Playing it Cool (Sydney Smoke Rugby) (9 page)

His pupils dilated as Harper’s ears filled with his unsteady breath and the ring of her own heartbeat. Her nostrils filled with the intoxicating accents of some posh cologne. Heat poured into her belly and streaked down her thighs.

He kissed her then. Hard and hot. His smell, his taste, the harsh, feral suck of his breath, the pure
urgency
of his mouth, flamed through her. His tongue thrust into her mouth as his hands invaded her gaping overalls, sliding onto her waist, yanking her body against his before turning them, switching positions, trapping her between him and the island bench.

“I want to fuck you,” he muttered, grinding the steely hardness of his cock between her legs as his mouth left hers, nipping and sucking a trail of kisses down her neck.

Harper moaned as she ground back, her eyes squeezing shut at the wild clamp of her internal muscles.
God. Yes
. If this was the way he punished her, then she was going to be bad a lot more often.

His mouth savaged lower, the sheer force of his passion bending her back against the bench, his tongue tracing over her collarbones and lower, his hands pushing at the opening of the overalls, exposing her breasts, groaning at the sight of them, cupping them, kneading them, his fingers squeezing the taut, tight nipples until she cried out at the twin sensations of pleasure-pain before lowering his head to soothe them with the hot lick of his tongue.

Harper closed her eyes and buried her hands in his hair, arching her back shamelessly as the scrape of his teeth and the deliciously brutal suction of his mouth rendered her incapable of coherent thought.

Too soon he broke away, and she cried out a weak protest, but he simply moved north again, his hands urging her into a more upright position, before sliding to the backs of her thighs as he whispered a ragged “Up,” in her ear, lifting her onto the bench as if she weighed nothing at all.

She clutched his shoulders as he seated her and then thanked the kitchen gods that her high benches were the exact level required to bring the big, beautiful bulge in his trousers directly in contact with the big, bitching ache between her legs.

She locked her legs around his waist and moaned as he rocked into her, claiming her mouth with the same mastery as before—deep and hard. But Harper was done with the dry humping. Done with clothes. She needed to touch him. To feel his cock in her hand. Feel it inside her.

She
needed
that intimate connection with him so damn much that nothing else mattered.

Still kissing him, she pushed frantically at his jacket, desperate to get closer to him. She made a triumphant sound in the back of her throat as it fell off his arms, and she greedily smoothed her hands across the breadth of his pecs, over the roundness of his shoulders, and then down his back.

Her hands landed on his ass and she pulled him in tighter, rocking him closer.

He groaned, breaking the kiss, his forehead pressing into hers. “God, woman, you make me see stars.”

There was a bulge in his back pocket and she yanked out his wallet, opening it without asking, finding what she wanted. “Condom,” she said, slapping it against his chest.

The wallet fell to the benchtop as she reached for his belt buckle, her fingers making surprisingly short work of both it and his fly, considering how crazily they trembled.

As crazy as the wild clatter of her heart.

He groaned, their foreheads still together, when Harper breached the waistband of his underwear and pulled out his erection, stiff and eager, the head plump between the press of their bodies.

“
Jesus
,” he muttered. “That’s so damn good it hurts.”

“Feels pretty damn good to me, too,” she murmured, loving the silk and the steel of it as she closed her fist around him, sliding up and down a couple of times. “
Condom
,” she panted.

“Lie back,” he said as he ripped at the foil packet with his teeth.

Harper didn’t have to be asked twice, lowering back onto her elbows so she could watch him sheath himself, then catching the flare of his gaze as he glanced at her once he was done. He was looking at her as if he was a sugar addict and she was his own personal lolly shop.

He slid both hands up her torso, pushing her gently all the way back, as he palmed her breasts and squeezed. “God, you’re beautiful,” he said on a ragged breath, his hands smoothing down her body again.

So used to her love-hate relationship with her body, Harper realised that when Dex told her she was beautiful like that, with a note of reverence in his voice that almost made her cry, she actually believed him.

He shook his head as fingers brushed the lace edge of her purple satin underwear. “I don’t know if I thought this through properly,” he said, tracing down the two vertical lines of black ribbon decorating the front of her full-figured brief. “I should have ditched your clothes before I put you on the counter.”

Harper closed her eyes to clear the sexual fog as his fingers continued down, brushing closer and closer to her aching sex. Thank God the baggy overalls were long in the crotch, giving them plenty of room to manoeuvre.

