Sunday Smooch with Amy Andrews

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!


Today we have a smooch from Playing It Cool but first 


... the winner of last week's Sunday Smooch Giveaway is Kim Martin!


Can you please contact rachel (at) rachelbailey (dot) come to receive your prize.


And now for today's Sunday Smooch from Playing It Cool by Amy Andrews.

Score one for the curvy girls!

Harper Nugent might have a little extra junk in her trunk, but her stepbrother calling her out on it is the last straw... When rugby hottie, Dexter Blake, witnesses the insult, he surprises Harper by asking her out. In front of her dumbass brother. Score! Of course, she knows it's not for reals, but Dex won't take no for an answer.


Dexter Blake's life revolves around rugby with one hard and fast rule: no women. Sure, his left hand is getting a workout, but he's focused on his career for now. Then he overhears an asshat reporter belittle the curvy chick he'd been secretly ogling. What's a guy to do but ask her out? It's just a little revenge against a poser, and then he'll get his head back in the game.

But the date is better than either expected. So is the next one. And the next. And the heat between them...sizzles their clothes right off.


Suddenly, this fake relationship is feeling all too real...Blurb and Cover

Harper is at work at the City Kids hospital where she's been employed as an artist to brighten up the old drab walls of the different areas with bright murals. Unbeknownst to her, Dex is also there with the Sydney Smoke on one of the team's charity engagements. He slips away from his duties to find her and say hi. When he does he finds her in her work clothes of paint splattered overalls and he's having a hard time concentrating on anything else other than the central zipper of said overalls that runs straight down the front of them.

“Well, come on woman, tell me about the damn mural before I do something impulsive.”

Impulsive? Like what?

The low growl twirled and twined itself around internal muscles with a gossamer touch, sparking to life all the pent up lust she’d been trying to control the last couple of days.

Harper wiped the scenarios in her mind’s eye with a quick clear of her throat. “This is my... under the sea mural,” she said, her legs jerking into action, wandering down to where it started, sucking in some much needed air as she fought to control the reaction of her body to the nearness of his.

It was insanity of the highest order how easily Dexter Blake could affect her body. No man had ever left her panting just from his presence alone.

Determined to keep this above board and professional in her workplace, she explained succinctly and methodically what she was trying to achieve. She pretended he was one of her school age art students and not a fully grown man who was emitting so much testosterone she was almost faint with it.

She discussed colour and technique and where she was going with the bare sketches on the unfinished section as her pulse fluttered madly. Some would have called it babbling. But she had to engage her mouth in something useful lest it develop a mind of its own.

She was too aware of him to relax. Too aware of his hands jammed in his pockets, his gaze on her mouth as she talked. His heated interest on her zipper.

His cursory questions and complete disinterest in the answers seemed merely an excuse to let his gaze wander freely over her. He didn’t touch her but she felt the hot, sticky fingerprints of his interest mark every part of her body.   

Christ. He was turning her on just by looking at her.

“Okay,” she said, her voice tremulous with desire as she ran out of scintillating factoids about the mural. He needed to stop or she was going to do something impulsive. “I think it’s time you left now.”   

To his credit he didn’t protest or pretend he didn’t know why she was kicking him out. He just nodded. “I really did come down here just to say hi but...Jesus...” His gaze dropped to her zipper. “Are you wearing anything under that?”

A twinge,  like the low sexy notes of a saxophone, undulated across her pelvic floor. Dex was looking at her like he wanted to peel her out of her overalls as if she was a ripe banana. God knew he could do it easily. He was only an arm’s length away. He could just reach out and yank if he wanted.  

Harper swallowed. Her breath hitched. “Well I’m not naked, if that’s what you mean.”

His low groan rubbed against her skin like the finest grade sandpaper, her nipples beading painfully against the fabric of her bra. “Damn.”

The word rumbled out of him, arrowing heat from her breasts directly to the bullseye between her legs. She should send him on his way for both their sanities. Push him out the door and tell him she’d see him on Sunday, but the desire darkening his usually light green eyes was a heady thing.

“I’m wearing underwear,” she clarified quickly as if it might give some protection from the incendiary gaze threatening to melt her overalls right off.

“Christ,” he muttered, his gaze zeroing in on the tab of her zipper as he reefed a hand out of his pocket and jammed it through his hair. “All I can think about is yanking that damn zip down.”

It was all she could think about too.

Harper’s breath was thick as fog in her throat, her pulse slowing right down. He took a step towards her.

“Tell me to go,” he murmured, his gaze almost feral on her mouth now.

Harper couldn’t. She was virtually paralysed with lust. How she was managing to stay upright under his thorough eye-fucking she had no idea.

“No.”

She should. But she couldn’t.

It was like there was an invisible string between them pulling them inexorably together, and she didn’t have the power or the will to break it. He was going to have to man up if he wanted out of here unmolested.

“Jesus, Harper,” he whispered, looking at her for long moments, looking into her eyes this time as if he was searching for some kind of lifeline.

She clocked the exact second he stopped searching.

“Goddamn it,” he swore, taking the one pace necessary to cover the distance between them, his hands grasping her upper arms, yanking her towards him as his mouth closed in on hers.

After days and days of sexual fantasies, the touch of his mouth was like petrol on a fire and she blazed with need. Harper had heard other women talking about hearing the hallelujah chorus when the right guy kissed you. Choirs of angels and all that jazz. But that wasn’t what she was hearing. There was music alright, but it was no glorious benediction. 

It was the bourbon-gravelly tones of Nickleback singing about pants around her feet and dirt on her knees. 

 She was vaguely aware of him walking her backwards in the direction of the wall, her legs moving automatically at the insistent push of his powerful thighs, and she had just enough sense in her rapidly devolving thought processes to protest.

“No, no,” she muttered, tearing her mouth from his. “The paint’s wet.”

Harper's job is one of the more unsual I've written. For a chance to win an e-copy of Playing It Cool, tell me if you've read any other heroines with unusual jobs or if there's a particular job/profession/calling you'd like to see a heroine doing. Who knows, I might just make it happen in one of my books! I'm always looking for intertesting things to write about!

Come back next Sunday, when the winner of today's giveaway will be announced and another smooch will be posted!

Smooch Graphic by WebWeaver