Chapter 17 #2
‘Fae women aren’t nearly as prudish as you mortals,’ he chuckles. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’
She doesn’t bother responding. Instead, she lunges, foot slicing low toward his shin. He dodges effortlessly and laughs. She pivots and drives a fist toward his ribs. He catches her wrist mid-air and twists it, gentle but firm, forcing her to step into him.
Lox is toying with her.
‘You’re getting better.’ He smiles.
‘Don’t patronize me.’
Marian doesn’t want compliments. She wants to win. Just once. One clean strike, one moment where she is not the one caged beneath someone else’s strength.
She feints right, ducks low, then sweeps at his legs again.
He leaps over the kick. As she rises, he grabs her waist and spins her until she slams into him chest-to-chest. She can feel the solid heat of him, the lean muscle and coiled power beneath his tunic.
His hand is at the small of her back, balancing them both, but she can tell he’s relaxed.
Overconfident that she won’t land a blow.
So she changes tactics.
Her voice comes out quiet, but it cuts through the clearing like a knife. ‘Do you know what those men would have done to me if you hadn’t come?’
Lox stiffens. His hand doesn’t move from her, but his fingers dig into the linen.
‘They were going to use me up until there was nothing left. One of them—’ Her throat catches but she forces it out, every word deliberate, and trembling with memory. ‘He said he’d never heard a sound as sweet as my screaming.’
‘That’s enough, Marian.’ Lox’s expression shatters. No more teasing. No more control. There is a wildness in his eyes, and for a breath, she swears the grass ripples beneath them in response.
‘Another said he liked the fight in me,’ she presses, fingers twisting against his chest. ‘That he wanted to see how long it would take before I broke.’
‘Stop it!’ Lox releases her and takes several measured steps backward, wrath and rage radiating off him.
‘It wouldn’t have ended quickly,’ Marian finishes, her voice hushed but unrelenting, her breath trembling with the effort not to look away. ‘They wanted me wrecked, Lox. A warning left in the woods for what happens to women who forget their place.’
At that, she lunges and, instead of merely moving out of the way, Lox responds with a flurry of movement.
He swings at her shoulder, her stomach, but Marian’s already moving out of the way.
His swings are unfocused and scattered, as if this is the only outlet that will provide the release he needs.
She ducks into him, letting his momentum overshoot.
Before he can correct, she spins low and holds her centre like Allen taught her, and plants her foot in front of his.
He stumbles and spins around.
Marian drives upward, twisting with all her strength, and sends him crashing to the ground with a grunt of surprise. Not willing to give him a moment to recover, she lets gravity take her down on top of him, ignoring the way her skirt rides upward as she straddles him.
For one suspended heartbeat, neither of them moves.
Marian blinks down at him, adrenaline pulsing through her veins like wildfire. The sun filters through the trees in flickers, casting gold across Lox’s chest beneath her palms. His tunic clings to the carved plane of his torso. Beneath her, he’s hot and solid and very, very still.
Lox stares up at her like she’s something holy and haunted.
‘Got you,’ she breathes.
The heat of his body seeps through the bare skin of her thighs. It’s not just the rush of the fight that lingers, it’s the way he’s looking at her. Like she’s not a broken girl learning how to stand, but something wild and dangerous that dared to rise from the dirt.
‘You win,’ he whispers. His gaze is searing and locked on her mouth.
Marian stares down at him, her hands still splayed across his chest, feeling the rise and fall of each ragged breath.
She’s suddenly aware of every point of contact – her knees pressing into his hips, the thrum of blood where her palms rest against his heart.
She tells herself it’s just the remnants of the fight, the echo of adrenaline, but the truth pulses low in her belly, thick and warm and terrifyingly alive.
Lox’s hands twitch at his sides, as if he’s desperate to touch her.
And maybe it’s that restraint that breaks something open inside her, because Marian leans forward just enough that her hair falls around them like a veil.
Her breath grazes his cheek, and she watches the way his throat dips when he swallows, how his lashes flutter like he’s desperate to close them fully and surrender.
