Kings of Denver - COMPLETE BOX SET 1-4

by Sheridan Anne

  I’m sitting with my hand on Dani’s lap to one side and Tank hungrily scoffing down his dinner on my other as I down my own plate when the captain of the LA Team makes an appearance behind me with a few of his teammates.

  Great, the biggest douchebag on the planet wants to interrupt my dinner. Wonderful. The whole table suddenly quietens down as every eye turns in their direction, trying to figure out what the fuck they want.

  “Miller,” he says, holding a hand out to me.

  I get up out of my seat and reluctantly shake his hand. “Trent,” I scoff, letting him know just how much I don’t appreciate him. “What do you need?” I ask getting straight to the point.

  “I just wanted to come and wish you luck with the championship tomorrow,” he says.

  “That’s bullshit. Why are you interrupting my dinner with my team?”

  He smirks over at me as he looks up and down the table. I notice Tank standing beside me with Dani now also on her feet, looking between us, clearly aware of the tension radiating off me.

  “I heard about your sister,” he says with a sick smirk. My back stiffens and I thank God this dickhead didn’t actually use her sweet name. Why the fuck is he even talking about her? “A picture was posted of her today,” he explains. “It’s a damn shame, I would have liked to test out that pussy. I bet she was real tight,” he winks.

  I see red and storm towards him with my fists outstretched. How dare he? Tank wraps his arms around me and tries with everything he has to hold me back as a few of my teammates get up to help him out.

  Dani gets up in my face and tries to get my attention. “Get out of my way, I don’t want to hurt you,” I snap to her.

  “NO,” she demands, grabbing my face and forcing my attention to her. “This is what he wants. You knock him out now and you’re suspended for tomorrow’s game. You’ll lose the championship and you can kiss the NHL goodbye.”

  “Dani. Move.”

  “No. He’s scared of you. He’s chicken shit. He knows you’re going to kick his ass tomorrow and he’s doing whatever the fuck he can to eliminate the competition. You’re not throwing your future away because of this piece of shit,” she yells, indicating to the dickhead behind her.

  “Come on, man,” Tank says to me. “She’s right and you know it.”

  “Fuck,” I yell, finally able to see reason. Tank pulls me back one more step and I reach out to take Dani in my arms when she holds her hand up for me with a scowl.

  She turns on me and gives me her back. She looks up at Trent and I so desperately want to pull her back, away from that piece of shit. “You’re a real fucking big man speaking ill of Mia like that,” she snaps. “But if anything, you’re the biggest fucking idiot. You’ve just sealed your loss for tomorrow because I know for a fact, Miller will not stop until he has defeated you and made you look like the absolute fool that you are. He will humiliate you. You will be the laughing stock by the end of that game and when that final buzzer sounds, you better watch the fuck out,” she warns then goes to walk away.

  “Ooh,” he laughs. “I love a fierce woman. Why don’t you come home with me tonight?” he smirks.

  Dani turns back around to him, rears back and punches him square in the nose with everything she possesses. I hear the distinct sound of bone breaking and stare at her in shock.

  Trent roars out in pain as blood pours from his nose and lunges for my girl. No fucking way. I grab Dani and pull her right out of the way and lucky for that fucker, his boys pull him back. Yeah, as soon as I kick his ass tomorrow on the ice. I’m going to deal with this mother fucker, man to man.

  His boys drag him bleeding out of the restaurant and I turn to check Dani over.

  “Fuck,” she cries, shaking out her hand with tears of pain in her green eyes.

  “I can’t believe you just did that,” I say. “Let me look at your hand,” I ask, reaching out to her.

  “No. No fucking way,” she snaps, pointing a finger at me. “How dare you almost throw away your future on that piece of shit,” she scolds.

  “Baby, I’m sorry,” I say reaching out to her again. “Please, let me see your hand.”

  “No,” she snaps again in frustration and squeezes her hand to create a fist. “Fuck, that hurts,” she groans.

