Playing It Tough

Table of Contents Content Warning Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Epilogue Glossary Acknowledgments About the Author Enjoy more heat from Entangled… One Night Stand After Another The Last Rule of Makeups Undercover Engagement The Nanny Rules This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Copyright © 2023 by Amy Andrews. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher. Entangled Publishing, LLC 644 Shrewsbury Commons AveSTE 181Shrewsbury, PA 17361 [email protected] Brazen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC. Edited by Erin Molta and Lydia Sharp Cover design by LJ Anderson/Mayhem Cover Creations Cover photography by 4x6 and MARHARYTA MARKO/Getty Images ISBN 978-1-64937-441-7 Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition April 2023 At Entangled, we want our readers to be well-informed. If you would like to know if this book contains any elements that might be of concern for you, please check the book’s webpage for details. https://entangledpublishing.com/books/playing-it-tough For my mother, Sandra. Still miss you every day. #fuckcancer Chapter One Ronan Dempsey was playing shit rugby. Sure, his brand of shit rugby was still better than half the current players in the Australian professional league, but that was beside the point. And if he didn’t want to find his ass on a plane back to Colorado, not to mention forgoing a spot on the USA rugby sevens Olympic team, he needed to fix that ASAP. He’d come a long way from the chubby kid who’d never been picked for anything, and he was never going back. So he needed to stop burning the candle at both ends because, clearly, it was finally catching up with him. Playing for the Sydney Smoke had earned Ronan more money this past four months than he’d have earned playing for several years back home and he’d been like a kid in a candy shop. A candy shop owned, run, and populated by women. Man, he loved Aussie women and they, praise the lord, really loved him. But there were only two months left till finals season, and if he wanted to help the Sydney Smoke get there, if he wanted to show the selectors back home what he was made of, he had to cut out the distractions. “Hey, Ronan. You want to go on a date with a friend of Em’s?” Lincoln Quinn asked as the team filed into the locker room collectively sweaty and exhausted after another gruelling session with their hard-as-nails coach, Griffin King. “She’s just split with some dickwad and is looking for some light entertainment.” Light entertainment was Ronan’s specialty but…finals…Olympic glory. “Nah.” He shook his head, decision made. “I’ve taken a celibacy pledge.” Abstaining from sex before a game or a competition was hardly new in elite sports circles. This was just going a little further. There was a moment of stunned silence before everyone—every last guy on the team—laughed. “Sure,” Tanner Stone, team skipper, said when the laughter finally died down. “Me too.” “Me three,” country boy Ryder Davis added. Donovan Bane, the man-giant with the blood of Maori warriors running through his veins, shook his head. “For a guy that’s been planting his American flagpole everywhere since he arrived, that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.” Ronan grinned, letting the smack-talk run off his shoulders. Could he help it if women over here found his accent irresistible? “Just doing my best for Aussie/US relations.” Donovan snorted. “Is that what you’re telling your mama?” Ronan hauled his shirt off over his head and tossed it aside. “I tell her I’m going to church every Sunday and saving myself for a nice American girl.” Everyone laughed as they, too, shucked off sweaty clothes. “What’s this pledge all about then?” Linc asked as he sat on the bench situated beneath the row of lockers and eased out of his boots. “You suddenly allergic?” Bodie Webb winced. “That’s not good for the junk. Swollen, and not in the good way. Itchy.” “A rash,” Dexter Blake threw in for good measure. “Yeah…a rash anywhere near your dick is not something women appreciate,” Kyle Leighton confirmed. He was married to Valerie King, the coach’s daughter. The tone of his voice left none of them in any doubt that the fathers of the women didn’t really appreciate it, either. Ronan ignored them. “Just want to channel everything into the game this next couple of months.” “Yeah well, wait till you take your first hit to those blue balls,” Ryder said with a grimace. “Hey,” Linc reasoned, performing a lewd action with his hand. “He didn’t say he wasn’t going to love himself.” “As long as he can still catch a ball,” Tanner said drily. He eyed Donovan. “You were celibate for years. You’ll have to teach Ronan the ropes.” As a gay man playing elite football, Donovan had forsaken romantic relationships rather than risk the secret he’d been keeping. But, recently out, he was all loved up with Beckett. Donovan grunted. “I ain’t touching his ropes.” There was more schoolboy sniggering. “I give it a week,” Linc pronounced. “Fuck no.” Bodie shook his head. “I give him three days.” “You care to wager on that?” Linc challenged. And then they were off. Bemused, Ronan listened as his team upped the ante on his ability to go without. “Y’all seriously think I can’t be celibate?” Dex snorted at Ronan’s serious question. “I live next door to a randy cocker spaniel. It humps anything not moving. And some things that are. That dog has more of