‘Did you let me win?’ she murmurs.
‘That’s not in my nature.’ His fingers flex before one hand settles against her waist, anchoring her to him.
The other he rests against the curve of her jaw, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth – a mirror of how he touched her in their first meeting.
When she doesn’t flinch or pull away, he lets his hand slide into the loose tangle of her curls, twisting around the strands.
He gives it a gentle tug, and when she sighs, he pulls her down to him.
Their mouths meet with a force that steals the breath from her lungs.
It isn’t soft. It isn’t hesitant. It is full of fire and hunger.
She kisses him like it’s instinct, her hands fisting in the damp linen of his shirt as she shifts against him. His body arches into hers, and she can feel exactly what she’s doing to him.
The kiss grows frantic, his mouth moving along her jaw and down her neck.
His hands slide down, one gripping her thigh, the other gripping the back of her tunic and tugging it upward until his fingers find bare skin at her waist. His palm is calloused and hot and utterly unrelenting.
When he drags it up her spine, she releases a soft, desperate sound she doesn’t recognize.
Clothes are an obstacle. Her tunic is already halfway off her shoulder when he drags the neckline further down with his teeth, baring her collarbone to the light.
His mouth finds the curve of it in the next breath, lips greedy, his tongue flicking against the salt on her skin.
She whimpers, digging her fingers into his hair, pulling him closer, and he groans like she’s breaking him.
Their legs tangle. Her knees tighten against his waist, and his hands are everywhere now – breasts, ribs, thighs – clawing at her like a drowning man might reach for shore. When his palm skims beneath the hem of her skirt and travels along the inside of her thigh, Marian nearly comes undone.
‘Say it again,’ she pants, dragging her mouth along the line of his jaw, the scrape of stubble raw and delicious.
‘You win, Marian,’ he moans, his voice low and rough against her neck. ‘Now, let me show you your prize.’
Lox’s hand curls around the base of her neck, tugging just enough to make her gasp, as he flips her beneath him. Their bodies roll in a blur of heat and breathless laughter. Now it’s his weight above her, braced on forearms, lips parted, eyes dark with need.
The world narrows to the heat between their bodies, the rasp of linen, the damp scent of moss and sweat and desire.
Her fingers twist into the fabric at his collar, his shirt pulled half off his shoulders, baring bronzed skin inked with faint vines that seem to pulse with life.
Her nails dig into his shoulders like he’s the last stable thing in a world built to break her.
She rolls her body against him and he groans into her mouth, sending a bolt of want straight through her core.
Marian kisses him like she needs to forget, and Lox kisses her like he’s desperate to remember.
‘Tell me to stop,’ he groans against her, as his fingers drag down the soft swell of her stomach, teasing at the waistband of her skirt.
The smile that stretches across Marian’s mouth would make a nun blush.
‘That’s not in my nature,’ she whispers.
Lox kisses her with the kind of hunger that unspools every careful knot she’s tied around herself.
His teeth nip at her lower lip before his tongue coaxes her mouth open with a force that leaves no room for doubt.
Her body answers, hips tilting up to meet the cradle of his, and the friction between them sparks white-hot.
It feels like her skin is too small to hold what’s surging through her.
‘Marian.’ He whispers her name like a prayer spat from a sinner’s mouth. His eyes burn, wild and soft all at once, pupils blown wide, as if he’s drunk on her.
The sunlight spins gold across his face, catching in the ends of his hair and casting a halo over the dangerous line of his jaw.
‘You drive me mad,’ he says, nipping at her ear.
‘Then stop pretending you’re sane,’ she moans. Her legs wrap around his waist and pull him closer.
He grunts, hips grinding down, and her head falls back with a cry, pleasure cresting so sharp that it steals her voice.
His hand curls behind her knee, tilting her hips up, and the sudden press of him, with too little between them, makes her roar again, need ripping through her like a tide she can’t wait to drown in.
But before Marian can lose herself entirely to the way his body bears down on hers, a voice cuts through the clearing like an arrow loosed too close.
‘You fucking traitor.’