Playing to Score

By Lisabet Sarai

With the right opponent, even Scrabble can be foreplay

Matt was supposed to be just a hot hook-up. Then he turned on the charm and brought out the bondage gear.

Jason Hofstadter comes to the Four States Annual Scrabble Tournament for two reasons: to play for the trophy and to get laid. Every year since his first, he’s managed to score with one of the other guys attending. He figures that he’s hit the jackpot when he spots handsome, bookish Matt Sawyer, who's competing at the Four States for the first time.

Shy and seemingly innocent, Matt turns out to be full of surprises. First he jumps Jason in the rest room at Starbucks. Then he reveals that he's into BDSM and encourages Jason to top him. Finally, despite his lack of experience with tournament play, Matt ends up facing Jason across the board in the semi-final round. When Matt throws the game he should have won, Jason is forced to confront his own feelings: about winning, about casual sex, and about Matt.

Note: This book was previously published by Totally Bound under the title Crossed Hearts. It has been revised, expanded and re-edited for this release.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lisabet Sarai
• Release date: Feb 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005046934

Lisabet Sarai

I became addicted to words at an early age. I began reading when I was four. I wrote my first story at five years old and my first poem at seven. Since then, I have written plays, tutorials, scholarly articles, marketing brochures, software specifications, self-help books, press releases, a five-hundred page dissertation, and lots of erotica and erotic romance – more than fifty single author titles including eight full length novels, plus dozens of short stories in various collections. My credits include contributions to the Lambda winner Where the Girls Are and the IPPIE Best Erotic Book of 2011, Carnal Machines. My gay scifi erotic romance Quarantine won a Rainbow Awards 2012 Honorable Mention. I have also edited a number of acclaimed erotica anthologies. Currently I am responsible for the charity erotica imprint Coming Together Presents, which as of December 2014 has published six volumes by top erotic authors, supporting causes such as Amnesty International, Planned Parenthood, and the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America.I have more degrees than anyone would ever need, from prestigious educational institutions who would no doubt be deeply embarrassed by my chosen genre. Aside from writing, travel is one of my most fervent passions. I’ve visited every continent except Australia, though I still have a long bucket list of places I haven’t been. Currently I live in Southeast Asia with my indulgent husband and two exceptional felines, where I pursues an alternative career that is completely unrelated to my creative writing.For more information about me and my writing, visit my website (http://www.lisabetsarai.com) or my blog Beyond Romance (http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com). Join my VIP email list here: https://btn.ymlp.com/xgjjhmhugmgh I also hang out at Goodreads, (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/83387.Lisabet_Sarai) because I love the idea of a social network focusing on the love of reading. I’m not on Facebook, because I don’t trust it.

Book preview

Playing to Score

Lisabet Sarai

© Copyright 2021 Lisabet Sarai

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental. All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.

This book is intended for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

Scrabble: Hasbro Company

DoubleTree Hotel: Hilton Hotels Corporation

Walmart: Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Abercrombie & Fitch: Abercrombie & Fitch Co.

Starbucks Coffee Starbucks Corporation.

Lysol Reckitt Benckiser Group, Plc.

Maserati: Maserati S.p.A

Velcro: Velcro USA, Inc.

Corvette: General Motors, LLC

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

About the Author

Blurb: The H-Gene

X-Rated Excerpt from The H-Gene

A Final Message from Lisabet

To GCS,

who taught me that even Scrabble can be foreplay

Chapter One

Fresh meat. Jason Hofstadter grinned as he took a deep breath of the sweat- and testosterone-scented air. Men of all shapes and ages milled around the carpeted receiving area outside the ballroom, waiting for the registration desk to open. There were grizzled codgers in denim overalls and wire-rimmed glasses; toned young executives, dressed down but instantly recognizable by their leather-covered attachés; middle-aged dads with baseball caps and hairy chests; and dozens of succulent college boys, nervous and eager, in rock-band t-shirts and shorts that showed off their tanned thighs and calves. A few women wandered through the crowd as well, but as usual the participants in the annual Four States Scrabble Championship were overwhelmingly male.

That suited Jason just fine. He’d been competing since he was a senior at U Nebraska, and had placed in every tournament except his first. And every single year, even that first time, he’d managed to hook up with one of the other contestants for a bit of extra-competition stress relief.

He remembered the first guy, a thirty-something lawyer from Kansas City. Mike. Jason never did get the last name, even after two days of sucking the guy dry and wallowing in his cum. But he could still summon Mike’s smell, high-end cologne mixed with perspiration and butt funk. Mike had coffee-colored curls scattered over his muscled chest, a short, fat cock that felt like heaven stretching Jason’s hole, and pale buttocks that held the livid imprints of gripping fingers long after Jason had emptied himself into the other man’s ass. Jason never saw him again, but he silently thanked Mike for establishing a tradition. Now Jason came to the Four States Annual for two reasons—to play Scrabble and to get laid.

The hotel air conditioning was no match for August in Omaha, especially with this many people crammed into the low-ceilinged space. The armpits of his Abercrombie & Fitch polo were soaked. A guy his father’s age mopped his bald pate with a bandanna. A teenaged hunk unbuttoned his shirt almost to the navel and fanned himself with his registration form. Yum. Jason didn’t really mind the heat. It helped diffuse the pheromones.

He scanned the crowd, looking for a likely prospect. Obviously he had to be careful in choosing a man to approach. Propositioning a homophobic straight guy could get Jason thrown out of the tournament. His intuition usually served him well, though. What did they call it back east? Gaydar?

Some of the college kids had great bodies, but really, they were too young. Anyway, they clumped together in anxious herds, laughing and pounding each other on the back. He’d never get one of them alone.

He liked mature men, but this year there seemed to be more than the usual quota of beer bellies and receding hairlines. Then he noticed a handsome, athletic blond guy who was also wearing A&F, loitering by the coffee stand. Jason was just about to head in that direction when a curvaceous redhead in heavy make-up ran up to embrace his putative target.

Damn! Jason turned his back on couple, annoyed by his mistake. This was the best time to make the hook-up, before the pressure of the matches made all of them