Bigger Than Beckham (28 page)

When her head fell back, Tony pressed his
mouth to her throat. “You drive me mad, Martha,” he murmured
against her shivering skin.

“I know the feeling,” she gasped. Lord, if he
didn’t lay her back and take her soon, her legs were going to
collapse.

One of his big hands curled around the back
of her neck and he gently nudged her head up. She gazed into his
eyes and her heart lurched, undone by the heat and emotion in his
gaze. He looked ravenous—all hungry, primitive male, hell-bent on
possessing her.

“Look down, babe,” he murmured in a husky
voice. “Look at how beautiful you are.”

Her womb clenched with need. Her whole body
clenched with need, unable to deny him whatever he wanted…whatever
he asked of her. She looked down and saw what he saw—their hands on
each other, seeking and giving pleasure, skin to skin, sliding over
burning flesh. It was so freaking erotic she almost came on the
spot.

She lowered her head, wanting him in her
mouth. But his powerful hands stayed her. “Not this time, love,” he
murmured. “I wouldn’t last two seconds.” He grabbed a condom from
the bedside table and quickly sheathed himself.

Then, with that startling strength of his, he
lifted her and flipped her around. She landed on her knees and
elbows, her ass tilted provocatively in the air. Before she could
even catch her breath, he parted her thighs and slid in with a
deep, powerful thrust.

Martha cried out and arched her back, pushing
up to her hands. Tony leaned in, surrounding her with his hard
body, pumping with smooth, controlled lunges that rolled waves of
desire through her. Her breath came in fractured sobs as she pushed
her hips back, deepening the contact. She couldn’t see him, but she
felt him everywhere, protecting her, pleasuring her, making her his
own.

Lord have mercy.
She was in
so
much trouble with this man, and right now she no longer gave a
damn.

And then Tony was pressing her down into the
bed, one arm wrapping around her chest as the other held onto her
hip. She turned her head sideways, the satiny pillow cool under her
heated cheek. Tony’s lips moved along the line of her jaw,
whispering soft kisses even as he surged inside her.

“Fuck,” he murmured in a husky voice. “I
can’t get enough of you.” She felt tension vibrating through his
big frame.

And then he gave her a hard nudge, tilting
her hips up just that little extra bit, and she flew apart on a
choking sob. Luxurious contractions rippled out from her womb,
flooding her with sensation. A moment later he followed, arching
over her with shuddering power.

Breathless, they fell together onto the
disheveled bed. As Martha struggled to catch her breath, Tony’s
arms wrapped tight around her, holding her close, keeping her
safe.

From everyone and everything but him.

Martha instantly adored the cozy intimacy of
Blackhampton’s classic Fenton Park, a hoary but renovated stadium
that had been built exclusively for soccer nearly eighty years ago.
In every way it was so unlike the cavernous, multi-use home park
her Thunder had to play in. Though Fenton had a capacity of about
forty thousand, every fan appeared to have a decent view of the
pitch from one of the three grandstands or the open north end
bleachers. Not a nose-bleed seat in the place.

She and Tony—alone as he’d promised—gazed
down from his suite at the top of the west grandstand and sipped
bottles of Smithwick’s, his arm firmly around her waist. For
perhaps the first time since she left Philadelphia those long
months ago, she felt something close to contentment.

The grinding mental pain of her predicament
with the Thunder had been temporarily anaesthetized by her
excitement over the potential of the Colton Butler article and, of
course, by Tony’s relentless, thrilling seduction. It had certainly
been a willing enough seduction on her part, but Martha still
placed a good share of the blame squarely on Tony’s broad
shoulders. After all, it had been his brilliant idea to coax her
onto a plane and transport her to a place where it seemed easy
enough to forget about her troubles back home. Less than
twenty-four hours into her working holiday, her body hummed with
excitement in knowing that she had another couple of glorious,
seduction-filled days before she had to again face cold reality
back in Jacksonville.

Tony Branch was getting oh-so-easy to get
used to.

“You’re a little quiet,” she said, gently
nudging her hip against his side. “Did I wear you out last night?
If so, I can’t say I noticed. Your exertions were admirable.”

He chuckled but didn’t take his eyes off the
pitch. “Worn out? That was just the warm-up before the match gets
underway. The best is yet to come, love.”

Love.

Again, the word jarred her. Brits used the
word easily, of course—sort of an all-purpose term of endearment.
Still, every time Tony called her that, it made her knees go just a
wee bit weak. And if what was yet to come turned out to be better
than the fireworks that had exploded between them yesterday, then
Martha began to think that perhaps her bad luck had started to turn
around.

“The fans are so unbelievably into it here,”
she said, admiring the way the sold-out crowd sang and chanted at a
volume that set her ears ringing. “It reminds me a little of
Georgia football on a Saturday afternoon down in Athens.” She took
a quick swig from her beer bottle, emptying it. “This is soccer for
real. You barely even know it’s the same game as back home.”

Tony tugged her even closer. “On the field,
it’s the same game all over the world. They call it the
beautiful game
for good reason.”

Martha let out a derisive little snort as she
thought about the number of times she’d seen her players butcher
good scoring opportunities, or allow opposing players to run right
by them and score easy goals. Often enough that she’d more than
once called them the
Jacksonville Blunder
in her mind—like
that awful time Derek Kavanagh managed to deflect a shot into his
own net, scoring a dreaded “own goal.” When he’d sounded blithe
about it in an interview afterward, it had set a new low in her
mind.

“It didn’t look so beautiful the other night
when we were watching my team, did it?” she said. “Not the way most
of my guys have been playing the game.”

