Fake Engaged to My Hockey Rival
"Still playing dirty, Huntress?" he taunted, pinning me with those piercing grey-blue eyes.
"Still hiding behind your daddy's money, Reaper?" I shot back, my blood boiling.
Lanaya Roux and Maverick Hayden are college hockey royalty-and bitter rivals. As the captains of competing university teams, their hatred on the ice is matched only by the legendary feud between their billionaire families' empires.
But when their ruthless fathers force them into a fake engagement to secure an $18 billion corporate merger, Lanaya and Maverick are thrown into the ultimate game of survival.
The rules are simple: Live together in the same penthouse. Smile for the cameras. Pretend to be madly in love for six months.
It was supposed to be strictly business. But behind closed doors, the venom they spit at each other quickly morphs into a scorching, undeniable addiction. Maverick is an arrogant, aggressively protective alpha who refuses to let her go, and Lanaya is the fiercely independent captain who refuses to submit.
Beneath their explosive chemistry lies a devastating secret: a shared tragedy from eight years ago that claimed the life of Lanaya's brother and shattered their innocent childhood bond.
With the national hockey championship on the line, scandalous secrets surfacing, and unseen enemies sabotaging their every move, the line between love and hate has never been so dangerous.
What happens when the fake engagement to your worst enemy becomes the only real thing in your life?
Chapters
Share
Chapter 5
[POV: Lanaya Roux]
The kiss was an act of war.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't soft. Maverick's mouth crashed against hers with eight years of starved, violent desperation. His hand tightened in her hair, anchoring her in place while his other arm wrapped like an iron band around her waist, hauling her flush against his chest.
Lanaya gasped against his lips, the sound entirely involuntary.
He took immediate advantage. His tongue swept into her mouth, hot and dominant, claiming territory that didn't belong to him. The taste of him-mint and dark, expensive bourbon-flooded her senses, obliterating every rational thought she possessed.
For two terrifying seconds, she kissed him back.
Her hands, which should have been shoving him away, tangled in the soft cotton of his t-shirt. She felt the heavy, frantic thud of his heart against her palm. It beat just as wildly as hers.
Then reality shattered the haze.
Crew's jersey number. The penalty box. The blackmail.
Lanaya ripped herself away, shoving her hands hard against his chest.
She stumbled back, hitting the edge of the mattress. Her chest heaved. Her lips burned, swollen and tingling with the ghost of his touch.
Maverick didn't move. He stood exactly where she left him, breathing heavily. His dark hair was slightly messy where her fingers had gripped it. His grey-blue eyes were completely black, fixated on her mouth with a hunger that made her skin crawl.
"Don't," Lanaya choked out, wiping the back of her hand across her lips. "Don't ever do that again."
"It was a test." His voice was a raw, jagged rasp.
"A test?" She let out a harsh, broken laugh. "Are you insane?"
"I had to see if you could fake it."
"Fake it? You practically swallowed me whole!"
"And you kissed me back."
The accusation hit her like a physical blow. The air vanished from the room.
"I didn't," she lied.
Maverick took a slow, predatory step forward. "You did. Your hands were in my shirt. Your mouth opened for mine. If Alexander or the press saw that, they would buy the engagement in a heartbeat."
"They aren't here!" Lanaya backed up until her calves hit the bed frame. There was nowhere else to go. "We are in a bedroom. Alone. There was no one to perform for, Maverick."
He stopped mere inches from her. The heat radiating off his body was suffocating. "Maybe I was performing for myself."
Lanaya's stomach plummeted. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means," he leaned down, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper, "that if you look at me like you hate me on the press tour tomorrow, I will pull you in front of the cameras and do exactly what I just did. Until you stop fighting me."
"You are blackmailing me into a relationship, forcing me to live in your house, and now you're threatening to assault me on national television?"
"It's not assault if you're my fiancée."
"I am not your fiancée!" Lanaya screamed, the rage finally snapping her control. She swung at him.
Maverick caught her wrist in mid-air. His reflexes were terrifyingly fast. He didn't twist her arm, but his grip was unyielding.
"You are," he said, his voice terrifyingly calm against her rising panic. "Until the ink dries on that merger, you belong to this lie. You belong to me."
