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I smiled coyly. “I’ve answered your question,” I said, his finger falling from my chin. “So . . .”
“Her name was Imogen.” He paused, studied the pond, and skipped a rock across its filmy surface. We both watched the stone hop, and the ripples it created.
“When I was a younger lad, many moons ago, I was a serf for an affluent estate. I was bound to the land, working off a debt. Imogen was the young heiress.”
Sounds familiar.
“She was a beautiful spirit. Just my dumb luck—or omen, as you said—but she fancied me.” He glanced over at me and smiled sadly. “If you’ve heard this story before, stop me.”
I understood the jest. It wasn’t an uncommon tale in fables, and it reminded me of my own circumstance. But I was mesmerized by him, rapt with attention.
He donned a faraway gaze, staring at the night sky. “Lady Imogen and I fell for each other. We were young and stupid.” His smile fell. “Her father caught us in the act, in the stable. I was whipped, of course, but he was angrier with Imogen. He beat her senseless for debasing herself with the help, sullying her for the pool of suitors he’d arranged.” Little John’s teeth ground together. “She died of her wounds three days later.”
I let out a strangled sound. Before I knew what I was doing, I took his lingering hand in mine, threading our fingers together and squeezing. “Oh, John.”
“I went mad with rage and grief.” He bowed his head, closing his eyes. “The scars I bear on my body from Imogen’s death aren’t half as bad as the ones I bear on my heart.” He paused, composing himself by clearing his throat, and glanced over at me with cold malice in his eyes. “So I hanged the lord from the gable of his manse and burned down his estate and crops. Then I left. And I was made an outlaw.”
My eyes bulged as he finished the story so matter-of-factly. For a long while, neither of us spoke. We commiserated, and I found my finger rubbing over the knuckles of his large hand. With my palm in his, mine looked like a child’s—soft, pale, spindly fingers compared to his scarred, tanned, thick ones.
“The baron of that estate was the brother of Sir George, the Sheriff of Nottingham,” he said at last. “I killed George’s brother and, in his mind, his niece.”
I sighed. “. . . Which is why the Sheriff’s huntsman, Guy of Gisborne, searches tirelessly for the Merry Men.”
A small nod.
More silence. For every question answered, two more seemed to sprout in its wake. My head spun.
So I tried to forget it all.
I murmured in a soft voice, “It seems we’re two wounded souls, swimming toward the same thing.”
“And what’s that, little star?”
“Hope.” I gazed into his eyes once more. “That there’s something else out there for us.”
He clicked his tongue. “Well, when everything is taken from you, all you can do is keep searching for new reasons to stay alive. New reasons to feel happiness. And, dare I say . . . new reasons to love again.”
I blinked, lips parting. “And have you found . . . new reasons, John?”
Our gazes locked. Mine, imploring. His, hungry.
Both of us searching.
Then he dipped his chin, grabbed the back of my neck, and pulled me in to kiss me.
Chapter 29
Robin
Icould taste the fervor on John’s lips. His towering presence became a shield—a barrier that protected me from all outsiders. Only we were allowed inside the bubble, and I grasped onto him with everything I had.
My hands instinctively fell on his brawny biceps when he wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and brought my face to his. His muscles felt so powerful and virile.
He claimed me with the kiss. Against all the alarm bells blaring in my head, telling me this was wrong, it felt so right to part my lips for this mammoth of a man and let him have me.
Our lips collided, our tongues danced. Our noses swiped, foreheads bumping in the night. I swallowed up the sound of his low groan, and it became a vibrating rumble in my mouth and throat.
Yes, we were two wounded souls. Peter Fisher’s death had reopened the injuries that festered in both of us. We sought only feel and touch as a means to get away from it for a moment. As a way to explain to the other, without words, that we understood.
