Superstar (Chapters 1–6)

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Note to readers: this is the start of a long story called Superstar. I’m not sure this is the place for it — it’s fundamentally an M/F romance novel — though one where the hero is very, very big and very, very strong, so I think it will be of interest to at least some people here (and I was encouraged to post it here by one of the people who read an earlier draft and gave feedback). I’m posting the opening chapters here so you can see if this is something you're interested in; at the end of chapter six there’ll be a link to where you can download the whole thing as a (free) ebook if you want to read the rest.

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CHAPTER 1 – Open tryouts

It was nearing the end of a hot, muggy August. Just over a month before the new season began. As he trekked through the arena concourse and took the escalator up to the suite level, Camden couldn’t help thinking that he did not have time for this. Pausing at the door to the owners’ suite, he reminded himself that it was just one day. He reminded himself that while today’s event was irrelevant to the team as far he was concerned, the PR and marketing departments loved it. And after the dismal performance of the team last season, the head coach probably needed all the good PR and marketing he could get. Taking a deep breath, he knocked.

“Come in!” he heard the old man calling out, as an attendant opened the door. “Come in, Rob!” he said, merrily waving the coach to the comfy leather club chair on the open side of the luxury suite, directly overlooking center ice. “Have a seat! Good to see you as always. How’s the roster shaping up?” The old man owned the team and acted as general manager, as had his father and grandfather before him.

“Good, good, I think. The new guys are looking good, I really think they’ll shore up some of the weaknesses from last year.”

“Let’s hope so.” To say last year had been disappointing was putting it mildly; they’d finished in the bottom half of the league for the first time in over a decade.

“You know, sir, if you ever think a coaching change is needed, I wouldn’t take it personally. You have to do what’s best for the Wolves organization.” Camden knew most owners would have shown their head coach the door after a performance as embarrassing as last year’s.

The old man (whose name was Henry Darnell III, but who nearly everyone simply referred to as “the old man”) waved it off. “Wouldn’t hear of it. One bad year’s not the end of the world. Too many of these new owners are far too quick to fire their staff. There are 32 head coaches in the NHL, and every year 31 of them don’t win the Cup. Shuffling them all around every year is pointless; a great team is something you build over time.”

“I agree, sir. But still, I’d understand.”

“Enough about last year. The future is far more interesting. Excited about the tryouts?” The old man peered eagerly over the railing, but nothing had started yet, the ice was still empty.

Camden made a noncommittal noise. The annual open tryout was a longstanding Wolves tradition. These days all of their players actually came up through what Camden thought of as the normal way: drafted out of college, affiliate clubs, national junior leagues, and so on. But once a year, the Wolves still threw open the doors and invited anyone who lived in the city to show up and see if they had what it took to “join the pack.” The old man insisted on it. He would tell anyone who would listen about how his grandfather (the first Henry Darnell) built the original team that way.

That was a century ago, thought Camden to himself. It was an amateur club league back then; the players didn’t get paid and held down regular jobs to pay the rent. Now it’s part of a multibillion-dollar pro league. No random guy off the street has a chance. The ones who show up to try out are invariably wannabes, has-beens, or fans who just want to come down and pretend to be NHL players for a day, take a selfie of themselves on the ice, and go home. He’d made all these arguments before, but the old man had flatly refused to end the practice. The open tryouts were a tradition. “Besides,” he said, “you need to make sure the fans feel it’s their team, that they can really be part of it. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of hired guns who go to whichever team pays them the most. Who wants to show up and cheer for that?”

Camden had given in, conceding the point. So now, once again, he would sit up here, spending the day watching guys who couldn’t skate and couldn’t shoot, playing around on the ice. At least the chairs were comfortable. He signaled the attendant to bring him a drink.

“Rob,” added the old man, “one day someone who shows up here is going to surprise you.”

 

“Next!” said the young woman at the registration desk, raising her arm. She didn’t even look up as the next hopeful came forward, stepping over to her station. She knew if she looked up, she’d see the line of guys behind him still waiting to get in, and she’d be reminded that she was going to be stuck here until two or three in the afternoon at the earliest. She loved her job with the team, but this was definitely not her favorite part of it. “Name?” she said, eyes on her laptop screen.

“Kyle. Kyle Mason.”

“I.D.?” she said, extending her hand. The guy put a driver’s license in it, and she propped it up against the corner of her screen with a practiced motion. She began to enter his name and address into the computer. Her gaze passed right over the irrelevant items like eye and hair color, but caught when she saw “HT 06-11 WT 425” printed on it.

At last she looked up, thinking that had to be an error. Then she got her first look at him. Holy shit, she thought, as she took in the sheer size of the powerfully-built young man looming over her table. The numbers on his driver’s license weren’t an error — he was an absolute juggernaut. The fabric of his t-shirt was stretched across an immense broad bulging chest, the sleeves large but still snug around his thick meaty biceps. Pretty handsome, too, she couldn’t help noticing. Lightly tanned skin, dark brown hair, heavy stubble on a strong jaw. His eyes were mesmerizing — not brown, not blue, but an oddly piercing light gray color. Slate gray? Battleship gray? She was having trouble thinking of a word to describe it. Maybe “steel gray.”

“Is something wrong, ma’am?” he asked. His voice was deep and resonant, not too surprising coming from a chest of that size.

She suddenly realized she’d been just staring blankly at him for the last fifteen seconds without saying a word. “Oh!” she yelped, startled, blinking and tearing her gaze away from him. “So sorry, I just spaced out there for a minute. It’s been a long day.”

“No worries. I can imagine,” he smiled, turning and glancing back at the long line of guys behind him. “Bet you had an early start.”

“Registration opened at seven this morning,” she said, handing back his license. “And we were here at five to set up,” she yawned, as a fresh page emerged from the printer next to her laptop. She grabbed it and slapped it down on the table, facing him. “Okay, I need you to read through this and sign it. It basically says you can’t sue us if you get hurt.”

He took the pen and signed the paper with barely a glance. His hand was enormous. The pen was regular-sized but looked almost like a little golf pencil in his big bear paw. Thick cables of muscle in his massive forearm twitched as he scrawled his name, then pushed the paper back across the desk.

“You brought skates and a stick?” she said.

His brow furrowed. “Uh, yeah?” he said, lifting up the gym bag he’d set down on the floor. A hockey stick was lashed across the top of it.

“Sorry, I just have to ask everyone.”

“You really get people showing up without them?”

“All the time. As if it’s a bowling alley and we’ve got rentals or something,” she laughed. He chuckled along with her, and she felt a little warm shiver go down her back. “Anyway, here’s your number.” She handed him a numbered bib, like marathon runners would wear. “Wear it at all times when you’re on the ice. You’re number 1065, that means you’re the fifth player in group 106. They’ll call out the group number when it’s your turn to get ready. Pay attention when your number is coming up, you miss it and you don’t get another chance.”

Kyle nodded. “Got it. Group 106. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. And good luck.” She raised her hand. “Next!”

 

“What are we up to? 105?” asked William.

“106. 105 just left. You’re up, man,” said Eevi.

The assistant coaches were taking turns with the tryout groups, and most of the scouting staff had shown up to watch. Not because they thought anything would come of the college washouts and beer-league hotshots that showed up for this event each year, but because they knew the head coach would be watching from the owner’s suite upstairs, alongside the team’s owner. The old man’s fondness for this event was well-known; it wouldn’t do to just blow it off completely.

Sighing, William got up from the home team’s bench and skated back out to center ice, blowing his whistle and yelling “106!” The door from the visitor’s bench opened and eight new guys — wearing 1061 through 1068 — started to file out onto the ice. “Line up right here!” he called out, pointing down at the blue line in front of him. He watched them come out, his experienced eye making instant judgments. Number One looked to be about forty pounds overweight. Two didn’t know how to hold his stick properly. Three seemed to have trouble even skating, it looked like he was using his stick to prop himself up to keep from falling. Four got going okay, but he failed to slow down in time and overshot the line where he was supposed to stop. William suppressed a smirk as he watched the poor guy trying to back up, and looked up just in time to see Five coming his way.

Fuck, thought the coach, taking an automatic step backwards as he saw a guy the size of a Mack truck bearing down on him. But he didn’t get run over. The giant skater came to a crisp stop right on the blue line and waited for further instructions.

Back on the bench, the other assistants and scouts were watching. As the latest batch of hopefuls lined up, it became clear that one of them stood head and shoulders above the rest — literally. “Jesus, who’s 1065?” asked someone. “Looks like a fucking linebacker.” “You think he knows this is the NHL, not the NFL, right?” The other assistant coach, Eevi, flipped through a stack of papers until he found the list for group 106.

“Last name’s Mason. Hey, any of you guys ever heard of a Kyle Mason?” The scouts all shook their heads, it wasn’t a name any of them recalled coming across. One opened his laptop and began searching through his old scouting reports, but that came up empty too.

Out on the ice, William was instructing the eight on the drill they were about to do. (Privately, the coaching staff called it the “garbage truck”, since its only use was to get rid of the trash.) “All right, listen up. First up is a quick test of basic skills. When I blow the whistle, all of you are gonna head down to the far end, go around behind the goal, and come back down this way.” He tossed a dozen or so pucks out onto the ice, scattering them between the players and the nearer goal. “You pick out any puck and shoot it, then keep going until you’re over the red line. Understood?”

“What if we miss?”

“That’s okay, you don’t have to score, as long as you’re somewhere in the neighborhood of the net. We’re looking for speed. You’ll get three tries, and your best time is what counts. Most of the Wolves players can do it in 12–13 seconds and a couple have even broken 10. Anything over 20 and I’m afraid the NHL is probably not for you. You got that?”

All the hopefuls nodded. William looked them over. No one ever got under 20 seconds. He guessed that maybe two of them would break 30 seconds. Four might be okay. Five was big as fuck but didn’t look fast, it was gonna take way too long to get all that muscle moving. Seven was the only one who actually looked anything like a decent hockey player.

“Everyone ready?” The guys all nodded. “Ready with the timer?” he asked, looking off to the side. The tech running the electronic timing system over at the scoring desk gave a thumbs up. “On my mark,” he said, raising the whistle to his lips.

The tweet! had barely sounded when Five absolutely exploded in a blur of motion. His massive thighs unleashed a torrent of pure power, steel blades digging into the ice as he sprinted forward, hitting top speed before he was across the neutral zone. He heeled over hard as he made the turn, his fingertips skimming the ice and his skate blades spraying snow as he shot around behind the goal and came screaming out the other side. William had that oncoming-truck sensation again as Five raced back down the ice towards him, raising his stick to take his shot. He sped right past the coach, then there was a loud crack! and the puck blasted off the blade of his stick like a bullet out of a gun, going straight into the back of the net. The big guy let momentum carry him forward for a split second until he flew across the red line, and then he slammed on the brakes hard, coming to a full stop just short of the back boards in a shower of ice and snow.

The assistant coach was so shocked it took him a second to even remember that there were seven more guys he was supposed to be watching as well. Down at the other end of the ice, Seven was halfway through the turn. Four looked like he was going to make it as well. One hadn’t even reached the far blue line and was already puffing hard. Six had managed to drop his stick and had to circle around to retrieve it. Everyone eventually took their shots and straggled across the finish line, after anywhere from 25 seconds on up to a minute or more.

Eevi poked his head over the plexiglass barrier separating the home bench from the scoring table. “How fast was that?” he hissed. He didn’t need to specify who he was asking about.

The tech read the number off his screen. “7.91.”

Eevi blinked. It had to be a fluke. Maybe the guy had trained specially for it, somehow? He’d have bet money that no rando could have ever gotten under 10 seconds, let alone 8. “Fucking hell. Are you sure it was a good start?”

The tech nodded. “I double-checked the video, it was clean. His skate blade crosses the line 16 milliseconds after the whistle starts to sound. Big dude has some serious reflexes.”

“Yeah.” Eevi considered. Or maybe not. Maybe he’d just anticipated the whistle and had gotten a lucky start. That wasn’t enough to explain the rest of it, though. “I guess we’ll see if he can do it again.”

There were two more attempts. A couple of the guys didn’t even bother, waving goodbye and heading for the exit. They’d had their fun, getting to try skating and shooting a goal in the big arena. Seven was the best of the rest, managing to get his time down to a respectable 22 seconds or so. But even that wasn’t really good enough. Five, on the other hand, chalked up a 7.74 and a 7.80 in his next two tries.

