Page 21 of Sherwood
And with that look, we agreed.
She didn’t need to know any more than she already did at the moment. At least not yet.
“Very well,” Rafe said tightly. “I shall leave. But I’ll be checking in with you tomorrow, Marian. And as for you, Lox,” he said, buttoning his suit jacket and walking toward the door, “I’ll be seeing you soon.”
His meaning was clear. The chess game wasn’t over; he was only hitting the button on his side of the clock. He’d be back.
I wouldn’t have expected any less.
Once he left, I turned to face Marian, who was smoothing her hair over her shoulder in preparation for rebraiding it. For a heady moment, I remembered the way she’d been wearing it the afternoon I’d left for deployment, in a ponytail tied with a ribbon which had matched her pretty yellow dress. I’d grabbed hold of that ponytail while I fucked her mouth, and when I’d left, I’d still had that ribbon tangled in my fingers.
It was currently tied around the wooden rail at the head of my bed.
“Well?” Marian asked, deftly separating her hair into three strands.
I walked over and took the strands from her. With a small hitch in her breath, she dropped her hands and allowed me.
“I want to keep you safe from Rafe de Lacy,” I said as I began weaving her hair into a braid. I went slowly, enjoying the cool weight of her hair in my hands. “I want to keep you far, far away from him.”
“But you know you can’t,” Marian said, correctly guessing what I was going to say next.
“But I know I can’t. So I’m asking you. Marian, please stay away from him.”
“You know, it’s funny,” Marian said, in a voice that told me she didn’t think it was funny at all, “that all I wanted for literal years was for you to come back and take charge of me. For you to make me yours—no, for you to realize that I was already yours and all you had to do was claim me.”
“Little fox—”
“But now here you are,” she went on, “late. Here you are after I finally swallowed your rejection, after I finally realized you were never coming back, that you never wanted me to be yours in the first place.”
She was so wrong. She couldn’t be wronger than she was at this very moment.
“I’ve always wanted you,” I said fiercely. “Don’t you remember the fox game? In the woods?”
Her chin lifted. “Yes,” she said. “I remember.”
The whole horde of us as children in Sherwood, running wild in the woods together. We’d been animals, all of us, but only Marian and I had been foxes. I was the king fox and she was my queen fox, and Sherwood was our kingdom, the forest was our castle. And even though we eventually outgrew the fox game, I’d never outgrown my queen fox, my consort.
“I knew even then that you were mine. That afternoon, the day I left—I would have it be like that every day if I could.” I finished braiding her hair, finding the ponytail holder on the low table near the bed and securing the end of her braid. I wanted to wrap that braid around my hand so badly that I was trembling as I let go of it. “Even now, all I want is to be your king fox again.”
“Then why, Lox? Why abandon me, ignore me? Why only come back now?”
I leaned my forehead against hers, letting out a long breath. “I already told you. I’m not safe.”
“Good. I don’t like safe people anyway.”
I had to laugh. The only two people Marian Fitzwalter had ever knelt for were some of the most unsafe people in the world. She knew her own preferences, I’d give her that.
“I don’t forgive you for the last five years,” she said softly.
“Good. You shouldn’t.” I didn’t forgive myself for them.
“And I’m guessing you have some bullshit reason about why you can’t be with me now?”
“Yes,” I said, and then I kissed her.
Her mouth was just as soft as I’d remembered, all give and all silk, like the mouth of someone in a dream. Heat licked down into my cunt, reminding me of how it felt to have her kiss on my body, how it felt to have her kneeling in front of me with her ready for my use.
How had I gone five years without feeling her mouth against mine? How had I gone all those years before it?
