Playing it Cool (Sydney Smoke Rugby)

by Amy Andrews

  Harper gave a half laugh, her lips at his neck. “What can I say? Watching you play rugby makes me horny.”

  His fingers lightly stroked her back. “In that case, I’ll get you a season pass.”

  She sighed as he continued the drugging caress, shutting her eyes enjoying his lazy touch. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, rousing after a minute. Her breathing had begun to return to normal and awareness was starting to creep back in, particularly of his cock still buried hard and deep inside her. She propped herself up on her elbow. “I shamelessly used your body to get off and was too impatient to wait for you.”

  “Just so you know, you are welcome to shamelessly use my body to get off any time you want.”

  Harper laughed. “You’re so easy.”

  “I prefer to think of it as accommodating.”

  She deliberately squeezed her internal muscles, clamping hard around him. He sucked air in through his teeth. “You’re going to pay for that.”

  His abs tensed then he was suddenly sitting, taking her up with him. “Hold on, baby.” He slid his hands under her ass before rising to his feet. Harper gave a little squeal as she held tight. “I’m going to make you come so hard you’re going to want to name a day of the week after me.”

  And with that he strode into her bedroom as if she weighed no more than a football.

  Hours later they lay in her bed, exhausted and quiet, a faint red glow coming from her bedside lamp over which she’d thrown a fringed red chiffon scarf. It would have been quite romantic had Harper’s belly not rumbled loud enough to wake the neighbours. She laughed, slipping her hand over it. “Sorry. It’s feeling neglected.”

  He rolled up onto his elbow, smiling as he slid his hand over top of hers. “Well, I have been very demanding of you. But if you’re hungry, I can make a mean mac and cheese.”

  She laughed. The idea seemed absurd at this hour. “You can make mac and cheese?”

  “Oh yes.” His smile faded a little as he propped his chin on her chest. “As long as it comes from a packet. And you have a microwave.”

  Harper shuddered. “Mmm. Delicious. Not.”

  One side of his mouth quirked up. “Hey, if you add real cheese, it’s practically gourmet.”

  “Yummy.”

  He rubbed his chin absently against her chest. His whiskers prickled, spreading goose bumps down her body, beading her nipples. “It keeps you alive,” he said after a beat or two. “And it’s cheap.”

  The sensation fanned up her neck, too. Or maybe that was more to do with his sudden seriousness. Something told her this was a subject with which he was very familiar. They hadn’t really talked about his background, other than him hinting that his path to professional rugby hadn’t been clear sailing.

  She sifted her fingers through his hair. “Sounds like that’s something you know about?”

  “A misspent youth,” he said, trying for a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  “Oh? Where was that?”

  For a moment she thought he was going to change the subject but then he relented. “Perry Hill,” he said.

  Perry Hill? That was a public housing estate of the worst kind in Sydney’s west. High crime, low employment. Truancy, poverty, despair.

  It was real wrong-side-of-the-tracks territory.

  “You’ve come a long way,” she said tentatively. “Is your family still there?”

  He shook his head, his whiskers rubbing. “No. They moved north. The warmer weather is better for my dad’s health. They have a nice house by the beach now.”

  Harper didn’t have to ask to know that he’d been responsible for that. “No more mac and cheese, huh?”

  He grimaced. “Not if I can help it.”

  “Your dad’s not…well?”

  He shifted, flopping onto his back. Harper rolled up this time, propping her chin on his chest. His arm came up around her, his hand resting on her shoulder.

  “He had a work accident when I was a toddler,” Dex said, staring at the ceiling. “He has some paralysis. For the most part, he needs a wheelchair to get around. Work didn’t pay out, said it was his fault. They made a couple of poor financial decisions trying to fix things, which only put them more into debt. He was in and out of hospital. Expensive operations. They lost the house. They had three little kids. He couldn’t find work, and when he did his hospital visits made him unreliable. There was nothing put away for a rainy day. Nothing for his retirement. My mum worked two jobs just to keep that shitty Perry Hill roof over our heads and my dad in operations and pain meds. There wasn’t a lot of money for fancy food.”