  I step into her and take her hand in mine to look it over to find it already swelling. “Baby, I think you might have broken something. Let me take you down to the medical center.”

  “No, I’m sorry Miller, I love you but I’m just so angry with you,” she says.

  “What? Did you not hear what he said?”

  “Yes, I heard it. It was terrible and I hope to God you deal with it later, but you were so ready to throw it all away and that pisses me the fuck off.”

  “Yep, I agree with Dani,” Coach Harris says, suddenly beside me. “Sophie, take Dani to get checked out and Tank, take this dickhead upstairs and knock some sense into him. I’ve had enough of this bullshit for one night. I’m going to bed. All you girls be ready for a 5 am training session,” he snaps, then turns on his heel and stalks out of the restaurant.

  “Fine,” the whole team grumbles. I lean in and give Dani a kiss on the lips and am relieved when she kisses me back. She turns and leaves with Sophie while Tank drags me upstairs.

  “What the fuck are we going to do about Trent?” Tank asks as we step into my room, just as riled up as me.

  “I don’t know yet but there’s no way that fucker is getting away with disrespecting Mia like that.” I growl.

  “I agree, but promise me whatever goes down, happens under the radar,” he says.

  “Yeah man. Mia would hate me if I threw it all away like that. Dani was right,” I tell him as I sink down on the bed.

  “That, she was,” he says. “But I’m pretty fucking impressed with your girl, man. Did you see the way she put that fucker in his place then socked him? Fuck, I didn’t know she had it in her.”

  “Yeah,” I laugh. “She was fucking awesome.”

  Dani comes back a few hours later, strips off naked and crawls into bed with a groan. “Hey baby,” I murmur, pulling her against me. “You still pissed at me?”

  “No,” she sighs, turning in my arms to face me. “But you were an idiot.”

  “I know, you were right,” I admit. “How’s your hand?”

  “I broke my pinky,” she murmurs.

  “Damn. I’ll have to teach you how to throw a proper punch.” I tell her.

  “You mean you weren’t impressed with my performance?” she gasps.

  “I was definitely impressed, I was so fucking hard.”

  She laughs and scoots up in bed to kiss me. “I’d jump you right now, but my hand hurts too much and you have to be up early,” she tells me.

  “Ok, baby,” I say as I take her bandaged hand and give it the gentlest kiss I can possibly manage.

  “You’re going to win the championship tomorrow, Superstar,” she murmurs on a yawn.

  “Yeah, babe,” I say, pulling her in. “Go to sleep,”

  “K.”

  Chapter 27

  Miller

  It’s the championship game. The mother fucking championship game and I’m the one leading my team out. Fuck, it feels good.

  “Just get out there. Kick those motherfucker’s asses and bring home that goddamn trophy,” Coach yells as we huddle around the locker room waiting for our team to be announced. Coach focuses his gaze heavily on me. “I shouldn’t be saying this, but any chance you have to humiliate Trent Daniels, do it, just keep it legal.”

  We know this is going to be the hardest game of our lives, but there’s no way that’s going to stop us. Hell, we have skated in much worse circumstances.

  We hear the L.A. team being introduced and the crowd roars for their team. We all put our hands in and begin our chant to drown out the noise of the crowd.

  Our door is opened and an official tells us it’s time. We all grab our sticks and the boys fall in line behind me.

  “Alrig
ht boys, this is it. I don’t need to remind you that there are scouts out here and tonight’s game will be a huge decider for them. So no fuck ups tonight, alright?” Coach warns, giving Tank and I a nod. “Jaxon, show me what you can really do then we can talk about next season.”

  “Yes, boss,” he says with all seriousness.

  I lead them out of the hole, down the corridor and out into the open arena. I look up into the crowd and find the whole right side of the arena in Dragon’s colours then spot my girl and Sophie as they stand up and start screaming for us. “You see them, man?” I ask Tank who walks behind me.

  “How can you miss them with those big ass, foam fingers waving in the air?” he laughs.

  The announcer calls us to the ice and our fans roar in support.

