by Sue Wilson
Damn! "Thea-" Damn her! The Sheriff of Nottingham was stronger than this. He mastered women. He mastered himself! He did not succumb-would not-
Nottingham prayed for resolve he never had, never wanted, never needed before. Scraping together every failing wit he possessed, he gripped the bunched woolen skirts at her hips, tore her from her wanton posture astride him, and wrestled her to the ground beneath him.
"You don't like this, do you, Sheriff?" she asked, dark lashes veiling her indigo eyes. "A woman in control?"
"On the contrary, Thea. I like it far too much. But in Nottingham. In my castle. Near a fire." He rocked against her, unable to stop despite his words, bending her body to his with the rhythm of the grasses swaying in the wind. "Not in Sherwood, temptress."
He arched his hips against her, watched her bite back a sob of pleasure. A flicker of confusion marred the delight in her eyes.
"This is where it happens, is it not?" he continued. "You give some subtle sign and they come springing from bushes, swooping down from trees. Six of them. Maybe more. Longbows nocked. Trained on my back."
Hard. Cruel. Words grasped like straws in the wind to defend himself against her. He hated himself for saying them, hated the blithe sound of them slicing through her, their meaning robbing her of pleasure.
Tears sprang to her eyes. "No! No! Damn you for the vile, stubborn man you are!"
"Thea-"
"If you think-if you still think-"
"Thea-we cannot-I cannot-"
"Bastard!"
"God help me-I will not-"
The throb of interruption sliced deep and low into his body, nothing in comparison to the hurt and bitterness on her face. With an effort, he pushed himself away, forsaking the feel of her, and sat back on his heels. White-knuckled fists lay on his knees, denying the anguish he felt.
"My vow," he muttered, knowing it was a feeble excuse.
"Your vow?" she challenged. "And not some driven need to accuse me with every breath?"
"I swore to you, to myself, that as long as you were his-"
"Yes, damn you." Her voice was ragged. "As long as I am 'his.' Accusation, indictment, sentence-passed in one swift, merciless decree. How like you, Nottingham, trying so blindly, so in vain, to be judge and executioner both."
"I would have you free of-"
"Yes, so you swore. Free of them, of Robin. Yet you are more his prisoner than I."
He dared a moment's glance at her, then shut his eyes tightly, willing blindness and numbness, an end to the agony of not having her. The image of her burned through the blackness, an apparition that would not fade any more than the memory of her touch.
"Is it so selfish a thing to want to keep you from him? Christ, Thea, this is his place, his forest, his damnable brook. The very grass we lie upon is his. And you-you will not let me forget."
"You will not let yourself forget."
He stared at her, rage and self-loathing building a wall between them.
"I was not thinking of Robin of Locksley, Sheriff. Not the whole of the day. Certainly not while I lay with you. I'm surprised that you were."
Enough of an accusation to silence him. He looked away.
"You will not let it be," she said. The crimson flush of desire gave way to one of outrage and insult, and anger choked the shallow, uneven breaths of fading passion. Thea swiped at the stray leaves caught in her tousled hair. "This obsession drives you like some merciless taskmaster that will not let you go. And it comes between us at every turn. When I think of you, it is there-what you truly believe of me behind your courtier's words and kisses. Even now. Even when-when-"
"I am no different from other men," he struck back. "I want a woman to myself. Her body, yes, but more than that-"
"And I am no different from other women. I want the man I am with to be so full of me he wants nothing else, thinks of nothing else, of no one else-"
She stopped suddenly, as though she'd confessed more than she'd intended.
With the awkwardness of broken intimacy, she drew her legs beneath her and tucked herself into a tight, huddled knot. She tore grasses from the ground and looked away, gaze fixed on the hazy horizon.
"You don't trust me," she said. "You don't even trust what I give you. Perhaps it is because you are insincere that you can conceive of nothing else but insincerity in those around you. Because you yourself are untrustworthy."
"Or maybe I've not known such trust given to me."
