love story about learning to be seen. Mary Kowalski is twenty-four, from Minnesota, and working as a dental receptionist in Greenville, South Carolina. She skates as an ice girl for the ECHL Swamp Rabbits because it's the closest she can get to the hockey she misses. She's dated boys, kissed girls at parties, and told herself the threesomes were for her boyfriend. She's starting to suspect that was a lie. Elena "Lena" Castillo is twenty-six, a marketing coordinator who also works as an ice girl. She's a local with a Colombian mother and Upstate ...

Nora Calloway has been running the math for four years. Three internships. Four cities. A 2019 CR-V with a paid-off title and a back seat that doubles as a mobile office. She’s twenty-six, she’s broke in the specific way of someone who is very good at her job and has not yet been paid for it, and she is three months into an unpaid internship with a minor league hockey team in Jacksonville when she makes the most practical decision of her life. Garrett Hollis is the Director of Communications for the Jacksonville Icemen. He is twenty-nine, precise, excellent at his job, and recently ...

When Sarah Mueller discovers BDSM content online, she finds something she didn't know she was searching for—a reflection of her deepest desires. But understanding what you want and knowing how to ask for it are two very different things. Anya Volkov has always known who she is: a confident teammate with a hidden dominant nature. When Sarah finally finds the courage to knock on her door, Anya is ready to guide her into a world of submission and trust. But this isn't about control or conquest. It's about building something real. In the spaces between ice and intimacy, Sarah learns that ...

She never forgot the night she serviced an entire hockey team. He never forgot how powerful she was when she told him about it. Lisa Matean has everything she's supposed to want: a loving husband, a thriving business, a comfortable life in suburban Michigan. But six years into marriage with Connor, a retired NHL defenseman, she finds herself wondering if "comfortable" means she's lost the adventurous woman she used to be. The one who once took on twenty-four hockey players in a locker room and walked away feeling invincible. When Connor discovers Lisa's secret browsing history—hotwife ...

Cole MacKinnon-Briggs was born to play hockey. First-overall draft pick. Nashville Predators. A rookie season that made good on every promise scouts had been making about him since he was fifteen. Then a Rangers enforcer's cheap shot ends his night in a New York training room, counting ceiling tiles and reaching for hours he'll never find. The gap in his memory is permanent. The concussion protocol is relentless. And the apartment in The Gulch is very, very quiet. Walking is on the approved list. So Cole walks — south, toward a city he's lived in for two years without seeing. He finds a ...

She knew exactly what she wanted. He was willing to give her everything. Neither of them knew the cost. Cole Ashford reads the ice the way most men read a room — ahead of the play, trusting his instincts, never missing a signal. As a Chicago Blackhawks left wing, he's built his career on composure. His marriage to Maya is built on something rarer: trust that runs deeper than jealousy, and a shared life where desire gets to be honest. When Maya tells him what she's been thinking about — the specific, carefully examined thing she's been carrying since February — Cole doesn't flinch. He ...

The Plan was simple: get hockey boyfriends. Falling in love was never part of it. Anaïs Gutierrez has her college life figured out—premed track, solid grades, and a best friend who makes everything better. When Harper Beaumont suggests they attend every home hockey game to catch the attention of the team's hottest players, Anaïs goes along with it. After all, what's the worst that could happen? Harper's never been good at wanting things she's supposed to want. The Plan gives her permission to finally take action, to have experiences, to figure out who she is. What she doesn't expect is ...

She fixes what's broken. He's learning to let her in. Maren Kowalski is the best equipment manager the college hockey team has ever had. At five feet tall, she's earned her nickname—Twig—and the respect of every player who's watched her work miracles with tape, tools, and sheer determination. She notices everything: a worn skate blade, a failing helmet buckle, the way her boyfriend favors his left shoulder months after everyone else stopped asking about it. Jake Lindqvist is the defenseman who fell for her the moment she fixed a teammate's helmet in ninety seconds flat. Now they share ...

Eve Ashford has spent three centuries enforcing vampire law in Charlotte, NC—and three centuries alone. When student journalists Maya Chen and Jordan Rivers stumble onto a vampire murder, Eve must protect them from a predator who believes humans are nothing but prey. But keeping them safe means keeping them close, and Eve hasn't let anyone close in a very long time. As danger escalates and political enemies circle, Eve faces an impossible choice: the duty she's upheld for centuries, or the two humans who make her feel alive for the first time since she died. BLOOD LAW is the first book in...