  Harper watched his mouth as he spoke. His lips, set in a grim line, barely moved. He’d done it tough. Having lost both her parents, Harper knew tough. But this was a different kind. And both sucked.

  She understood now why he was so determined to put his career before all else, what he was fighting for. The boy from Perry Hill was future-proofing himself. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, running her finger down his nose, over his lips and down his chin.

  He shook his head as if he was coming out of a trance. “Hey.” He smiled, looking at her again. “At least I can cook, right?”

  She smiled back. “A man who can cook is a marvellous thing.”

  She kissed him then, ever-so-lightly, before pulling away and snuggling her head onto his shoulder, trying to give him comfort just from the press of her body.

  Absently, her hand wandered—it was hard to stop with so much temptation at her fingertips. She stroked down his body, traced patterns on his hips, over his flat abdomen, and up his chest to his pecs.

  He was flat in places, ridged in others, but deliciously smooth, the only hair the dark whiskery goodness of his neck. Even his legs were shaved, as was the trend for athletes these days.

  He reminded her of a canvas. Blank yet full of possibilities.

  Their conversation faded as desire took hold. And she knew just the thing to distract him from the past.

  “You don’t have any tattoos,” she mused absently. Most of the players on the field tonight, from both teams, seemed to sport at least one or two on their arms or legs or both.

  “No.”

  “A lot of the other guys did.”

  “You were checking out the other guys?”

  Harper smiled at the note of fake gruffness in his voice completely ruined by the hint of amusement. “Only to check they were okay as they lay scattered on the ground in pieces after you busted right through them.”

  He chuckled. “Good answer.”

  “You don’t like them?” she asked as she swirled her index finger around his nipple. “Tattoos?”

  “No. I don’t mind them. I just prefer to take my pain on the footy field.”

  Harper smiled, an idea forming rapidly in her brain. She sat, kissing him briefly. “Wait here.” She scrambled to the side of the bed. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I really should go,” he called after her.

  Harper glanced over her shoulder, satisfied to note his gaze was glued to her ass. Her bedside clock said ten past one. It was usually about this time he was kissing her good-bye, but she was gripped with the urgent desire to keep him in her bed for just a little bit longer. He’d opened up to her tonight, and she wanted to give something of herself, too.

  “Just another half an hour, I promise.” She grinned before slipping out the door.

  She was back within a few minutes, several small paintpots in a handy wire basket carrier, along with a few dainty paintbrushes, and a drop sheet tucked under her arm. Her breath caught as she stared at his naked, sleeping form. Even relaxed his muscles were magnificently defined, their bulk hinting at the power leashed by slumber.

  Her gaze drifted to the elegant length of his cock. It might be flaccid now, but its size and girth hinted at all its glorious capabilities.

  She had the sudden urge to paint him like this—relaxed, his body a study of actual and potential energy.

  But…another time.
/>   She had something different in mind tonight.

  “Get up, sleepy head,” she said. His eyes fluttered open as she threw the clean but paint-flecked bundle on the bed at his feet. “I need to put this drop sheet down.”

  Dex lifted his head, eyeing it. “It’s not plastic is it?”

  “Don’t worry.” She grinned. “You’re the only Dexter here tonight. No chainsaws, I promise. Just these.” She held up a handful of small artist’s paintbrushes. “I’m going to ink you. It’ll be awesome.”

  He laughed, but moved. Between the two of them they covered her bed with the sheet, and within seconds he was lying in the centre while she straddled his knees, the basket with the paintpots sitting on the mattress nearby.

  Harper knew exactly what she wanted to create as she dipped her brush into the black paint. “Christ that’s cold,” he said as she made her first stroke mid-thigh, his balls visibly contracting. “What are you painting?”

  “It’s a surprise,” she murmured, using broad brushstrokes to bring her vision to life.