After the drill was concluded and the players had left the ice, William glided back over to the bench where the other coaches and scouts were talking. The shock still hadn’t completely left his face. “Do you know if they saw that upstairs?”

“I’m texting Rob now,” said Eevi, typing furiously on his phone. A few seconds went by, and then his phone beeped. “He says to have Five come in Monday for a real test.”

 

The old man came into the office without knocking. “Three days until the roster deadline.”

Coach Camden nodded. “I know.”

“You fill that last spot yet?”

Rob shook his head. “Hardly any room left under the salary cap. I’ve been looking at who we could afford to bring up from the affiliates but there’s no one cheap enough that I’m too excited about, honestly.”

“What about that kid from the open tryout?” Rob blinked. It had been a couple of weeks, and with a million things left to do before the start of the season he’d sort of put that out of his mind, along with the rest of that day. “You told me he looked good.”

“He did. Better than good, if I’m honest.” He’d brought Mason back for a full afternoon, talked a couple of the regular players into doing a workout with the guy, acting as teammates or opponents for some of the more advanced drills. The results had been surprising. The speed he’d shown originally wasn’t a fluke; Mason could move like lightning. He only seemed to have two speeds: fucking fast, and even fucking faster. His accuracy with the puck was almost frightening, he could hit the net from the far end of the ice every time. His skills weren’t just physical, either, he had great instincts, and seemed to know exactly where every man on the ice was at all times. Rob had watched him make a stunning backwards no-look pass right to his teammate’s stick blade with both of them barrelling down the ice at full speed.

“So what’s the problem? You think he’ll ask for too much money?” chuckled the old man.

“I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s something off about him. Pro-level players don’t just walk in off the street. Why have we never heard of him? If he’s that good, why didn’t he go for the NHL draft? Why’s he apparently never played in an organized league before, at any level?”

“Invite him to the training camp. What’s the harm? We’ll put him on the league minimum salary, there’s enough room for that. I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

“Is that an order?”

“Does it need to be?” asked the old man, with a twinkle in his eye.

“No,” replied Rob, making a sound somewhere between a sigh and a chuckle. “All right, you win. I’ll give him a call.”

Edited March 30 by GymWolf
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CHAPTER 2 – Part of the team

There was a knock on the door just before it opened. “Coach Simmons?” came the deep voice from outside.

“Hello! Come on in, you’re right on time. And forget ‘Coach Simmons’, it’s just Steve. You’re Kyle Mason, right?”

“Yessir,” said Kyle, ducking his head through the weight room door.

Steve’s eyes widened a little as the young man straightened up to his full, towering height. “God damn, son, they were not kidding when they said you were a big guy. I wasn’t there to see you at the tryouts, but I heard you were impressive.” Kyle just gave a modest shrug as he looked around the room at all the equipment. “Now, like I said, my name’s Steve, and I’m the team’s strength and conditioning coach. I like to meet one-on-one with all the new guys for an evaluation, figure out where they stand, and identify any weaknesses we can work on. Sound good?” Kyle nodded. “Now, you look like you know your way around a gym.”

“Er, not really,” said Kyle, apologetically.

“Really? How’d you get so goddamn big?”

“Used to go hiking in the backcountry a bunch when I was a kid. Practiced by lifting rocks and stuff. Plus when I was older I spent a couple seasons on a logging crew in Alberta.”

“Nice. Nothin’ wrong with that. Compound movements and functional strength are great. Sure looks like it worked for ya, at any rate. So, we’ll start by getting some numbers, so we can track your progress. Let’s start with the bench press.”

After warming up a little, Steve told Kyle they were going to find his one-rep max. “That means you only do one each time, but we add weight after every rep, and we don’t stop until you can’t lift it. I’ll be spotting you in case you get into trouble. Got it?” Kyle nodded. They started out at 225, but the weight quickly rocketed upward as Kyle added plate after plate. As he neared 800 pounds Steve started to grow uneasy. “You sure you’re all right?” he asked, as Kyle walked across the room to grab more plates. “Don’t want you to injure yourself.”

“Nah, I’m good. It’s not too hard yet.”

Kyle came back, and Steve’s jaw dropped a little as he saw what the hulking rookie was carrying: six 45-lb plates, a stack of three clamped in the fingers of each of his giant hands. The sheer grip strength it would take to do that was mind-boggling. But Kyle made it seem like no big deal as he slid all of them onto the ends of the bar at once. Before Steve could object to the size of the jump Kyle had laid back on the bench and banged out another quick rep, making it look like a piece of cake.

Steve knew he should stop the kid. The weight he was throwing around was getting downright dangerous. If he got into trouble Steve wasn’t gonna be able to help him enough. He could get seriously injured. But Kyle just kept going, and the coach was too stunned to stop him. In the end Kyle filled the bar completely, sixteen plates per side, a total weight just shy of 1500 pounds. The bar was bending visibly as Kyle got under it. He lifted it off the brackets, lowered it down to touch his massive chest, then powered it back up, smooth as silk. Steel clattered as he racked it and then sat up.

“Wasn’t that … difficult?” asked Steve, quietly. He looked deeply shaken.

“Uhhhh, yeah, I guess it was pretty hard,” replied Kyle, unconvincingly.

“Why don’t we call it good there, then.”

“All right.” Kyle got up and began to pull off the plates, returning them to the racks.

That evening, Steve met with the head coach to give his report. They went through the roster, going through all the returning players and the new ones one by one. Rob noticed that Steve omitted any mention of their most unconventional new recruit.

“What about Mason?” asked the head coach, at last.

“I … I’m not sure what to say, Rob. As far as strength goes he’s off the charts.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I watched him casually destroy the bench press world record, and I don’t think he even realized it. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Are you 100% sure he’s human?”

 

“Hey Godzilla, shove over,” said Girard, as the players came back out from the locker room, filling the bench while waiting for the second period to start. “Gonna need a bigger bench here, with your fat ass warming it.”

“Fuck you, Froggie,” shot back Mason, the most junior member of the Wolves. But he scooted over as best he could. It wasn’t easy to squeeze in with shoulders as broad as his. The trash talk was really just good-natured banter — Kyle and the other players had gotten along well in the intense two-week training camp. The skepticism of the veterans at this nobody from nowhere suddenly being on their elite team had evaporated once they saw his skills in action — mostly. But Kyle couldn’t help being a little stung by the benchwarmer comment. It was the second game of the season and he’d had yet to take the ice.

Missing the first game wasn’t really Kyle’s fault. As a last-minute addition to the roster, the custom gear they’d had to order to accommodate his enormous size wasn’t ready in time, so he’d been scratched. During the training camp he’d worn the largest pads they’d had, but it was a tight squeeze and they wouldn’t really do for a real game. But now he was here, dressed in his brand new properly-sized uniform for the first time. “MASON – 5” was hand-stitched across the back of his new home sweater — whoever had assigned Kyle his jersey number must have had a sense of humor. But the whole first period of this game had gone by and Camden hadn’t put him in once, and he was starting to wonder why.

The game was not going well. They’d lost their season-opener away game pretty badly, prompting a bunch of online grumbling from fans about how it was already shaping up to be another bad year for the struggling Wolves. Now it was their second game — their first at home — and they were already down two goals after the first period.

“Jones. Dobrovich. You’re up. You too, Mason, it’s showtime,” came the voice of the head coach, standing behind them. Hearing his name called, Kyle was suddenly nervous. It was really happening. He forced himself to calm down as the third line came in for a shift change, and Kyle and the other two sprinted out onto the ice to join the play in progress.

The sound of the crowd seemed to disappear as his attention zeroed in on the opponent with the puck, coming down the center. Kyle’s mighty legs went into overdrive as he set a collision course. The guy tried to shake him but Kyle was too fast; he caught up with his target and slammed into the guy, smashing him into the corner boards, hard. The puck bounced free and Dobrovich was ready, scooping it up and zooming away back down the ice. Kyle left the opponent he’d checked — still seeing stars, probably — and raced off to support Dobrovich. A couple of defenders were rushing him, and he dumped the puck off in Kyle’s direction. Kyle saw the small opening the goalie’s low stance had left, and with the opposing defense out of position he went for it. The loud thwack! of the snap shot resonated through the arena, and suddenly the puck was in the net. The red lamp lit up and the arena horn let off a thunderous blast, signaling a Chicago goal. Kyle had been off the bench for 18 seconds.

He suddenly became aware of the raucous noise of 20,000 fans on their feet, cheering. “Wooooooolves goooooal!” cried the announcer. “Scored by number five, Kyle Mason! Assisted by number twenty-two, Vasily Dobrovich!” The cheering went on for some time. Kyle circled around and skated past the bench, slapping gloves with all the other guys on the team, celebrating his very first NHL goal. Coach Camden looked a little shocked, but quickly recovered and began shouting for a shift change. Kyle returned to the bench as the first line skated back out, taking up their positions for the puck drop at center ice.

“Nice work, Godzilla,” said Girard, slapping his hulking teammate on the back. Kyle just grinned as he grabbed his water bottle and took a swig.

Defensively Kyle was a force to be reckoned with as well. He could turn on a dime, flipping from skating forwards to backwards in what seemed like the blink of an eye. He was a towering wall in between any opposing forward and the goal. It helped that with his long arms and equally long stick, his reach was a good foot longer than his opponents were used to — more than once he knocked the puck out of his opponent’s control with a bit of deft stick work, getting his team back on offense again. Fourteen minutes later, he scored again, turning a fast takeaway into another goal. Outracing the opposing skaters down the ice, the goalie left just enough of a gap above his shoulder for Kyle to chip the puck in through the 3-hole unassisted, leveling the score. The home crowd was ecstatic.

“Damn, mon frère. Might have to start calling you Goalzilla,” came the inevitable comment from his neighbor on the bench.

The mood in the locker room was a lot cheerier during the second intermission than it had been in the first. Kyle’s two goals had really turned the game around. Kyle glanced up at one of the TVs showing the broadcast. It was strange to see his own face on the screen as the commentators analyzed his performance. The color man was pointing out that only seven players in NHL history had scored a hat trick in their debut game, and was speculating about whether Kyle might become the eighth. “You know,” said one commentator, “before now, a lot of people were saying that the addition of the unknown Mason to the roster was just a cheap publicity stunt. I think they may be reevaluating that now. It seems like Wolves owner Darnell’s legendary insistence on old-fashioned open tryouts might have finally turned up a nugget of gold.” Kyle winced. If Girard had heard that, his nickname was sure to be “Nugget” for the rest of the season.

Having lost their lead, their opponents came out swinging in the third period, determined to get it back. It was a lot messier and dirtier than the first two periods, with both sides racking up penalties as tempers flared. Kyle mostly stayed out of it. He wasn’t shy about delivering a hard hit when it was needed — and with his size, all his hits were bone-jarringly hard — but he didn’t let it get personal. He just did his job — putting up a solid defense, clearing the zone, looking for opportunities. About halfway through the period, he got one. He got control of the puck and blasted off down the ice. The crowd was revved up, on their feet again, hoping to see history made. At the last second, though, he changed his mind, passing it back to his teammate Khodemchuk, who smacked it towards the net. The goalie couldn’t react to the pass in time and the puck sailed past his glove. The red lamp lit up with the go-ahead goal, and the crowd went wild.

Khodemchuk pumped his fist in the air as Kyle skated over to slap his back and congratulate him.

“What, you didn’t want it?” shouted Khodemchuk into Kyle’s ear, trying to be heard over the din of the crowd.

“Wanted it, couldn’t get it,” Kyle shouted back. “Goalie’s getting a little less sloppy for me.” Khodemchuk just laughed.

In the final minutes the opposing team pulled their goalie to try to even the score, but in the end it didn’t matter. Kyle and the other defensemen played solidly, avoiding anything spectacular and risky. They repeatedly cleared the puck out of the zone, making the other team waste time chasing it down. Then the final horn blew and they’d won, 3–2.

William, the assistant coach, had to push his way through the celebrating players in the locker room to get to Kyle, tapping the big guy on the shoulder just as he pulled his pads off. “Mason!” he said loudly. “They want you in the media room!”

“What, now?”

“Of course now! Star of the game, bro, time for the post-game interview!”

“Uh, okay.” Kyle pulled a clean t-shirt out of the locker and quickly yanked it down over his sweaty muscular torso. He raked his fingers through his damp helmet hair but only succeeded in making it spiky and messy. “I look like shit.”

