Page 7 of Sherwood
“Punish,” he said simply, and then he bit the inside of my wrist.
Pain flashed—bright, metallic—and then died away as quickly as it had come to life. Rafe raised his face to study the indented parentheses he’d left on my pale skin, which were quickly going from a bloodless white to a dark, angry red, and then he dropped a kiss onto the same spot.
I sucked in a breath, not sure whether that kiss felt good or bad, strung between the two poles of pleasure and pain like an electric current.
“Now,” he said softly, releasing my bitten wrist, “are we ready to listen?”
“Yes,” I said, and then added a hasty, “Sir,” when he lifted an eyebrow at me.
“Good,” he said crisply. “I want you to kiss my shoe.”
I froze.
Part of me, the executive officer part, was already scoffing.That’s all?I wanted to ask.That’s it?I did deeply unpleasant tasks every day, from fielding meetings with disgruntled shareholders to enduring acquisition pitches over tedious lunches—and I knew I was capable of anything for the sake of a goal. That the goal was proving myself to a dominant and not to a stakeholder or investor wasn’t the point here. The point was that I could do it and had indeed done worse. With worse people too.
But the other part of me, the part that knew a dessert fork from an oyster fork, the part that had season tickets to the ballet and hadn’t sneezed in public for twelve years, couldn’t even process the command. The Bond No. 9 lipstick I was wearing had cost as much as some people earned in a day; my mouth hadn’t come that close to the ground since I was child playing in Sherwood Forest, darting through the trees with Lox and Will and Tuck.
The idea of touching my mouth to Rafe’s shoe, which had walked across the undoubtedly fluid-spattered floor of The Knot, which had probably walked over airport terminal carpet and through wet parking lots and God knew where else…
“You can sayred,” Rafe reminded me. His voice was neutral, devoid of inflection. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
But of course, I wasn’t only a CEO and a socialite—I wasMariantoo, the same person who once dreamed of having Robin Loxley pull on my hair and bite my mouth. Underneath the designer lipstick and the couture dresses, I was still her. The girl who’d dreamed about a kind of love that was bruising and dark, and raw in its exposed lust—and of course I knew that this thing with Rafe de Lacy wouldn’t ever be love, but it would be as close as I’d ever come to the rest of it now that Lox was gone.
Before Rafe could speak again, I braced my hands on either side of his feet and lowered myself down, going slowly, carefully. I wanted to do this right; I wanted Rafe pleased with me.
The realization was like a bloom of clarity in my mind. I wanted to please the wolf, and so nothing else mattered.
The top of Rafe de Lacy’s shoe gleamed.
My wrist throbbed where he’d bitten it.
I pressed my lips to the leather and kissed his shoe.
* * *
The Fitzwalter mansionwas perched on the rocky edge of the world, with the ocean at its front and the dark expanse of Sherwood Forest at its back. It had always been private—practically monastic—but now with my parents gone, it often felt worse than private. It felt robbed and hollow, lonely in the kind of way that only houses near the water could be lonely.
But tonight, I felt none of that. I parked in the garage and walked into the house in a kind of daze, my wrist still singing with Rafe de Lacy’s punishment, and my knees still aching from his commands. My body still wound tight with hunger.
He’d rewarded the kiss on his shoe with a single, fond pet of my head, and then had helped me to my feet. “You did very well,” he’d said. And after he’d studied my wrist for a moment, he’d flicked those blue eyes up to mine. “Very well, indeed, Marian.”
“Thank you,” I’d whispered. The place between my legs had been tight, hot, wet enough to feel on my thighs. I’d wanted him to do so much more to me, to use me and fuck me, and I’d seen the way he’d adjusted his erection as he’d stood up…
But with another soft kiss to the marks on my wrist, he’d left.
Silently, quickly, like he’d had more prey to chase after tonight.
As I stepped into the large central room of the house, I wondered if Rafedidhave more prey to chase. More submissives to lure in with those wide shoulders and strange eyes.
I wasn’t upset by the idea, but I couldn’t say I felt excited about it either. Nonetheless, I remained as floaty and dreamy as I had been in that room at The Knot, wandering over to the floor-to-ceiling windows which looked out over the sea, watching the rain streak down into the water below.
With a loud click, a lamp flicked on behind me. I turned, stumbling back into the window, and saw a tall, fair woman with green eyes and too many freckles sitting on the sofa. She was wearing boots and cargo pants with a tank top and a sleeveless vest, the latter of which was unzipped and opened to reveal the straps of a leather shoulder harness with an empty holster. Her dark red hair was shaved close on one side and then left longish and tousled on the other.
The last time I’d seen her, her hair had been in a thick, regulation ponytail. I’d heard a few years ago that she’d had to shave it all off for Ranger school, but that was only hearsay.
She’d stopped talking to me long before then.
“Lox,” I said hoarsely, the window cold against the bare skin of my back. “You’re here.”
