It’s clear that the author knows a lot about hockey and is obsessed, which like, I get the obsession now.

athletes may not have much time for doing other dating activities and not figure out right away that their relationship evolved into something bigger tha just sex. I know this is so many people’s favorite book in the series, but the ending leaves me feeling a bit…blah. Shane often abstained from alcohol because he didn’t want to do anything that might compromise his performance on the ice.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. I’m just going to quit looking for Kindle reads myself and start reading everything you recommend instead. I wasn’t expecting to give it another chance until I read Role Model and found myself not only loving Ilya, but smiling at every Shane-Ilya cameo.

These two MCs are so well written, so well developed and the chemistry they have is out of this world. Considering they have sex more than ten times, with those sex scenes being an excessive amount of pages, their scenes never felt tender, sweet, or intimate. It didn’t take typical routes when it came to certain scenarios and I really didn’t know how/if everything was going to work out. I don’t find long distance romantic, especially if the plan is to stay long distance for over a decade. The juxtaposition of their continued physical interactions on and off the ice with their growing and tentative emotional tenderness toward each other over time is sublime.Shoving and cursing each other and battling for control until one of both of them gave in and allowed themselves the release they both craved. Also added late was Ilya’s little sex game when Shane was on the phone with Hayden, but that was just for me). At the beginning I could really feel how much these two characters disliked each other (mostly because they couldn't stop loving to hate each other in the bedroom, if you know what I mean), but at the same time I could also see the underlining respect and attraction they had for one another. And even tho it does touch on homophobia, it's on a world stage for people that are very famous, not *so much* in the personal, so I don't feel this book has any trigger warnings.

I know I already said this, but they had so much sex that my brain became damaged from its repetitiveness.

It was easy to see why Ilya found so much pleasure in teasing him until he made him blush and stutter, lose control and beg. And if someone says, “They can’t be together because they can’t risk it” or anything similar, that is exactly why the forbidden part failed.