“You look like you just played 60 minutes of pro hockey, that’s what they want. C’mon, stop stalling.” William jerked his head, leading Kyle out of the locker room and down to the media center. Heads turned as Kyle entered. The room seemed packed solid with reporters and TV people.

He wasn’t sure what to do, but then a small hand grabbed his wrist. “Darla Wilson, Midwest Central Sports,” came a familiar voice. Kyle looked down. Whoa, he thought, it’s really her. She’d been part of the Wolves broadcast team for years, he’d seen her on TV a hundred times. Now she was going to interview him. He never knew she was so short.

The far end of the media room had a kind of low stage area, set up with production lighting and a backdrop for doing interviews. Darla yanked Kyle’s arm in that direction with surprising vigor, and he followed. She pointed at a marked spot on the stage and he stood there, obediently, as a production assistant clipped a mic onto his sweaty t-shirt. He noted with surprise that Darla actually stood on a small wooden box next to him, to erase a few inches of their height difference. He’d never realized before; he’d only ever seen her on TV and these interviews were always framed from the waist up anyway. It made sense, she was five-foot-nothing and most players were pretty decent-sized guys. It wasn’t nearly enough in his case, though, he still towered over her like a building.

The red light on the camera lit up. “I’m here with the Wolves newest player, rookie Kyle Mason. Kyle, you were a late and, dare I say, unexpected addition to the roster, but that was quite a performance for your first game!”

He didn’t know how to respond. “I’m, uh, I’m just excited to be part of the team,” he said. He tried to remember to look at the camera. The team press officer had given them all interview tips at orientation but that was the only one he could remember right then.

“Those two goals of yours in the second really turned things around for the team after a fairly sluggish performance in the first period.”

“Thanks. But Dobrovich deserves most of the credit for that first one, he set it up perfect and I was just lucky to be in the right place to take the pass.”

“Are you disappointed to have missed out on the debut hat trick? You would have been just the eighth player in league history to do it.”

Kyle just shrugged his massive shoulders. “Nah. I could see Andriy had a better shot than I did. It’s more important to win the game.”

“Well, the Wolves certainly did that tonight. For more on tonight’s come-from-behind Wolves victory, let’s go back to Brent in the broadcast booth.”

The light on the camera winked off. “We’re clear,” said the cameraman.

“Was that okay?” asked Kyle, sounding nervous.

“Just fine,” said Darla. “The fans eat that kind of aww-shucks shit up. Off the record, though — you really didn’t have the shot?”

Kyle laughed. “I really didn’t. I could tell the goalie was being extra careful to not leave me an opening — so I figured he probably wasn’t paying enough attention to Khodemchuk.”

“Indeed. Anyway, nice job. We don’t often see rookies who know how to play the players as well as the puck. Now we’ll have to see if you can keep it up, or if you just got lucky.”

Over the next month, the whole hockey world did see him keep it up. Mason was on fire, racking up goals and assists like nobody’s business. The Wolves won ten out of their next dozen games, and even the ones they’d dropped were close. Somehow the whole team seemed to work better, even when he wasn’t on the ice. When he was, it was almost magical. He could target his opponents’ weaknesses like a laser, and play to his teammates’ strengths just as much. Everyone’s stats were up, across the board. Having Kyle playing was almost like having an extra man on the ice; every play was a power play. The fans online — whose attitude towards Mason had rapidly swung from eye-rolling to skepticism to excitement to awe — were already starting to chatter about the possibility of winning the Cup this year.

Edited March 30 by GymWolf
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[expander]

CHAPTER 3 – Running into each other

In the Wolves public relations department, George poked his head out of his office. “Lauren? Would you mind running Wednesday’s promo night plans over to Coach Camden?” He glanced at his watch. “They should be getting done with practice shortly, it’ll probably be a good time to catch him and get his signoff.”

“Sure, no problem,” said Lauren, getting up from her desk and taking the file folder from her boss. “I’ll go now.”

The team’s front office was in the building across the street from the arena, but thankfully the two were connected by an underground tunnel, so she didn’t have to go outside in the frigid wind of a midwestern November. It was good to get up from her desk and stretch her legs anyway. She took the elevator down to the basement level, badging through the doors into the tunnel. It led straight into the below-ground floor level of the arena. She smiled and gave friendly nods to all the workers she passed as she made her way through the backstage areas underneath the seats.

“Anbassa!” she waved, seeing one of the porters wheeling a catering cart down the passage. “Have you seen Coach Camden around?”

“Practice finished early, Miss Lauren, you just missed him. Last saw him headed down that way, towards his office.”

“Thanks, Anbassa.”

Her heels clacked on the concrete floor of the main hallway as she rushed to catch the coach, passing storage areas, the media center, the entrance to the visitors locker room. Hearing male voices, she sped up, jogging around a corner without looking and running straight into a brick wall. The folder of papers went flying as she bounced off and tumbled to the ground.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry, are you all right?” said the brick wall, sounding concerned. Kyle bent down, helping Lauren up to a sitting position. “Did you hit your head?”

“No,” she said, pushing her chestnut hair out of her eyes. “I’m all right, just came down hard on my butt.” She looked up and let out a small squeak as she realized who she’d run into.

Kyle didn’t seem to notice her reaction. “Are you sure? The team doctor’s office is just down the hall, maybe she should take a look.” She felt a powerful arm encircle her torso and she was abruptly lifted off the ground. “I’ll take you there.”

“No, really, it’s not necessary. I’ll be fine. More embarrassed than anything, really, I should’ve been watching where I was going.”

He reluctantly lowered her back down, setting her down on her feet. She immediately wobbled and grabbed hold of his shirt to keep from falling. “That’s it. You’re seeing Dr. Bowe,” he declared.

“No! No, it’s just my damn shoe, the heel broke.”

Kyle looked skeptical. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I just need to sit down for a minute, that’s all.

“Okay, if you’re sure. Come in here.” With his huge hand clamped gently but firmly onto her upper arm, she couldn’t have fallen down if she’d tried. She realized he was leading her into the team locker room. He must have been coming out when she came barreling around the corner and ran straight into him. She’d only been in it a couple of times before. It was less a “room” and more like a whole complex. Around the corner to the right was the actual locker area and the bathrooms beyond that. She could hear showers running and guys talking as they got cleaned up after the morning skate. Kyle steered her to the left, where there was a kind of a VIP lounge area where the players could gather before and after the games and practices: watch game film, relax and have a snack, confer with the coaches, or just hang out. “Sit,” he commanded, pointing to one of the large black leather armchairs. “I’ll get you some water.”

“Okay,” she said, grateful for the softness of the cushion beneath her bruised tailbone as she lowered herself into the chair. Kyle returned from the big commercial fridge at the back of the room with a bottle of water, which he tossed to her. “Thanks,” she said, catching it.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I feel better already. I’m a pretty tough girl.” His concern was kind of sweet, though.

“Okay. I’ll be back in a sec. Don’t go anywhere.” He disappeared out the door again, leaving her alone in the room. She looked around as she took a drink, a bit nervous that someone would catch her in here and throw her out. She’d never been in here when the players were around before, she wasn’t sure if that was even allowed. But Kyle was back in less than a minute. “Here, tough girl. You dropped this. I think I got all the pages.” He held out the file folder she’d been carrying; she’d forgotten all about it.

“Oh, gosh, thanks, you shouldn’t have bothered. It’s just some paperwork for Coach Camden.”

“I’m Kyle, by the way,” he said, extending a friendly hand.

As if she wouldn’t know who the breakout star of the team this year was. “Lauren,” she said, shaking his enormous hand. “I’m from the PR office.”

“Nice to meet you, Lauren from the PR office.”

“Nice to meet you too.”

His eyes narrowed for a second, searching her face for something. “Hang on a sec. We’ve met before! You were doing registration when I came to try out!”

“Yeah, I remember,” she smiled. “1065.”

“1065,” he laughed. “Why didn’t you say?”

“I didn’t think you’d remember me,” she admitted, blushing slightly.

“It was kind of a big day for me, I remember everything about it. You wished me good luck.” She giggled, a little flattered that he’d remembered such a detail.

“And you called me ‘ma’am’. Made me feel about sixty years old.”

Kyle smiled and laughed, and the sight made her knees feel wobbly again, even while sitting down. “Sorry,” he said, “I was really nervous. Anyway, it’s nice to meet you. Again.”

 

For the next few days the office was quiet; the team was on an east coast road trip. Lauren took advantage of the lull to catch up on paperwork and get prepared for upcoming events. They returned just before Thanksgiving, having completed a five-game sweep of their opponents. The Wolves were leading the division by a healthy margin, and everyone was in a good mood. They had two home games over the long weekend, though, so it was going to be a working holiday for everyone.

She’d noticed Kyle hanging around the front office a couple of times. That was a little odd; the players usually didn’t have much cause to come over to this side of the street. If there was any business to be done it was usually their agents who showed up. Though now that she thought about it, she wasn’t sure Kyle even had an agent. She was just coming back from a meeting in the finance department when they crossed paths in the hallway.

“Oh hey Kyle, welcome back,” she said, friendly as always. “Nice job in Toronto by the way, you really curb-stomped those guys.” She wasn’t exaggerating, the game had been a blowout.

“Thanks,” he grinned. “I’ve been hoping to run into you.”

“Not again!” she said, drawing back. “Wasn’t once enough?”

Kyle reddened. “I didn’t mean … I mean, well, not literally run into,” he stammered, awkwardly.

“I know,” she smiled. “Sorry, it was just a dumb joke. Anyway, what can I help you with? I’m guessing it’s not PR-related, but maybe I can at least point you in the right direction. Did payroll mess up your check or something?”

“Um, well, actually …” He paused, looking down at his toes, then the words all came out in a rush. “I was wondering if you’d be interested in getting coffee sometime. W-with me, I mean.” His steel-gray eyes met her clear blue ones for an instant, but then he quickly looked back down at the floor.

Lauren blinked. The gargantuan handsome budding hockey superstar was asking her out? “Um, okay,” she managed to say, a little shocked by the question. She took a deep breath, recovering. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right. I mean, yes, I’d love that.”

“Great,” said Kyle, looking relieved, his smile returning. “How about tonight? When do you leave work?”

“Not until about eleven. I have to stay late on game nights, and it’s easier to keep the same schedule all the time.”

“Same here! Eleven’s perfect. I’ll come by your office then. Sound good?”

“Yeah. See you tonight.”

 

With no game on, it was a slow night in the office, and one by one the other members of the PR staff left for the day, until Lauren was left in the office alone. The knock on the door came right at eleven. “Hi,” she said, opening the door to find Kyle’s broad bulk filling it. He’d obviously made an effort to dress up — dark jeans, a crisp button-down, and a well-cut blazer. His hair was trendily disheveled, his beard freshly trimmed. Even in street clothes it was obvious how much muscle mass he carried on his towering frame. His arms bulged visibly through the sleeves of the blazer, and while his jeans weren’t so tight as to be indecent, it was clear that he definitely did not skip leg day. The big guy cleans up real nice, thought Lauren, suddenly glad she’d taken the time to spruce herself up a bit as well, touching up her lipstick and putting on the nicer necklace she kept in her desk for when VIPs visited the office.

“Hi,” he said, in that deep rumbling voice that made her shiver. “So I was thinking, it might be a bit late for coffee, unless you want to be up all night. You want to get a drink instead?”

“Sounds perfect. If you don’t mind a bit of a walk, I know a good bar a few blocks away. And for once it’s not below freezing outside.”

“Lead the way,” he said, taking her arm.

At the bar, they settled in to a quiet table in a dimly lit corner. “Cheers,” he said, clinking his glass against hers before taking a sip of whiskey. “So tell me, what is it exactly that you do? Apart from manning registration tables and risking your life shuttling paperwork to coaches.”

Lauren laughed. “Honestly, that’s about it. ‘Public relations associate’ is really just a fancy title for ‘general office gopher’. I do whatever needs doing, that no one else wants to do.”

“Come on,” he rumbled, “I’m sure there’s more to it than that.”

“Not really,” she chuckled. “But I’ve only been here a year. I was lucky to get the job straight out of college, and I’m still learning the ropes, you know. But George has been giving me little projects of my own to work on, here and there, and I’m basically responsible for tracking all the team’s social media at this point.”

“I knew it. You’re not just a gopher.”

“Don’t be too impressed. I still do plenty of gophering. But it’s a good organization, with plenty of opportunities, and I plan to stay a long time and to work my way up.”

