Playing the Player (Sydney Smoke Rugby #3)

by Amy Andrews

  Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled at him with sleepy eyes. “They should award medals for giving head.”

  He chuckled. “You’d get gold for sure.”

  “Damn straight I would.”

  He chuckled as her eyes fluttered closed again. Something caught in his chest at the breadth of emotions fizzing under his skin. “I love you.”

  Linc never imagined he’d say that to anyone. Now he couldn’t not.

  She cracked open an eyelid, fixing him with a tawny stare, her mouth slightly parted. The other one opened slowly. “If I’d known a sixty-niner was the way to your heart, I would have done it weeks ago.”

  It was casually flippant, but Linc could see the sudden alertness in those sleepy eyes, hear the underlying tension. He shook his head. It had nothing to do with the sex they’d just had.

  With any of the sex they’d had.

  Sex he could get anywhere. Em was unique.

  He picked up a curl off her shoulder and pulled it out until it was straight, then let it go again, watching it recoil. “You don’t have to do anything to find a way into my heart,” he murmured. “Somehow you already snuck in and set up house in there. There are curtains in my heart.”

  Her smile was slow and tentative. “There are?”

  “There are.”

  The smile got a bit bigger. “That was sneaky of me.”

  “It was,” he said through a chuckle.

  “And how did I manage that?”

  “Beats the shit out of me.” He smiled ruefully. “But it’s the truth.”

  She searched his face, her smile tempering slightly, and he hoped like crazy she was going to reciprocate and tell him she loved him, too. Because he thought she felt the same way, was pretty sure she did, but he needed to hear her say it.

  “Are you sure, Linc? I don’t want you telling me stuff just because you think it’s what I want to hear, or you’re suffering from some kind of post-BJ euphoria.”

  He laughed. “That’s a thing?”

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty damn euphoric.”

  Oh yes. He was definitely still feeling the buzz. But she clearly needed to feel surer of him before she declared herself. He stroked a finger down the side of her face. “I have never been surer of anything in my life.”

  Suddenly, she was grinning at him, her eyes wide awake and twinkling, and Linc’s heart swelled in his chest. Surely that was the look of a woman in love?

  “Well, all right then,” she said.

  She slid her spare hand around his neck and pulled him down. Her lips met his halfway, but he took control straight away, kissing her long and deep, trying to show her just how much she meant to him.

  Trying to prove his truth through a kiss.

  By the time she pulled away, however, he was proving it with other parts of his body, too. His dick pressing into her hip, ready and raring to go.

  “Clementine Mildred Clarence,” she said as she stared up at him, her finger toying with the stubble at his chin.

  Linc frowned, still too spun around from the heady sexuality of the kiss to grapple with a string of nonsensical names. “What?”

  “My name. My names, actually.”

  He blinked as he realised what she was saying. “Clementine Mildred Clarence?”

  “Yes.”

  Linc didn’t do or say anything for a moment or two, then he threw back his head and laughed. He laughed harder when she punched him in the shoulder. “No wonder you wanted to keep that under wraps.”

  “They’re family names,” she said waspishly.

  He bloody hoped so. Why on earth else would you lumber a child with names that had been given up as a bad idea over a century ago? “Oh my darlin’—”

  “Linc. Don’t you dare sing that song,” she threatened.

  “Oh my darlin’…”

  “Stop right now.”

  Completely unperturbed, he sang the next line. “Oh my darrrrlin’ Clementine.”

  “Linc.” She glared at him. “I’m warning you, don’t.”

  “Or you’ll, what?” He laughed.

  “I’ll…” A flush of high colour tinged her cheekbones as she summonsed a sufficient punishment. “Never blow you ever again.”

  Linc sobered pretty quickly at the prospect. He didn’t really believe her, but he certainly didn’t want to put her to the test.

  No blowjobs? That was no laughing matter.

  “Okay, fine. Clementine.” He laughed again at the rhyming, biting his lip to stifle it, and holding up his hand in surrender when she tried to land another punch on his shoulder. He grappled with her hand as it tried to exact further revenge on his shoulder. “If you don’t want me to use it, why tell me at all?”

  “Because the man I love deserves to know my proper name,” she huffed.

  Linc went very still at her admission. Finally. “Oh. You love me, huh?”

  She rolled her eyes. “As if you didn’t know that.”

  Suspecting it and hearing it were two different things. “I didn’t.” He smiled, his gaze drifting to her mouth. “Not for sure. It sounds good hearing it, though.”

  She smiled back at him, her face softening. “It does, doesn’t it?”

  He dropped his head then, kissing her slow and long, a surge of happiness coursing through his body on a waterfall of sensations.

  This had been a freaking great night.

  “Wait,” he said, pulling out of the kiss as a stray random thought struck him. “We’re not going to have to pass them on to our kids are we?”

  She frowned, her eyes satisfyingly glazed from their kiss. “What?”

  “You said they were family names…we don’t have to lumber any of our kids with them, do we?”

  “You…want kids?”

  Linc had surprised himself by the statement. He’d never thought of himself as procreating. It had been one of those things that went with love and therefore not within his realm. But…now?

