AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Will!” Tuck yelled, aghast.
“We need you to bring back the reckless, stubborn, infuriating girl who first joined us as a lad,” I said through gritted teeth, crouching to get to her level. I held her sternly—not stifling her windpipe, but making sure she looked at me and only me.
I couldn’t be compassionate and wise like Tuck, or insightful like Alan. I could only match Robin’s energy with what I believed in, and I wasn’t going to coddle her into accepting her place within the Merry Men.
Her eyes began fearful, like she was seeing me for the first time since the day I ripped her tunic from her body to expose her lies. Then that daring expression from the woods—when I chased and wrestled and dominated her—overtook the fear, and I swore she was biting the inside of her cheek as her visage smoldered with my hand around her neck.
“Find the bratty princess who knows better than anyone,” I growled low in my throat. “You don’t want to cry? Fine. Then find a different avenue for your grief.”
Her fist launched out reflexively and punched me in the arm.
I smiled wickedly. “There she is. Do it again.”
She smacked me again. Alan muttered inanities, and Tuck just shook his head, appalled at what he was seeing.
“Weak, little thorn,” I snarled, leaning forward. My lips ghosted over hers, my thumb trailing across her chin while my fingers tightened around the thin, perfect column of her neck. “I said hit me, not graze me. Let it out. You gave the quarterstaff to me. You don’t want tears or pity or a shoulder to cry on? Then attack the man who is to blame for taking your position . . . and fucking hit me, Robin!”
She let out a strained sound as I yelled in her face and my grip tightened—
And her fist lashed out to land square against my nose.
My head whipped back, blood spurting.
She gasped in fear.
I leveled my bright eyes on hers. Warmth trickled down my nose and I tasted the coppery blood on my lip as I smiled at her. “There’s my good girl.”
Her eyes flared wide, glinting with mischief. When she glanced down, she let out another sound at the sight of my hard cock straining against my pants.
She snapped at me like an animal—like we were back on the hunt for the Grinning Oak. Her teeth clacked closed and I dipped my head forward and fused my lips with hers.
My tongue slammed inside her mouth and batted hers away. I inhaled her gasp and she quickly recovered, fighting valiantly to regain a semblance of dominance. We were dancing, noses bumping, faces twisting. The blood trickling down my nose smeared on her face.
Inside, my body thirsted for more. All I wanted was to touch her and take her. Even Tuck and Alan had fallen silent, watching as we negotiated in the only way we knew how: with feral groping and grasping and tasting.
Her hand landed on the swell of my pants, outlining my cock as I pulled her body closer and settled my thigh between her legs. Her core was swollen and heated, burning up through the fabric of her clothes. She squirmed and let out little noises as she grabbed at my cock and let my leg guide her arousal.
I pulled my lips off hers and stared into her shining eyes and the smear of my blood on her nose and upper lip. My fingers had been around her throat so long, they’d be leaving a handprint well into tomorrow.
I would imprint my touch on her body, so everyone knew she was mine. Possessiveness flared inside me, and it mingled with the obsession I felt for this maddening, beautiful, perfect disaster of a girl.
It was a fleeting sensation I knew I could never keep, because Robin didn’t belong to me. Even if I belonged to her, Robin belonged to the Merry Men in equal measure: to Little John, to me, to Alan-a-Dale, to Friar Tuck.
“You own my heart, body, and soul, little thorn,” I said, hoping my inner thoughts sounded convincing on my tongue.
“And every part of me,” Tuck said, saluting with a fist to his chest as he crept closer to us.
“All I can do is show you how much you matter to us, to our sanity, and to the future of the Merry Men,” I said.
Alan-a-Dale crouched behind me, lurking near my shoulder, and rested a hand on the inside of her thigh near my knee. “We are at your service, little songbird. Always.”
My voice became thick and gravelly. “I chose to pass the quarterstaff to you in the first place because I have no dominion over you,” I explained. “It’s the other way around. We are lost with you, and wrapped around your fingers, little thorn. All I want to do is worship you. Is that what you want?”
She blinked mindlessly. She was dumbfounded, at a loss for words.
“How can a man lead when he’s in the presence of you?” I flared my nostrils to take in her heady scent of arousal. “How can I possibly lead and call myself superior to a goddess?”
A groan escaped her lips as I loosened my hold on her throat and she inhaled sharply.
