Page 22 of Sherwood
I lifted my hands to her face and used my thumbs to part her lips so I could slide my tongue against hers. She let me, opened for me. Let me take what I wanted.
Heaven.
She tasted like mint and faintly of expensive gloss, and she panted against my lips as I fucked her with my tongue.
“Don’t see him anymore,” I murmured between kisses. “Promise me you won’t.”
“No,” she said.
I broke the kiss. She was still breathing hard, and through that sheer nothing of a dress and the thin silk of her bra, I could see the outline of her erect nipples.
“Little fox,” I murmured. “What will it take?”
She stepped back, her blue eyes almost purple in the red light of the club. “I want to say that it would take you staying with me—or taking me with you wherever it is you go. Taking me no matter how dangerous you think you are, no matter how much you think I’d be better off without you. But I don’t think that’s enough anymore.” She let out a short, unhappy laugh. “And it’s not like you would do it, even if it could be enough.”
I wanted to argue with her, but I couldn’t. She was right.
I couldn’t stay with her, not in the real world where I was wanted for treason, and I wouldn’t rip her away from her life and her work to join me as a modern-day outlaw. She deserved better than the trouble either of those options would bring.
“So I guess the answer is that there’s nothing you can say to convince me not to see Rafe,” she said. She moved over to the door and began putting on her shoes. “At least he’s willing to take what I want to give.”
“He wants to take so much more than that,” I said, torn between telling her the entire truth and keeping her as separate as possible from the mess I’d made. “You can’t trust him, Marian. I mean that.”
Marian stood and put her hand on the door handle. She looked back at me. “But why should I trust you instead?” she asked. And she didn’t wait for an answer.
She left.
ChapterSix
RAFE
ONE WEEK LATER
A far bluesky stretched overhead, echoed by the expanse of ocean below. Gulls and cormorants wheeled through the air, and the water rolled endlessly forward, foaming and sizzling as it died away on the khaki-colored sand of the beach.
Marian sat on a blanket on the sand, her feet bare and her hair ruffling in the summer breeze. The beach was small, narrow, girded by rocky cliffs on either side and sheltered by tree-capped sea stacks, and even the trees on actual, proper land still felt like sentinels around us. It felt more defensible than actual outposts I’d built and manned. It felt like a castle made of sea and sky.
“Thank you for meeting me,” I said as I reached her.
Marian looked up from where she sat on the blanket, a small smile creasing those full lips. “Is that your idea of a beach outfit?”
I looked down at my suit trousers and brogues. “I came from a meeting,” I said as I sat down next to her. That much was true.
“Here in Sherwood?” she asked curiously.
“In Olympia,” I replied, also honestly, as I pulled off my brogues and dress socks, and then rolled up the cuffs of my suit pants. “Better?”
The smile was much bigger now. “That’s not good for your suit, you know.”
“Clothes were made to be worn, Marian. And I see why you suggested we meet here. It’s lovely.”
“It is,” Marian said. She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her head on them. Her eyes settled on the birds, on the sea stacks beyond. “I like coming here after I’ve been in the city. It reminds me of who I am. Really am, I mean.”
A specific kind of satisfaction rolled through me as she spoke, as it became clear that she was beginning to trust me with her feelings. I would wonder if it was the satisfaction of the dominant or the spy, but I gave up trying to splice my various selves apart long ago. What made me good at one made me good at the other, and I wasn’t bothered by that.
What I was bothered by was that I found this new trust of hers unhealthily…deliciously…tempting. I didn’t want to leverage it so much as I wanted to eat it. I wanted her to trust me with everything—her thoughts, her flesh, herbreath—and I wanted everything to start right now, here on the cool, damp sand of the beach.
Or perhaps I’d wanted it to start before, from the moment I’d felt her come around my fingers, from the moment I witnessed her adorable indignation as I betrayed her with the silicone paddle.