  He remembered Dex boasting about wanting a footy side. And hell if Linc didn’t want that also.

  “Well…yeah,” he said. “I mean, not straight away or anything but yeah…”

  She was looking at him like he’d lost his mind. “Kids with…me?”

  He laughed. “Yes. Kids with you. A footy team full of kids with crazy caramel curls.” He sobered as a thought struck him. “You don’t want kids?”

  She shook her head vehemently, those curls bouncing like springs around her head. “Of course I do. Not straight away, though, as you said. I want to get ahead in my career. I want to become a head of department, and I’d love to be involved in curriculum decisions at department level around science.”

  Linc loved hearing her talk about her ambitions. It was so easy in his line of work to be one-eyed about the world. Professional athletes were cloistered, told their shit didn’t stink and that the world revolved around them. Ambition to him was totally wrapped up in sporting prowess.

  It was a novelty to be looking at the world through a different lens. Having Em—Clementine—in his life was going to be good for him on so many levels.

  “I’ve probably got another ten good years in my career, if I’m lucky. Barring no injuries. How does that timeline work for you?”

  Linc couldn’t believe he was making plans like this. Talking about the future and kids with a woman. A woman he’d known for just six months. Hell, he’d only kissed her for the first time two months ago. But he knew with absolutely no doubt that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Wanted to be there for her always. Father her children and watch her grow old.

  Christ. Talk about doing a complete one-eighty. Not that long ago he believed he’d never fall in love, now he couldn’t imagine life without Em.

  Didn’t want to live a life without her.

  “It sounds like a date.” She laughed, shaking her head like she couldn’t quite believe the speed of things, either. “I think we’ll have both have accomplished a lot by then. Besid
es”—she slid a hand onto a bare ass cheek and squeezed—“call me selfish, but I’d like to spend some alone time with my husband before I have to share you with a footy team of kids. Sharing you with a footy team of adults is going to be hard enough.”

  Linc froze as she turned her head and dropped a kiss on his shoulder. Husband? He may have changed his mind about a lot of things since falling in love with Em, but marriage was not one of them. There wasn’t anyone who could convince him that train wreck was worthwhile.

  Especially when it wasn’t even necessary in this day and age.

  She half turned toward him, her mouth pressing a string of kisses across his chest, stopping to dip her tongue in the hollow of his throat before heading north. He shut his eyes as her lips brushed the ridge of his windpipe, grappling with the conflicting sensations of ice from her bombshell and the heat of her lips on his body.

  Despite his inner turmoil, his body stirred. The erection that had deflated a little while ago reviving.

  Bloody traitor.

  She pulled back, looking up at him through a curl that had flopped in front of her eye. She was smiling, but a slight V drew her eyebrows together as she inspected him. “Are you okay?”

  God, she was breathtaking propped up like that, with his medal sitting between her breasts. His chest filled up with the enormity of his love.

  He just wished he didn’t also feel a sense of impending doom.

  “You want to get married?”

  The smile disappeared as she eased back from him a little. “Well…not right away, no. I’m happy to wait a while. Two or three years if you want, but…I guess I assumed as you were talking children that we would eventually…get married.”

  Children? Getting married to have children hadn’t ever crossed his mind. It might have been a necessary evil to protect women and children hundreds of years ago, but not anymore. “Oh. Right.”

  The V deepened between her brows. “So…you don’t want to get married someday?” Linc shook his head. “Like…ever?” she pressed. “You’d never even…consider it?”

  The smart thing to do, he supposed, was to be vague. To fudge the answer with a maybe or a we’ll see. But Em had been dicked around too much by jerks in her life, and he didn’t want to be one of them. She deserved more respect than that, and he didn’t want to build a relationship with her only to have it crash and burn in years to come because he’d set up some kind of false expectation.

  Marriage was one of those things he had very definite views on.

  “No. Not ever.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Em was pretty sure her heart skipped a beat or two before it kicked in again, returning slower and harder, punching against her ribs with startling brutality. How had this night gone from beyond-her-wildest-dreams incredible to a freaking disaster in a couple of minutes?

  “Husband” had just kinda slipped out. Linc had been talking long term and babies, and she’d spoken without thinking. But that didn’t mean she would take it back, either. Because the truth was if they were still together in a year or two, marriage would be the next logical step for her.

  But…Linc didn’t want to marry her. Ever.

  Sure, he’d told her that two months ago, but that was before they’d spent this incredible time together, before they’d become inseparable, before he’d fallen in love with her.

  “Right,” she said automatically, because he was looking at her like he wanted her to say something.

  She fell back against the mattress as it sunk in.

  He wanted to have babies with her, but he didn’t want to marry her.

  His face loomed over hers. God, his beautiful, symmetrical face. She was going to miss his face.

  “Em…no.” He shook his head. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. This isn’t about you. It’s not that I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to get married to anyone.”

  “Right.” She nodded and wondered absently if she was having a stroke. She seemed to be having difficulty finding words, and his words seemed to be coming from a long way away, as if he were at the end of a tunnel and there was a hurricane between them.

  A hurricane in her heart.

