GREENWOOD

by Sue Wilson

  She could not kiss him back. It was too much, too much to bear.

  His tongue dipped between her breasts, blistering into her as he sucked the round softness past the sharpness of his teeth at the same time he entered her with his finger.

  She sobbed out and cursed him and writhed beneath him, wanting nothing of him, wanting more of him, wanting all of him.

  With agonizing slowness, he let her flesh slip from between his teeth, and soothed the imprint left purpling there with his tongue.

  "Stop me, Thea," he whispered. His movements were relentless, invasive. His fingers circled her, sent flames lapping at her flesh, then filled her with the fire of his touch. The blaze he kindled spread deep inside her, where relief from its heat did not exist. Her hips twisted away from him, thrust against him, seeking escape, seeking completion, fighting herself as much as him.

  His breath was hot as it trailed to her belly. His words and soft exhalations moved lower against her thighs, rhythmic like the movement of his fingers, hot, insistent like the unanswered need building inside her. She felt the heat of him, close, closer, his hand withdrawing, fingers painting the inside of her thigh with her own wetness. And desire-

  When his mouth replaced his hand, she knew she would die of it.

  "Please!" she cried. Her hands clutched at the linens, at furs, trying to hold onto something in the whirling void where there was nothing but sensation. He was sensation, this man, this enemy who was driving her, pulling her with him down to some hellish depths where there was nothing but a powerful, desperate wanting laid open by his touch. His tongue was warm and gentle and teasing within her, and hot and hard and demanding. It filled her as it had filled her mouth, then left her, dipped through her soft folds and suckled her and entered her again.

  Thea could not breathe, was afraid to breathe lest he stop, and the tension built unbearably until she sobbed with it, drew in air, and held it again. There was not a place he touched that did not cry out for more, and she arched beneath him, bringing herself closer to him, opening to him, wanting some substantial answer to her longing, for the reality of his hands and mouth and tongue on her. With every touch, the wanting grew. God, it would be the end of her-this torture so near pleasure and pleasure forever out of reach. There was not a time in her memory when she had known such brutal need, or ached to feel it more.

  His hands slipped beneath her, cupping her buttocks, drawing her nearer as he slid deeper inside her, pushing her back as he left her, creating the rhythm she needed until she moved on her own. Close to fulfillment, so close she could not tell where he touched her or how, because she was burning out of control and giving herself to the fire, because she, and he, and sensation were one.

  Frail cries escaped her throat, and her fingers curled around the sleek cloth of his tunic, twisting it into tight, desperate fistfuls, as if it were the last cool bastion of sanity and reason. The fabric turned to black flame in her hand. When she could not breathe for fear of scalding her lungs, when she could not see for the dizzying play of his lips and hands, when she was certain she must kill him or die herself from the unspeakable maelstrom of feeling, she reached out blindly, searching her soul for the strength to push him away. Her fingers met with his hair, raked through tangled black curls-

  And clutched him to her.

  Surprisingly, the soft cry that followed was not hers, but his. The sound of it left her shivering, helplessly spent, in his arms.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  There. He had proved it.

  He waited for the small contractions within her body to fade, then slipped his hand from her and untangled himself from her thighs. The conquest should have delighted him, for what thrill was equal to bringing about desire in a woman who at first refused him? Desire and fulfillment. For once, she was speechless. None of her vocal repudiations or claims to loathe him or threats to take his life while he slept. Nothing but the faint quivering of spent passion.

  He lay beside her, curling his body around hers, but as she turned her head away from him, he spied the silver tracery of tears gleaming on her cheeks. He had not hurt her-Christ, he swore he had not-unless they were tears of defeat. Had it pained her to surrender to so brief a moment of ecstasy? Was it anything compared to the ache he felt now?

  His body screamed out for some reciprocal touch, to find desperately needed release, and now he doubted he would ever have her, or if he did, that he would have her enough.