"Yes, Sheriff," she said bitterly, "you have. For a time, there-" She glanced at the grasses, bent and flattened by the weight of their bodies. "I did trust you. With my body, with my heart. You say Sherwood is his place, but you forget. It is mine, too, and I wanted you, here, would have lain with you, here. What more trust can you demand of me?"
He said nothing, swallowing the impact of her words without expression.
She struggled to her feet. The green folds of her kirtle were inky-black, heavy with water, clinging to her legs like the memory of her body clung to his mind.
"You could leave me here," she suggested with a brittle laugh. "An easy end to your woes. Go back to Nottingham where you can bed your wenches without care for their trust or affection."
Transfixed, the Sheriff watched her, remembering the softness of wool and linen and bare skin, imagining the longed-for feel of her slender legs parting, wrapping around his hips-
She shook out her skirts, brushing his memory, his dream, away. "Failing that, the next time you think to bed me, leave Robin of Locksley behind."
His gaze broke sharply, as something knotted painfully deep in his chest, something akin to an arrow piercing armor and flesh. She had laid him open with aim as sure as any outlaw archer, stripped him of the one excuse he'd always had for the failure between them.
He went from knees to feet stiffly, doing everything in his power to keep from looking at her, to check the craving that threatened to engulf him at the sight of her. He whistled sharply for Chimera and waited for the stallion to cross the stream.
The sun had already dipped down below the tree line, taking warmth with it. As daylight left them, Thea spoke, her voice hushed. "We've come too far into the wood. We'll not reach Nottingham before nightfall."
Truth, and yet the truth pained him, forcing acknowledgment out into the open. His earlier good humor had let her take them farther into the forest than he ever intended. At best, he had misjudged the hours left in the day. At worst, his desire had eaten away what foresight and caution he had possessed. Either way, darkness was creeping through the aging sentinels of oak and birch.
The alehouse at Blidworth lay far behind them; the inn at Worksop too far ahead. He had neither torch nor bedroll, and what little remained of his pride was patched together with nothing more than grim-lipped stubbornness.
"We press on," he said, mounting the warhorse and reaching his arm down to her.
Thea settled behind him on the saddle, both legs dangling, her sigh rustling like the soughing of the breeze as the night winds rose.
"There is the abandoned swineherd's hut," she reminded him. "Through there." She gestured ahead of them to a fork in the main-traveled road where a thin dribble of a trail branched off into deeper wood.
He hesitated, suspicion rising, overtaking the possibility of protection the dwelling could offer. A trap? Another ambush? It was a small miracle he had come this far without being picked off by one of her hooded allies. In a day where everything had gone amiss, what more could he expect?
He knew she sensed his delay and the reason for it. With each minute he stalled, distrust seeped from him, filling the air between them with thick, palpable uneasiness. He half-turned in the saddle to face the irritation emblazoned on her features.
"Don't be a fool," she lashed out. "No one can venture through Sherwood at night."
"But you know the paths so well." An accusation wrapped in silk, as easily a curse as a compliment. Nottingham saw her lips tighten against the verbal blow and regretted the remark.
Glibness seemed to have deserted him, along with the ease with which he usually controlled women.
Her dark brows drew low over eyes that matched the blue of the hastening dusk. "I also know enough to seek shelter in the dark. Loosed arrows are the least of what you need fear after the sun is down."
Fatigue showed through the venom of her reply. He felt it himself, tiredness from the day's activity overlaid with weariness at the dismal prospect of the eve ahead.
How difficult it would be if they stopped now, if he let himself spend the night in the close confines of a hut with a woman he could not have, could not even take. Damn, but this was an ill-starred day. Had the planets all risen up in protest against his merest hint of good fortune?
"How far?" he relented.
"Just ahead." She sat immobile and proud, as if she had ripped another victory from him. And maybe she had.
This was Sherwood, her domain. A God-forsaken nightmare of a place to be, and she not the safest of consorts.
He steeled himself against a shiver of premonition and veered Chimera into the tangle of vines and thorny hedges that guarded the obscure path.
