Page 8 of Sherwood
She dipped her pert, pointed chin in assent.
“But you—you can’t be here.”
Her lips were painted a dark, dark color, and so I saw the moment her mouth flattened. “No, little fox,” she said, and I swallowed to hear the name that used to be mine, the name only she had ever called me. “Ishouldn’tbe here. There is a difference, you see.”
I stared at her, still hardly believing she was back in Sherwood. The stories about her—the things those FBI agents had asked me—
The way she’d just dropped me after she’d left five years ago, like I hadn’t existed to her at all—
“But,” Lox said, sitting back and propping a boot across her knee, “I heard something so fucking ridiculous that I had to come and see for myself whether it was true or not.”
I processed complex information all day, every day. I’d had to learn about mycelial research and the native habitats of cork trees and the vagaries of a stock market that still favored resource exploitation over renewable technology. And yet I could not process this.
Lox.
Here.
Now.
Even the scent of her was here. Cedar and loam, the smell of the forest behind my house. Every breath I dragged in was dosed with it.
“What did you hear?” I managed to whisper.
A muscle jumped in the slender line of her jaw. “That you were at The Knot tonight. With a man named Rafe de Lacy.”
ChapterTwo
LOX
For a long moment,there was only the rain on the glass, the distant churn of the sea outside. Then Marian lifted her chin.
“It’s none of your business whom I kneel to,” she said, her voice as cool as the room around us. “Especially after what you’ve done.”
“It is my business when you’re kneeling to Rafe de Lacy,” I told her, ignoring her little dig about the things I’d done. I probably deserved it. “He’s not the kind of person you should be playing with.”
Marian straightened up off the glass, stepping into the pool of lamplight and allowing me to see her properly for the first time in five years.
She wasn’t any taller than she’d been at eighteen, but her bearing had changed, had grown into a natural grace that made me think of old Hollywood films and present-day duchesses. Her hair—dark as the Army coffee I used to choke down before PT—was pulled back in a chignon that exposed the long lines of her throat and clavicle. It also had the effect of showing off the little bow behind her neck that held up the bodice of her dress, and abruptly all I could think about was tugging on those slender ties and watching the velvet tumble down her breasts.
But I managed not to betray myself; I kept my eyes firmly on her face. On those blue eyes fringed with thick, dark lashes, the upturned nose, that lush mouth. Her lower lip was so full that there was a small crease underneath it, and I lost myself for a moment remembering how it felt to pull that lip between my teeth and bite.
“I think it’s a little rich of you to tell me who to play with,” Marian said crisply. “And I would ask you how you got into my house without me knowing, but I remember enough from my interview with the FBI agents that I don’t have to.”
I hadn’t known they’d been to see her.Goddammit.
“You were interviewed,” I said, and somehow managed to keep my tone level. Good. She didn’t need to know how close she was to the havoc I’d wreaked—and the havoc I planned to wreak still. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She crossed her arms, which only served to push her tits up higher under the velvet. A kick of desire pulsed low in my belly, but I forced myself to ignore it. I’d lived this long without touching her again, and I would probably survive the lack. Although the idea ofRafetouching her sent a tumult of emotion crashing through me, and I hated the thought of that amoral wolf getting to see her on her knees for him, I hated it more than I hated almost anything else in this cold, greedy world.
So why couldn’t I stop imagining what it must have looked like? Marian, kneeling in a pool of dark velvet?
A suited Rafe looking on, his mouth carved in a satisfied near-smile?
“I don’t know, Lox,” she said, sounding exasperated now. “My parents died and I was trying to single-handedly run a corporation I had no business running. I had a lot more going on than whatever trouble you’d gotten yourself into. And if you’ll recall, I hadno way to tell you, given that you’d ghosted me years before.”
“You could have told Tuck,” I said. “Or Will. They would have gotten it to me.”
An elegant eyebrow arched at me. “You still talk to them?” When I didn’t answer, she sighed. “Of course you do. Of course it was only me that you cut off.”
