Playing By Her Rules (Sydney Smoke Rugby Series) (16 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Tanner was running late for the Smoke’s Saturday morning training session as the Uber he was in pulled away from the air field and headed for Henley stadium. They didn’t usually train on Saturdays because, more often than not it was game day, but this week they had a Sunday game and, given it was against their toughest opponents to date, Griff had insisted on the session.

Knowing Griff, he probably wouldn’t stop until the will to live had been wrung out of every single one of them.

Tanner drummed his fingers on his jeans, feeling naked without his phone. He’d accidentally left it behind in his locker on Thursday and hadn’t realised it until he was almost at the airport for his trip west. But, given there was no mobile reception way out where he’d been heading, and the retreat for young male offenders was completely unplugged anyway—no phones, no computers, no television—it had been pointless going back for it.

Still, he felt like he’d been away from civilisation for a month, despite it only being a day and a half. He was desperate to check his messages and his Twitter stream and extra desperate to read Tilly’s last feature article, even though the crushing sense that there truly was no hope left for them had been on his mind since Monday.

Still…he couldn’t help himself where she was concerned.

Being seven hundred kilometres away, in the middle of nowhere, mentoring a bunch of guys who’d done it really tough had been a good distraction. They had given Tanner something to focus on other than obsessing about Tilly’s last words.

Yeah, but I stopped loving you.

Except now he was back again, in civilisation, and the words were back, playing over and over in his head.

If it was true—and she’d said it with such convincing sincerity—then he only had himself to blame. But he wasn’t giving up, either. He loved her, and he couldn’t just switch those feelings off.

He needed to give her some time, however. Give them
both
some time. Then start as friends. And take it slow.

She’d fallen for him once. Surely she could again.

All the guys were in the locker room when he burst through the door almost an hour later. Traffic had been a nightmare, and he had five minutes to spare before Griff would be in the room and have his ass if he wasn’t kitted up and ready to go.

“Well, look who the cat dragged in,” Dex said with a grin. “So glad you could make it.”

“The man of the moment,” Linc announced.

“Nah,” Bodie added, “The man bigger than the myth.”

Tanner frowned, ignoring them. He didn’t have time to try and decipher their bullshit right now. He had to get dressed and get his head in the game. He hurried to his locker, yanking his shirt over his head as he went, pulling up short at the newspaper article stuck to the front with electrical tape. It was Matilda’s last feature. The headline read
Tanner Stone, A Man Bigger Than The Myth.
And, lower down, there was a ring of bright red Nikko around the very last sentence.

You said once you wanted to marry me, Tanner. I still do. #definitelylove

What the fuck? Tanner’s pulse spiked, and his hands trembled as he tore it off the locker to read it. He devoured the article, not looking up until “The End.” It was then he realised there was absolute silence in the room, and he glanced over his shoulder.

All the guys were grinning like loons, and Dex and Donovan took two paces forward and tossed handfuls of confetti at Tanner’s stunned face. Linc hummed the wedding march. “Da dum da da. Da dum da da. Da dum da da da da da da da da.”

“I bag best men,” Bodie said.

“In your fucking dreams,” Dex said good-naturedly.

Tanner, his head spinning, glanced back at the article. She’d really just proposed to him in a
national newspaper
?

“What are you waiting for?” Dex demanded. “Don’t keep the lady waiting. We like her better than you.”

“Yeah,” Linc agreed. “She’s hella prettier to look at than you, too.”

Tanner grinned, his heart suddenly light as a freaking balloon. The heavy weight he’d carried all week suddenly lifted. He stuffed the newspaper article in his pocket and shoved his shirt back on over his head, displacing a bunch of confetti.

He reached into his locker, grabbed his phone, and was heading for the door when Griff sauntered in. He took one look at Tanner, dressed in civvies and folded his arms across his chest. His gaze skimmed Tanner’s confetti-strewn hair before coming to a halt on his face.

“And where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“Sorry, Griff. There’s a personal matter I have to attend to.”