"I would rather see Redstone burn."
"No, you wouldn't." He stepped closer, crowding her completely. "Because if Redstone burns, Crew's foundation burns with it. And you will never let that happen. You will let me kiss you. You will hold my hand. You will smile for the cameras."
He released her wrist slowly, his thumb brushing over the frantic pulse jumping beneath her skin. The gentle touch was infinitely worse than the harsh grip.
"Get dressed, Huntress," he ordered softly. "Dinner is in ten minutes. And you are going to sit next to me and act like you like it."
He turned and walked out of the bedroom, leaving the door wide open.
Lanaya sank onto the mattress, her legs completely giving out. She stared at the empty doorway, her heart hammering a toxic, terrified rhythm against her ribs.
She raised her hand, her fingers trembling as she touched her bruised, swollen lips.
She hated that her body remembered him before her mind could stop it. Hated that her muscles recognized the shape of his mouth, the way his hands fit around her waist, like some cruel kind of muscle memory she hadn't consented to. For two seconds, she hadn't been kissing her enemy in a stranger's bedroom.
She had been kissing the boy who used to make her laugh on frozen ponds and cheap neighborhood rinks, before the lake took everything and turned him into the monster she needed him to be. She had never let herself think about what he had looked like that day at the lake, the exact tilt of his face when he came out of the water without Crew. She wasn't going to start now.
The realization made her stomach twist.
She hated him. She hated him with every fiber of her being.
But the most terrifying part wasn't the kiss.
The most terrifying part was the dark, twisted knot low in her stomach that realized he was right.
She had kissed him back.
You may also like
8.3
I was the long-lost Donovan heiress, finally brought home after a childhood in foster care. My parents adored me, my husband cherished me, and the woman who tried to ruin my life, Kiera Reese, was locked away in a mental facility. I was safe. I was loved.
On my birthday, I decided to surprise my husband, Ivan, at his office. But he wasn't there.
I found him at a private art gallery across town. He was with Kiera.
She wasn't in a facility. She was radiant, laughing as she stood beside my husband and their five-year-old son. I watched through the glass as Ivan kissed her, a familiar, loving gesture he’d used with me just that morning.
I crept closer and overheard them. My birthday wish to go to the amusement park had been denied because he’d already promised the entire park to their son—whose birthday was the same day as mine.
"She’s so grateful to have a family, she’d believe anything we tell her," Ivan said, his voice laced with a cruelty that stole my breath. "It's almost sad."
My entire reality—my loving parents who funded this secret life, my devoted husband—was a five-year lie. I was just the fool they kept on stage.
My phone buzzed. It was a text from Ivan, sent while he stood with his real family.
"Just got out of the meeting. So exhausting. I miss you."
The casual lie was the final blow. They thought I was a pathetic, grateful orphan they could control.
They were about to find out just how wrong they were.
9.3
My father ordered me to marry into the cursed Vaughn family.
Their heirs were rumored to die young from a mysterious genetic agony. My sister Kayden laughed, saying she wasn't going to waste her youth planning a funeral. So, I became the sacrificial lamb.
When I refused, my father slammed his hand on the table and threatened to throw my dead mother's ashes into the city dump.
"You are a struggling actress with no money and no power. You have no choice," he told me coldly.
To make matters worse, my own agent drugged my drink at a business dinner, trying to sell my body to a sleazy investor just to secure project funding.
I was completely cornered, suffocating under the weight of their cruelty. I couldn't understand how my own flesh and blood could be so vicious, treating me like a worthless pawn to be traded and discarded.
But none of them knew that while escaping the drug-laced dinner, I crashed directly into the terrifying Vaughn heir, Algot.
When his glowing crimson eyes locked onto me during a violent episode of his cursed pain, we discovered an impossible truth: my physical touch was the only cure for his agony.
Looking at the dark bruises he accidentally left on my neck, I chose not to run. Instead, I pulled out the private business card he gave me and dialed his number.
"You need me," I whispered to the dangerous billionaire. "And I am going to use you to destroy them all."
7.1
Barrett handed me a Montblanc pen and a legal document, his voice as cold as the rain lashing against his Tribeca penthouse. He told me to sign an admission of guilt for an SEC violation I never committed.
