Merely Players Read Online Free Page A

the foreplay they both knew she enjoyed. Then passion took over and he rejoiced in the sudden urgency of her movements, of her nails digging into his shoulders as he brought her to a climax and she urged him on with the familiar blunt commands.
    Then they relaxed, unclasping their limbs as unhurriedly as they had begun, and lay on their backs with hands entwined as a prelude to sleep. It was good to have the experience, to know what would excite a woman and give her sexual pleasure. That was his last, consoling thought before he turned on to his side and lost consciousness in the big warm bed.
    Actors are more self-centred than ordinary men. It did not occur to Adam Cassidy that the pleasure they had just enjoyed might also owe something to Jane Webster’s experience in other places.

THREE
    E ight hours later and twenty miles south of Adam and Jane Cassidy, in a house which would have fitted comfortably into the four-car garage at Broad Oaks, a very different couple were preparing themselves for the challenge of a new day.
    Detective Chief Inspector ‘Percy’ Peach surveyed his breakfast table and Mrs Peach with a satisfaction that his enemies might have called smug. He wasn’t short of enemies among the criminal fraternity of North Lancashire, and he even counted one or two among the police service on the other side of the great divide. He set his hands on the shoulders of his wife’s dressing gown and said with conviction, ‘I’ve decided I like being married.’
    â€˜I’m not sure I do,’ said Lucy Peach ‘Not at work, anyway. I’m getting tired of all the stale jokes about having sex on tap.’
    â€˜But you know how to turn the tap on full flow,’ he said with a smile, allowing his right hand to run for a moment through her luxuriant chestnut hair.
    â€˜Speaking of taps, it was bloody cold in that bathroom of yours this morning!’
    â€˜Language, our Lucy!’
    â€˜Our Lucy’s language will get a lot worse, if you don’t do something about the heating in there before the winter sets in.’
    â€˜You were warm enough last night,’ said Percy dreamily. ‘If I could have plugged in to that, I could have heated the house for a week.’
    â€˜If you’re going to comment on my bedroom performance every morning, I shall become inhibited. You’ll be giving marks out of ten next.’
    â€˜Nine point five for technique, ten for artistic impression,’ said Percy promptly. He looked sadly at the bowl of muesli in front of his new wife, then slid a slice of white bread provocatively on to the pan in which his bacon and egg was frying.
    Lucy tried to convey the correct distaste when he banged the cholesterol-laden plate down opposite her two minutes later, but feared that she had managed only envy. ‘This is how sausages should be, nearly black all round but not burnt,’ said Percy. The sausage disappeared down the chief inspectorial throat with a rapidity that was matched only by the consumer’s relish. ‘Nothing wrong with a bit of cereal, lass, but you need a fry-up to follow before you meet the rigours of the day.’ He dipped a piece of his fried bread in the yoke of his egg and downed it with a predictable sigh of satisfaction.
    â€˜If I breakfasted like that, my bottom would look big even in a kaftan,’ Lucy informed him.
    â€˜Tha’s got a gradely backside, lass. If tha’d been a cricketer, tha’d have needed a gradely backside. One of the requisites for a fast bowler, John Arlott always said.’
    â€˜And who was John Arlott?’ said his wife innocently. She was ten years younger than Peach’s thirty-nine, and she liked to remind him of that occasionally.
    â€˜Wash thi mouth out this instant, lass!’ Percy shook his head sadly. ‘If tha doesn’t behave thisen, I shall have to tell thi mother that tha didn’t know who John Arlott was. And then tha’ll