“I’ll drink to that,” he smiled, saluting her with his glass before taking another long sip.

A couple of nervous-looking guys approached their table. “Ex … excuse me …” stammered one of them. “Are you K-Kyle Mason?”

“Yeah,” said Kyle suspiciously, not sure what was happening. Behind her martini glass Lauren was snickering.

“I told you it was him!” hissed the other guy to his friend, who elbowed him in the side.

“C-could we get your autograph?”

“Uh, sure, I guess,” said Kyle, blinking. He patted his pockets, realizing he didn’t have anything to write with. But Lauren was ready, handing him a black sharpie she produced from her handbag. Kyle scrawled his name and “#5” on the backs of a couple of beer mats and handed them over to the guys, who handled them as if they were holy relics.

“Thank you so much, Mr. Mason, we’re your biggest fans! That hit on Courbet at the Rangers game last week was awesome!”

“Thanks, I appreciate it,” said Kyle, graciously. “But, uh …” He locked eyes with the first of the two fans, then flicked his gaze in Lauren’s direction. Both the fans seemed to suddenly realize their idol was there on a date, and stumbled back.

“Anyway,” the other guy said hurriedly, “sorry to bother you. Thanks again, sir.” And with that both of them abruptly took off.

Lauren couldn’t hold back her laughter any longer, letting out a hoot as Kyle watched the two of them go.

“That was weird,” said Kyle, uneasily.

“Better get used to it,” she said, wiping her eye. “You’re a big star now.”

“You always carry one of these around?” he asked, handing back the sharpie.

“Spend enough time around pro athletes who are gonna be anywhere near the public, and you’ll learn.”

“I’m learning a lot from you this evening, it seems.”

“And that’s only the beginning. You know about #sexymason, don’t you?”

“Hashtag-what?”

“It’s on Instagram. Mostly local still, but growing rapidly. I think it’s gonna go global. Check it out.” She pulled out her phone, tapped in a search, and waited for the results to pop up. “Ooh, I say, that is a nice one,” she laughed, sliding her phone across the table.

The top result was a still frame of Kyle, from another post-game interview. It had been an especially hard game, and he was dripping with sweat but still managed to look absurdly handsome somehow. His t-shirt was soaked through with perspiration and it clung to his skin like a glove, showing off every curve and bulge of his powerfully-built torso. Animated sparkling hearts and shooting star emojis drifted across the image, and the comments below ranged from lascivious to downright pornographic.

“Oh god …" he sighed, scrolling through it. He handed Lauren back her phone and downed the rest of his whiskey in a single large gulp.

“I know it’s kinda tacky, but I’m afraid it’s all part of the job. At least it is for you, now.”

“All I wanted was to play some good hockey …”

“Shoulda stuck to the beer leagues, then. And just wait until they see what happens in January.”

“What’s going to happen in January?” said Kyle, warily.

“The first home game of the new year is always the calendar giveaway night. The twelve hottest, buffest members of the wolf pack, all baring rather more skin than usual. An obvious sop to all the lady fans — and I suppose a fair number of gay guys as well. And you, my big friend, are penciled in as Mr. April. Didn’t you get the email?”

“I saw something about a photo shoot next week, but I thought it was, like, they needed an updated headshot or something …”

“First 5,000 fans through the gates get a free copy, and they sell more to raise money for the charitable foundation. I heard they’ve doubled the print run this year, expecting more than the usual amount of interest.”

Kyle groaned, and Lauren couldn’t help but be amused by his discomfiture. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I can get out of this.”

“Not really. It’s all in your contract. At least it’s for a good cause, eh?”

Edited March 30 by GymWolf
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[expander]

CHAPTER 4 – Giving thanks

Kyle stopped by her office the next day, around three. “Hey, wanna grab lunch?” It was the day before Thanksgiving, a game night, and on their schedules, 3pm was lunchtime.

“Sure,” said Lauren. “Let me get my coat.”

It was chillier that day, but they walked down to the lakefront anyway, suitably bundled up. Buying a couple of hot sandwiches from a sidewalk vendor, they decided to eat outside, sitting on a park bench where they could look out at the water.

“Sorry about last night,” started Lauren. “I didn’t mean to make fun of you.”

“Nah,” said Kyle, waving it off. “Just took me by surprise, that’s all. Now that it’s had time to sink in, I think maybe it’ll be fun. What do you think they’ll dress me up as? Sexy fireman? Sexy cop? Sexy plumber?”

Lauren laughed. “I think ‘sexy hockey player’ is the idea, really.”

“Duh, of course. Gotta stay on brand, right?”

“You’re a quick study. Are you gunning for my job?”

“Well there’s gonna be an opening after you move up, right? You could be my boss.”

Lauren laughed again, grabbing Kyle’s arm. He pulled her in closer, and she snuggled herself up against his huge warm bulk. It was a nice moment; it felt comfortable, for both of them. Then she asked, “So, any plans for Thanksgiving tomorrow? You got family in town?”

Kyle shook his head. “Nah.”

“They couldn’t make it, eh? Mine couldn’t either.”

“No, it’s just … well, no family, really, to speak of.”

“Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” he said quickly, cutting off her apology. But the look on his face said it was not actually okay. Lauren hadn’t meant to hurt him, but he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted to give him a hug and make him feel better, but suspected he would pull away if she tried.

“Well, uh, I’ve got a couple of friends coming over for dinner tomorrow. It won’t be fancy, but if you’re not doing anything else, you should join us.”

“Are you sure? I don’t wanna mess with your plans at the last minute.”

“Oh god no. There’s sure to be twice as much food as the three of us could eat. I couldn’t find a small turkey at the store so I ended up with an enormous one, it barely fits in my oven. Seriously, you’d be doing us a favor.”

 

The doorbell rang, and Lauren rushed to answer it, hurriedly wiping her hands off on a dish towel. She opened it to find Kyle’s broad hulking form filling the entire doorway as usual. He was clutching three bottles of wine in his great hands. “Come in!” she said, waving him in as she rushed back towards the kitchen. “Sorry, just in the middle of getting some stuff in the oven!” she said over her shoulder as she headed back in.

Chuckling, Kyle let himself in and closed the door. “It smells amazing!” he said, detecting the scent of roasting turkey wafting in from the kitchen.

“Does it? Oh good,” she called back. She emerged from the kitchen a minute later. “There, I think I’ve got a few minutes now. Hello, by the way,” she said, wrapping her arms around his midsection as far as they would go and embracing him. “I’m glad you came.” He hugged her back, lifting her feet off the ground in the process, and she gave his scruffy cheek a quick peck. “Welcome to Casa de Chaos,” she laughed, as he set her back down.

“Little busy this morning, eh?” he laughed. “Anything I can help with?”

“Thanksgiving is, like, my favorite holiday, but I may have been a bit overambitious with dinner this year. And what you can help with is cracking open one of those bottles you brought and pouring me a very big glass, because I could definitely use a drink. Glasses are in the sideboard over there, and there should be a corkscrew in the top drawer.” An electronic beeping sounded from the kitchen. “Oops, there goes one of the timers, back in a minute.”

Kyle smiled to himself as he opened the wine and poured two glasses. He handed one to Lauren when she returned and she immediately took a big swallow. “Dayum, hockey boy, that is some good stuff! Someone’s got excellent taste in wine!”

“Yeah, the guy at the wine shop,” laughed Kyle. “Wine’s not usually my thing, I just got what he recommended.”

“Well then, here’s to the guy at the wine shop,” she declared, taking another sip. Kyle had just settled down onto the sofa when the doorbell rang again. “Oh, that’ll be Angela and Nick!” She opened the door, and there was a round of squealing as the two girls embraced. She waved the newcomers in. “Kyle, this is Angela, my best friend from college. She’s a grad student at the University of Chicago now. And this is her husband Nick, who does something I don’t understand with computers. Guys, this is Kyle.”

Nick’s expression changed to one of utter shock as Kyle rose up from the sofa, towering over the three of them. “Um, Lauren?” he said, in a small voice. “When you said ‘your friend Kyle from work’ would be joining us, you meant KYLE FUCKING MASON?!”

Angela hit him on the shoulder. “Don’t be rude!” she hissed. Then she stepped forward, holding her hand out. “Hi Kyle, it’s nice to meet you. Lauren said there’d be four of us for dinner. Please excuse my husband, he’s usually very nice but is also a total hockey nerd and Wolves fanboy, and would probably sign up to have your babies if that were biologically possible.”

Kyle’s laughter boomed across the room. “Nice to meet you, Angela. You too, Nick. Want some wine?”

Angela nodded eagerly, while Nick still seemed to be processing who was in the room with him. “Ignore him, he’s still rebooting or something,” she said, accepting a glass from Kyle. “Nice,” she said approvingly, after tasting it.

Nick’s brain started to function again after another fifteen seconds or so. “Sorry,” he said to Kyle, blushing. “Didn’t mean to be an asshole just now, I just… I mean, like, wow.”

“No worries, bro. Believe me, it’s not the strangest reaction I’ve gotten. Everyone’s weird around me now, I still don’t really get it.”

“Well,” said Angela, “now that Nick’s firing on all cylinders again, I’m going to go help Lauren in the kitchen, where we can talk about you without you hearing.”

Kyle looked a little surprised as the girls disappeared through the kitchen door. “Wow. She’s certainly … direct.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

“I kinda like it.”

“I do, too. Sorry, I’m still kind of trying to get my head around you being Kyle Mason.”

“Take your time, I’m planning to be him all day. Would some booze help?”

“It might.”

“Wine? Or something stronger?” Kyle went over to the big winter coat he’d worn and left in the closet, pulling out a large bottle of scotch from one of the deep inner pockets. “The old man gave it to me, so it’s probably pretty good.” He found a couple of tumblers in the sideboard with the wine glasses and poured them both a good amount. He handed Nick a glass, then raised his own. “Skål!”

Nick took a sip. “Damn, this tastes expensive.” Kyle shrugged. “Wait a sec — the old man … you mean Henry Darnell gave you this scotch?”

“Yeah. After my hat trick last night. Apparently it’s a tradition. He’s very big on tradition.”

“Wow. I mean, like, wow. Sorry, I promise to only go full-fanboy maybe four or five more times today.” Kyle laughed. “Maybe the scotch will help.”

“No worries. You catch the game?” The Wolves had crushed Tampa Bay the previous night, 5–1. Three of those five goals had been Kyle’s.

“Yeah! We were there! I split season tickets with a couple of guys from work. God, you were amazing! That goal in the second period was fucking unreal!”

“Thanks, man.”

 

Kyle pushed his chair back from the table, thumping his firm stomach with a big hand. “I am stuffed. I couldn’t eat another bite.”

“Are you sure? Angela made two pies — pumpkin and pecan …”

The big man groaned. “I meant, I am stuffed. I only saved room for two pieces of pie.”

Laughing, Lauren and Angela went into the kitchen, busying themselves with cutting the pies. “How much do you want?” called out Lauren.

“Just a little,” returned Kyle. “Barely a sliver.”

The girls returned shortly, and Lauren slid a plate with two good-sized slices in front of him. “You’re not a very good liar.”

Kyle glared up at her briefly, then sighed, giving in and taking a bite. He turned to Nick. “They’re going to have to roll me out onto the ice tomorrow night. If the Wolves lose, it’s their fault,” he said in a stage whisper, pointing at the two girls with his fork.

“Maybe they’re working for the enemy,” Nick whispered back, grinning.

“Hmm, now there’s a thought,” said Kyle. “Might be the only chance New Jersey’s got tomorrow.”

After dessert, Kyle stood, yawning and stretching his vast muscular frame, then planted a huge heavy hand on Nick’s shoulder. “C’mon, Nick. The ladies fed us, and you know what that means.”

“We spend the next couple hours on the couch in a carb coma, watching the Lions lose to the Bears again?”

“Not quite yet, my friend. First it means we do the dishes.”

“Damn right,” put in Angela, pouring herself and Lauren some more wine. “You might have found a keeper,” she said to Lauren in a loud whisper.

They opened the door to the kitchen, which wasn’t large but looked like a bag of flour had exploded in it. “Oh god,” said Nick, upon seeing the mess.

“Eh, it won’t be so bad. I’ll wash, you dry.” Kyle began running hot water in the sink, and they got to work.

It was strange for Nick, standing next to a towering hockey god, his immense muscled forearms covered in soap suds as he scrubbed out a casserole dish. “Something wrong?” asked Kyle, noting how quiet his workmate had gone.

