Page 49 of Sherwood
“It is,” I admitted, “but it doesn’t have to be only that. I—” I stopped. I couldn’t finish the sentence, not yet, because I didn’t even know what I wanted to say.I think you might be right. OrI want you to be right because I still love you.
OrI want to fix this because the thought of never seeing Marian again feels like a flogger snapping against my naked heart.
“If you were me,” I said quietly, “what would you say? What would you do right now? Lackland is on his way to Sherwood. Zhang and the others know you’re here. This is supposed to be the end of your Merry Men.I’msupposed to be the end of it. So what is it that I should do?”
“You’re an asshole,” she said. “I hope you know that. You’re asking me what you should do when you’re the one with all the power here, when you’re the one who manipulated me here in the first place.”
“I don’t know how to tell you any more clearly thatallthe choices are extremely limited right now, yours and mine. So if you’d like anything different to happen other than the inevitable, I need your help.”
“This feels like another interrogation tactic, andGod,I wish we could just try to kill each other again, that was so much easier than this.”
I sighed. “I wasn’t trying to kill you. But if you’d like to fight me again, you’re welcome to try.”
Her eyes narrowed; her tongue pressed against the tip of one of her sharp incisors. “Or maybe I should try punishing you instead. Any hard limits, Rafe?”
“Treason. Why don’t you at least tell me what you think can be done about Ys, and I promise to listen.”
“That’s not why I came here,” she said, stepping close enough now that her boots crowded my dress shoes.
I looked down at her. Green eyes, dark red lashes. Beautiful, half-feral features. “Then why did you come here?”
“For this,” she said, and then her fists were in my shirt and her mouth was on mine.
The shock kept me still, and it wasshock—shock like I’d never felt in combat or in danger. Shock like my entire body was made of nothing but blood and heat, made of nothing but the mouth currently slanted against hers and the cock straining against my fly.
I found her waist, grabbed, and she twisted her hands in my shirt and pulled. We fought, half grappling, half stumbling, until I was able to slam her against one of the bare walls of the structure and pin her there with my hips.
She hissed as I palmed her breast over her tank top and then shoved my hand up her shirt to do it again. Her fingernails raked through my hair, and I felt her broken exhales against my lips as I found the buckle of her belt.
“I have to fuck you,” I grunted, and she bit my ear in response.
“I know.”
Her belt fell free, and then I worked mine open with one hand, my other hand sliding through her copper hair and pulling until she growled and bit me again.
I spun her around, and she was already guiding her knickers and trousers over the tight curves of her ass as I did, never one to let me have the lead for long. It made me hungry, eager, the kind of hungry and eager that felt almost angry, but deliciously so, and I sank my teeth into her shoulder as I unzipped my trousers and pulled out my dick.
She was wet—nothing made her wetter than fighting—and after a perfunctory check with my fingers, I pressed the head of my cock to her opening and wedged my way in.
“Fuck,” she moaned, pressing her face against the wall. “Rafe.”
“I know,” I said. My jaw went tight and every muscle in my body clenched as I pushed all the way in, deep enough that my hips were flush to her ass and every inch of me was buried. Her cunt was a hot, satin glove—just the slick squeeze of it alone was threatening to undo me—and how I’d lived without this for the last year, I had no idea.
True to form, Lox tried to take control right away, bracing her hands on the wall and fucking herself back on me like I was nothing more than a dildo suctioned to a mirror. But with her trousers and knickers binding her thighs together, there was only so much she could do, and I relished that, that accidental bit of bondage and the way it made everything tighter and sweeter and rougher.
I slid my hand around her waist, which gave me the dual pleasure of getting to fondle a breast and also restraining her a little, so I could hold her still enough to properly fuck her. She squirmed and struggled against me, not to get away, but to fuck me harder than I could fuck her, and the noises filled the hollow space: slaps of skin, the rustle and pull of fabric, hoarse grunts and low moans.
I found her clit with a hand shoved between her thighs, and gave her the firm circles I knew she liked, two fingers against the stiff bud.
She arched this way and that, as if not sure exactly what front she wanted to battle me on, and I laughed as I kept fucking her.
“You fight even when I’m inside you,” I grunted, “and I can’t tell you how fucking hot it makes me.” I was hard enough that ithurt, even inside the welcoming wet silk of her.
She reached back and found the nape of my neck, her fingers twisting in my hair until I hissed. “You never fight hard enough back,” she mumbled. She was still trying to take over, rolling her hips to meet mine, bucking against my fingers on her clit.
“Last time I did, you accused me of trying to kill you.”
“So I have a flair for the dramatic.”
