Page 10 of Sherwood
“I didn’t say he wasn’t going to harm you,” I cut in. “I said he wasn’t going to violate the space of a scene. Those are two different things. And,” I added, running my thumb over the marks on her wrist, “I still can’t promise that he wouldn’t use kink to further his own ends, even if he’s still technically within the bounds of what’s safe.”
Marian didn’t pull herself free, but she did give me an impatient look. “If he’s not going to hurt me during play, then this concern is pointless, because he and I won’t be together otherwise. He’s not proposing marriage; he’s not trying to…I don’t know, invest in my company or wedge himself into my daily life or something. And as for furthering his own ends, what exactlyarethose ends, Lox? Do they have anything to do with how you know him?”
Yes,was what I should have said.He’s looking for me. He’ll use you to find me.
I found myself hesitating to say it, though. Hesitating when I never hesitated, when I did everything quickly, intuitively, without worrying about what would come next. But this wasMarian; this was my little fox. If I fucked up with myself, if I fucked up with Will and Jovanna and the others who’d elected to join me, then at least we’d chosen this chaotic path with our eyes wide open. But Marian Fitzwalter had nothing to do with our missions and our treasons. She had nothing to do with the NSA or the Castle of the North Wind.
It should stay that way.
“Rafe and I were together,” was what I finally landed on. It was the truth, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. “A while back. It didn’t end well.”
Lying like this went against all the principles I had about what people deserved to know about their own lives, their own decisions. But ironically enough, the closer someone was to me, the less I gave a shit about what I believed.
Maybe Rafe had been right about me all along. Maybe I was something worse than a thief: a faithless liar.
Marian’s pretty mouth flattened into an unimpressed line. “So that’s it then. You’ve come to warn me off your ex-lover.”
I knew how it sounded. I knew how it must seem. But while I could pull up stakes and vanish at a moment’s notice, Marian could not. She was tied to Sherwood and to her family’s company, and that would make her easy to find and easy to interrogate.
Maybe even easy to arrest.
And I had to assume that Rafe would use every trick he knew to flush me out of hiding.
“Please,” I said. “Please just stay away from him. He’s up to no good, Marian, I know it.”
“You think an awful lot of yourself if you think that he’d play with me just to hurt you.”
Not just to hurt me, little fox. He’s playing with you because I’m wanted for treason, and it’s his job to bring me in.
“You already know I think a lot of myself,” I said instead, and I did have to smile at the face she made. “But I’m still right.”
Marian looked down to where I held her wrist. The tips of my fingers rested along the delicate tendons there, just above the blue threads of her veins. If someone walked in and saw us like this, it might look like I was holding her in place. It might look l
ike I was showing her that I didn’t need padded cuffs or bondage rope to have command over her.
She looked back up to me, blue eyes soft in the lamplight, and I knew she was thinking the same thing.
“Did he bite you anywhere else?” I murmured, suddenly wanting to know. Wanting to see. “Did he untie that little dress and then bite all the pretty skin he found there?”
Her throat moved in a small swallow. “No,” she murmured. “He said we had to discuss limits before we played. We only—we only did one small thing.”
She was flushing again, and I burned to know, the jealousy like fire in my veins.
“What did you do?” I asked, knowing I had no right to ask and doing it anyway.
And strangely enough, Marian didn’t seem to care either. Her skin was pebbled with goosebumps, her pulse thrumming in her throat. Her eyes when they met mine looked drugged.
I wondered if she’d let me pull her even closer. Close enough for me to run my nose along her cheek, over the hollow of her temple.
“I kissed his shoe,” she said, a little unsteadily. “Only that.”
“Only that?” That was enough, as far as I was concerned. On par with canes and climaxes. Practically a collar. “Did you like it?”
Her cheeks were stained a deep red now, along with her chest. I wanted to lick those stains. I wanted to know if they felt as warm as they looked.
“Yes,” she admitted in a whisper.
Our faces had come close without my meaning for them to, close enough that I could feel her breath on my lips. I was only a few inches taller than her, but it was enough of a difference that I would need to angle my head just right if I wanted to kiss her…
