Page 1 of Sherwood
Prologue
MARIAN
FIVE YEARS EARLIER
“Don’t go,”I said to the soldier in front of me.
She stepped inside the house, leaving her bag of olive drab canvas propped against the doorframe.
“I came to say goodbye to your parents,” she said.
But it must have been a lie; the way her eyes burned along my body, from my ballet flats to the ribbon holding back my hair, told me it was a lie. Robin Loxley’s mother was close with mine, yes, but I knew that she’d already seen them yesterday. I knew that she must have already marked how quiet the house was right now. How empty.
“They’re not here,” I said, instinctively taking a step backward. Not to create space between us, but to invite her inside.
Robin—Lox to everyone who wasn’t her grandparents—stepped forward. Brown combat boots, camo-covered body. Her red hair was pulled into a neat ponytail at the nape of her neck, and the collar of her uniform emphasized the line of her jaw and the length of her neck. Her lips were their natural pale mauve today, not painted in the shades of crimson and currant she typically favored.
Her eyelashes were as red as her hair.
“I suppose I’ll just have to say goodbye to you alone, then,” she murmured, taking another step closer. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
“No,” I whispered. “Just packing for college.” She was close enough now that I could smell her—cedar and fog and moss—and I wondered if she knew, if she could possibly know how much I loved her. Had always loved her. From our childhood summers in the forest until the day she left for MIT, she had been the rolling, rushing, frothing hope of my heart, a tide that had started as a little girl smitten with her playmate and had churned itself into a powerful, hungry current.
And now here she was, about to leave, about to be deployed, her green eyes like the forest itself come to life, and she was so close now, closer to me than she’d been in years.
“You’re flushing,” she murmured. “Are you feeling well?”
“I am.”
She pressed a hand to my cheek. The shock of her skin on mine was enough to make me inhale. “It’s a very pretty flush, Marian.”
What else could I whisper but, “Thank you”?
“I like the way you thank me,” she replied. Her hand slid to my jaw, and then to my neck. I could feel her fingers toying with the ribbon which held my hair in a loose ponytail. It felt almost like she was holdingmebymy hair, like she could pull on it at any moment to make me do what she wanted—and it felt so powerfully, wonderfully right.
Heat burned up my thighs and tugged low in my stomach. I knew, without even checking, that if she looked down, she’d be able to see my nipples beading through my dress.
Kiss me, I wanted to plead.Kiss me hard. Kiss me like you’re going to war.
She was close enough now that I could observe the precise slopes of her mouth, of the peaks of her Cupid’s bow, the concavity of her philtrum. Sunlight caught on her eyelashes, glimmers of gold among the red.
It couldn’t be, could it? After years of loving her, wanting her, years of wondering if she even remembered me? Could she really be this close? Touching me?
Staring at me with dark eyes and parted lips?
Kiss me, and don’t ask when you do it. Kiss me and take me, kiss me and make me.
I didn’t understand what it was that I wanted exactly, why my entire body keened for something more than the sweetness you were supposed to want from a crush, but perhaps it was that I knew that any sweetness wouldn’t really beher, it would only be a facade. A filtered act. And the thought of anything between us, facades or filters, was anathema to me.
Or maybe I knew even then that sweetness wasn’t enough forme. How could it be, when it felt so half done, so anemic and feeble? I wanted to wear the memories of a kiss on my skin, I wanted someone’s hunger to break on me like a wave on the shore.
But I didn’t know how to say any of that back then, and I didn’t even know what to hint at—what to intimate and suggest with my expression or with my body language.
All I could do was reach for Lox’s hand and wrap it around my ponytail myself.
Her hand tightened without me having to do anything more, and she searched my face, which was now held captive for her examination.
“Think carefully about this,” she said slowly.
