Page 58 of Wench

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.