“Sorry. Still just can’t quite get over the fact that I’m standing here doing dishes with … with …”

“Kyle fucking Mason?” grinned Kyle.

“Yeah,” laughed Nick. “I mean, I’ve never met a Wolves player in person before. And I knew you were big, but god damn, you’re a beast! It’s incredible! Your shoulders are so massive I thought you were wearing your pads at first!”

Kyle laughed. “Nope.” He raised one fist and flexed a gigantic arm. “It’s just me.”

“Damn, dude, you are fucking jacked,” said Nick, his eyes going wide.

“You gonna be at the game tomorrow?” asked Kyle, dropping his arm and turning back to the sink.

“Afraid not. We had last night, one of the other guys has the tickets tomorrow.”

“Gimme your email address before you go, if you want. I’ll hook you up, man, I get two free seats to every home game that I hardly ever use. You don’t wanna miss it bro, we’re gonna pound New Jersey into the fucking dirt,” he growled, holding out a soapy fist.

Nick grinned broadly, bumping Kyle’s massive cinder block of a fist with his own. “Holy shit, man, thanks! That would be amazing!”

 

Later that evening, after Nick and Angela had left, Kyle was lazily snoozing on the couch, half-listening to the end of a football game. Lauren came over, sitting down and snuggling up beside him. “You know,” she said, “when we were in the kitchen, Angela asked me what our status was. Like, were you a friend friend or a boyfriend friend.”

Kyle’s lips curled upwards but he didn’t open his eyes. “And what did you tell her?” he murmured.

“That it was all pretty new, and we were still somewhere in between.” She slipped a hand in between two of the buttons of his shirt, her fingers exploring his hairy pecs. They felt like thick slabs of solid rock, hard and unyielding, but then he’d move slightly and she could feel the seemingly solid rock reshaping itself from within, as if by magic. “Definitely feels like it’s trending towards the latter, though.”

“Good. That means I can do this,” he said, wrapping his giant paw around the back of her head and pulling her closer to him for a long, slow kiss. He felt the initial crackles of desire roaring up into a flame. Crawling up on top of his massive bulk, she could feel the hardness developing beneath his jeans. She trembled slightly as two massive rough hands worked their way under her blouse, running over her back, working their way up towards her swelling breasts.

Lauren returned the favor, pulling open the buttons of his shirt. She gasped as her fingers made contact with his abs. She’d made out a few times with pretty fit guys back in college — but they’d felt nothing like this. Kyle’s stomach felt like a literal brick wall — warm, but hard and absolutely solid. She explored the individual muscles with her fingertips, feeling the occasional pinch as the deep crevices between the bricks expanded and contracted with his breathing. She slid her hands up, running them across the vast expanse of his chest, digging into the thick fur of the deep canyon between his pecs. The feel of him was incredibly arousing; she’d never wanted anyone more than she wanted Kyle right now.

The feeling seemed to be mutual, judging from how Kyle wrapped his arm around her, clamping her to his front as he stood and looked around. “Bedroom?” he grunted. With her arms pinned between the two of them, she attempted to nod her head to indicate the right direction. He strode across the room, opening a door to find — a linen closet.

“Next one,” panted Lauren, nodding more vigorously. He turned and opened the next door, ducking his head under the doorway into her room. He casually tossed her down onto the bed, the headboard banging against the wall as she bounced on the mattress, laughing. He stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at her hungrily. His shirt was already hanging open, now he pulled it off entirely and tossed it aside. He dropped his jeans next, and she gaped at the immensity of his thick muscled thighs as he kicked them off. Only his boxer shorts remained, and as he pulled them off, she got her first complete look at him.

“Oh god,” she couldn’t help saying out loud.

“Just ‘Kyle’ is fine,” he grinned, crawling into bed on top of her. His weight pinned her down, pressing her back and shoulders down into the mattress. His erection had softened briefly but now returned with a vengeance. She could feel his cock head grazing her thighs. Even putting its gargantuan size aside, the sheer heat of the thing was incredible. It felt like it might burn her while splitting her open. She didn’t want to stop, but she really wasn’t sure she could do this.

“Don’t worry,” he said gently, as if he’d read her mind. “We’ll go real slow, and we can stop any time you want.” She nodded, trying not to lose her nerve as she felt him start to enter her. She couldn’t believe how good it felt. She’d expected it to be painful, or at least uncomfortable, but as he sank deeper into her, inch by thick inch, she felt nothing but jolts of pleasure going up her spine. She breathed in the warm masculine scent of him, beginning to feel more confident. All that yoga was paying off.

He buried himself in her, right up to the hilt. She’d never felt so full before. Then he began to move, and the intermittent jolts she’d felt before became a continuous stream, rapid-fire bolts of sensation lighting up every pleasure center in her brain. Nothing she’d experienced before came anywhere close to this. She wanted to look up into his face, but she couldn’t. Their height difference meant her face was about level with his chest; her vision was filled by his vast muscular pecs. She was gasping for air, drowning in her own bliss. She could feel herself building to a climax, unbelievably fast. She tried to delay it but she just couldn’t. The raw animal friction of him inside her was just too much. It seemed like he’d barely gotten into a rhythm before her back arched so hard it felt like her vertebrae would crack and she let out a throat-ripping scream. Without thinking she grabbed two handfuls of his thick chest hair, yanking with all her might and making him let out a roar that shook the walls.

Kyle pulled out, flopping over onto his back right beside her, hitting the mattress so hard he bounced her up an inch or two into the air. She barely noticed, still riding the high. It took a minute for her to come down off it, but when she did, she felt a little embarrassed at how fast she’d been. She didn’t think he’d even gotten to finish. Scooting up so they were more eye-to-eye, she reached over and put a hand on his chest.

Just as she was starting to open her mouth to apologize, Kyle said in a low voice, “I’m sorry.”

Lauren blinked in surprise. “For what?”

“For not lasting longer. I’m usually better about that, I don’t know what happened this time. You’d think I was 15 or something. For some reason I just couldn’t hold back.”

She couldn’t keep from laughing at that. Apparently that roar wasn’t just her pulling on his chest hair after all. She stopped abruptly when she saw him turning red with embarrassment. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “I really shouldn’t laugh. After all … I was about to say exactly the same thing.”

Kyle looked slightly confused. “You were? You mean you …?”

“Oh hell yeah. Right when you did, as near as I can tell. I didn’t even realize you had as well.”

A smile broke out on his face. “Damn, girl. You’d think neither of us had ever done this before.”

“I thought I’d done it before. But nothing I’ve done before has ever been like that.” Kyle chuckled. “What’s so funny?”

“I was about to say exactly the same thing.”

 

The next morning, the sun was peeking through the blinds. This deep into winter, that meant it was pretty late in the morning. Lauren had already showered and was getting ready for work, while Kyle hadn’t even stirred. His enormous feet were sticking out from underneath the covers at the foot of the bed, hanging off the end of the mattress. “C’mon, lazybones,” she said, grabbing a bare ankle and shaking it. “Time to get up.”

Kyle groaned. “What time is it,” he mumbled, though it sounded more like whatimizzit.

“Almost 8:30. Let’s move. Unlike you bigshot players, us lowly office drones get fired when we’re late.” Heaving a sigh, Kyle threw off the covers, but made no other move to get up. After putting in her earrings, Lauren turned from the mirror towards the bed. “Damn,” she muttered to herself. Her bed was overflowing with a giant muscle beast, completely naked amidst a tangle of sheets. One corner of a bedsheet just barely covered his gigantic manhood, as if it had been placed there deliberately. Apart from that, every inch of his chiseled muscular frame was on display, like a diagram from a medical textbook come to life. “I should take a picture and post it online. #sexymason would lose its shit. They could forget the calendar, too, just print 20,000 copies of that.”

“Huh?” said Kyle blearily, rubbing his scruffy chin and stretching as he sat up.

“Nothing. C’mon, we gotta get going, big fella. You can shower in the locker room.”

“Okay …” he yawned.

“Besides, it’s game day. Don’t you have a team meeting at ten? Don’t wanna be late for that, Camden’ll make you do laps around the rink or something.”

That seemed to get through to him. He focused on the clock, finally taking it in. “Shit,” he said, now fully awake.

“I’m starting to doubt those hockey commentators who go on about your ‘amazing situational awareness’,” she teased, as he hunted on the floor for his boxer shorts.

“Yeah, well, fortunately they don’t schedule hockey games for 8:30 in the fucking morning,” he shot back, pulling on his shirt.

Edited March 30 by GymWolf
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CHAPTER 5 – The best defense

While the Wolves continued dominating their opponents, by the middle of December it was clear a problem was developing with the team. Scott Browning had been their first-round draft pick this year. A 20-year-old center from Saskatchewan with a lethal wrist shot, he’d set the Big Ten on fire last year and came to the NHL with high expectations. His Wolves debut had been rather overshadowed by Kyle coming out of nowhere and shooting to stardom. Some guys would have resented that. But Scottie didn’t seem to mind. He’d privately confided to Kyle that it was nice to have some of the pressure taken off, to give him time to settle in to playing at this level. Instead of a rivalry, the two of them had forged an unlikely bond, one rookie to another.

Scottie had been on a hot streak lately, outscoring even Kyle in the last few games. Unfortunately while Scottie was nearly as fast and nimble as Kyle, he wasn’t even half his size. At five-foot-ten and 170 pounds dripping wet, his recent performance had painted a target on his back. Every opposing enforcer who had concluded they couldn’t take down mighty Mason had decided it was time to pound on Browning instead.

Tonight’s villain was named Mark Visser. A big Dutchman who hadn’t scored a point in probably his last dozen games. Scoring points wasn’t his job. His job was to fuck with smaller guys, and tonight his assignment was clearly to shut down Scottie. He’d done it all tonight: questionable almost-late hits, cross-checking whenever he could get away with it, one nasty collision that probably would have been called as boarding if Visser’s colluding teammates hadn’t been keeping the referees distracted. Scottie was aching with bruises and more than a little frustrated, but he didn’t complain. All part of the game, he told himself, just gotta roll with it.

After two periods the score was tied. During the intermission, back in the locker room, Camden went over what they needed to be doing better in order to wrap it up with a win. As the players filed out to head back to the bench, Camden called out, “Mason, hold up. A quick word, please.”

“Yeah, coach?” said Kyle, hanging back, adjusting his helmet strap.

Camden waited until the other players had left. “What position do you play, Mason?”

“Left defenseman, coach.”

“And what does that make your job?”

Kyle wasn’t sure what Camden was getting at with the strange questions. “Defending our zone?”

“Just the zone?”

“I mean, what else is there to def— oh.” Suddenly he got it.

“And may I remind you, sometimes the best defense is a good offense.”

“Got it, coach. Thanks for the advice.”

“I haven’t given you any advice, Mason.”

“No sir, of course not.”

As they took the ice for the start of the third period, Kyle glared at Visser as if he was marking him for death. Screw the puck, he thought. Let his teammates worry about that. Hell, they could lose the whole game and still be leading the division by a healthy margin. The next twenty minutes weren’t about the score. They were about teaching Visser — and every player who’d see the footage afterward — that you didn’t get to fuck with anyone in the wolf pack.

Scottie’s reflexes won the faceoff as usual and play began. Girard got the puck and headed down the ice into the opponents’ end, passing it to Halvorsen. One of the opposing defensemen managed to snag the pass, knocking it over in Visser’s direction to clear it out of the zone. The puck had barely touched Visser’s blade when BOOM — 425 pounds of muscle and bone came out of nowhere to smash him into the boards. The monster hit had served no real purpose, strategically. The puck bounced out of control and was swept up by one of Visser’s teammates anyway. Kyle had hit him just to hit him.

Kyle kept up the pressure, delivering hit after hit, never relenting. Visser couldn’t touch the puck without inviting a collision with freight-train Mason. The rest of the Wolves quickly caught on to what was going on, and eagerly helped out. Whenever Visser came out onto the ice, the nearest Wolf would instantly head for the bench so Mason could skate out to replace him. When Visser headed for his bench, Mason came back in as well, resting and waiting to strike again. It was like Visser had an extremely large and violent shadow. Camden said nothing about all the unusual substitutions going on that he’d never called for. He simply let his players carry on.

It was halfway through the period when Visser’s temper finally frayed to the point where he made a fatal mistake. Kyle had just shoulder-checked him yet again, a mere tap compared to some of the crushing hits he’d already made, but Visser had reached his limit. He threw down his stick and tore off his gloves. He shouted something foul at Kyle, but whatever he said was lost as the crowd began roaring for a fight. Kyle followed suit, and the refs stayed clear as the two men squared off.