Tony gave her a devilish smile. “In all
honesty, I can’t say I was completely focused on what was happening
down on the pitch.”

“Good point, and a damn good thing, too,” she
retorted as she gave him a little poke with her elbow. He
had
been very attentive to her that night in her suite. “I
can assure you that the in-suite entertainment was much better than
anything on the field.”

“Watch this, now,” Tony said, pointing to
where one of the Lions had started a brilliant run down the left
side of the pitch. “That’s Kevin Keenan turning on the jets.”

Like everyone who followed soccer, Martha
knew Keenan was one of the most talented players in England. She
watched almost in awe as the lightning-quick midfielder blazed down
the sideline, outdistancing the defender who was desperately trying
to mark him. As Keenan motored toward the corner, another defender
came across to intercept. But Keenan stopped on a dime, spun around
and let loose a bending kick that flew around and over both
defenders. Breaking free from a pack, another Blackhampton
player—Martha recognized him as the Ivory Coast national Emmanuel
Diarra—timed his leap perfectly and headed the ball past the
goalkeeper’s diving hands.

“Yes!” Martha turned to give Tony a
high-five. Keenan’s centering ball and Diarra’s header had been
things of beauty—masterpieces of skill and timing.

The celebration in the stadium was so loud,
so boisterously manic that Martha wondered what would happen if the
Lions ever won the Premier League championship. She had a hunch
there might not be much of the stadium left standing.

“This is exactly what my father hoped to live
to see with the Thunder,” she found herself saying. “He wanted to
watch his guys play like that, and to feel what you’re feeling now,
Tony. To experience the joy of having a great team playing in front
of fans that care so deeply, like the folks down there in your
stands obviously do.” Her voice started to catch. “But he never got
that chance.”

Tony wrapped her in a comforting hug. “I’m
sorry, Martha. I wish it had been different.”

She swallowed her impending tears and patted
his back gratefully. “Look at me,” she drawled, “gettin’ all
maudlin like that in the bat of an eyelash.” She picked up her
empty beer bottle and waggled it at him. “Y’all got more of this
good stuff in the fridge?”

“You don’t fool me, tough girl,” Tony
murmured, giving her a quick kiss on the tip of her nose. Then he
patted her on the butt and headed for the suite’s wet bar.

Martha wrestled her wayward emotions under
control by giving herself the pleasure of watching Tony bend over
to retrieve the beer from the lower part of the fridge. He’d worn a
brown corduroy sports jacket over an open-necked white shirt and
tight jeans, but had ditched the jacket as soon as they reached the
suite. She couldn’t help sighing with satisfaction at the sight of
his great ass and lean hips. She’d had her legs wrapped around
those hips just a few hours ago.

“I would have liked to have known your
father,” he said when he came back and handed over another
Smithwick’s. “I admire what he was trying to do—bringing football
to a place where the soil hasn’t exactly been fertile. It takes a
lot of commitment and courage to stick with something like
that.”

While Martha appreciated the brief paean to
her dad, the irony wasn’t lost on her. Here
she
was, acting
with “commitment and courage” to save her father’s team—at least
she thought so—while Tony had been doing his best to yank it out
from under her. Still, his clear gaze showed that he meant the
compliment sincerely.

She told herself to ignore her little flash
of resentment. “A lot of people accused Daddy of tilting at
windmills,” she said. “Even our family and friends.”

Tony leaned back against the wooden counter
running underneath the suite’s wide windows. “I’ve got a few of
those types in my back yard, too. I’m sorry I don’t know a lot
about your father, Martha, but I’ve always wondered why he was so
committed to football.”

Martha stared down at her sandals, absently
inspecting her bright pink toenails.

“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” Tony said
after she didn’t answer right away. “You don’t have to talk about
it if you don’t want to.”

She cast him a quick smile. She wasn’t upset,
just thinking. Wondering what her father would say if he could see
her right now.

“He grew up in England,” she finally said,
fixing her eyes on the luxurious green of the pitch below. “In
Oldham, which is near Manchester.”

Tony chuckled. “I know exactly where Oldham
is, Martha. They’ve got a League One team—the Latics.”

“Latics?” Martha leveled a mock scowl at him.
“Well, that’s a plenty weird name for a team, if you ask me. But,
sorry, I digress. Anyway, to my father, the sun and the stars
revolved around Manchester United. Red Devils forever was his
credo. He worshiped those sixties players—guys like George Best,
Denis Law, Bobby Charlton. I still remember the names all these
years later. Hell, our family might have been the only one in
southern Georgia that had even
heard
of Manchester United.
But that team was just as much Daddy’s church as First Baptist in
Marvel. He always had himself a big ol’ honkin’ satellite dish so
he could pull down the matches from England and watch them while
the rest of us were sleeping in late on Saturday mornings.”

Leaning an elbow on the counter, Tony smiled
at her. “I can’t say I share his colors, but I admire his
commitment to United. Your dad made his money in the paper
business, didn’t he?”

“Oh, yeah. One thing Georgia’s got is trees,
and Daddy figured that out right quick after he headed to the
States to marry my mother. He’d met her at university in London.
Mama came from Georgia planters going back to the revolution—not
rich folk, but they did pretty well whenever the damn drought
stayed away. Daddy got a little start-up money from Granddad, and
bought himself a mill and a few thousand acres of forest south of
our hometown.”

“And I gather he made a smashing success of
it.”

Martha fidgeted with her beer bottle, peeling
away corners of the damp label. She was always uncomfortable with
the subject of Winston Papers and all it had meant to her father.
“We weren’t exactly Georgia-Pacific, that’s for sure. But the
company gave Daddy enough to realize his dream and eventually buy
the soccer franchise.”