Page 76 of Wench

Her answer is a broken cry, hips arching into his hand. The forest seems to lean closer, branches knitting tighter, as though it too strains to hear her. She’s never felt so completely undone and remade in the same breath.

His fingers curl inside her, drawing another sound from her throat, this one sharp and needy.

Marian twists, desperate for his mouth, and he turns her with hands rough on her waist. Her back hits the trunk again, but this time he sinks into the soil before her, antlers haloed in moonlight, eyes dark with hunger. His fingers part her thighs with gentle insistence, and the night air licks at her bare skin.

He kisses down her body, leaving a trail of fire in the wake of his lips. His breath breaks just above the place that aches for him, and her knees wobble.

Her body arches helplessly, thighs trembling as he licks her with a devastating, ruthless tempo. Every scrape of bark, every slip of his fingers, heightens the storm in her chest. She’s alive in a way that’s unbearable, every nerve strung taut between survival and surrender.

She fists her hands in his hair, tugging him closer, and his grin ghosts across her flesh.

A feral groan slips out of him. His head presses against her, as though he can’t stand the thought of not tasting her. His fingers quicken in response to her grip, pressing harder, stroking deeper, until her cry splits the quiet like an offering.

Marian can feel his hunger for her release. His breath stutters hot against her, his antlers scraping across her stomach. She wants to give herself over to him, to tumble headlong into the storm Lox is coaxing from her body, but her mind splinters.

The soldiers’ laughter worms back in.‘Hallomere whelp’, he’d called her. Said the Sheriff planned to‘burn the heart out of Sherwood’because of her. She sees their faces again, flushed with cruelty, eyes lit by the thought of her as nothing more than what is between her legs.

Her hands in Lox’s hair falter. She should be revelling in the way he worships her, the way the forest itself leans close to listen for her moans. Instead, the smallness of what they just achieved weighs on her.

It isn’t enough.

‘We can’t keep doing this.’ The words tumble out of her unbidden.

He glances up, lips slick, grin curling wickedly. ‘Strange time to complain. You didn’t seem to mind a few moments ago.’ He circles his thumb against her, coaxing another gasp that makes her thighs quake.

Her head knocks back against the tree, a broken grunt slipping out despite her words. But her thoughts claw at the edges, dragging her elsewhere.

‘Raiding caravans isn’t enough,’ she whispers fiercely, trying to steady her breath. ‘The Sheriff still has my father’s hand feeding him weapons; our forge is the largest within a hundred leagues of Nottingham. Every chain, every net, every blade they use to cut into the fae begins there.’

‘You’re distracted,’ he murmurs, his voice gravel and heat. His fingers plunge deeper and beckon inside her repeatedly, as though to coax her thoughts back to him. ‘And that wounds my pride.’

His mouth is all heat and patience, tongue drawing slow, deliberate circles. Fingers anchor her thighs wide against the bark. He nips at her swollen skin and her knees threaten to give. She grips his antlers without thinking, and he groans low, answering with a deeper, slower suck that makes the canopy sway.

Still, the forge squats in her skull, red-mouthed and laughing.

Pleasure frays at the edges of her fury, but it doesn’t unmake it. She squeezes her eyes shut and her father’s ledger rises behind them, every number a nail in the coffin of her desire.

‘We need to cut them off at the source,’ she says, her voice roughened by both want and wrath at once. Lox’s hand stills and she knows he’s listening. ‘We should burn my father’s forge, break the bellows, crack and drown the hearth.’

‘Marian,’ Lox warns. He rises in one fluid motion and braces his forehead to hers. ‘Hallomere’s forge is ringed with men who would torch these woods to ash for the Sheriff’s smile. A strike like that isn’t a thief’s trick – it’s a war cry.’ His thumb strokes once along her jaw, as if to quiet the tremor there. ‘And I cannot go to war without the Council’s consent.’

The night closes around them. Marian’s chest heaves against the press of Lox’s body. Her thighs still tremble from his touch, but the words she’s spilled hang between them.

‘If I do nothing,’ she whispers, eyes stinging, ‘if I continue hiding in the shadows and only take what scraps they leave behind, then I’ll never be free of them.’

Lox studies her, golden eyes glinting. The hunger in him hasn’t dimmed, but it’s threaded with respect and the dangerous shape of belief.

‘You burn hotter than any forge they’ve ever built.’ His voice is rough with both pride and warning. ‘But heat can make or unmake. You want to prove you’re not the same as them? Then don’t just fight their fire with fire.’ His thumb traces the corner of her mouth. ‘Show them you’re the storm that smothers it.’

Marian swallows, a wild ache unspooling inside her. His words press deeper than his fingers ever could, carving space where fury might become something else. She leans into his touch, lips brushing his palm.

A familiar sound cuts through the forest. It’s a high keening, raw with pain. It sinks its claws straight into her chest.

Marian freezes. Her eyes narrow as the sound threads through the dark – thinner, like a scream stretched over distance.

‘Lox.’ Her voice is a broken whisper. Confusion shadows his features. ‘What is it?’

Her breath stutters as the sound rips through the trees once more. The pleasure still pulsing through her veins sours with dread, her body caught between release and recoil. She shoves him aside and tugs her trousers up with shaking hands.