Griff was unmoved. “You already missed yesterday’s training.”

Tanner reefed the crumpled up article out his pocket. “Gotta go accept a proposal of marriage, boss.”

“It can’t wait?” he demanded.

“I’ve already waited eight years.”

Griff rolled his eyes. “This is the kind of shit I expect from Linc.”

“Hey,” Linc protested not looking remotely insulted.

Griff pinned Tanner with a steely gaze. “You going to bring your A game tomorrow?”

He nodded. “Yes, sir.” Tilly and rugby were all he needed.

Griff stood aside. “Go.”

A cacophony of male hooting followed him out of the locker room.

…

Matilda woke with a start at ten in the morning. Her head throbbed, her eyes were gritty in the way only hours of crying produced, and it tasted like a small, furry animal had died in her mouth overnight. She groaned as she rolled on her back.

Drinking the entire bottle of wine last night hadn’t been very smart.

She searched blindly in her bedside table drawer for a box of breath mints she knew was in there somewhere, finally locating them and throwing three in her mouth. Next she groped for her phone and found her glasses, shoving them on her face as she struggled to her elbows, half-sitting.

Maybe there’d been some news from Tanner overnight?

She peered blearily at the phone screen, tapping in her passcode. A hot well of disappointment fountained in her chest to find no missed phone calls. No texts.

The urge to cry returned, but she beat it back. Crying was for last night.

No more bloody crying.

She quickly navigated to Twitter. As there were yesterday, several hundred notifications awaited her. But were any from Tanner? Rather than searching through them all she cut to the chase and went straight to his profile.

She almost dropped the phone when she saw his one and only tweet in days sent out about an hour ago.

Yes @MatildaK #Istilldotoo #definitelylove

There were hundreds of retweets and responses beneath, none of which she cared about as the news took long seconds to set in.
Yes?
Her heart raced, her breath caught around a giant lump in her throat threatening to choke her.

He said yes?

A low buzz of excitement that seemed to originate from the phone spread from the tips of her fingers, down her arms to her chest and belly, then down her legs, all the way to her toes.

He said yes.
Definitely love!

She grinned at the phone like a madwoman, her heart practically floating in her chest, then promptly burst into tears.

So much for that!

A loud banging on her front door startled her, causing her to almost choke on her breath mints. “Tilly! It’s me. It’s Tanner! Open up!”

Tanner?

Matilda’s pulse leaped as she practically levitated from the bed. If she’d had her wits about her, she might have cared that she was in a T-shirt that said “Journalists do it on the front page,” instead of her slinky, clingy red lace negligee. Or that her eyes were probably bloodshot to hell, and her hair probably looked more punk than pixie. Or that she probably still stunk of booze.

All she cared about was getting her hands on her man.

Her man.

She could get used to that.

She was at the door in ten seconds flat, her hand fumbling with the dead lock. Then it was open and he was standing there in a pair of knee-length chinos and a T-shirt soaked in sweat. More sweat poured down his forehead and neck, his golden-blond hair dark at the roots where perspiration had saturated it in clumps.

“Yes,” he said grinning at her. “Yes.”

Matilda didn’t care how sweaty he was. She threw herself at him, crawling up him to kiss him on the mouth, whispering, “Yes, yes, yes,” against his lips.

Somehow they ended up inside her apartment on the other side of her door, pressed against it, kissing like they’d never kissed before, like the world was about to end and this was the way they’d chosen to spend their last moment.

“I love you,” she said eventually, sinking her hands into his sweaty hair, pressing her forehead to his as she sucked in lungsful of much needed air.

“I love you, too,” he said simply.

“God,” she said, on a half laugh. “You sure as hell played it cool. I thought I’d blown it.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’ve been in the far west of the state, unplugged since Thursday afternoon. I only saw the article about an hour ago.”

“So you…” She brushed his sweaty fringe off his forehead. “You ran all the way here?”

