Men of Sherwood (A Rogue's Tale Book 1)

by Sarah Luddington

  Never one to hold back I felt the now familiar tingle begin, the ache in my guts and balls reaching critical mass. Guy held me in a punishing grip, his kisses wet and uncontrolled as he fucked hard against my cock.

  “Now, Guy,” Robin ordered.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, broken and exhausted by need.

  His movements lost all control and I cried out as he bit my neck, holding on to me with bruising intensity. He locked solid and I pushed once more into Robin’s grip as I tipped over with him. Robin rocked hard against me, his breathing rough and ragged. He released our cocks and lifted his soiled hand to his mouth. I watched as he licked our combined passion off his thick fingers and he shuddered, claiming Guy’s mouth as he came hard against my backside.

  “Fuck,” he growled as I lapped at the salty mixture. Guy’s lips found mine and he licked the thick white fluid off my tongue.

  Our breaths began to calm. Our bodies, close to collapse, sank to the ground and we curled around each other, a mass of limbs and vulnerable need. We were one being in that moment.

  Guy chuckled. “Well, I’ve never been so happy to be bewitched and enslaved by a faerie demon.” He kissed my sore mouth.

  I smiled and stroked a hand through his soft white hair. “I’ll be your faerie demon, Guy of Gisborne, if you will be my protector.”

  His grey eyes softened further, the moon mist back, a magical blessing. He stroked my cheek. “God, Will, what have you done to me?” I heard his fear again but Robin missed it.

  I heard Robin grunt behind me and the deep bass voice rumbled through me into Guy. “I keep asking myself that question. Can’t find the answer. You two are going to ruin me. I’m an old man.”

  “Not that old,” Guy said, hiding the fear again. He snuggled against me. Guy of Gisborne, the scourge of Nottingham, snuggled against me and dragged Robin’s arm around us both.

  I wanted this moment to last but knew it couldn’t, we needed a plan. I needed to save Tuck, Marion and the others.

  “How are we going to deal with this?” I asked.

  “Don’t want to think about it,” Guy mumbled, sounding as if he were already half asleep.

  I felt Robin shrug. “I have no idea, minstrel. Guy’s presence here was your doing. You figure it out.” He yawned.

  “Oh, great, my fault then,” I muttered as both men made more sleepy noises. We were all dressed, sticky maybe, but dressed and wrapped in cloaks, so I surrendered for a moment and slept on Robin’s chest with Guy pressed into my arms. I felt so safe.

  I WOKE TO GUY twitching and moaning in his sleep.

  “Wake him,” came a soft voice from behind me.

  It took a surprising amount of effort to untangle my fingers from Guy’s long slim ones but once released I could stroke his cheek, lit white by moonlight. “Sweetheart, come on, it’s alright. You’re safe.”

  Guy woke in violence with Robin’s arms holding him tight against me. He came back into awareness fighting demons I didn’t understand. His breath heaved in sucking torment and his hands clutched at my arm.

  “Will?” he half moaned.

  “I’m here.”

  “Where?”

  “You’re safe.”

  He struggled upright, free of us. “No, I’m not.” He stared out over the clearing. The fear no longer lay hidden, it had risen in all its serpentine glory while he slept and taken over the wild cat’s heart. My own heart ached at the sight.

  “Guy…”

  Robin placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Leave him, Will.”

  Guy scrambled away and the cold rushed into me, replacing his warmth with callous intent. “I have to go.” He struggled to stand, right his clothing, searching for his sword until he remembered he’d surrendered it for me – for us.

  I twisted in Robin’s arms. “Stop him.”

  “No, Will.” Robin’s expression, his eyes, were dark but calm. “He has to leave. It will be alright.”

  Guy reached his horse and Robin stopped me from standing. I squirmed against him. “This is wrong.”

  “It’s alright. He belongs to us now,” Robin said into the noise of leather creaking as Guy mounted his patient horse. A hunger and darkness in his voice jarred against my need to protect Guy.