At first glance, it wasn’t the craziest matchup. At six-foot-seven, Visser was one of the league’s biggest men. But with a weight advantage of probably 150 pounds, Mason was in a different class altogether. Whoever ran the arena’s big screens switched to the decibel meter, showing it getting up into the red zone as the crowd got amped up. Adding to the volume, the arena DJ started blaring Come Out and Play over the sound system. The roars grew louder as Visser threw the first punch, right at Kyle’s stomach.

Kyle didn’t even bother to dodge. The blow landed on his rock-hard abs, doing more damage to his opponent’s knuckles than to him. It brought Visser close enough for Kyle to get in a punch of his own, a vicious left that scooped down low and swung upward, slugging Visser squarely in the gut and bringing a collective gasp from the crowd. It seemed to happen almost in slow motion. The punch was hard enough to lift Visser visibly off the ground — a good four inches of air showing between his skates and the ice — and just at the peak of his trajectory, Kyle’s massive right fist came down like the hammer of God and smashed Visser back down to the ice, flattening him so hard that he bounced like a ragdoll on the frozen surface.

One of the linesmen skated up behind Kyle and bravely grabbed his arm. Kyle reflexively clenched his fist, and for a brief moment it looked like Kyle was going to deck the linesman next — a move that would have ended his season, if not his career. But then the ugly black look on his face faded, his fist relaxed, and he allowed the official to pull him away from his downed opponent.

The screaming of the fans pegged the meter. Kyle’s devastating one-two combo had ended the fight as quickly as it started; Visser clearly wasn’t getting up. Seconds ticked by, and the crowd began to quiet down as more people realized — Visser wasn’t moving at all. The music cut out suddenly. The crowd noise dropped to nothing but urgent whispers as the team doctor and two medics rushed out into the ice and began to tend to him.

After what seemed like an eternity but in reality was probably no more than a minute, Visser slowly began to stir. The sense of relief in the crowd was almost palpable as the two medics helped him up. He was able to skate back to the bench, mostly under his own power, but then the medics accompanied him and the doctor down the tunnel towards the locker room and he disappeared from sight. Kyle just stood there, out in the middle of the zone, a few smears of blood on the ice not far from his skates.

After conferring with the other officials, one of the referees skated out to the center and faced the cameras, hitting the mic switch on his belt. “Boston, number 67, Visser. Chicago, number 5, Mason. 10 minutes for fighting. Game misconduct.” The last words were drowned out by an avalanche of boos from the crowd, who clearly saw what Kyle had done as simple justice. Being ejected from the game was irrelevant for Visser, he was out anyway. Kyle just collected his stick and gloves and headed for the exit as the booing for the refs continued.

As he passed the bench, he glanced over at Camden. The head coach couldn’t be seen to condone what his player had done, not in front of the cameras, but as Kyle caught his eye he thought he saw Camden make a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. Kyle headed down the tunnel with a grin on his face.

The Wolves won the game anyway, in the end. It took going into overtime, but without Visser constantly hassling him, Scottie got back into the groove and scored the winning goal on a pass from Eklund. Afterwards, when the team returned to the locker room, they found Kyle sitting in the lounge, having already showered and changed, watching the wrapup on television.

“Nice job in OT, bro,” said Kyle, bumping Scottie’s fist.

“Thanks, man. For everything.”

“Just doing my job. All of my job. Isn’t that right, coach?” he called out to Camden, who was standing a few feet away.

“No comment,” said Camden, but with a very visible grin on his face as well now.

“Well,” continued Scottie, “if the league ends up giving you a fine for misconduct, I’m writing you a fucking check.”

“Deal,” laughed Kyle. (As a first-round draft pick, Browning’s contract was worth a lot more than the league minimum.)

Eevi came in. “Hey coach, they want Mason in the media room for an interview.”

“Absolutely fucking not,” said Camden, flatly. “And not Browning either.”

“Who, then?”

Camden looked around. “Give ‘em Eklund. He was in on the last goal, that’s good enough. Eklund!”

“Yeah, coach?”

“Get your ass down to the media room. Time to do your thing.”

Alec Eklund was the team’s television darling. The handsome blond Swede had perfect English, effortless charm, and a thousand-watt smile whenever he was on air, and he was a hell of a left winger to boot. As she saw him walking in to the packed media center, Darla Wilson felt a little disappointment, but no real surprise. Camden was never going to be dumb enough to put Mason on the air to talk about the fight. Alec was the next best thing. He was easy on the eyes and could string a sentence together, unlike most of them. He was usually good for an extra rating point or two.

As the camera’s red light came on, she didn’t even pretend to be interested in the game-winning goal. “I’m here with Alec Eklund of the Wolves after their overtime victory over Boston. Tell me, Alec: what did you think of your teammate Kyle Mason’s ejection in the third period? Do you think the penalty was fair?”

There was a long and uncharacteristic pause, as the normally-voluble Alec seemed to struggle to find words. Darla’s professional smile faltered a little and she was on the verge of repeating the question when he finally started to speak. “Kyle Mason has not been part of the team long, you know,” he said slowly, speaking with just a hint of his lilting native accent. “We are still getting to know him. He is a very big man, obviously, and an impressive player. Before today I always thought he was never interested in fighting. Many good players are not, you know.”

“And what do you think changed that tonight?”

Alec looked into the camera. “Tonight, I realized … we had just never seen him angry.”

 

Kyle found Lauren on the empty concourse level, yawning and looking tired. “Hey. Long day?”

“Yeah. What are you still doing here? The game ended like two hours ago.”

Kyle shrugged. “Waiting for my girlfriend. Thought I’d walk you to the station.”

“Awww, that’s so nice of you. But I think it’s too late to make it home on the train. When I end up having to stay this late the team lets me expense a cab.”

“Or …”

“Or what?”

“You could come back to my place, if you want. It’s close.”

Lauren thought. She’d never been to his place before. But why not? He’d spent a few nights at hers, what was the difference?

“All right,” she smiled. “But I need to stop by the office and get my coat.”

“Way ahead of you,” he said, producing the coat from behind his back and tossing it to her. “How’s that for ‘situational awareness’?”

“Perfect. I take it all back.” She paused to pull the coat on. “Lead the way.”

Emerging from the player entrance to the arena, she expected them to turn towards downtown. Most of the young single players had apartments in one of the sleek new luxury residential towers in the city center. With cost not really an issue and being on the road half the time, they valued proximity to the arena and full-service concierge convenience — plus they never knew when they’d be traded to another team and have to uproot themselves, so they just rented anyway.

Kyle surprised her by turning the other way, heading into the gritty old industrial area that lay south of the arena. She tried to remember if there’d been any recent residential developments down this way. She didn’t know of any. In twenty years this would probably be all redeveloped and gentrified, but it hadn’t even gotten started yet. “Where are we going?” she asked, as he turned onto a narrow side street.

“Almost there,” he said. He stopped at an old stone-fronted building on the next corner, with a pair of large wooden garage doors facing the street. “FIREHOUSE NO. 3 – 1892” read the words carved into the stonework above the big doors. She could just barely make them out in the darkness, lit only by the glow of the distant skyscrapers and the half-full moon. Kyle took out a set of keys from his pocket, and unlocked the regular-sized metal door off to the side of the two big ones. “Home sweet home. Right through here, turn right and up the steps.”

The stairway was dark, grimy, and alarmingly steep. “Okaaaaay … getting a real serial killer vibe here, for what it’s worth,” she said, as she slowly climbed the creaking steps. “Lots of people saw us leave together, you know.” She was joking, mostly.

“Sorry, I keep meaning to clean this part out and redo it, but I just haven’t had the time,” he said, following her up. “Maybe in the offseason. I tell myself it keeps the burglars out.” The steps ended at the corner of the building, and she was almost afraid to look around the corner. “Hang on,” he said, coming up behind her. “Light’s right over here.” He reached around her and flipped a switch. The lights came on and her jaw dropped.

She was looking at a sleek, modern, open living room that was easily twice the size of her entire apartment. Low-slung Scandinavian-design sofas and chairs were grouped around coffee tables. Glowing lamps alternated with abstract sculptures on side tables. Huge arched windows wrapping around three sides of the building gave panoramic views of the downtown and the waterfront. The walls were all exposed brick, the high ceiling supported by polished oak timbers and wrought iron braces.

“You … uh … never mentioned that you lived in an issue of Architectural Digest. Where did you find this place?”

“Bought the old building cheap from the city at auction, a couple of years ago. Did most of the demo and remodeling work myself.”

“You did all this?!”

Kyle nodded. “Yeah. It was pretty rough for a while, though. Basically slept on a cot in the middle of a construction site for the first few months.”

“It’s gorgeous.”

“Thanks. You want a drink? Sit down, you must have been on your feet all night.”

Lauren had been running around so long it seemed like her legs had gone numb. “Ahhhh,” she sighed, sinking down onto one of the sofas. “I may not be able to get up again.”

Kyle handed her a glass of scotch and sat down beside her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. “No problem.” They looked out at the city lights in silence for a bit, relaxing. “So when are you gone for Christmas? Heading back to California, I assume?”

Lauren shook her head. “Not this year, I’m afraid. Home games on the 23rd and 27th, there’s not enough time in between to justify making the trip. It’ll probably be a Zoom Christmas.”

“They can’t spare you for a few days?”

“They don’t need everyone, but as the newest associate in the office, guess which lucky girl gets to hold down the fort? Thaaaat’s right … this one!” she laughed, pointing right at herself.

“Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s fine. My parents understand. Plus I finagled my way onto the Vegas-LA road trip in January, so I’ll take a day and see them then.”

“At least that’s something. I can’t say I’m entirely unhappy that you’re stuck here, though,” he grinned.

“That is some consolation,” she said, happily resting her head against his broad shoulder. “So … can I ask you kind of a big question? What happened with your family? I’ve never heard you talk about growing up. I don’t even know where you’re from.” She felt him tense up a little, and hoped she hadn’t ruined everything. “You don’t have to talk about it if it makes you uncomfortable.” But then he relaxed a bit, and started to speak.

“No, it’s okay. As for the second part: Montana, originally. Way up north, a little town near the Canadian border. My parents couldn’t have kids, for whatever reason. So they adopted me. I don’t have any idea who my biological parents are.”

“Oh.”

“I was homeschooled. They weren’t religious crazies or anything, just that the local schools kinda sucked, and they were both former college professors, so they thought they could do a better job. So mom taught me about math and science and dad did literature and history and music. And I spent a lot of time hiking around in the backwoods, climbing mountains, getting lost and finding my way back out again.”

“It sounds nice. But maybe a little lonely.”

“I guess, yeah. No brothers or sisters, obviously. I got used to being on my own. Didn’t have much choice, after mom and dad died.”

“Both of them?”

“Yeah. Car crash. Drunk driver. Killed instantly. I was 16.” Kyle knocked back the rest of his drink.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Lauren, hugging him more tightly.

“It’s okay. It was eight years ago.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“Anyway, I left. Made my way on my own ever since. Did some logging, worked on a fishing boat in Alaska for a bit, other odds and ends.”

“When you weren’t even 18?”

“I was always a big kid, and I shot up even bigger and really filled out starting at about 11 or 12. By 16 I was already six-foot-five. I stopped shaving and let my beard grow out, and no one ever asked me for I.D.”

“I bet. So where’d you learn to skate?”

“Played hockey since I was a little kid. Mom and Dad were both nuts for it, diehard Wolves fans. No real rinks around, but also no shortage of frozen lakes in a northern Montana winter,” laughed Kyle. “And there were enough other kids around for pick-up games. The border was pretty porous, we’d play Americans versus Canadians. Not like there was much else to do. You know, I think being on the Wolves — being part of a team — it kinda feels how I imagined having siblings would feel. Maybe that’s why I wanted to do it. I mean, I know it won’t last forever — guys will get traded and stuff — but for now, for this season, it’s all of us together, working towards one goal.”

“Don’t say it,” warned Lauren, half-jokingly. The superstition against saying the name of the championship trophy was universal. Even the office staff avoided it, mostly for fear of pissing off some coach or team executive who really believed in the curse.

“I know, I know, I won’t say it. Anyway, that’s my story.” Kyle yawned. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready for bed.”

“Ugh, you’re right. It must be almost two in the morning.”