  Perhaps she cried from some imagined betrayal on her part. If he had bedded Locksley's woman-

  Realization sank heavily into him. Of course. He should have known, should have remembered to whom Thea belonged. He should have been pleased to have her, when Locksley could not, but to bed another man's woman was cowardly revenge. Guy's game. Not his.

  He could not explain the emptiness he felt. Her body still radiated the heat of lovemaking, and although she'd turned away, the curves of her back and buttocks nestled close against him, making arousal painful. Damn! Finally he had bested the woman! Where was his gain, the spoils of victory?

  The hollow feeling in his belly sickened him. He had wanted her desire, and taken it, stolen it, ripped it from her. No better than a thief.

  "Will you not look at me, Thea?" He lifted her hair, damp against her neck, and pressed a kiss against heated flesh. Her shoulders shook with silent sobbing, and he circled her with his arms.

  For the first time, he wished that his body did not announce his need of her so blatantly, that when he cradled her close, there would be gentleness in him with which to soothe her, not the brazen display of arousal that refused to retreat. He shifted positions, hoping to disguise the fact that he was left unsatisfied. He wanted no more of threats or intimidation, not even enticement. Yet while he commanded her body, he could not command his own. Even the slight movement he intended to spare her sent a shudder through her.

  Nottingham tried to imagine how she felt, not the fevered delirium of moments ago-she had fought even that-but the uncertainty, not knowing when he would take her, certain he would, that he must. He guessed her shudder to be fear, or worse, revulsion, and could not force himself upon her now. So he lay still and said nothing, and held her.

  Her skin was warm and moist against his, where they were not separated by the tangle of clothes and linen; the air was fragrant with her scent. He waited as her breath evened out and slowed, every muscle he possessed rigid with control.

  Restraint had cost him, and his body trembled as it struggled to find the completion he denied himself. Surely Thea felt the tension he could not hide. She pushed herself away from him, raising herself on arms that still shook with the aftermath of exertion.

  "You will not take me again," she warned.

  "I did not take you at all."

  "Belabor the language, Sheriff. It is what you did, and against my will."

  Not the response he expected, but the cold truth of accusation. It angered him as none of her other protests had. "You did not know your own will-"

  "That is codswallop!"

  "And I took nothing. I gave you-"

  "Forced upon me," she corrected him. She wrenched away and scrambled to the far end of the bed, gathering twisted bedclothes about her. "And it was nothing I wanted. Nothing! Do you hear?"

  His head sagged against his chest; one hand gripped the pelt of sleeping fur. Her hatred reverberated off the chamber walls, off the hollow space within him, fitting punishment. The bed shifted slightly as she stood, and he winced, the rejection salt to the wound of his need.

  From habit alone, his mind scrambled with a ready barrage of other options. He could take her still-should. He was stronger, more powerful, and he had not begun this venture to sate her while leaving his own needs unmet. Damn her! If she thought the feelings he'd awakened in her were some sort of atrocity, then let her know what it truly meant to be 'taken.' He would throw the word in her face while his body rammed its harsh meaning into her-

  Lids closed. The thoughts receded into the
dark, shadowy recesses from which they emerged. At any other time he would have. With another woman. With any other woman.

  Nottingham waited, half expecting more diatribe vented in his direction. When it did not come, he opened his eyes. She had pulled the sheets away; they lay in a white drift about her ankles. Her fingers fumbled with the laces at the side of her shift. He thought he saw them tremble, thought he saw the outline of hardened nipples beneath the gauzy fabric as she pulled it tight around her, and forced himself not to care.

  So she desired him, if she desired him, what of it? He had touched her with intimacy she had not expected, maybe had never known, but he had not made the slightest caress on her heart. He had wanted only a kiss, a small sign of her affection. Instead he had pushed her over the edge of some abyss and now she was fully lost to him.

  He should leave her. There were others. For a moment, he considered Aelwynn, the hot salve of her willing mouth around the tortured, unrelieved part of him-and the emptiness stabbed at him again. Not what he wanted, that emptiness. Far more agony than the throb of thwarted lovemaking. Did Thea know that emptiness? Or was that damned Locksley so full within her that there was no room for loneliness? Could she not welcome the love of a man?