  “I hate you,” snarled the distraught warrior.

  Robin didn’t flinch as I did at the words. He merely said, “Remember what we look like in the moonlight.”

  “You bastard,” Guy gasped.

  Robin chuckled. “You’ve always known that. Time never softens, only tempers the hardness of us.”

  I watched in confusion as Guy rode off among the night dark trees, an awful twist in my guts. “I can’t let him go.”

  Robin kissed my tangle of hair and relaxed against my back. “We have to but he’ll be back. You’ll bring him back. He’s smitten with you, just as I am. We are dark souls, Guy and me, you offer a light we crave but can never attain alone.”

  I felt the loss of our companion deep inside, a wound sharp and brutal. I needed Guy, I needed him and I’d lost him. “I don’t understand.”

  Robin hugged me. “I know. I’ll try to explain.”

  28

  IT TOOK SOME DOING but we managed to untangle ourselves and began the walk back to the camp. I sought out Robin’s hand and he laced his fingers through mine.

  “Sorry, they’re all sticky,” he said.

  I smiled up at him. “I think we need to wash before retiring.”

  He grunted. “Naked Will Scarlett sounds good.”

  I laughed. “If you think I’m stripping naked in the middle of winter in the middle of the night to bathe in that river you’ve another thing coming.”

  “Huff, there goes a fantasy.”

  The brevity of the moment slipped away. “What happened to Guy?” I asked.

  Robin sighed. “It’s complicated.”

  “I deserve to know.”

  “You need to know. I just don’t know where to start and don’t say the beginning because for Guy there isn’t one that I know of.”

  We stopped moving for a bit, while Robin tried to gather his thoughts. What had happened between the three of us earlier played a chaotic and mad reel in my head, so I doubted Robin fared much better.

  “I can’t tell you much, Will,” Robin began. “Guy isn’t exactly forthcoming with information about himself.”

  “I noticed.”

  Robin grimaced, the moonlight shifting shadows over his face. “When he joined my cohort of soldiers, by order of the king, he’d already gained a reputation for violence and insubordination. I was told to take a firm line with him.”

  I pulled on Robin’s arm to make him face me. “You hurt him?”

  “It’s how I won his loyalty and eventually his heart. I’d only ever slept with my wife up to the moment Guy kissed me.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand, I need some kind of beginning.”

  Robin stared past my shoulder into the mists of their creation. “He’s the youngest son of a lesser noble from Brittany. His father rode with Geoffrey and we all knew how that ended.”

  “Badly.”

  “Hmm. So, Guy had something to prove. To himself, to his family and to his king. We were both there for the same reasons, pride and greed. Not exactly what the Crusades are meant to represent.” His bitterness didn’t escape me.

  I touched his arm. “You went seeking redemption as well, Robin, don’t forget that.”

  He remained silent for too long, his darkness sweeping over us. “I often wonder about that. I like to tell myself I had some noble intentions but… Guy had no noble intentions. He never lies to himself even if he is forced to live a lie for the rest of his life. Women hold no interest for him and the submission he needs to give manifests in ways many men find disturbing. I think he’s always been different but he was young when he crossed my path so perhaps I shaped this in him.”

  “How did you win him over?” I asked.

  “He disobeyed a direct order.
I had him flogged and I stood there, watching it happen. He could see me the entire time. When they cut him down I ordered the other men away. I’d never – fuck, Will – it disturbed me but I was so fucking hard. The look in his eyes as he took the lashes. There were only twenty, his skin split but not badly and I ordered him to come to me. I didn’t move.” Robin rubbed his face with both hands. “Fuck me, he did it. He fucking crawled to me, with this look in his eyes like… like I was a fucking god. I just, I couldn’t not do it. I lifted him up, wrapped my cloak around his shoulders, took him to my tent and cared for him. When he recovered he took over my… well, everything really, my horse’s care, weapons, camp, all of it. Once I became used to his need to please me, we became friends but I noticed things. He’d be fine for a while, then he’d become deeply agitated, restless and I’d have to punish him for some infraction.” Robin managed a rueful smile, “I eventually put two and two together. I confronted him… he begged for my forgiveness. Dropped to his knees and I, I dropped with him. Then we were kissing. We were outside Constantinople at the time.”

