Free Playing it Cool (Sydney Smoke Rugby) by Amy Andrews

grinned. “Prepare to be annihilated.” Her fingers moved quickly on the controller as she set things up. She glanced across at him. “You ready?”
    Dex stretched out his traps. “I was born ready, baby.”
    Harper pressed play, and they were off, sitting forward, shoulders hunched, brows furrowed. Dex did a cute thing where he stuck his tongue out whenever he was about to shoot. It made it easier for Harper to pre-empt, but still it took her twenty minutes to get him just where she wanted him. If this was him rusty, then he must have been damn good at one stage.
    She was closing in on him, going in for the fatal blow when he said, “Is this where you did the deed last night?”
    Harper startled at the unexpected question and misfired. His guy blasted a bunch of hers. She paused the game, and he grinned as she looked at him.
    “Are you doing this on purpose, to try and put me off my game?”
    “Damn straight,” he said, completely unabashed, looking boyish suddenly. “Is it working?”
    It most certainly was. Her concentration was shot now she’d been brought out of the virtual world to face the real world and the real man sitting beside her.
    “It was, wasn’t it?” he insisted, harking back to his original question.
    It would have been handy to be able to muster a glare, but the fact that it was, in fact, the place where she had done the deed , put Harper on the back foot.
    “I have a blush that tells me it was.” He looked up and down the length of the couch then back at her, his gaze lowering to her mouth. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have made it more than four for you but we were robbed with a couple of those penalties.”
    Harper was relieved the Smoke had only run the ball over that many times. She wasn’t sure she’d been hydrated enough for a fifth orgasm.
    “So…how was it?”
    There was no way she was telling him last night had been the single most risqué thing she’d ever done. Or the thrill of it alone had kept her excitement at fever pitch between tries.
    He’d held the upper hand in this conversation far too long.
    Recovering her composure, Harper injected some steel into her spine. She leaned in slightly and lowered her voice. “You want a…blow by blow?”
    His big smile oozed sex and confidence. “Hell yeah.”
    “I videoed it if you want to watch?”
    His sudden stillness, and the bob of his throat as he sat even more forward, were gratifying. “You…did?”
    Harper dropped her head to the side and shot him a gotcha smile before pressing start and blasting his last man to smithereens while he was still staring at her. “Oops.” She turned to him and batted her eyelids as Game Over flashed on the screen. “Sorry.”
    He laughed then. Big and deep. “You like to play dirty.”
    She arched an eyebrow. “I’m learning to play by your rules.”
    He grinned. “Oh, this is going to be so much fun.”
    Harper rolled her eyes at his obvious enjoyment. “Another?”
    “Sure. But let’s play as a team this time. At least until I’m not so rusty anymore. Then I’ll kick your ass, paint girl.”
    “Ha!” Harper said, setting up another game. “Dream on, rugby.”

    They didn’t go to the drive-in. The time came to leave and they were in the middle of a battle against enemy insurgents, and they decided to just keep playing. Harper grabbed two beers and some corn chips and salsa, and they worked their way through dozens of levels together.
    Dinnertime came and they ordered pizza. They devoured two between them and drank more beer. Harper couldn’t remember the last time she’d had this much fun.
    With her clothes on anyway.
    It was ten before they were triumphant in their third map together.
    “Another?” Harper asked.
    He was lounging back on the couch, his legs wide apart in that potently casual way of men. His T-shirt fell flat against the planes of his belly, and his jeans clung like a second skin, stretched out over thick quads and cupping the bulge of what she knew to