  Love? No, of course not. Nottingham checked himself and pushed the blunder of thought aside. She was Locksley's woman. And maybe not his alone. Maybe she also gave herself to that Little creature. That behemoth with the inappropriate name. Or Scathlocke. Or the whole bleeding camp.

  His desire curdled within him, becoming something black and foul. Bastard outlaws! Did she really prefer that life to the protection he could give her? Had her dalliance with Locksley taken her reason so thoroughly? Had their woodland trysts claimed her affections until she had none to spare? And if so, what was Locksley's charm? Maybe she was captivated only by the secrecy of it, the danger of being with him. She would know danger; that he promised. He would raise the bounty on Locksley's head and not be satisfied until the outlaw's entrails were spilled and torched and his head staked above the castle gate.

  He bounded from the bed, mindless of his disheveled clothes. She crouched backward into the corner, and his lips parted in a cold, sardonic smile. "Do not fear. I will not ravish you, although you tempt me, woman. You do tempt me. My miserable, battered spirit longs for something willing, possibly even eager. Damned if I will lay myself open only to have you batter me with your lies and your schemes and your inept designs. Damned if I will forfeit all I have worked for to have a reluctant body in my bed. The castle swells with women who will gladly obey my every whim, who even find it pleasant. What an inflated price you put on your affections, that I might buy them only with my honor-"

  "Your honor?"

  "What will it take to win you, Thea? Surely you have some purpose behind this belated refusal. You gave yourself to me because you wanted me. You satisfied yourself with me-no, do not deny it. I have felt a woman's release. Do not think me a stranger to that. No, there is some other game at play here. What is it? Want me, desire me, but deny me-for what purpose? What are you here for?"

  "I am your surgeon." Sarcasm dripped off her words like thick honey.

  "And what else?"

  "Nothing else."

  "Tomorrow the castle will say you are my bedmate."

  "They say it already."

  "Now it will be true." His tone was hostile, superior, everything he knew she had come to hate in him. "And what do you hope to buy with that privilege? His pardon? Locksley's? John Little's? Their pardons, the whole thieving, murdering lot of them? Would you trade yourself for that?"

  The air cracked and his head whipped to one side, the fiery imprint of her hand burning across his cheek and mouth. He felt the inside of his lip tear against his teeth and tasted the saltiness of blood.

  "I am not Robin's whore. Or John's. Or yours. Or any man's that I can be bartered for like horseflesh or political favor. You got what you wanted, Sheriff. A turn in my bed. My submission to your renowned skills in seduction. Do you not think I've been pleasured by a man before like-like-in that way? What I gave you-what you took from me-it came with no price, for I want nothing from you, have wanted nothing from you since the beginning, ever, except freedom to go."

  "Which you cannot have." He sucked at the split in his lip and swallowed bitterly.

  "If I plague you so, release me! If I am such a burden you can do naught now but speak to me in anger-"

  "When have I not spoken to you in anger, woman, save those mewling endearments? And those I regret more than you know. At least anger is the truth."

  Her face drained of color, as if he had laid a hand to her, and he hated himself for causing that. Hated the choler that poured from him.

  Her words were but a whisper, as if she spoke them to herself. "Then, truly, I cannot leave."

  She lifted her chin to him and squared her shoulders, and the gesture pierced him more surely than any spiteful outburst. When she spoke, it was with a quiet calm, her voice clear and unwavering. "If I have no hope of freedom or reprieve, I will bear that. But I beg you for theirs. They've done you no wrong this night. Your anger, whether justified or not, is at me. Leave them out of this."

  "So you admit it, finally."

  "I admit nothing."

  "You admit your sympathies are with them. Is that not enough? Surely you have come a long way from denying they even exist."

  He watched the color rise in her cheeks, saw the defiant set of her jaw and eyes, blazing like twilight sky streaked with lightning, and wanted her more than ever.