“I shouldn’t have kept you up so late.”

“No, I’m glad we talked.”

“Me too.”

Edited March 30 by GymWolf
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[expander]

CHAPTER 6 – Silent night

The game on the 21st was a narrow loss — the team had a bad night — but it was a two-game series, and they made up for it by absolutely demolishing the same opponents two nights later, winning 8–1. When Kyle emerged from the locker room after the game, Lauren was waiting for him, not far from where he’d knocked her down a couple of months back.

“Hey you,” he said, smiling as he bent down to kiss her cheek.

“Hey you,” she said. He reached around, playfully grabbing her ass with a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt. She giggled, lightly slapping his forearm. “Control yourself, skater boy.”

“Mmmm, just wait till we get home,” he growled in her ear. “I’ll show you just how much control I have.” She giggled. “You ready to go?”

“Yup,” she said, hefting the small bag she’d brought with a few changes of clothes. She was going to stay the whole Christmas break at Kyle’s place. “God, three whole days of not being here. I can’t wait.”

“No morning skates, no conditioning drills, no film reviews …”

“No status meetings, no promotional plans, no vendor invoices …”

“So let’s stop talking about it and get outta here, shall we?”

It was almost midnight by the time they got to Kyle’s place. As he unlocked the door, Lauren looked up at the window arches on the front facade. “What’s that colored glow coming from inside?”

“You’ll see …” said Kyle, mischievously. He followed her up the creaky stairs, and when she turned the corner, she gasped and dropped her bag. In the center of the large room stood a 15-foot balsam fir tree. The whole thing was decorated with strands of lights and tinsel, going right up to the very top, where a shiny gold star was nearly touching the high ceiling. “Merry Christmas,” he said. “What do you think? I’ve never done a Christmas tree on my own before.”

“When did you … I mean where did you … how did you even get this in here?!”

“Not telling,” he teased.

“But mmphh—” she started to say, the words cut off as Kyle gently pressed a finger to her lips.

“Hush,” he said, “no more talking now.” He peeled off his t-shirt and tossed it down onto the sofa, baring his awesomely muscled torso, rolling his massive shoulders as if warming up for a workout. He scooped her up effortlessly in two mighty arms. “My plans for the rest of this evening don’t involve any words at all. Any objections?”

Held across his chest, Lauren ran one of her hands affectionately over his thick hairy pec. Then she looked up at him, smiled, and silently shook her head.

 

She woke early the next morning. The huge east-facing windows made for a glorious view of the sunrise over the lake, but so much light also made it very hard to sleep in. She was a little sore from the night before, to be honest. A good kind of sore, though. A big win always made Kyle especially … enthusiastic. She didn’t mind too much. Somehow it made the game scores actually mean more.

Kyle was still sleeping soundly. She disentangled herself from her naked boyfriend’s massive limbs and started to get up. A powerful arm hooked itself around her and pulled her back down. There was no fighting his strength, she might as well have played tug-of-war with a bulldozer. “How can you sleep in here when it’s so bright?” she whispered in his ear. Grunting, he reached over towards the bedside table and groped about with his other hand. Finding the remote, he pressed the button, and there was a gentle whir as blackout shades descended from the ceiling, covering the windows and returning the room to peaceful darkness. “Oh,” she said, curling up against his broad chest again. Might as well get some more sleep, she thought.

Two hours later she woke up again. It was still dark, but she had to get up anyway. Fortunately Kyle’s gentle snoring was a sign he wasn’t going to put up a fight again. Careful not to wake him this time, she slipped out of his arms and got to her feet, softly padding off towards the bathroom.

Kyle may have built himself a very nice kitchen, but he was still a total bachelor. The huge sleek stainless steel fridge held little besides beer and assorted takeout containers of indeterminate age. He did have a fancy German coffee maker, though, and eventually she figured out what buttons to press to get it to do something. Checking the fridge again, she found a container of cream in the door, and what’s more, it was actually still good. She curled up on the sofa, warm mug in hand, enjoying the smell of hot coffee mixed with the woodsy fresh scent of Kyle’s absurdly enormous tree.

A rustling sound came from the tree. Lauren straightened up, instantly on alert. “Kyle?” she said. The rustling repeated itself, and there was a clatter as one of the silver balls fell from a low branch of the tree and bounced onto the floor. “Uh, Kyle!” she said, louder, and a little more panicked. Then a lean gray cat with a crooked tail emerged from under the tree, turning his yellow eyes on Lauren and emitting a distinctly complaining meow.

Kyle has a cat? she thought. He’d never mentioned having a pet of any kind.

The cat padded around the room silently, sniffing things, following one of those curving paths that only cats can see. From behind her she heard the heavy thuds of some much larger feet. Turning around she saw her giant boyfriend, clad only in his boxers, arms bulging as he yawned and stretched and ran his fingers through his messy hair. “Oh,” he said, still yawning and scratching his chest. “You’ve met Parker.”

“I didn’t know you had a cat.”

“I don’t,” he said, grabbing a mug and pouring himself some coffee.

Lauren looked over at Parker. “No, I checked, it’s definitely a cat.”

Kyle took a swallow from his mug, and Lauren could almost see him wake up a little more as the caffeine hit him. “I know he’s a cat,” he said, stifling another yawn. “But he’s not mine.”

“Whose is he?”

“He’s his own, as far as I know. He was already living here when I bought the place.” Kyle sat down on the sofa and patted his huge thighs. Parker immediately jumped up onto Kyle’s lap, accepting some ear scritches with a lazily satisfied expression on his little furry face. “It’s taken a couple of years, but we’ve come to an arrangement. I think he’s finally accepted me as co-owner of his firehouse.”

It was Christmas Eve. They spent the morning going to the grocery stores before they closed for the holiday, getting everything they’d need for the big Christmas dinner Lauren was planning. They stopped by her apartment, filling a box full of kitchen gadgets and utensils that she needed but Kyle didn’t own. Then an afternoon walk along the chilly lakeshore, followed by a takeout supper from a local Chinese restaurant. They spent the evening snuggled up together on the sofa in front of the tree, big mugs of hot chocolate (with extra marshmallows) in their hands. It was all very cozy and relaxing, but with their schedules, 11pm was basically just the end of the work day, and neither of them was the least bit sleepy. Besides, Lauren could tell something was troubling Kyle. He’d hidden it well, disguised it by keeping them busy running around all day, but when he was quiet … that’s when she could tell. It felt like he was wrestling with something.

She decided to ask, as gently as she could. “Kyle?” she said, quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

There was a long, long silence.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Of course.”

“I mean a big, serious secret. One you promise to take to your grave. You don’t breathe a word of it to your friends, your family, anyone. No hints, no suggestions. If anyone asks you about it, you lie, convincingly and without hesitation.”

Lauren was silent for a minute, thinking about whether she could make that kind of commitment to him. “Yes.”

“Then I want to show you something. Get your coat.”

“We’re going outside?”

“Yeah. Not far, though.”

As she bundled up for the cold outside, she couldn’t help noticing that Kyle was not doing the same. In fact he’d pulled his shirt off. “Come on,” he said, gesturing for her to follow.

“Don’t you need your coat too?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. He led her to a small door at the back of the living room. She’d assumed it was a closet or utility room or something, but when he opened it she could see that behind the door was a steep narrow staircase leading up to the roof.

“Follow me,” he said, starting to climb.

They emerged onto the large flat roof of the old firehouse. A biting wind was coming in off the lake, cold enough for Lauren to feel instantly on the tip of her nose. Kyle, standing there bare-chested, didn’t seem to notice it, even as it ruffled the hair on his pecs. “You must be freezing,” she said, almost pleadingly, thinking he must be miserable.

He ignored her, bending down and scooping her up in his great arms. For one wild second she thought he was going to throw her off the building. “Kyle, what are you doing?” she said, panic rising in her voice. But he made no move towards the edge.

“Try not to worry,” he said. “I promise you’re safe.” It was probably meant to reassure her, but it had just the opposite effect.

And then they began to rise up into the night sky.

Lauren’s eyes were wide with fear as she saw the surrounding buildings dropping away. “K-Kyle … what’s happening …” she tried to say, but she couldn’t make her throat work right. They rose higher and higher, a hundred feet, two hundred, more. She struggled against his grip but his arms were like iron. She managed to twist around far enough to see down, at all the tiny lights, the neat grid pattern of the old industrial area of the city as it shrank away far beneath them. She closed her eyes, unable to take any more, shaking with terror. “Kyle please, stop whatever it is you’re doing.”

“Lauren, you won’t be harmed,” came his familiar deep voice. “The thing you need to know is … I’m not like other people.” She opened her eyes and looked up at him, and immediately yelped in fear. The subtle steel gray of his irises had been replaced by an unearthly deep red glow, like he had burning coals instead of eyes. She squeezed her own eyes shut as hard as she could, hoping to wake up from this nightmare, but it didn’t work. Then she felt a wave of gentle warmth wash over her, taking the freezing cold away like a summer breeze. She dared to look again. His eyes were brighter now, the red tinged with fiery orange. Somehow he was doing this, she realized. Making it less cold. For her.

“Can we go back now? Please?” Her voice was a frightened whisper.

“All right,” he said gently. They began to descend, dropping down to be amongst the buildings again, until his big bare feet touched down on the roof of the firehouse. He carried her over to the top of the stairs and gently set her down. She stumbled and he steadied her. “Can you manage the stairs?” She nodded, and he followed her down, closing the roof hatch and the closet door as they returned to the living room.

Her world had changed. Everything was different now. What she’d just experienced was supposed to be physically impossible. Every certainty she had: home, work, family, friends … it was all coming into question now that it seemed that reality was all a lie. Kyle led Lauren to the sofa and sat her back down. He pressed the still-warm mug of cocoa into her hands — they’d only been gone ten minutes or so, though it seemed like a lifetime. “I know you’ll have questions,” he said softly. “Whenever you’re ready, I can answer them. Or at least I can try.”

She rocked back and forth on the cushion, her eyes staring blankly. Slowly, things started to come back into focus.

“What are you?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you an alien?”

“I don’t know.”

“Some kind of government experiment?”

Kyle shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. If I knew, I would tell you. But I only know that I’m different.”

“Does anyone else know about … you?”

“Two people did.”

Did, she realized. Past tense. His parents. No wonder he felt so alone, carrying this secret all by himself since they died. She reached out and clasped his giant hand with her own small one. Even though he’d scared the living daylights out of her, she couldn’t help wanting to comfort him.

“Thank you for trusting me,” she said.

“I didn’t want to scare you. But I had to prove it to you, if I’d just told you you’d have thought I was crazy, you’d never have believed it.”

She actually managed to chuckle. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have. God, even now I’m still not sure it was real.”

His eyes flicked upward, toward the roof. “Want to go again?”

“No!” she said, firmly.

“Okay.”

“At least, not yet.” She felt calmer now. Some of the blank disbelief had faded. He was still Kyle, just … different. “So what all can you do? Apart from very good impressions of an elevator and a space heater.”

That brought a flicker of a smile to his face. “Well, like you saw, I can fly. And you saw the heat vision.” She nodded. “That was only a little bit, by the way. I can crank it up and focus it tightly, burn right through shit.” She swallowed nervously. “And I’m strong,” he continued, starting to sound a little more confident. “As in, steel-bending, concrete-crushing strong. Did I ever tell you about the first time I met Coach Simmons?”

“No …”

“He was evaluating all the new guys, wanted to know how much I could lift. I knew I had to hide my real strength from him, but when I got there, I realized I didn’t have any idea how much a guy my size was ‘supposed’ to be able to bench press. So I figured, well, they probably make the bars big enough that a big dude can do it with a full bar. So that’s what I did.”

“You didn’t!”

“I mean, why would they make them so long otherwise? Why have the space if no one’s ever gonna use it all?” She had to admit he had a point, but it was still ridiculous. “But when I finished, I set the full bar back down and looked over, and Simmons had just gone white. Like all the blood had drained from face. That’s when I realized I’d really fucked it up.” Lauren was giggling out loud by then. “So I had to kind of tone it down the rest of the session. But I couldn’t sandbag too much, or he’d wonder why my bench press was so out of whack compared to everything else. So I think he ended up with some very confusing numbers on his spreadsheet.” Now she was shaking with laughter, clutching onto his arm. “Look, I was just nervous, okay?!”

Gasping for air, she finally managed to stop laughing. It was ridiculous. “Oh god, you’re such a massive dork,” she said, patting his huge bare chest.