  We’d arrived at the hut and went inside, just to sit, with Robin holding my hands.

  “I don’t really understand what happened next but I became so cruel. I had all this power over this beautiful, intelligent, broken man and I hurt him because I could, we were both so young. That place, the heat, the hunger, the endless thirst, that fucking war, it made monsters. I think some part of me hated him as much as I loved him for making me a deviant.”

  We dropped into a well of silence. I had to find a way out of the darkness. “It was Ghaalib who showed you that you weren’t – aren’t – deviant?”

  He nodded. “Gave me you.” He squeezed my hands.

  “And returned Guy to you.”

  Another nod, less certain this time.

  “We didn’t even talk about it, Robin. We just, we took over his life, we were intimate in ways I’ve only ever shared with you. I don’t know what to feel about that.” Fragile, I felt dangerously fragile about it but I couldn’t admit to the weakness. “And he left.”

  “Trust me, he ran, he didn’t just leave. He is as scared as you are. Will,” Robin rubbed his hands over mine, “you don’t realise what you are to men like us. You are hope, beauty, a future. We want to own you, protect you, provide for you, and he is as bewitched as I am. I cannot be jealous of that. Seeing you with him, watching the light grow in him because of you, his care and compassion for you… those were things I didn’t know Guy could feel. When he was with me, just the two of us, it often seemed like he had no more emotion in him than my hunting dogs. I don’t know what made him like that, he’s never trusted me enough to tell me and I never cared enough to ask. I didn’t know I could feel these things again either.” He bowed his head, hiding the pain from me.

  Exhaustion swept me up in arms too strong to deny. “I need to sleep, Robin,” I said.

  He nodded and helped me undress. We had a bucket of clean water in the hut at all times so we washed despite the bitter cold, and I curled up in Robin’s embrace. It took a long time for sleep to reach me though, as all I could think about was Guy, out there, alone in the night returning to Nottingham’s castle and its cold walls.

  When we woke late the following day snow blanketed everything. As a community we worked to clear paths, feed the animals, feed ourselves and check on wood stocks. Marion and Tuck tried to speak to Robin about Guy’s appearance but he cut them off and sent me to work with John and Much so I stayed out of the communal areas shovelling snow away from the latrines and food stores.

  That night we gathered in the cave and ate as a community, Robin explaining how the political landscape Guy had given us changed nothing in the short term but in the long term we needed to make decisions as a group about how we continued fighting. If we continued fighting. He spoke about gaining trust from the barons in the north, that perhaps we could be of help to them but he spoke to men who did not trust nobility and they would not hear of a connection.

  “I’m not stopping,” Marion said.

  “I’m not asking you to, I just think it’s important to know that the king will protect Marc because he has no choice. It seems there are few loyal enough to the throne to trust with protecting Nottingham and that’s going to make Marc and the king reckless with us. They will destroy Sherwood rather than see us succeed.” Robin’s fingers laced through my hair where I sat at his feet.

  I listened with half an ear to the back and forth. All I could think about was Guy and how much I wanted him here with us. How did a hole exist in my life when Guy should be the enemy?

  “So we just pack up and do what?” Marion asked.

  “I didn’t say we were stopping. Damn it, Marion, I wish you’d listen to me sometimes. You have all given me the responsibility to make decisions here, who we fight, when we fight, how we fight – how we survive, but I will not make those decisions while you are all blind to the consequences.”

  “Robin’s right, Marion,” John said. “We have some difficult choices to make. There will be changes coming with the spring. If there is rebellion in the north and we are caught in the middle…”

  “Well, you all have the information and we have the luxury of time with the snow here, so think on it and let me know how you would like to proceed,” Robin said. “Right now we’re off to bed.” He tugged on a lock of my hair.