“Practically. I got caught in a traffic gridlock due to some accident. Nobody could go anywhere so I mounted the kerb, parked the car, and ran the last eight kilometres.”

Matilda laughed incredulous. “That’s crazy.”

He shook his head. “No. It’s the sanest thing I’ve ever done.” He kissed her again, and Matilda’s heart sang as she held him tight. “Do you have a shower in this place?”

She grinned at him as she wriggled down. “Follow me.”

A trail of their clothes lay strewn on the floor by the time they both hit the shower, completely naked. Tanner turned on the cold only, and Matilda gasped but he soon wrapped her up in his arms and kissed her senseless against the tile, urging her to wrap her legs around his waist.

But she refused to go, turning him so his back was to the tile instead and kissing down his chest. And down lower. And lower.

“Tilly,” he said, pulling gently on her shoulders. “I want to be in you.”

“Later,” she said, rising on her tiptoes to place a playful kiss on his mouth before sinking to her knees in front of him.

Cold water sprayed down all around her, beading her nipples to tight points, and her head was level with the thick, long jut of his erection. She looked up at him, past the flat of his belly, the spread of his ribs, the wide expanse of his chest, the whiskery length of his neck, the brooding line of his mouth.

All the way up to the lust-fuelled blue of his eyes. “I want to taste you.”

The rings of cartilage in his throat bobbed as he swallowed. “You can have whatever you want. I’m all yours.”

Matilda smiled at him, pressing her knees into the grout of the tile in case she actually become so light with happiness she floated. “Good answer.”

Then she grasped the base of his cock in one hand, cupped his balls with the other and sunk her lips down his shaft, taking him right to the back of her throat.

She just heard the
thunk
of his head against the tile over the sound of the water and his long, low, “
Fuuuck.
”

A surge of pure feminine power streaked through her system, and Matilda withdrew, sucking hard all the way before eating him up again, going as far as she could, alternately squeezing and rolling his balls.

She glanced up to find him, head back, eyes closed, his palms flattened hard against the tiles behind him, his knuckles white as if he was trying to stop himself from moving or touching her. But Matilda wanted him to move. To thrust. She wanted him to touch her. She wanted to feel his hands on her head, in her hair, urging her on.

She wanted him to
watch
her blowing him, watch her making him come with her mouth, watch her swallow everything he had to give.

She withdrew all the way, letting the plump head sit gently against her lips. He roused shortly, his eyes fluttering open before he looked down.

“I want you to watch me,” she said, her voice husky. “Hold my head. Guide me.”

His low groan went straight to her belly, and she swore she could see the tightening of his abs. His gaze fixed on hers as his hands slid into her hair, and she felt the subtle pressure of them as they urged her back onto his cock.

Matilda shut her eyes in deep satisfaction, opening to take him all, moaning as he thrust slightly to push deeper, protesting as he pulled out then sucking greedily as he thrust in again.

Now they were a team. It wasn’t just her on her knees servicing him.
He
was a part of it. Fucking her mouth. And she freaking loved it. He was hot and slippery against her tongue, tasting like salt and musk, the chill of the water lubricating and cooling all at once.

When his legs started to tremble, she knew he was nearly there. His balls drew tighter, and he started to thrust faster. Matilda matched him, sucking harder and faster, clawing at the back of his thighs to stop herself from dissolving into a puddle of lust and washing down the drain.

“
Oh…yes…baby
,” he muttered, his hands clamping in her hair, his hips suddenly jerking to a stop. A deep bellow echoed around the shower as his hot seed spilled into her mouth. She swallowed until he was spent, clinging to his legs as he eased from her mouth, pressing her forehead to his thigh as blood pounded through her head.

“Come here,” he said after a beat, reaching down for her, hauling her up his body as the cool water flowed down her back before he turned her around. Her legs automatically wrapped around his hips as he leaned heavily against her like he was having trouble holding himself up.

“That was amazing,” he muttered, before his mouth descended hot and a little crazy on hers. “God,” he groaned. “Tasting me on you is such a frickin’ turn-on.”