Margaret "Margi" Kasey has everything figured out—a steady boyfriend since high school, a spot on her college hockey team, and a future that looks exactly like everyone expects. Then a late-night scroll through Reddit tears a hole in the life she thought she knew. Suddenly she can't stop noticing things she's spent years not seeing: the curve of a teammate's shoulder during warm-ups, the way sweat traces down bare arms in the locker room. She's not just curious. She's hungry. When her secret is exposed in the locker room, Margi's careful world starts crumbling. But it's Charlie Greene—...

For thirteen years, vampire sheriff Eve Ashford has built an impossible life with Maya and Jordan—a polyamorous family that defies every rule of her kind. They've weathered political threats, faction wars, and the daily miracle of loving across the divide between immortal and mortal. But time is the one enemy Eve cannot defeat. When Maya's beloved uncle Marcus receives a terminal diagnosis, their carefully constructed world begins to crack. Their daughter Elena, now eight years old, is asking questions none of them know how to answer. What happens when people die? Why won't Mama Eve get ...

She's spent years telling herself she's too ordinary for someone like him. He's spent just as long waiting for someone real. Lisa Hampton is a high school English teacher who loves Milwaukee's AHL hockey team for all the right reasons — her late father's spirit is in every game. She doesn't expect to end up at a charity dinner talking to the most grounded man she's ever met. She definitely doesn't expect him to call. Marcus Cole is a defenseman who made peace with the AHL after an injury ended his NHL career. He's seen enough of the hockey world's spotlight-chasers to know exactly what he...

She spent three centuries building her authority. She'll destroy it all in one night to save them. Four years ago, Eve Ashford—the 311-year-old vampire Sheriff of Charlotte—did the unthinkable. She fell in love with two humans: Maya, a fearless journalist, and Jordan, a gentle therapist. Together, they've built something no one thought possible: a life that bridges the divide between predator and prey. But not everyone wants them to succeed. Harrison Wells has spent two years in exile, watching and waiting. Now he's returned with an army of extremist vampires and a plan designed to ...

She's spent five years perfecting the performance. Now she has to learn what's real. Lindsey Davis knows bodies. As a senior athletic trainer at a Division I hockey program, she can diagnose an injury with a glance, tape an ankle in her sleep, and earn the trust of every athlete she treats. But there's one body she's never understood: her own. At twenty-two, Lindsey has never had an orgasm. Not with Mark, her patient and loving boyfriend of two and a half years. Not with Chloe, her best friend since high school and the woman she's been secretly intimate with for just as long. Not alone, no ...

She was invisible in her own marriage. He was a ghost who'd never been seen. Megan Hartwell has spent eleven years being the perfect wife—raising three children, managing a pristine Dallas home, and pretending not to notice that her husband stopped seeing her years ago. She fills her days with lists and routines, her nights with silence, and tells herself this is what marriage looks like. She's almost convinced herself it's enough. Then she starts to feel something in her house. A presence. A warmth in empty rooms. The sense that someone is finally, impossibly, watching. Eli Navarro died ...

He's hidden his whole life. Now the people who see him want everything. Dmitri Volkov has spent twenty years burying who he really is. As a Russian hockey player climbing toward the NHL, he learned early that some secrets could destroy a career—and a life. His marriage to Maija is real, their love is solid, and their private arrangement works: what happens outside stays outside. No strings. No feelings. No risk. Then he gets called up to the Minnesota North Stars. And then the team's billionaire owner invites him to dinner. Warren Lindqvist is powerful, silver-haired, and absolutely ...

She almost destroyed everything. Now she has to fight to keep it. Carmen Anatov has always known exactly who she is: a hockey player, a competitor, a woman who goes after what she wants. At nineteen, she's the leading scorer on Wisconsin's women's hockey team and deeply in love with Larry Reynolds, the charming center who made her feel like the only person in any room. But something has changed. Larry cancels plans constantly. He's physically present but emotionally absent. The man who used to look at her like she hung the moon now stares through her like she's made of glass. Carmen tells ...