Page 26 of Sherwood
“Maybe Lox knows more about difficult compromises than we give her credit for.”
Marian opened her eyes. “And you? Are you still in love with her?”
I didn’t want to answer that question. I didn’t want to answer it at all.
But I did.
“Yes,” I said, the word scraping its way like gravel up my throat. I was surprised I didn’t taste blood after I spoke it. “Yes, I’m still in love with her.”
Seeing Lox at the club last week had been like a punch to the chest followed by a fist around my cock. I hadn’t needed to see her bright eyes or hear her husky voice to know that I still loved her, but her appearance at the club made the truth impossible to ignore.
In love with my mark and obsessed with my asset. Not good.
“Then I’m sorry,” Marian said, sounding sincere, and I sighed.
“Me too.”
“We’re really fucked up, aren’t we?”
I looked down at her and traced the edge of her jaw with a finger. “In my life, most things are fucked up. That doesn’t mean they’re not good.”
She turned her head enough to nip at my fingertip. Pleasure seared up the nerves of my arm.
Yes, this was getting more and more dangerous by the moment.
“Rafe,” she said, kissing my finger before turning back to me. “Will you keep doing this? Telling me the truth too?”
“Yes, sweet one,” I said. “I’ll tell you the truth always.”
It was a lie. And as long as I had this job, it would always be a lie. Maybe that was one of the reasons I’d fallen so swiftly in love with Lox. With a mission partner, there didn’t have to be secrets, lies, half-truths.
How briefly wonderful that had been.
“Final question,” Marian asked. “Can we play again soon?”
My cock jumped against her, both from the promise of having her again and from the cold little victory I’d just achieved.
“Yes, darling. I even had an idea about that today. What would you say to making one of the things on your wish list come true?”
ChapterSeven
MARIAN
When my doorbellrang three days later, I already had my hand on the handle of the door, pulling it open as the chime of the doorbell still echoed through my house. It opened to reveal Rafe de Lacy in yet another suit that seemed far too nice for an EPA employee to own. He had a hand in his pocket; his other dangled at his side, his thumb rubbing idly against his palm.
His hair was styled back away from his face, but a stray tendril had fallen over his forehead, and I wondered if he’d let me feel it between his fingers. If I could earn it, the access to that simple gesture, and I didn’t know why the idea ofearningsomething regular lovers took for granted seemed so exciting and delicious to me, but it did, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
As natural as breathing. As natural as kneeling.
“You have to kneel to the king fox,” Lox had told me when we were children playing in the forest. “Everyone kneels to the king fox.”
“Even the queen fox?”
Lox had smiled at me then, the half-feral smile she’d never lost, even as an adult. “Especially the queen fox.”
“Hi,” I said to Rafe a little breathlessly. I hoped it wasn’tincredibly obviousthat I’d been hanging by the door waiting for him, like a schoolgirl waiting for her crush to arrive. Judging from the barely-there twitch of his lips, I could guess that it was more obvious than I’d like.
He stepped into my house—only giving theArchitectural Digest-featured surroundings a quick, cursory glance—and then he settled his cool gaze on me.