  “Em?”

  She lifted her head off the bed and took the medal off from around her neck, handing it to him. She had to get dressed. She couldn’t have this conversation with him lying in nothing but a medal and a pair of lacy-topped thigh highs.

  “Em.”

  She rolled away from him, her feet hitting the floor; her legs working on autopilot carried her to the en suite. She inspected herself in the mirror. She looked pale and a little like someone had punched her in the gut. Where had that happy woman from earlier gone?

  That would teach her to be so bloody smug.

  A knock sounded on the door. She’d shut the door?

  “Em?”

  She gave herself a shake as she wondered what the hell she was doing in here. She was naked. She needed to put something on. Her lacy black thong had been discarded on the floor, but her dress was still in the hallway where it had fallen off. Luckily she’d started to keep an overnight bag here with some spare clothes.

  Em grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her body, pulling herself together as she did so. She was probably going to dissolve the second she walked out, because she really had started to think Linc was the one—that she was the one for him. But for now she just needed to keep her shit together.

  She pulled the door open, brushing past him as he hovered in the doorway. He’d slipped his boxer briefs on, for which she was eternally grateful even if they did emphasise every contour of his package.

  “This is insane,” he said, watching her grab her bag out of his wardrobe. “Let’s talk about it.”

  She ignored him, her heart hammering as she grabbed a clean pair of yoga pants and slipped them on under the towel, then threw a T-shirt on over her head, reefing out the towel and tossing it away.

  “Just because I don’t believe in getting married doesn’t mean I’m not committed to you.”

  Em snatched the hoodie out of her bag and shoved her arms through it—it was still cold outside.

  “I don’t want to be with anyone else. I want to be with you. Forever. I gave you my grandfather’s clock, Em. Do you think I’d give that to someone I wasn’t serious about?”

  Oh God. The clock. She was going to have to give back that beautiful clock.

  She yanked the zipper up so hard it sounded like a cord ripping in the silence of the bedroom. “So let me get this straight,” she said, trying to wrap her head around all he was saying. “You love me and you want to be with me forever and you want to have kids with me. But you don’t want to marry me?”

  “Plenty of people have relationships and kids without being married these days.”

  Em folded her arms. “Yeah. I know. And I don’t care. That’s not me. I want to give my kids two parents who have made the ultimate commitment to each other.”

  He rubbed a hand back and forth over his buzz cut. “That’s bullshit. Why is marriage the ultimate commitment?” he demanded. “Because of tradition?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “And honour, and fidelity, and symbolism, and all those lofty ideals. It’s like…the freaking Olympics. Faster. Higher. Stronger. Every day, striving to be the best people we can be for each other. There’s permanence to it. Not us both saying this is enough for now. It’s a public declaration that our relationship is special. That of all the people in the world, we only want each other.”

  He blinked. “But I do want only you. I’ll stand up and say it wherever you want. Hell, I’ll get it tattooed on my ass if you want. Why should we need a ceremony and piece of paper to prove it?”

  “Why shouldn’t we?” she hissed. “Why? We get a piece of paper to prove a shit load of things. To say we can drive and vote and own a bloody pet. Hell, the parents of the kids at my school have to sign a goddamn piece of paper to say they’ve checked their kid’s head for nits!”

>   Em took a deep breath. She was sounding shrill, and it was important to stay calm no matter how much her heart was breaking. She wanted him to understand why it was so important to her without being rendered inarticulate from the emotion of it.

  “I’m pretty sure you signed a piece of paper when you joined the Smoke,” she continued, her voice lower. “So you could both prove your commitment to each other. Would you have joined the team without it? Would they have let you without it? Why shouldn’t people sign a piece of paper when they make one of the biggest decisions—to be together—of their life?”

  Em shook her head, swallowing down an insane urge to cry. Maybe it was because her parents’ marriage hadn’t lasted that she’d enshrined the union as some kind of mystical touchstone. Something noble to strive for. To do better than her parents had done.

  He’d told her that night they’d gone to the Nerd Girls that he didn’t believe in marriage, so she could hardly be surprised at this turn of events. But then he’d told her he didn’t think he was the type to fall in love, either.

  She zipped up her bag and quickly accessed the Uber app on her phone. “How can we teach our kids about the importance of commitment when we don’t make the ultimate commitment ourselves?” she continued.

  “Oh my God.” Linc shook his head. “This is such a ridiculous fight. I can’t even believe we’re having it. There aren’t any kids in the picture. There won’t be for a long time. We just talked about a ten year plan, for crying out loud.”

  Em was pleased to see there was an Uber two minutes away. “So you’re saying you might feel differently in ten years’ time?”

  He looked at her hopelessly, conflict twisting his face. “I don’t know…maybe… For fuck’s sake, Em… It’s an entire decade away.”

  If Em was watching this on the silver screen as some bad B-grade rom-com, she’d have laughed at his completely unconvincing half-assed reply.

  But it was happening to her right now in full freaking Technicolor.

  “You’re right, of course. I’m getting way ahead of myself. I’m not expecting you to drop to your knee and ask me to marry you after two months. Of course I’m not.”