Playing By Her Rules (Sydney Smoke Rugby Series) Read Online Free Page A

submit”—he grinned as he drew the word out a little—“to you, on six occasions. But I say where and when.”
    If this was him “submitting,” he’d better not ditch rugby for a BDSM lifestyle.
    An image of him submitting whilst naked and tied to her bedpost undulated rather unhelpfully like a serpent through her brain. If only it were hissing keep your distance instead of step a little closer .
    Matilda cleared her throat. She just wanted out now. She wasn’t used to dealing with this much testosterone in one room. Hell, if she stayed much longer, she’d probably grow her own pair of balls.
    She’d come to set up a time to meet and get the hell out. If Tanner wanted to assert himself by trying to control the extraneous details, so be it. She was the one wielding the pen.
    She reached into her bag and plucked one of her cards out of the internal pocket and thrust it toward him.
    “Text me with the details.”
    He took it and instantly raised it to his nose, inhaling deeply, and in a flash she was transported back to high school, Tanner’s nose nuzzling her hair, her neck, and the sweet spot behind her ear.
    Excruciatingly aware that they were just standing there staring at each other in front of a gawking audience, Matilda nodded her head, signalling her intention to depart. “Well…” She glanced over his shoulder briefly again. “See you later.”
    Her legs were decidedly unsteady as she walked away, the image of a half-naked Tanner, her card pressed to his nose, looking an awful lot like the guy she used to love, taunting her mercilessly.

    The wolf whistles and smack talk started as soon as Matilda left the room. The guys had a great time at his expense, and Tanner let them. His brain was busy churning over his reaction to her.
    Christ. He raked a hand through his hair. He’d acted like a dick again. Hell, if he’d been able to reach, he would have kicked his own ass over the “mythic in the bedroom” crack. It was hardly appropriate after such a long time apart.
    But he’d been so fucking angry .
    Angry at her for hiding behind her professional boundaries, all buttoned up with her contacts and short, serious hair and her frickin’ pantsuit , so different from the girl of his youth with the ponytail and glasses and T-shirts with funny sayings that always made him laugh.
    This girl— Matilda —didn’t look like she knew how to laugh.
    And that was on him. Kissing the cool girl at that party that night, choosing the exact moment he knew Tilly would be watching, had been an asshole move, one that she was clearly still smarting from. But it had been the only thing he could think of to make her break up with him. Make her take up her scholarship to Stanford and become the writer she’d always wanted to be instead of following his sorry ass around every regional backwater, waiting for his opening to play with the big boys.
    Which could have been never.
    Injury, bad luck, bad weather, bad timing—any of these could have ended his career before it had even begun. They hadn’t, but now he had to live with the fact that the girl he’d once known had disappeared behind a wall that had been laid by him—or started by him, anyway.
    Maybe other men in her life had been dicks, too. He cringed thinking about it. She used to shine. She’d been so happy and open, and she’d deserved so much more than having her joy sucked away by him and whatever else had conspired to make her the woman she was today.
    But he had seen a flash of that clever, witty, funny girl he’d fallen in love with all those years ago.
    Tanner Stone’s dick doesn’t quite live up to its namesake and pales in comparison to his ginormous ego.
    Tanner smiled thinking about it. That was his Tilly. The girl who’d teased him mercilessly about his hunk rep around the school. The girl who had laughed at every opportunity.
    That old Tilly was still in there, he was sure of it. She was just hiding, buried beneath a shit-ton of hurt, and he