  We drown them out, just like we’re trained to and get on with business. We stick to our half of the ice as we do a quick warmup and before we know it, the referee is blowing the whistle to get the championship game started.

  I stand dead center of the ice, facing a smirking Trent Daniels and I can’t wait to wipe that look off his face. Which is exactly what I do as I demand ownership of the puck and shoot right up the ice, surprising their deadbeat goalie and scoring within the first eight seconds of the game.

  The crowd is on their feet and I hear my name being chanted over and over again. “Fuck, yeah,” Tank shouts, grabbing my head and smashing his helmet against mine. “This game is ours,” he says as the rest of the team come and clap me on the back. I glance up to find Dani on her feet with her camera pulled up to her face and I know without a doubt she’s got that moment recorded.

  I come back to the center with a smirk and stand before a scowling Trent. “Look who's fucking laughing now,” I smirk at him.

  He doesn’t comment but his scowl deepens. Humiliating him is going to be easier than I thought.

  Trent gets frustrated and attempts to slam me into the walls over and over again, narrowly missing me each time which only proves to frustrate him further and throw his game off. Though, unlucky for me, he clearly isn’t the talent in his team. The rest of his boys make up for what he lacks, but it’s nothing I haven’t pushed my boys to handle.

  Trent is thrown in the sin bin ten minutes into the first period allowing the rest of us to get a proper game in. I push forward with Jaxon and Tank hot on my heels. I recognize one of Trent’s boys from last night coming at me with everything he’s got. I nod over at Jaxon who cuts across me while I pull back and dart to the left. Jaxon does what he’s best at and body checks the dickhead into the wall, leaving their goaltender wide open. I shoot and score my second goal of the night.

  The first and second period continues in a similar way with me and Tank, the ‘dream team’ doing our thing. Though I must admit, it’s fucking nice to have Jaxon keeping up with us again tonight. We might have to get a new name to have him included. Hmm, Triple Threat? No. That sounds weak. I’ll have to keep thinking about it. Right now, I have shit to handle.

  The game is close, with us just slightly ahead and I know we have to keep our momentum up. The opposition has been focusing on me, Tank and Jaxon, realizing that we’re the best players and fuck, do they play dirty. They have had three of their skaters thrown in the sin bin, so far, but I know my boys can win this and keep it clean in the process.

  I grab a quick drink, take a deep breath and head back out for our third and final period. The whistle is blown and we get right on with it. I shoot the puck over to Bobby who forces his way up the ice. When two guys come at him he shoots it over to Tank. The puck is intercepted by the opposition and stolen to the other end of the ice.

  Tank charges at the guy with me right on his heels, he does a little fancy footwork that has the guy fucking up his moves leaving the puck wide open for the taking. I get the puck out from under him and take it back up the other end. I look the goalie hard in the eyes, just so he knows I’m coming for him and shoot it hard into the back of the net. I loop around the back of the goal to avoid slamming into it when Trent springs out of nowhere. With his gloves already on the ice, he grabs me by the back of my jersey and throws me hard up against the barriers causing my head to bounce back.

  “This is my fucking game,” he snaps, getting right up in my face as the crowd go nuts with the anticipation of a fight.

  I give him a hard shove to get the fucker off me as my head spins. “Your game was over before it fucking began,” I taunt, knowing exactly what he’s about to do but let it happen anyway. He rears back and throws a punch, but with my helmet and padding, it really has no effect apart from sending me flying backward onto my ass. Yeah, it pisses me off, but I give him a smile instead as the referee throws him into the sin bin for the second time tonight. You know, sometimes you have to take one for the team.

  I get up on my feet and search out Dani to find her looking down at me with wide eyes. I give her a slight nod letting her know I’m fine. I skate over to Coach, who demands to check my head over. “I’m good,” I tell him as I pull off my helmet.

  “I don’t give a shit. I’m taking a look whether you like it or not. He got you pretty hard there,” he tells me. “Looks like you’ll have a nasty bump back here but you’ll be right.”

  “Good,” I say “Let’s get this done.”

