Page 33 of Sherwood
Fuck me, he was infuriating. “You said I could name my prize. I named aftercare.”
“Should have read the fine print, Lox,” he replied crisply. “I never said you could claim your prize alone.”
We glared at each other a moment, until Marian pushed up to a sitting position. “Is there any water in here?” she asked, and Rafe and I turned toward her, both of us looking guilty. We should have gotten her something to drink the moment we walked in, we should have made sure she was seen to before we fell into another one of our pointless sparring matches.
“Yes, sweet one,” Rafe said. He went to a narrow closet and opened it; inside there was a small fridge and built-in shelves stocked with everything someone could possibly want after a scene, from personal wipes to Clif bars, and he grabbed a small carton of water from the fridge along with some personal wipes and an ice pack. When he returned to the bed, he set the wipes and ice pack down on the silk sheet, and then opened the carton of water for Marian to drink from.
I couldn’t help but watch as his fingers made deft, efficiently work of opening the cardboard. As he held the carton to Marian’s lips for her to drink.
By the time she’d finished, I was pushing her legs open and cleaning her well-used cunt. The wipes were cool, and she shivered a little as I wiped the insides of her thighs too. As I cleaned, I checked the red-blooming bites and bruises to make sure there wasn’t any broken skin or deeper contusions. Her cunt was swollen and red, but she’d only be a little sore tomorrow. Sore enough to remember me when she sat, but not so sore she’d have to abstain from play. Exactly how I liked it.
“Show me your breasts,” I said, getting a fresh wipe from the container.
Rafe tugged down the bodice of her dress before Marian could comply, and as irritated as I was that he was still here, I couldn’t deny that it was helpful to have an extra set of hands to help with aftercare.
I also couldn’t deny that the sight of Rafe’s hands hooked around the red silk of Marian’s dress sent abrupt and contradictory things blowing through me like gusts of hot, dangerous wind.
Marian hissed as I used the cool wipes on her breasts, all shivers and goosebumps as I cleaned her, and when I finished, her nipples were pulled into tight little points that I couldn’t resist rolling between my fingers.
“What do you like in your aftercare?” I asked, because I had to ask. Because I’d never given her aftercare before. Because the one time I should have, I left to go to war instead.
Marian stretched a little, her bodice still tugged down and her gown still shoved up around her hips, her hair more tangled than I’d seen it since we’d spent hours and hours playing foxes in the forest as children.
She looked beautiful like this. My wild little fox, unburdened from whatever it was that had made her so cool and closed off over the years.
“I like to be held, I think,” she said. “But I don’t know though, this is still new to me—”
I was already reaching for the cashmere blanket folded neatly at the bottom of the bed and wrapping it around her. I then crawled onto the bed and pulled her into my arms, settling in with her back to my chest and her head tucked under mine. I folded the ice pack into the blanket so that it would be nothing more than a whisper of coolness and then slipped it between her legs to rest against her pussy.
Marian sighed, happily, but then she raised a hand to Rafe, her meaning clear.
She wanted him on the bed too.
I wanted to kick my heels against the bed in protest; I wanted to snarl and snap at the wolf in our room until he slunk off. I wanted Marian to be mine and only mine—and I certainly didn’t want to share her with an ex-lover who’d chosen a country over me—but unlike Rafe, I was cuffed and bound to the truth. To what I believed the truth demanded of our actions.
And tonight the truth was this: Marian wanted Rafe here.
The truth was that Marian belonged to Rafe more than she’d ever belonged to me, fox games notwithstanding.
I had no right to fight her on this.
Rafe looked down at Marian’s outstretched hand and then up to me, his pale eyes betraying nothing of what he was thinking. But I saw the muscle jump in his jaw, the slight twitch of his hand at his side. For the first time tonight, including as he’d watched me grope and bite his new submissive, he looked uncertain.
I gave him a small nod to indicate I wasn’t going to argue. I was certain all the reluctance I felt was showing on my face right now—and I dearly fucking hoped none of the other unwelcome feelings currently twisting inside my chest would reveal themselves either. I didn’t want them to exist; and if they absolutely had to exist, then I didn’t want Rafe to know about them.
Rafe climbed easily onto the bed and sat next to me, so very close, close enough that we touched.
He had to, I knew, in order to be close to Marian. In order to touch and kiss and stroke her as she so clearly wanted. And yet it had the effect of pressing his entire body flush to mine, all the way from our feet to our hips to our shoulders. And I’d forgotten how firm his body was, how layered with muscle it was, how warm he’d always felt, always, even in the middle of a Carpathian winter that could freeze the tit off a witch.
I’d forgotten his scent too. It had always smelled like money to me—literally like money. Like walking into a bank, like pouring coins onto a table, clinking and spinning, like the crisp five dollar bills my grandmother used to press into my hand whenever my parents weren’t looking.
It shouldn’t have smelled as good as it did, but there was something so sharp and clean about it, something so ruthless and also yet so reassuring. His scent was certainty itself. Or at least as close as any scent could come to something like that.
“Thank you,” Marian said, her voice falling into a soft moan as Rafe took her hand and began massaging it. She made the noise again as I began stroking her hair, slowly and carefully unknotting it with my fingers. My free arm was wrapped around her waist, and my thighs cradled hers.
At the bottom of the bed, combat boots and gleaming Oxford shoes and dainty bare feet splayed on the sheets in a strange array.
My throat hurt to look at it.