  He ground his knee against the juncture of her thighs, and Harper sucked in a breath, her eyelids fluttering shut. “God,” he muttered. “You’re still wet.”

  She shifted away from the wicked press of his kneecap, forcing her eyes open. “Behave,” she said, “or I’ll paint dicks all over you.”

  He laughed. “You expect me to just lay here and do nothing while you lean over me all naked like that?”

  She shot him her best prim look. “Yes, I do. The more you mess about, the longer it will take. You want to see the end result or not?”

  “Fine,” he sighed, lifting his arms above him, bending his elbows and tucking his hands under his head as he glued his gaze to the ceiling. “I’m all yours.”

  A tiny trill fluttered through Harper’s stomach. It felt like he’d been all hers for the past month.

  What would it be like to have that forever?

  She worked quickly, aware of the hour yet still absorbed in her work. His hairless thighs were the perfect canvas for the dark red and ochre flames snaking upward. His cock hardened as the flames licked his groin and his lower abdomen.

  She glanced at him, quirking an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  “You’re naked and that damn paintbrush feels like your tongue,” he bitched. But desire crackled in his gaze, as wicked as the flames climbing his legs. Her own desire ignited, heating until it sizzled through her blood.

  “Tell me what you’re painting,” he said, raising his head to look down his body.

  “Patience,” she murmured.

  Harper reached for a finer brush once she got to his abdomen, swirling it over his flesh in lighter strokes, curling plumes of smoke in gray and black over the ridges of his belly, the indent of his ribs and the flat planes of his pecs. The smoke crossed over at his nipples before dispersing into vapour over the broad round planes of his shoulders and the base of his throat.

  She was conscious of his eyes on her as she worked, conscious of each infinitesimal reaction of his body to the light stroke of the brush—the quickening of his breath, the slight twitch of muscle, the fine shiver as cold paint kissed warm flesh.

  By the time she was done, her breath clogged her throat, thick as fog.

  “Watching you paint is turning me on,” Dex murmured as she sat back to admire her handiwork.

  Harper smiled. “Now you know how I feel.” She threw her paintbrush down, satisfied. “Done,” she said. He lifted his head to look down his body. She pointed to the door of her wardrobe and said, “Go look in the mirror.”

  She lay on her side in the middle of the bed, her elbow bent, her head propped on her flattened palm, and she held her breath as he opened the door and inspected himself in the full-length mirror, twisting and turning to see all the detail. The low light in the room was a perfect complement to the art, casting the red of the flame in sharp relief while shadowing the darker, airier wisps of smoke, giving them a sense of motion.

  Had there been time she’d have done his back, too, with more flames bubbling like dragon scales across the broad expanse.

  “You’re right.” He looked at her with eyes full of wonder and admiration. “This is awesome.”

  Harper let out her breath, thrilled at his obvious delight. “It helps to have a decent canvas.”

  He nodded slowly as he headed toward her, potently sexy with his thighs aflame, his gaze fixed firmly on her breasts. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Harper swallowed as he neared, the arousal she’d felt as she’d brushed paint over his body flushing bright and hot through her system, settling like a nest of prickles between her legs.

  “My turn.”

  Harper barely heard him over the beating of her heart in her ears. “From memory, you’re not great with paint.”

  He crawled onto the bed and she rolled onto her back as he straddled her hips, the broad canvas of his smoke and flame chest dominating her view. Her breath hitched at the pure raw power of him.

  “I’ll keep it simple,” he said as he reached for a paintbrush.

  Harper shivered as he traced the round fullness of her left breast with cold black paint. He used the brush in the red paint next to repeat the process. He followed it with another circle of black. Then red. Then black. Each circle grew smaller and smaller until he was skimming her areola and her nipple was an achingly hard point.

  She waited for the cold paint to touch her nipple, her insides melting in anticipation, her hands screwed tight in the drop sheet. But it never came. Instead, he paused to admire his handiwork.