His thumb whispered over the satiny fabric between her legs, already damp from their making out, and she bit down on her lip. “Just push it aside,” she urged, her voice all deep and growly, too far-gone to worry about logistics. Then she clamped her legs around his hips, her strong solid calves anchoring tight against the taut globes of his ass, and rubbed against him.

He groaned, yanking the fabric aside as she’d suggested, guiding himself through slick folds to her entrance, and thrust home. Harper gasped as it slammed like a shock wave through her body, rolling up from where they were joined to her throat, finding an outlet through a cry that exploded from her chest.

“Yes,” she moaned, eyes shut tight, feeling the burn and tingle of his possession, blindsided by the completeness of it.

His hands clamped on her hips as he pulled out and thrust back in again. She was vaguely aware of the heavy bounce of her bare breasts as he rocked in and out of her one more time.

“God, I wish you could see yourself,” Dex murmured, and Harper opened her eyes to find his glittering green gaze locked on her chest, following the motion of her breasts with every thrust of his hips. “You look incredible.”

Harper arched her back and was rewarded with the flaring of his nostrils and the quickening of his breath. “Yes,” Dex groaned, plunging in and out, harder and harder, watching intently as each shove jarred through her torso, jolting through her breasts with the convulsive force of an electric shock.

She was watching him intently, too. She couldn’t look away from the feral lust on his face—the cording of his neck muscles, the tight clamp of his jaw, the baring of his teeth. It fed the heat building in her thighs and buttocks and belly. It stoked the fever raging out of control between her legs.

She’d never been so freaking turned on in her life.

She couldn’t breathe or think or move. Only feel. The rigid clamp of his fingers on her hips, the cold press of the stone bench against her shoulder blades, and the deep, hard shove of him driving her closer and closer to nirvana.

Nearer and nearer.

When it happened, it happened fast, the tumult building in seconds, everything pulling taut inside her, wrenching a cry from her throat.

“
Dex!
”

“I’m here, baby,” he panted, his voice ragged and strangled as he hammered in and out, everything a blur as the world disintegrated around her into a sticky quagmire of pleasure.

Suddenly, his head fell back on his neck and he let out a long guttural bellow as he joined her there, bucking wildly, emptying everything he had, giving it all until there was nothing left and he collapsed on top of her.

“Christ,” he gasped, his head on her still heaving chest.

Harper automatically cradled him there, holding him close, her fingers twined in his hair as the mad synchronicity of their pulses and the unevenness of their breathing eventually slowed and settled. He lifted his head, propping his chin between her breasts, and she prised her eyes open, fighting the pull of postcoital drowsiness.

“My name on your lips as you come is the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Her heart skipped a beat both at the sincerity of and the rough burr to his voice. Damned if the man didn’t say the nicest things. She needed to watch herself around him—he was just too damn good for her ego.

He gathered her close and pulled her into a sitting position, his forehead pressing lightly against hers as he cast a last lingering look down at her breasts before pulling the sides of her overalls together and stepping back a pace.

“Bin under the sink,” she said.

He nodded and turned to get rid of the condom. She watched him, liking the way his shoulders sat snug against the seams of his shirt as he reached for a paper towel, and the way his trousers cupped his ass like little elves had sewn it with threads of awesome.

Hell, she liked every single thing about this guy.

She zipped up before he headed back, all tucked in and immaculate again, picking his jacket up off the floor as he walked toward her. He placed it beside her before settling between her legs, sliding his hands up her thighs and onto her waist then kissing her thoroughly.

“Mmm,” she murmured, her head spinning when they finally came up for air, his lips trekking to her ear. “What time does your thing start?”

He nuzzled her temple. “Fifteen minutes ago.”

Harper straightened. “What? Oh my God!” She laughed as she pushed a hand against his chest. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“And miss out on
that
?” he asked, his voice low, tinged with laughter. “Are you crazy?”

Harper was beginning to think she very well may be. She picked up his jacket and shoved it at him. “Go.”

“I will,” he leaned toward her again. “In a second.”

“No,” she laughed, shoving harder. “Now.”

“Okay, okay.” He grabbed his jacket and shrugged into it. “You want to do something Sunday arvo?”

Harper nodded, her heart doing a merry little tap dance in her chest. She hadn’t expected him to set another date with her right now. They hadn’t discussed logistics, but she’d assumed they were going to be sporadic. She was inordinately pleased that he was lining something up again so quickly.

“Yes.” But then she remembered she was busy and her hopes fell. “Oh no, wait…I can’t. The twins are coming around on Sunday for movie afternoon.”