"Eighteen months in prison, Anaya," he said, adjusting his cufflinks without looking at me. "The trust fund is set up. You'll get twenty million dollars the moment you step out."
I was being sold. The man I had loved for ten years, the man whose secrets I had kept, was trading my freedom to save his merger with Adele Townsend. He had scrubbed the digital logs of Adele’s illegal trades and pinned everything on me. When I refused, he didn't see my heartbreak; he only saw a malfunction in a business transaction.
"Do not speak her name," he hissed when I mentioned Adele’s fraud. "This merger is bigger than you."
He forced the pen into my hand, calling me dramatic while his security guards dragged me to a locked bedroom to "cool down." I spent three days parched and starving, listening to the muffled sound of champagne corks popping down the hall. They were celebrating my destruction. My heart finally gave out in that luxury cage, the darkness swallowing me as I realized I was nothing more than a disposable asset to him.
I died in that room, alone and betrayed by the person I trusted most. How could he do this? How could a decade of loyalty be worth less than a stock price? Why did I let him treat me like a sacrificial lamb for so long?
GASP. I shot up in bed, my lungs burning, but I wasn't in the penthouse. I was in my old, peeling Brooklyn apartment, and the date on my phone was May 12th—three years ago.
My phone buzzed with a text from Barrett: "Where are you? Bring the Townsend files. Now."
A cold, cruel smile touched my lips as I typed the reply that would start his nightmare.
"I quit."
7.5
Bryn hovered as a translucent soul over her own fresh grave, just three days after she was buried.
She had been shoved off a cliff by Keifer, the boyfriend she provided for, while her adopted sister Fabiola watched and laughed.
Now, they stood at her grave crying fake tears, ready to steal her massive inheritance.
Suddenly, Dominic Hutchinson, the arrogant school tyrant who made her life a living hell, arrived.
He didn't come to mock her. He dug up her grave with his bare, bleeding hands, hugging her freezing urn as he sobbed in pure despair.
He ruthlessly exposed Keifer and Fabiola's murder plot, sending them to federal prison.
Three months later, Dominic stood before her rebuilt headstone in a pristine white tuxedo.
"It's finally over. I can finally come pick you up."
He pulled out a silver scalpel and slit his own wrist, leaving a bloody kiss above her carved name as he died.
Bryn fell to her knees, screaming and sobbing uncontrollably.
The boy she thought hated her had loved her with his entire life, while the parasites she trusted had killed her.
Why had she been so utterly blind?
A blinding light swallowed her soul, and Bryn suddenly snapped her eyes open.
She was standing by her high school lockers, completely alive.
She had returned to exactly three years before her death.
9.7
What else could Bella Kiretti possibly want?
She had the perfect billionaire husband, the cars, houses,vacations and even the most beautiful children.
Everything was given to her on a golden plate.
But so everybody thought.
With her husband always on business trios and her children now in College, Bella is left home alone most of the time.
Everything was automatically running for her...wake up, eat, scroll through social media, walk the dog and sleep.
Until there was a knock on the door; her twenty year old Nephew,Jack is in town and he wants a place to stay.
"You have grown, and matured."
He was no longer the boy she carried when he was young, he was taller, bigger and his d**k was just the perfect size.
7.3
Betrayed by the man she loved. Katrina Donovan's death was supposed to be the end. Instead, when Katrina opens her eyes, she isn't in heaven-She's in Rachel Sterling's body. The very woman who stole her lover, harvested her heart. The villain everyone hates.
Now trapped in the life of her enemy, Katrina must pretend to be the spoiled, manipulative heiress while hiding the truth that would destroy them all.
Worse-Owen Blake, the cold and powerful billionaire adopted son of the Sterling family, watches her every move. He despises "Rachel", believes she destroyed the only innocent girl he ever cared about. He doesn't know the girl he mourns... is standing right in front of him.
With hatred burning in her veins, Katrina swears she will not waste this second chance. She will expose the lies. Reclaim what was stolen. Make every person who carved out her heart beg for mercy.
But revenge is dangerous-Especially when the only man who might uncover the truth is the one who wants her dead.