Excerpt Day: Heart of a Forest by Angelia Sparrow & Naomi Brooks

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Heart of a Forest by Angelia Sparrow & Naomi Brooks
Release Date: July 24, 2009
Publisher: Ellora’s Cave
Publisher Link: http://www.jasminejade.com/m-489-angelia-sparrow.aspx

Blurb: In 1199, King Richard the Lion-Hearted lay dying in France. He commanded his lover, Sir David of Doncaster, to protect his small son by any means necessary. Marion Fitzroy, princess of the blood on the wrong side of the blankets, now lives a constrained life in Nottingham castle, dreaming of her childhood betrothed, the son of the Earl of Locksley. As the Barons’ War rages around her uncle King John, her dispossessed fiancé—now called Robin Hood—and his merry irregulars make life miserable for Phillip, the sheriff of Nottingham. And fires Marion’s blood. Robin, for his part, is about to learn the secret that Marion guards with her life. Thwarting Phillip’s gambits for Marion’s hand, a doubled price on his head, even shooting for an arrow of pure gold all pale next to the pleasures to be had under Marion’s skirts, deep in the heart of Sherwood Forest. But Marion is no ordinary woman, no ordinary princess. In fact, her body isn’t a woman's at all.

Excerpt:

Marion brushed her hair, thinking on the oddities of the day. Bess had already retired. She heard a bird call from the balcony, but surely no lark was abroad at this late hour.

She set the hairbrush aside and hurried out. A cloaked figure hovered at the edge of the balcony. She withdrew in fright. The handsome young butcher pulled back his hood and clung to the rail, his legs entangled in the ivy that grew on the tower.

"Mad and merry butcher, you take an unwarranted chance with your neck." She looked down, knowing it was many feet to the ground.

He smiled at her, his teeth white within his yellow beard. "A worthy risk to finally see my lady this close." He took one hand of hers and kissed it.
Marion gasped both at the shivers that ran over her from the brush of his lips and at his precarious hold. "Caution! Both hands on the rail or the vine. I would not see you fall." She stepped closer and did not try taking his hand from hers. "´Twould be a shame to lose you before I know your name."

He swung up, throwing his long legs in their green hose over the rail and landing on his feet before her. He favored her with a proper bow, as courtly as any she had seen in the Great Hall. His voice was sweet as the birds in the morning as he said, "Robin, my lady. I am Robin."

She inclined her head in acknowledgment. She knew the name. Bess had told her this story almost as often as that of her parents. "My lord Locksley," she said, her voice soft and reverent, using his proper title. She offered her hand again. "Lady Marion FitzRoy, your betrothed." She gave him a sweet smile.

His eyes went very large and he grasped the rail for support. "My...betrothed?" After a moment of thought, he recovered. "Indeed, I had forgotten. We were, seven? Eight?" He took her hand and she shivered again in the strong grip. "A lovely surprise to be reminded. And to see you in something other than tangled braids and a grubby dress suitable for playing tag in the fields of Locksley with a wild boy." He kissed her hand again, pausing to breathe over her wrist. "So soft. I knew you would be." His eyes twinkled as he looked up. "Are you entirely soft or can you still chase me down over three fields and wrestle me to the ground?"

Marion blushed at the reminder of her unladylike childhood. "My lord Nottingham does not allow me out, so there can be no chance to learn the answer. I´d have been down for a kiss from a good tight butcher, else."

"I didn´t coax you well enough to sneak out then. I tried my best." Robin looked entirely crestfallen.

Marion took his other hand with her free one. "Please, my lord, understand, I am locked in. Bess is allowed out, but my uncle, the king, says naught should happen to me. The war goes badly. Alas, Bess is a poor messenger." She gave him her naughtiest smile, knowing full well what came next, even if she didn´t know what came after that.

Robin laughed and the sound caused a knot to form low in her belly. Not fear, but excitement sent waves through her all hot and cold by turns. "Shall I remedy that?" He drew her closer and wrapped his arms around her waist. She felt as if she had spun around and around too fast, as she had on that long-ago betrothal day, and then fallen backward into soft hay to let the sky spin above her. It would not do to show these feelings. She was a princess.

Instead of melting against him like the last patch of snow in the April sunshine, she gave him a saucy look and a wicked smile. "Have you still three pennyworths of meat about you? For it was fine beef." She wanted to tease and flirt tonight. Despite her usual behavior, she heard, overheard and remembered everything, from the words of a bawdy song to the conversations the Sheriff thought her too dim to grasp.

Robin sighed. "Only a bit of kidney, too squashed to sell. I was going to pass it to a beggar as I left town." He gave her a wicked smile. "Unless my lady´s mind was on a bit of meat better suited to the wedding feast?"

Marion giggled. He was indeed a match for her. "I daresay that bit will have to roast a little longer. But allow me to pay you for that kidney." She slid her arms around his neck, feeling his strong shoulders and the heat of his skin even through the cloth. "And in full." Boldly, Marion kissed him, pressing her lips to his for a long moment. He tasted wild, of wood and wind and forest. As he drew her closer, lightning filled her body. The scent of him, leather and blood, sweat and man, made her head swim. She pulled back and smiled. "That is how the girls do it, is it not? That is what I saw. Although it is not quite the one you bade Bess give to me."

"Aye, let me deliver that one to you."

Robin pulled her so close she could feel his large body all against her own. Her prick, stirring from the moment he had arrived, now came fully awake. She could feel his as well and a strong desire to hold it seized her. But that was far too forward.

He kissed her, bending her back just a little with the force of it. His mouth moved hotly on hers, his tongue brushing her lips. She parted them a little and he slipped inside. His tongue pressed hers and then up to the roof of her mouth. She reeled from excitement, her heat rising until she thought she might faint. She knew he would hold her if she did and that too excited her.

Her breath came in short sharp bursts when he released her, as if she had run up all the stairs to the tower. She smiled at him, his face still above hers and very close. "Does a princess of the blood kiss as well as a peasant girl?" she whispered.

Robin smiled and shook his head. "Nay. Better, much better. As far beyond that milkmaid who turned you red as the moon is beyond the millpond."