  The last fifteen minutes are excruciating and for my own good, I probably should have sat down for a while, but there’s no way I’m sitting out for the last minutes of the championship game.

  Tank notices I’m lacking slightly and does what he can to be right on my defence, but luckily my slightly lacking is still better than these fuckers.

  Together, Tank and I own the ice, giving it our absolute all for our last college game. For Dani and Sophie, for our boys and for Mia.

  The other team gets another goal which we immediately make up for with one of our own, always making sure we stay ahead.

  The final few seconds countdown and by now we are just playing with them. We can tell the other team gave up two minutes ago when we scored another two goals just 30 seconds apart and they realized it just wasn’t physically possible to beat us.

  The buzzer sounds and we throw our gloves down. Fuck yeah, we did it. I look up to Dani who blows me a kiss with a huge grin on her face. I skate over to Tank who pulls me in, slapping me hard on the back. The rest of our boys join us, throwing us both down to the ice in the process and jumping on top. The crowd around us cheer and chant our names as we are announced the National Champions.

  Fuck yeah. National Champions.

  The red carpet is laid out for us and a ceremony is held on ice as we’re presented with our trophy. We all celebrate, cheer, and pretty much go fucking nuts while the photographers and media try to do their thing.

  After what feels like forever, we’re finally freed to go and celebrate as a team. We make our way back down the long ass corridor and into our locker room where we all break into chants and whoops while giving high fives and back slaps over and over again.

  We fucking did it.

  I somehow hear a commotion from down the hallway that sounds particularly like Dani and Sophie screaming at the top of their lungs.

  I poke my head out the door to find our girls being held back by security. “Baby,” I grin, then focus my attention on the security guard. “Let them pass.”

  He immediately drops his arms to let them pass and Dani sprints full on ahead and jumps right up into my arms. “Congratulations, superstar,” she yells as Sophie bypasses me and heads straight into the locker room to, I assume, do exactly the same thing we are. Dani crushes her lips down on mine as I walk us back into the locker room. “Fuck, you did so good. You kicked their asses,” she laughs.

  I can’t help but grin back at her. “I love you,” I tell her as all the boys start grinning and making comments about being pussy whipped.

  “I love you, too,” she says then turns her glare on my boys. “Shut up, fuckers,” she scolds as they laugh. Then looks back at me. “What happens now?”
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  “Well, there will be another press conference and probably a shit load of interviews and meetings after that. Then we can do whatever we want. It’s up to you.” I tell her then lean into her ear. “As long as I get to fuck you at the end of the night, I really don’t give a shit what we do.”

  She grins up at me. “How long will all that take?”

  I look over at Coach Harris with a questioning eyebrow. “I can imagine you seniors will have a few meetings with scouts following the press conference, so, I’d assume your ass is stuck here for at least another three hours,” Coach explains.

  “Fuck. Sorry, babe,” I cringe.

  “That’s ok. You do what you need to do. Sophie and I will head back to the hotel and get ourselves all dolled up, then you guys can come back and take us out, and don’t worry, I plan on finishing this night with you deep inside me,” she tells me.

  “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

  “Ok, Superstar,” she says, unwinding her legs from my waist. “I’ll see you when you’re done.”

  I give her a long, lingering kiss and send her on her way.

  Best. Day. Ever.

  Two hours later, we finish up in the press conference when Coach Harris pulls Tank and I aside. “Follow me, boys,” he tells us in a tone that suggests we shut up and do what we’re told.

  We follow him down a hallway and into an empty meeting room. He motions for us to take a seat which is exactly what we do. “What’s up, Coach?” Tank asks.

  “You’ll see,” he says with pride in his eyes. “Just don’t sign anything straight away. You’ve got three of these meetings tonight,” he mentions as the door is opened and two men in suits walk in, one being the scout for the Chicago Raiders that Tank and I met a few months ago.

  “Gentlemen,” he starts as he takes a seat before us. “You did an amazing job tonight.”

  “Thanks,” we say in unison.