  “Why did you bring him here?” Marion asked again looking at me across the fire with pain in her eyes. I felt for her, I really did. Marion’s life had turned into a snake pit of misery and tension. Her volatile temper had landed her in trouble more than once and whatever Philip Marc had done to her over the last few years in the bedroom… But Guy was not to blame and I wanted her to understand that for my own selfish reasons.

  Robin, half off the log he sat on, sighed and returned to sitting. “I told you, Marion, Guy was not to blame for what happened to you at the keep.”

  “He let my husband –”

  I rose in one fluid movement startling both Marion and my brother. “Guy tried to protect you. He’s trying to protect us all because he cares for Robin,” I felt my lover’s fingers wrap around my wrist in warning, but nothing was going to stop me, “and I care about him. He prevented Marc from humiliating you further, from a public shaming and an act of utter brutality and believe me when I say I know exactly the kind of damage that could have been done to you.”

  “Will, please, you don’t know what she’s been through,” Tuck said, rising to match me.

  “And you don’t know what Guy’s been through,” I snapped back. “He’s risked everything to try to talk us out of this insanity. And what we are doing is insane. I’ve told you both that, repeatedly, yet here we all are, living your dream of rebellion while Guy is forced to punish others for our crimes. You think we are heroes for our act of defiance? Because I don’t. Not after seeing what’s happening in the city. Guy stopped you being publicly raped, Marion. He couldn’t stop the beating, Marc is your husband, but who do you think made sure the guards weren’t watching as you and Alan ran?”

  My hands were fists, my entire body a taut bowstring waiting to snap, we were all so vulnerable and I’d seen the bodies of the thieves Guy’s men had caught. My brother, my lover, my friends, we were all destined to hang from the city walls and rot.

  “That’s enough, Will,” Robin said. He took hold of my shoulder and turned me away.

  “I can’t believe you truly feel like that, Will,” Marion said from behind me. “I thought we were friends.” Her voice broke and the pain of it pierced my heart.

  However, I knew I was right. “Then you haven’t been listening, Marion. This game will get us all killed.”

  Robin led me out of the cave and back to our home. “Do you believe that?” he asked in the silence of a snow drenched world.

  “Don’t you?” I couldn’t hold back the aggression.

  He lay a spark into the fire we’d prepared earlier and it wavered into light. “I do, I
just never thought you could see the darkness rushing towards us.”

  “Hard to ignore after my last visit to Nottingham,” I said, sitting in a disgruntled heap.

  “I should be glad you see the reality at last but I’m not.”

  “That’s because you want to keep me as some kind of talisman against your darkness,” I said, picking up a piece of wood and feeling as if my entire body was made of prickles and thorns.

  “Is this about Guy?” he asked.

  “Why did he have to leave?” I cried out.

  “You’ve been brooding all day.”

  “Yes, and it doesn’t help that I have to deal with Tuck and Marion.” Even to my ears I sounded like a petulant child.

  “You have to understand why she’s upset with us.”

  I studied Robin’s face, at moments like this a gulf of age and experience separated us, his quiet patience said it all really. “Yes.”

  “Good. But we can’t stop now.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I understand what Guy told us, more than most probably, but I want Philip Marc gone. What he’s done to Marion, how he treated my father, how his grasping fingers are after Huntingdon, I want him gone. We need to take radical steps. I need to take radical steps.” He stared into the fire and I saw the warrior in Robin, the man he held in check at all times. The dark knight, the old fox, who hunted under orders from the Lionheart. I saw a man forged in the green fields and woods of England but tempered and burnished in the heat of the desert sun.

  I saw Robert Loxley, Lord of Huntingdon.

  His eyes were glittering with the thousand thoughts cascading through his avenger’s mind and my heart swelled, I had been chosen to share this man’s life, his bed, and I loved him. I would die for his cause if I must.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked.

  29