“Okay,” he nodded, roughly finger combing his hair. “Sounds good to me.”

She frowned. “Oh. You want to…come over and watch a couple of movies with two eleven-year-olds?”

“And you.” He smiled. “You’re going to be here, too, right?”

Harper smiled back. “Yes…I’ll be here, too.”

“Cool. Sounds like fun. If it’s okay by you?”

Stunned, it was a second or two before Harper bobbed her head wildly in the affirmative. “Of course. Sure.”

Her devotion to her siblings had been the angst in one too many relationships. Often unable to go on dates because it clashed with her commitment to the twins, or having to cancel dates at the last minute due to one of the many unforeseen scenarios that could develop when children were involved, had caused more than one guy to walk away.

“Oh, hang on.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “What movie? It’s not some chick flick, is it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Star Wars,
of course
. We’ve been working our way through them all.”

“Oh my God.” He grinned as he moved quickly between her legs again. “You
are
the perfect woman. Curvy and kick-ass with
excellent
taste in movies.”

He smacked a brief, hard kiss on her mouth. It lasted for only a few seconds but still managed to leave her woozy and breathless. “See you on Sunday,” he said before stepping away and striding out of her house.

Harper happy-sighed as the door clicked shut after him.

She had excellent taste in men, too.

Chapter Eight

“How long do you think is reasonable to ask a guy to wait before you put out?”

Em was moving forward in her determination not to be a doormat with men anymore.

Harper gave her an A for effort but she’d been Em’s shoulder to cry on too many times to believe that her friend wouldn’t revert to type the next time a guy flashed her a
hey baby
smile.

She gave it a month, tops.

“If a guy’s going to dump you because you won’t put out, then he shouldn’t be given the time of day,” Harper said. It dodged the question, but it wasn’t a subject she felt she had any authority on, given that she’d slept with Dex on their second date.

“Of course.” Em nodded, her curls bouncing in Harper’s peripheral vision. She had put out too many times for guys who’d been too impatient and too disrespectful to wait. A childhood spent with an emotionally distant father had left Harper’s bestie starved of affection and unwilling to deny it when it did come her way.

Harper would have ordinarily taken the time to reinforce the point but her gaze was glued to the television, where a bunch of big, sweaty guys were running around playing rugby. Catching the occasional glimpse of Dex was worth the frequent glimpses of her stepbrother reporting, all smug and pretty from the sidelines.

It was almost halftime, and the Smoke were behind by three.

The play stopped as the ref blew his whistle and the camera zoomed in on Dex, who’d been crunched beneath two burly blokes from the opposing team. Ordinarily, three buff guys piled on top of each other would be quite the titillating sight, but it wasn’t that kind of man-wich.

Harper winced as Dex staggered to his feet, blood pouring from a gash in his forehead. She wasn’t too worried; she knew even the tiniest of head wounds could bleed impressively.

The ref and a few of the Smoke players gathered around as the two opposition players tried to talk their way out of a penalty. A couple of guys ran on from the sidelines to Dex’s side. One was toting a small bag and wearing gloves, with
Medic
printed on the back of his Sydney Smoke shirt. The other was a kid with Down Syndrome, who looked about fifteen, carrying two bottles of water.

Dex held his hand out for some water and squirted it into his mouth in a long stream, his head tilted at an awkward angle to allow the medic to inspect the wound. He drank greedily. The medic said something and stood back a little as Dex squirted more water over the wound. Diluted blood ran down his face as the medic stepped back in, applying a gauze pad to the injury.

Dex gave the water back to the kid, smiling at him and giving him a fist bump. The kid beamed at Dex, and Harper’s lungs suddenly felt too big for her chest cavity.

“Oh my God, did you see that?” she asked Em.

Em looked up distractedly from her book. “What?”

“The way Dex fist-bumped the water boy.”

Em had missed it, Dex was being led off with the medic and the water boy in tow, and the ref was blowing his whistle for the game to recommence. There were six minutes left in the first half.

“Oh yeah,” Em said drily, picking up her glass of wine from the coffee table near where her feet were propped. “How surprising for a jock to do that.”

Harper laughed. Em’s legendary affability with men did not extend to sports. She’d never been into it particularly, but having to constantly compete with the sports department for a slice of the funding pie at her school was an ongoing irritant.

If Em had her way, she’d have banned all forms of organised sport from existence. It was a testament to their friendship that she was watching the game at all. Sort of.

“Has he texted you yet?”

“No.”

