Page 167 of The Puck Stops Here

‘Not what he cares about.’

‘Not what I care about right now either. He can talk smack all he likes, I’m ready for him.’

Blake ducked around Larsson, using the giant Swede as a buffer.

Get the message, bro.

He just wanted to play hockey. Once he got on the ice, he could quit thinking. He could quit feeling. He could just be. Because everything would be about the game. Just as it always had been. Just as it should be.

‘Blake?’ His brother came up alongside him again, his concerned gaze boring through their visors. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing’s going on. Just let me get out there and give me some peace.’

He launched ahead of him onto the ice, thrusting his stick into the air and relishing the chants and the cheers as he swept around like a coiled spring unleashed. This was where he was at home. Not some swanky flat in the city and not in the arms of some broad who he’d been fool enough to let get close.

V chuckled as he swept past him. ‘God help Zorro is all I can say.’

Blake grunted.Too right.

Zorro clocked him, their gazes colliding across the ice, the guy’s sneer like striking a match over gasoline.

Bring it on, buddy.

Bring. It. On.

* * *

Astrid’s fingers hovered near her lips as the opening minutes unfolded at breakneck speed. The slash of skates on the ice and rattle of the boards charged the erratic thud of her heart.

She’d seen them play multiple times over, but never like this. Blake hadneverbeen like this. He wasn’t just out to win the game. He was out for blood. And the opposition knew it.

Her eyes stung as she stayed glued to him, each near miss and crushing hit making her wince, her body pulsing with empathic pain.

‘Fury’s back,’ Harry muttered under his breath from his seat on the bench before her.

‘Zorro’s goading him,’ Jake, the rookie beside him, said.

‘Zorro?’

They both turned to look at her.

‘Number 21,’ Harry explained. ‘He’s an enforcer for the opposition.’

‘I thought enforcers were no longer a thing.’

‘Once an enforcer, always an enforcer…’

‘Especially when they’ve got unfinished beef,’ Jake added.

‘Unfinished beef?’ she repeated, fear stealing her voice as her eyes found the other guy on the ice and her heart sank into her toes, her stomach with it. ‘He’s…’ She swallowed. ‘Huge.’

‘Don’t worry, Foxy, Fury knows what he’s about.’

She nodded and eased back into hiding, using their heavily padded bodies as a shield. She knew Blake didn’t want to see her and she was doing her best to remain ‘unseen’, all the while willing the team to victory, and willing Blake to stay safe.

Helookedlike he knew exactly what he was doing, his skill and determination making Zorro’s attempts to throw him off seem more desperate by the second. But with the game moving at this speed, things could change in a nanosecond. And her straining eyes knew it. Her beating heart too.

Two periods sped past, the pace of the game sending her dizzy as she struggled to catch her breath. The players were here there and everywhere, the puck flying at lightning speed. They were locked in a brutal stalemate, the rivalry on the ice reaching fever pitch. The rivalry between Blake and Zorro even more so. Checks turned sharper, glances grew more venomous, and the crowd could feel the confrontation building.

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