  Harper clenched and unclenched her hands as she looked down at herself. “Are you painting a bullseye?” she asked, incredulous.

  He grinned. “I might be.”

  Harper laughed and shook her head, but endured as he repeated the process on her right breast, the nipple begging for attention and again left wanting.

  “Now what?” she asked huskily.

  “The pièce de résistance,” he murmured, choosing the thicker brush that Harper had used for the flames. Dipping it in the black, he painted a long line from her sternum down to her pubic bone. He dipped again, thickening the line until it was about an inch wide, then painted a triangle at the southernmost point.

  “Well?” he asked. “What do you think?”

  Harper looked at the thick black arrow pointing the way straight between her legs. She smiled momentarily before clearing her throat for a professional critique. Kind of hard when she was painted with two bull’s-eyes and an arrow, her nipples shamelessly betraying her state of arousal.

  “It’s kind of abstract…but not terrible.”

  “Oh baby.” He grinned. “There ain’t anything abstract about it. That’s a promise.”

  Harper’s blood flowed thick and hot through her pelvis, flooding the ache between her legs. She should tell him to go. That he had to be up for training at six. But she wanted him to follow through on that promise so freaking bad.

  And he did, shuffling back quickly, pushing her legs apart with the broad intrusion of his shoulders, settling himself between her legs and fixing his mouth to her.

  “I take it back,” she gasped, her back arching as his tongue got busy and his hands found their bull’s-eyes. “You’re really freaking good with paint.”

  He didn’t answer. She would have killed him if he had.

  …

  Dex stirred slightly, lightening a little from the heavy layers of sleep some time later. Harper shifted, her body seeking his. Sexual satisfaction weighted him to the bed, and he revelled in it, letting it pull him under a little deeper as her head burrowed into his shoulder and she settled her thigh over the top of his.

  “I love you,” she murmured, her lips nuzzling his chest, her breathing slow and deep.

  Somewhere in the quagmire of slumber, his chest flooded with pleasure at the knowledge, and his eyes fluttered partially open. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, it was stupidly light in the room. The scarf mu
st have slid off the lamp.

  He shut his eyes again, drifting along in that strange twilight zone between consciousness and unconsciousness with Harper warm and soft at his side. He’d never met a woman like her—someone who gave so openly and didn’t want anything in return.

  Who he could be himself around.

  Someone who understood him. Who hadn’t judged him over his roots like so many people in his past had done. Who liked him, not just the trappings of his celebrity. Who had no expectations.

  He’d told her she was awesome a dozen times, but actually this was awesome. This…thing between them. Them together. Rugby had been everything to him for so long, but now there was something else.

  Harper Nugent ticked all his boxes. And she loved him.

  Something buzzed loud and insistent nearby, bringing him slowly out of slumber again. It took long seconds to register the noise as his phone, but the message finally got through, piercing the bubble and dragging him by the roots of his hair into full consciousness.

  He sat bolt upright, the bright morning light stabbing into his eyeballs as he displaced Harper. “Fuck,” he said, his heart racing like a train on a track as his phone jangled through his nerves. He grappled to orientate himself, looking around wildly for the phone or the time, or any sense he could grab hold of.

  “What time is it?” he demanded. He’d zeroed in on his phone, discarded on the floor, and groped for it.

  “What?” she asked, blinking at him sleepily, her smudged bull’s-eyes and black arrow a startling reminder of last night’s fun and games and the fact that he was at Harper’s.

  He’d stayed the night at Harper’s.

  And she loved him?

  Jesus.

  He reached his phone and snatched it up. It was Tanner. “Where the fuck are you?” he demanded, ignoring any preliminaries. “Griff is pissed off. Wherever you are, you better be dead because he’s probably going to kill you if you’re not.”

  Griff had been one of the best rugby players the world had ever seen. Now he was the best damn rugby coach alive. And Dex knew how lucky he was to be coached by the best. Sure, Griff was a tough taskmaster. He demanded 100 percent from everyone, but he gave 200 percent in return.