The hut turned out to be no more than a shelter of woven branches enclosing a natural recess formed by a low overhang of rock. Long ago, some enterprising swineherd had daubed a mixture of mud and leaves in the cracks between the branches, but time had eroded the best of his efforts. The hut leaned precariously on one side, and most of the front wall was missing. Only a pile of rubble and twigs hinted that the structure had ever been more than a hastily constructed lean-to.
Their arrival and Chimera's pawing as they dismounted sent squirrels and dormice scurrying from their nests within the hut. The Sheriff's arched brow spoke volumes for his assessment of their night's accommodations.
"It has fallen into some disrepair since last I saw it," Thea admitted, "but at least it's shelter."
"After a fashion."
She pointed to a circle whose boundary was nearly intact save a few scattered stones. "There are the remnants of the firepit."
"Or some Druid's sacrificial altar," Nottingham grumbled, kicking at the charred remains of a log.
"Stop complaining. There's deadfall, as much as you need, twigs and dry moss for kindling. And the flint stone-" Thea lifted a rock, drew out the firestarter, and held it out to him.
"You know the place well," he said.
"I knew it. For a time."
"And the swineherd who used it? Gone on to more devilish deeds?" He spied the tremor in her outstretched hand and the dilation of pupils darkening her eyes. Suddenly, he did not want the truth from her, would have traded his sheriffdom for a lie.
"I don't know," she said tersely. "Gone. The place has been abandoned for several seasons. Perhaps the feeding was better elsewhere."
"Perhaps."
"Well, it's deserted now. What more do you want?"
She thrust the flint stone into his hand and turned her back in a huff. Bending low, she entered the hut, shaking her skirts and poking her slippered toe into cobwebbed corners to ensure the dwelling was emptied of its crawling denizens.
Nottingham watched her from behind, curious and more than a little amused at her needless domesticity. What did he care about the cursed hut's cleanliness when his mind was on how he would survive the night with her?
He tugged Chimera's reins and led the stallion down to a nearby brook. Still half-expecting a midnight ambush, the Sheriff was reluctant to unsaddle the horse, but he let him drink his fill.
"Sorry to be in Sherwood, old friend?" he said, gazing back at the hut. Through the gleam of dusk, he could see Thea squat and scoop an armful of leaves into the deep pocket she had made of her skirts, then rise and enter the hut again.
"I, too," he continued, as if the stallion had spoken in turn, "and especially with that one. Damn if the woman has not begun some dreaded alchemy on me. By morn, I will be at war with myself more than with her. God, but she makes a mockery of my every attempt at indifference. And to think, I could have lain with her on goose down and silk and furs. Tonight it will be forest debris instead-if she lets me near her at all."
Chimera lifted his head and snorted an equine opinion of the Sheriff's dilemma. Nottingham laughed ruefully. "You don't have to agree with me, old ghost." He patted the stallion's neck, led him back to the clearing, and looped the reins through a low-lying limb.
He met Thea as she crouched to leave the hut, and ducked his head inside long enough to determine her progress. Several piles of brown and yellowing leaves lay heaped in the beginnings of a makeshift mattress. A narrow makeshift mattress.
"You don't expect me to sleep outside this veritable palace of luxury?" Nottingham stooped low and stepped back out of the hut just as Thea passed past him with another skirtful of leaves.
"The hut was made for one," she replied, not sparing him a backward glance. The leaves tumbled from her lap as she knelt and smoothed them into a passable bed.
"But we are two."
"There isn't room."
"Make room." He meant the words as an order, had delivered them with his best tyrannical sternness, yet she rose and looked squarely at him, chin raised in defiance. A host of unwanted responses slammed through his body.
How was it possible for her to undermine him with no more than a gesture? He noticed the pulse beating in the hollow of her throat, saw her swallow hard before she spoke.
"There is only room for one," she repeated tightly, then gathered up an armful of the forest stuffing and threw it in his direction.