“Ugh.” Em sighed. “
Men
. Why do they do that?”

Harper made what she hoped was a suitably vague noise indicating her own puzzlement, as she feigned interest in the game despite her give-a-shit wavering now that Dex was off the field.

“Oh my God.” Em rolled her head to inspect Harper’s face. “
You
contacted
him,
didn’t you?”

Taking a sip of her own wine, Harper shrugged noncommittally, hoping in vain that Em might drop it.

“
Harper
.” Em might be the same age as Harper, but she had perfected that don’t-mess-with-me schoolteacher voice very early in her career.

“Just a couple of texts.” Harper could feel Em’s stare lasering into the flesh of her profile.

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “And? What else?”

“Nothing,” she lied, wishing Em would just send her to the naughty corner already and lose the stare of interrogation.

A very unladylike snort came from the woman who looked pretty and delicate and like she quite possibly farted rose petals. “You’ve had
sex
with him, haven’t you? Since I saw you on Monday.”

Harper dropped her gaze guiltily to the couch, thinking about the things she and Dex had done right where they were sitting. “Well…”

“Oh my God.” Em jumped up. “
You had sex on this couch
, didn’t you?”

“No.” Harper shook her head violently. At least not in the time frame her friend was talking about, anyway. Best not go into that, though. Or the other time on the island bench where Em had sat earlier, drinking wine and prattling on about how stupid men were.

She’d tell Em later. When her man-hate had disappeared and they were back to sharing the intimate details of their lives like they had since they were six.

Harper grabbed Em’s hand and yanked her back onto the couch. “It was only the once, okay? It was a…spontaneous kind of a thing.”

Em kept hold of her hand. “So it was a…
booty call
?

Harper blinked. She hadn’t thought about it like that. She’d never hooked up with a guy just for sex. Especially not one she didn’t know that well. She grinned.

She’d had her first booty call.

“Well, yeah, I guess.
I
initiated it, though,” she added hastily at the disapproving look on her friend’s face.

“But…why?”

If Em hadn’t been genuine, her puzzled expression would have been funny. Harper sighed. “Because he’s just so easy to be with.”

And that was the truth of it.

Of course, it helped that he was also pretty damn easy to look at.

“Oh no,
no,”
Em wailed. “Harper, listen to me.” She squeezed Harper’s hand tightly as she clasped it against her chest. So tight Harper almost winced. “This is the kind of thing
I
do. Not you. It’s normally you holding my hand, telling me to slow it down, to not rush into things. And you were right. Booty calls mess with your head and make you feel shitty afterward, and you’re my best friend. I don’t want you to feel shitty.”

Harper pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t laugh. She didn’t feel shitty. Hell, she felt sexy. Wanted.

Desired.

The difference between Em’s booty calls, and Harper’s one and only, was the type of guy and the expectations involved. Em attracted jerks and always expected a booty call to be a sign of something more.

The beginning of a commitment.

Not Harper. She had absolutely no expectations where Dex was concerned. They weren’t a couple. They weren’t even heading toward being a couple. What happened here on Wednesday afternoon was just two people who liked each other getting their rocks off.

Simple.

“It’s fine, Em,” she assured her bestie. “It’s not like that between us.
Really.
I’m going to be fine.”

Em didn’t look convinced, dropping Harper’s hand and pulling her in for a hard hug instead. “Just be careful, okay?” she insisted, her voice muffled in Harper’s hair.

Harper rolled her eyes at the melodrama as Em’s slender arms practically cracked ribs. “I promise,” she assured her, wondering when old, resilient, unicorns-and-rainbows-Em was going to make a reappearance, because she wasn’t sure her body was going to survive too many more hard squeezes from emotional-wreck-Em.

Harper opened her door at three sharp on Sunday afternoon. Behind her in the living room, Jace and Tabby were squabbling over whose turn it was to play the PlayStation, but their arguments faded to black as Harper took in the sight of Dex lounging casually in her doorway wearing shorts and a T-shirt, his hair damp.

He smelled fresh and clean and looked big and vital, a small laceration high on his forehead the only evidence of last night’s bloody but temporary exit from the field. He brought both his hands from behind his back and held up two jumbo packs of chips.

“It’s not a movie afternoon unless there are salt and vinegar chips.”

Harper couldn’t have agreed more. “This is true.” She smiled, hoping she sounded a lot more nonchalant than she felt.

She couldn’t believe how nervous she was. A big old knot in her gut was getting larger by the minute. She’d changed her outfit three times, finally deciding on a maxi dress that hugged her boobs, skimmed her curves, and had an Aztec pattern that was very flattering to her shape.