Kyle grinned sheepishly. “He’s been kinda suspicious of me ever since.”

“No shit, sherlock. I wonder why.”

“So, yeah, anyway. Flight, heat vision, strength. What else is there? Pretty superhuman reflexes, I think, and superhuman speed too. Probably invulnerable, at least to a lot of things. I fired a shotgun at myself once and it bounced right off. Some kind of x-ray vision, I can see through stuff if I concentrate.”

“How did you fire a shotgun at yourself?” The only thing she could picture was him putting it in his mouth, and that was too sad and too gruesome to think about.

“Well, like I said, super speed. I fired it in an empty field, then ran around and got out in front of the bullet. Barely felt a thing. When I found the bullet on the ground after, it was all mashed flat.”

“Jesus …”

“Oh, and telekinesis. That one’s kinda new.”

“Tele…?”

“…kinesis. I can move stuff just by thinking about it. Check it out.” He twisted around, looking over at one of the side tables. A curvy glass sculpture silently rose up in the air, turned 360 degrees end-over-end, then deposited itself back down onto the table. “See?”

Lauren shivered. “What do you mean, it’s new?”

“Well, the powers didn’t all just appear one day. They kinda came on bit by bit. I started getting some serious strength after about my eleventh birthday. By my twelfth it was starting to get a little crazy. I remember being out hiking in the woods with my dad, and showing him how I could take a rock the size of my fist, and if I squeezed it as hard as I could, it would just go pop and shatter into gravel. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, but it really freaked him out. I’ll never forget the look on his face. I didn’t know that being able to do that wasn’t normal. But he told me not to show anyone else, or tell them about it.”

“Is that why you weren’t in school?”

“Yeah, not long after that they pulled me out. Probably worried about me revealing my strange abilities, or maybe even hurting the other kids by accident or something. Either way they wanted to keep an eye on me. Anyway, the heat vision came a little later, and then the x-ray stuff after that. No, wait — it was the other way around. Or was there something in between? At some point I realized I could fly, too. I guess the exact order doesn’t matter.”

“But the telekinesis is new?”

“Oh yeah. That just started, like, a year and a half ago. I started noticing little stuff — coins and paper clips and shit, kinda twitching sometimes when I looked at them. When I was working on building this place, I’d do something like drop a screw and found I could just pick it back up with a thought.”

“Handy.”

“Yeah. And it kept getting stronger from there.”

“How much stronger?”

“Well, back in the summer, about a month before the tryouts, I took a trip out to a junkyard and crushed an old car.”

“With your mind?”

“Yah. And it was super easy, like crunching an empty beer can in my fist. So I bet it’s pretty strong.”

“That was July? What about now?”

“I haven’t had time to try it since. Been kinda busy since I made the team, ya know?”

Lauren looked around his bachelor pad. “Kyle, when you say you did the demo and remodeling work here yourself, you mean …?”

“Ripped it apart with my bare hands, yeah. This whole upper floor was a bunch of little rooms and hallways, I just tore it all out. Crunched all the shit up and hauled it out in my truck. It was hella fun, honestly.”

Lauren could just picture it. Huge hulking Kyle. In her mind’s eye he was dressed as a construction worker. Faded jeans and big dirty work boots, a snug tank top stretched across his big chest — or maybe just stripped to the waist — casually smashing his massive fist through an old brick wall. Tearing off old timber beams and snapping them like toothpicks. Of course he would have enjoyed that. She’d have liked to see it, honestly. Just thinking about it was doing funny things to her insides.

“When you’re out on the ice — like, in a game, I mean — what’s it like?”

Kyle thought for a minute. “Well, some of it — the strength, the speed, the reflexes — is just part of who I am. I can’t turn it off. I have to control it, not go too fast or hit guys too hard. But I try to avoid actual cheating too much.”

“What do you mean, cheating?”

“You know, like, invisibly grabbing hold of the puck and making it go into the net or something. Once in a while I can’t resist, though.”

“Doesn’t sound like cheating to me. Just … using your natural abilities. Right? There’s no rule against it.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think most people would see it that way. At best it’s … well, it’s like playing in the wrong league. Like an NHL pro playing in a peewee game against a bunch of five-year-olds. Unfair.”

“Well, when you find a couple dozen more guys like you, you can form your own superpower hockey league.” Lauren paused as a thought occurred to her. “Wait a sec. Are there more of you? More guys with your kind of abilities?”

Kyle shrugged. “Never come across one.” Lauren felt a little relieved. The idea of a couple dozen Kyles loose in the world … was a little scary, to be honest.

She kept thinking about Kyle on the ice. “So could you win every game, if you wanted?”

“We could probably crush every opponent 20–0, if I tried. But it would be boring, no one would want to watch.”

“True. How do you pick which games to lose?”

“I don’t go that far. I never throw games, but some nights I just kinda … ease off. Only give it about 5% effort and let whatever happens happen. You might be surprised at how many they’ve won without any special help from me. They’re great players, the changes Camden made after last season helped a lot, and the Wolves would be doing well this year even without me.”

“But not as well.”

Kyle chuckled. “Not as well, no.”

Lauren sighed. “That’s kind of too bad that you don’t just, you know, decide what the score will be. Some parts of my job would be a lot easier if I knew the game results in advance.”

“Sorry, not gonna happen. Even when I am trying harder, I don’t just score ten goals in the first period. I try to set up the other guys, make them look good.”

“Helping your brothers out?”

“Something like that. It’s more fun for everyone that way — for them, for me, for the fans. But don’t tell anyone.”

“Of course not. I promised, and I meant it.” She snuggled up against him, feeling more relaxed. With her fingertip she traced along the ridges of his firm stomach, outlining every solid brick. “Kyle … what happened in the Boston game last week?”

Kyle sighed. “In a way, you know, Eklund was right about what he said. I don’t normally get mad about plays.”

“But Visser got to you?”

“It annoyed me that he was beating up on one of my guys. Someone I was supposed to protect. And I was kind of embarrassed that Camden had to point out that I was supposed to do something about it, when I should have figured that out myself. It all made me a little angry.”

“It looked … it looked like you were really going to hurt him.”

Kyle shook his head. “Nah, not even close. Mostly I was concentrating on making it look scary without doing any permanent damage. He’ll be okay. I saw the other day he’s already back to skating with the team in practice.”

Lauren was glad to hear it. Kyle was a good guy. She’d always known it. But there’d been something in the way he was talking. Something hidden, and dark. “Is that the worst it’s been? Have you ever … really hurt anyone?” Please, she thought, say no. She wanted to believe that he’d only ever used his power for good. But as Kyle’s silence stretched on, she felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. And she knew. It was obvious, really. “The drunk driver. The one who killed your parents.”

“Oh, you mean ‘good kid who just made a mistake’?” he said, with acid in his voice. “The 20-something unemployed son of the fucking local sheriff? Whose so-called ‘punishment’ was losing his license plus six months fucking probation? It wasn’t enough for me. I was sixteen, I had all these powers I didn’t understand, and he’d taken my only family away. So I did something about it.”

“Oh Kyle … what did you do?”

“Swooped down out of the sky in broad daylight when no one was around, scooped him up, and just took off. As far as anyone else knew he just disappeared one day. I took him way up north, into the hills. I landed, threw him down to the ground. All I could feel was anger, and power, and hate, flowing through me like a river of fire. I was going to make him pay. I told him to run for it if he wanted to live. Blasted a crater in the ground at his feet when he didn’t move, and he took off. I chased him for like a mile, maybe two. Hurling boulders the size of cars to make him dodge. Setting the ground around him on fire, making him run through smoke and flames. He was screaming, claiming the accident wasn’t his fault, begging me to stop. Eventually he just couldn’t run any more. He was panting, exhausted, gasping for air as I walked up to him. He’d pissed his pants in fear.”

“Did you … kill him?” But she knew the answer. If he’d revealed his powers …

Kyle’s eyes flashed with the memory. “Oh, I didn’t just kill him. I wanted him to suffer. I played with him. Every time he tried to make some pathetic excuse for what happened, I snapped another limb. You know how many little bones there are in a person’s hand? I crushed each one, slowly, one by one. Pop, pop, pop, just like those little rocks I’d been so proud to break, showing off for my dad a few years before. I burned him. Burned holes through him. There was no one around for miles, it didn’t matter how much noise we made. I liked hearing him scream. I don’t know how long it went on for. Eventually I realized he’d expired at some point, and I was just mangling a corpse. So I cremated what was left, turning him to ash so there’d be nothing left of him.”

Lauren thought she might be sick.

“But that wasn’t enough. I went back to town. I was gonna wipe out his whole crooked family too, even though he was already dead and wouldn’t know it. But I got distracted by something on the way.” Kyle paused to take a breath. ”On the edge of town there was a bar. As I was passing overhead, I saw a guy come out, stumbling. It was dusk, he looked like he’d been drinking all day. He got in his car, I could see it kinda weaving unsteadily as he drove across the gravel lot. And I thought, no. No more. I’m gonna stop this shit before it starts. As he pulled onto the road, I went into a dive, fists out in front of me, curving around and smashing right into the side of his car. Boom. Turned the guy into chunky salsa, instantly. Car all crushed in like a cheap toy, upside-down in the ditch by the road. One less fucking drunk on the roads.”

“Doing it once wasn’t enough, though. I still wanted more. So I went hunting. Crisscrossing the sky over half the state until three in the morning, watching for people coming out of bars and pubs and little roadhouses by the highway. You get in a car while hammered and I see it? Boom, you’re dead. No fucking around. Instant consequences. No more fucking dead victims on my watch. I killed 23 drunks that night.”

Kyle was shaking slightly, a couple of tears rolling down his cheek as he relived the memory. But eventually his breathing slowed.

“That was when I left home for good.” His voice was low, but steady. “That was the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

Lauren was too shocked to think. She shivered with cold, like her circulation wasn’t working properly. She didn’t know if she wanted to give Kyle a hug, or to flee from the building and never see him again.

“It’s after midnight,” said Kyle, looking over at the clock on the wall. “Let’s go to bed.” Numbly she got to her feet, functioning purely by rote. “Oh hey, you know what that means?”

“What?” she said blankly.

“Merry Christmas.” He bent down and gave her a quick peck on the cheek, like when they were first dating and he’d been so shy and awkward about it.

She wanted to cry. “I’m so tired,” was all she said.

She padded barefoot down the hallway and crawled into the cold bed, hiding herself under the covers. She laid awake, expecting to hear heavy footsteps coming down the hall any moment. But she heard nothing. She was scared to realize she felt — relieved. Lauren knew it wasn’t his fault, not exactly. But she didn’t know who he was anymore. She wanted her old Kyle back. Fun, easygoing, adorkable Kyle. Not scary, superpowered, psycho-killer Kyle. She wished he’d never told her who he really was.

---

Thanks for getting this far! To read the rest, visit bit.ly/superstar-book to download the full ebook!

Edited March 30 by GymWolf
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[portamivia]

Oh wow… 

This is super hot! Can’t wait to finish the whole book!

 

[FallenAway]

Oh, HELL yes, I will read the whole book!  This is really good. I have to wonder why you're giving it away when you could self-publish it on Kindle and make a little money on it. Even if you charged $1.99 for it, at least you get something for all your work.

[spacevlad]

I have read the whole book and it’s fantastic! Really well written, Expander really gets you to care about the characters, good character development, fun plot and setting, and some extremely hot sequences with Kyle using his incredible powers in all kinds of fun ways. And even as someone who is strictly m/m in real life, the sex scenes and tension are very hot. Highly recommended if you enjoy power disparity, superheroes, displays of strength, romance, destruction, or hockey!

[portamivia]

On 1/2/2024 at 7:52 AM, spacevlad said:

I have read the whole book and it’s fantastic! Really well written, Expander really gets you to care about the characters, good character development, fun plot and setting, and some extremely hot sequences with Kyle using his incredible powers in all kinds of fun ways. And even as someone who is strictly m/m in real life, the sex scenes and tension are very hot. Highly recommended if you enjoy power disparity, superheroes, displays of strength, romance, destruction, or hockey!

I also read the whole thing and I wholeheartedly agree with the above comment: it’s truly a masterpiece. Even if the sexual action is mostly f/m (except for one HOT moment), I was hooked on the story and ended up caring a lot for the characters. I’m actually re-reading it.

I especially liked the glimpses into “young evil Kyle” a lot!

Thank you Expander!