He fended off the barrage of leaves with one arm raised to shield his face, then dived for her and wrestled her back into the cushion of the leaves.
He ignored her gasp of protest and deftly avoided the futile kicks she aimed at him through the snarl of her skirts. Clasping her to him, he rolled them over, once, and again, sending dried leaves swirling until there was nothing left of her carefully heaped bed but wild disarray.
Somehow, of all the mistakes he had made that day, this was the gravest.
She lay beneath him, breasts heaving against his chest, the dark blue of her eyes firing him with angry sparks. And behind the anger, disguised so well from habit alone, the glint of every tender feeling she would not give him.
He pushed himself to his knees, aroused and aching and not caring that she knew. He gestured around them at the leaves strewn over the hut's floor.
"Now there is room for two."
~*~
Why did his words affect her so? They were no more than his usual, meaningless excuse for wit, half banter, half flirtation, imbued as always with a coarser meaning Thea could not help but see. She should have become accustomed to his quips and taunts by now.
Maybe it was not his words at all, but the aftermath of the whirlwind they'd created among the leaves, of the fleeting moment when he'd held her close, buried her against the lean hardness of his body. The last of the leaves drifted down, wheeling in slow spirals to land with the others.
Tenderly he reached up and plucked one from her tangled braid, brushed it against her lips. She inhaled deeply. The breath came out in ragged bursts.
Dear God, what did he want of her now, playing at lovers' games when he forbade it just moments ago? What purpose? For he had a purpose-he always had a purpose-this man who would sooner be caught without honor than without motive.
She tried to shake herself free of the web of feeling he'd woven around her. This was the danger of him, the sly, manipulative way of the man. Even now he knelt between her open legs, gazing at her with such unabashed longing that her breath caught hot in her throat and stayed there, smoldering, making words impossible.
Something in his dark eyes told her that words, that protest, was useless. He knew, as did she, that they had both abandoned every guise of indifference back by the creek's edge. Her passion, so diligently masked as loathing; her desire, as intense as his, shoved deep inside where it burned like a dark secret-he had exposed it all, reveled in it like a
man thirsty for the truth of her feeling-
And then denied himself. The Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham, who denied himself nothing.
A war of lust and conscience played out in the planes of his face, once elegant lines of cheekbone and jaw now rugged and intense with restraint. The world seemed to have stopped around them, making Thea mindful of every quickened breath, of the way her breasts ached for his touch, of the way her skirts lay in a woolen puddle at mid-thigh.
If she wanted, she could undo him with a word, a gesture, a single, brazen caress, this Sheriff she had been so sure she hated, who gazed at her, heavy with wanting, bruised with the weight of unspent seed. She could have him, command him against his own indomitable will, vanquish him.
Yet she had not the heart to do so. If anything, she must spare him, and end his struggle-and hers. For, God in heaven, she could not live, wanting the bastard so.
She groped for the edge of her hem, trying to push it down over the unseemly expanse of bare skin. He captured her hand, fingers lacing hers immobile, settling on her flesh like a firebrand.
"Your vow-your all-important vow not to take me," she stammered. "Not until-until-"
He raised a brow, the cool, polished gesture at odds with his disheveled appearance, bits of twigs and leaves clinging to his clothes and in his matted hair.
"I did not vow not to look." His gaze pored over her, missing nothing, sparing her nothing of its intensity.
She wrested her fingers away from the snare of his hand and clutched at his sleeve, hoping to prevent him from moving the short distance to the juncture of her thighs where her body was sure to proclaim how little his vow meant to her.
He made no further move save to gather in the sight of her lying amidst the leaves, memorizing her with a peculiar wistfulness that tore through her more surely than his most blatant seduction.
There was never a time when she had longed more to give him what he wanted, to part her lips beneath his and bring his hand to her breast, for this was no war between them. It was not even a game-
Then his wistfulness disappeared, so rapidly replaced by hard cynicism that it seemed she'd dreamed the yearning there only because she wanted it so badly.