“Only to win the game.”
She smiled. “So, itislike insults.”
He laughed. “Yes, but the ones made down there will be a matter of pride. You’ll still see tempers fly on the field. Mark my words.”
“The players get violent?”
Percy eyed her, certain he should have been concerned by how she sounded more intrigued than disturbed. “Blood runs hot in the heat of the game,” he confirmed. “By fouls overlooked, mostly. A player besides the goalie touching the ball, players tripping their opponents, illegal use of equipment in the shoes or under the shirts.” He shrugged. “Sometimes a player will throw a punch in frustration and the whole field will turn into a bare-fisted pugilism match.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That’s ridiculous. The players should conduct themselves with honor and play fairly.”
He’d known from the start a strange thread of justice drove Danny. There was no other reason a clever woman would follow a suspicious man into a dark courtyard or have the balls to train a gun at him at point-blank range.
What it must have been like to see the world through black-and-white lenses. Percy wondered—grimly—which side he’d take if she turned her gaze his way.
“Fair is faux,” he said. “Expecting life to adhere that way is a bit naive, don’t you think?”
“Of course it is,” Danny said, ever self-aware. She gazed at the field. “But wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could know, at a glance, if someone or something was good or bad?”
There was something in her tone, or maybe it was the uncharacteristic caving set to her shoulders, which had Percy believing Danny’s mind was far from the players on the field.
“Is that what you really wish?” he asked carefully. “That right and wrong couldn’t fall into shades of varying grey?”
“I do.”
The way her gaze latched on to his, as if needing an anchor to hold, Percy had but one wish at the moment: To take her against the glass and wipe the look of defeat from her face and replace it with open-mouthed moans of ecstasy.
But the doors had opened, and the flood of bystanders poured inside, eager to find their seats.
Not so eagerly, Percy stood back as groups of tailored misters and polished misses strolled past, every one of them staring openly. After the tenth couple passed, their gazes not even touching the field, Percy cursed under his breath.
Had a caricaturist rendered his likeness to every blasted rag house in London?
Grumbling something unintelligible to Danny, Percy slumped back in the chair by the divider, the only seat that wouldn’t be obvious to anyone passing on either side and would be impossible to see from the terraces directly across on the other side of the green. He hoped this infernal place didn’t offer the looking glasses one would find at the theatre, or he’d be forced to sit here the entire match. And where was the grub? He hadn’t eaten anything in over an hour and was properly famished.
Danny’s amused chuckle sent desire straight to his groin. The laughter brightened her cheeks and drew attention to her lovely breasts as she pressed a hand to her stomach.
Leaning back, Percy crossed his ankles and decided anything going on around and below the field—or in his stomach—was nothing compared to watching the light from the glass above cast Danny in a halo of golden light. His hand went to his pulsing cock and imagined those lovely breasts where his fingers squeezed him at the base. While everyone else foolishly watched the men below tackle and wrestle in the dirt, he’d focus on a livelier and more worthwhile player, the one who made him at once wish to spectate and compete.
Danny’s breathless laugh faded as she noted his silent stare.
Her gaze dropped to where he stroked himself through his trousers and the fingers splayed across her stomach skimmed upwards as if to draw away a sudden tightening in her bodice.Breaths turning labored, she bit her lip, her other hand coming to clench the skirts between her legs.
Percy groaned, his willpower threadbare. Friends. They were supposed to be friends. If he truly wished to be on equal and respectable terms with her, this growing obsession with her and those luscious breasts must desist at once.
“Percy.”
Percy closed his eyes. His name on those sweet lips; it was torture.
Even here, where the normal privacy of walls and floors were illusions of translucent glass, where her sister could happen upon them any moment, she responded, undeterred by their public surroundings, not caring about their positions. It would take nothing to send her over the edge. A few licks over her skin, a well-placed finger against her folds and she’d come.
Fuck it. He could respect her just as well with her coming on his cock.
Eyes snapping open, his gaze locked on hers. “Come here.”
She came without hesitation, at once displaying a hunger for scandalous danger and unquestioning trust that left Percy swelling with a need to prove both her desires right.
When she stood before him, her eyes were heavy lidded and glazed with lust, looking down at him as if he were the culmination of everything she’d ever wanted.