  "Spare them," she asked in a tone more resembling command than plea.

  His chest contacted around an aborted spasm of laughter, his brow arched in disbelief at her daring. "What little taste I had of you was not worth that. They are outlaws. Then. Now. Still. Nothing changes that. And your affiliation with them, your aid and succor to the first one of them from now henceforth, I shall consider criminal as well. Criminal and punishable."

  He paused and feigned a smile he did not feel. His voice dropped to a meaningful whisper. "Let the threat of gaol help you reconsider the wisdom of bartering your favor. Maybe in time I will be more amenable to the notion. Only know this, Thea: should that time arrive, I will expect more than I received tonight."

  She swirled away from him and opened the door of her chamber to such a violent draft of air that the rushes eddied at her bare feet and tendrils of hair stirred about her face. He ached for some stinging rejoinder full of sweet venom, the transparent mask for her true feelings-ached for it now, more than he ached to be inside her. Of all he expected, silence was the least of it.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. She had cost him. More than forfeiture of her body, which he had not wanted to give, more than the outlaws' pardon, which he would not give, more than she knew. For once, anger was no opiate. The wrath he used to cover himself, like styptic to wounds, filling every crevice where fragile feeling might have existed-none of it was enough. He left her room without looking back, and burst through the doorway into the corridor. He backhanded the guard who stood there and strode down the hall toward his chamber.

  Mildthryth waited at his door, her round face drawn with concern. "I have waited, my lord. There is word adrift-"

  He snatched the front of the old woman's tunic in his closed fist and bent low to her, hissing words in a spew of rage. "Go to her. Stay with her. Make her your lady and sleep at the foot of her bed."

  "My lord?"

  "For, by Christ, I will have the bitch. Or kill her. And I cannot tell you now which would please me more."

  ~*~

  "I agree. He's far too interested in her," Aelwynn said in a bored tone.

  Gisborne favored the Sheriff's leman with a withering look. With liquid, snake-like movements, he uncoiled his limbs from hers and slid from their shared furs. He rose to his feet, arched his back to dispel the tightness along his spine, and swallowed a hearty gulp of ale from the tankard on the bedside table.
<
br />   "You sound unconcerned," he grumbled, swiping his forearm across his dripping chin and passing the cup to the woman.

  Alewynn's sulfur-gold eyes flickered toward the Sheriff's cousin as she accepted the drink. He was not unappealing, she noted as she let the lukewarm beverage wash the taste of him from her mouth. His muscles were tight, corded with tension and a sinewy strength. In that, he was not unlike Nottingham, although Guy was younger and smaller by inches. Her red lips curved up as her pointed tongue licked at the brew's foam. In height, as well, she thought.

  Unfortunately, the lieutenant's testiness had increased tenfold of late, his physical prowess had decreased similarly, and tonight he had been too preoccupied to give more than a cursory performance. Nothing had passed between them in the last hour that had pleasured her, and it was a rare sennight when she could not find her lust quenched by one of them.

  "So she's in his chamber," she said, stroking the inside of her thigh with distracted abandon. "She's a scrawny, unwilling thing. He'll be calling for me before the night is past."

  "Willingness has never been one of his requirements," Gisborne fumed. At the very moment he should be reaping the satisfaction of having again bedded the Sheriff's whore, Nottingham was likely beyond caring.

  "You're unduly vexed tonight, Lieutenant," she purred. "One would think you envied him the little wretch."

  Gisborne flashed her a dangerous glare, and again Aelwynn was struck by the cousins' similar expressions: perpetual frowns, lightened only infrequently by mirthless smiles. Yet there existed such a stark contrast in coloring. Gisborne's wan complexion and watery-pale eyes were but a pallid foil for Nottingham's ebony hair and golden skin. Gisborne shared little of his cousin's magnetic intensity and none of his ambition. Even his anger was but a frail imitation of the Sheriff's tantrums.