She’d fought the urge to apply makeup, settling for just a slick of lip gloss, a fact he’d obviously noticed, as his gaze zeroed in on her mouth.

It was because of the twins she told herself. She didn’t want them to get the wrong idea about her relationship with Dex. Harper was perfectly fine with deceiving Chuckers, but not two eleven-year-olds with whom she shared some genetic material.

She and Dex were friends. Jace and Tabby didn’t need to know about the benefits part that had evolved between them.

He grinned, slid his hands onto her waist, the chip packets rustling as he dragged her against him. “Hey,” he murmured against her mouth before kissing her long and slow, the deep rumble of his groan as intoxicating as the aroma of coconut that filled her senses and poured like a rum cocktail through her veins.

A loud thump came from the living room, and Harper dragged herself away with difficulty, shaking her head at him. “We can’t,” she whispered, a hand on his chest to hold him back from taking more. “The twins. I don’t want them thinking there’s something going on between us.”

His lazy smile almost curled her toes. “But there is something going on between us.”

Harper’s breath hitched at his casual observation
. “
It’s just sex,” she said dismissively, as much for herself as for him and his toe-curling smile. “And that’s not any of their business.”

“Okay sure.” He shrugged casually, but she was sure she could hear a slight edge to his voice. “If you want to lie to your siblings…”

“It’s not lying,” she said quickly. He was teasing, but it hit a nerve. “They’re
eleven.
They’re innocents. There are things they don’t need to know.”

“So who
do
they think I am?”

“A friend.”

“With benefits?” He grinned.

Harper grinned back. “Not today, mister. Today is just pizza and a couple of movies.”

“Okay, fine.” He sighed with faux disappointment. “As long as you know that I’m going to spend every minute of it thinking about ways of getting you out of that dress.”

Dex took advantage of Harper’s temporary brain malfunction to give her ass a quick squeeze before entering the townhouse. She had to grip the door for a beat or two before she was composed enough to face her little brother and sister without blushing.

“Okay,” Dex announced, a few paces ahead of her, the chip packets behind his back, “which Star Wars is it today?”

Harper caught up to him and introduced the twins, who seemed a little overawed by his presence.

Not that she blamed them.

It wasn’t that they knew him—the twins took after her and her arty side more than they did Chuckers and his sporty interests—he was just a physically imposing kind of guy. And then there was his undeniable aura. Charisma swirled and crackled like a force field around him which was, apparently, also detectable by children and not
just
horny twenty-three-year-old women.

He produced the goodies from behind his back. “Who likes chips?”

Jace and Tabby’s eyes almost popped out of their heads. Anthea was all about whole food and calorie counting—the prospect of having a child with a weight problem was just too much for her vanity—so treats were rare.

“Me, me, me,” they chimed simultaneously.

And just like that, they fell under his spell, too.

Harper had to think hard to remember a time when she enjoyed herself as much as she had today. The fact that Dex, like Harper, knew most of the dialogue in the film line-for-line won him major brownie points with the twins. And then he went and won
all
the brownie points by ordering the pizzas over the phone in a Darth Vader voice.

Harper doubted she’d laughed this hard in a long time.

They paused between movies to eat the pizzas. He asked them about their school and what their hobbies were, and Tabby was telling him about how she’d just started playing the saxophone when Jace interrupted with, “Are you Harper’s boyfriend?”

Harper almost spat her mouthful of water all over the table then nearly choked trying to swallow it instead.

“Of course not,” she said as soon as she could catch her breath. She shot a panicked look at Dex in case he thought they had heard the term from her. “I told you, we’re just friends.” She smiled almost maniacally at her little brother in an attempt to convey how
friendly
they both were.

“Like you and Em?” he asked.

A little hand clamped around Harper’s heart. Jace, his face earnest, was so like their father sometimes. “Exactly like that,” Harper nodded.

If she and Em were playing strip Battlefront and getting each other off at work.

“Isn’t that right, Dex?” she said, nodding at him encouragingly.

Dex, a small smile on his lips, raised a sardonic eyebrow but joined in, saying, “Exactly.”

Jace opened his mouth as if he was going to ask more questions, but Harper had absolutely no intention of answering any of them. “Who wants ice cream?” she asked, standing and making a big deal out of cleaning up the pizza boxes and paper towels she’d used as disposable plates. “I’ve got some rocky road in the freezer especially for you guys.”