Maybe posting mid-week isn't such a good idea. It looks like people are too busy with school and work and so on to read fanfiction. Oh well! I'm just about finished writing this story, and when it's finished I'll post twice a week until the whole thing is done. Since the story is going to be about ten or eleven chapters long, it wouldn't be fair to put up just one chapter a week and make you wait two months just to get to read the whole thing. Until then, the standard Friday Update rule applies.

Disclaimer: Robin Hood and the characters therein are not my property.

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Warmth. That was the first thing he was aware of as he foggily roused from a pleasantly deep sleep. He forgot momentarily where he was, but memory returned in a rush as the sunlight leaked in through the little porthole high up on the cupboard wall; he was on the floor beside two crates, with the warm and heady smell of sex hanging in the air around him. He shifted slightly under the heavy weight of his cloak and the shawl and clothing heaped on top of him, and then realized that his arms were firmly wrapped around…

Djaq made the smallest, quietest little noise as she snuggled closer to him in her sleep. He looked down at her, laying there next to him on her stomach with her arms tucked under her sleeping body; her head was turned into his shoulder, warming him with her steady, even breathing. Her hair was deliciously rumpled from sleep and their rough play, her cheeks rosy and pink—from here he could see the broken skin and dark, circular bruise beginning to form on her right shoulder where he'd bitten her the night before. He stroked the mark gently, carefully, with his fingertips and wished that he hadn't done it, hadn't marred her beautiful body in the heat of passion like he was some kind of wild animal.

He moved his hand, dancing his fingers delicately over her skin around to the back of her shoulder and down the dip of her spine, all the way down to her buttocks—and delighted in the little shiver that coursed over her body under his touch, and in watching the goosebumps raise on her flesh in the path of his fingers. He saw a tiny little smile settle across her lips, then heard her sigh gently and murmur something incoherently in her sleep.

He doubted that there was ever a more beautiful woman anywhere in the entire world. She was completely perfect.

She wiggled even closer to him, tightening the grip on his legs with her own, trying to get even closer to him, do away with that pesky empty air between them. Will smiled, and softly dragged his fingernails up her back again and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, hugging her close. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathed her uniquely spicy scent, kissed her shoulder.

There was no sound, just the quiet creaking of the ship as it rocked gently along the way. The moment was peaceful and beautiful and serene and wonderful.

He began to doze again in the wonderful peace of this moment, sighing contentedly against her hair and using his free hand to pull her shawl and his cloak up around them for a little bit of extra warmth.

With his head all fuzzy, and being in his own little world and not completely on solid ground, he didn't hear the voices outside their little cupboard, or the footsteps, or—

The door opened suddenly, bashing him soundly in the back.

"Ow!" He moaned, arching away from the door and rubbing the sore spot on the bottom of his back where it had hit him. He turned, awkwardly trying to turn over and look behind him at the intruder while maintaining both his and Djaq's dignity under their makeshift bedding. He covered her with the extra bedding as best as he could, hiding her from view in case it was somebody rather… unsavoury.

When he looked, all he saw were a pair of boots. He followed the legs up and saw a pair of blue eyes and a grinning face looking down at him.

"Allan?"

His friend looked down at him, his eyebrows raised. "What're you doin' in here, mate?" Pause. "Did you sleep in here last night?"

From the complete lack of teasing, he figured that he hadn't seen Djaq there, hidden under their discarded clothing and sleeping peacefully beside him. If Allan saw her, and worked out what they'd done, he'd likely laugh and then tease him about it relentlessly for the rest of his natural life—and probably a good deal beyond. But Will didn't really feel like putting up with him at the moment.

"Go away. I'm tired," he groaned softly, shifting away from the open door and trying to roll over again and go back to sleep.

"You wanna tell me why you're on the floor?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"Then—"

"Oh for goodness sake!"

They both looked over to see Djaq, now awake, slowly lifting her head and pulling Will's tunic off of herself.

Now Allan actually looked surprised.

"Do you mind?" She huffed. "We have only just been to sleep!"

The surprise soon vanished from Allan's face, to be replaced with mirth; the corners of his mouth turned up in a broad smile, and then he laughed.

Will looked over at Djaq, who just shrugged. Neither of them knew what to make of this, so they simply waited nervously for him to quiet down—they sorely hoped that his laughter wouldn't attract the attention of anybody else. How embarrassing would that be?

"Well, well, what's this, then, eh?" He drawled, leaning on the cupboard's doorframe and smiling down at them. Will felt his face and ears heat up with a red blush. This was embarrassing—why didn't he just go away?

"It is called 'sex', Allan," Djaq said calmly, sitting up and covering her chest with a discarded piece of clothing. "You might try it sometime."

"I can honestly say, this is—hey, wait a second!" He interrupted himself to glare at her. "I do do it!"

"I meant with another person."

Will couldn't help it—he laughed. He tried to stifle the noise in his hand, but to do that he had to drop his cloak and it made part of the cloak covering his chest fall down.

"Ooh, you're cheeky, aren't you?" Allan said, eyes narrowed. But he was grinning anyway. "Better you than me, mate," he directed this comment at Will before closing the door and leaving them once again at peace.

And the little cupboard was dark again.

The laughter dispersed and the smile left over slowly began to falter.

"Well…" he began nervously, still staring at the door. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and reflexively tensed a little bit. He knew he shouldn't have been shy or nervous—not after what they did last night—but it was more or less an instinct now.

She pulled herself up close behind him, pressing her bare chest into his back. "Nice of him not to call everybody over to have a look, wasn't it?"

He laughed wetly and turned over again, leaning back and supporting himself on his elbows; she was on her side, holding her upper body up with her left arm. The clothing and cloak and shawl had all fallen off of her, leaving her naked from the waist up. She wasn't shy about her nudity, didn't care that he was staring at her. And stare he did. He studied her carefully, his eyes roaming over her face and her breasts, down her stomach to where her lower body disappeared beneath the folds of his cloak, still resting across her thighs—and, once again, he thought how absolutely beautiful she was.

She was perfect. He had no idea how he was so lucky, what he did to deserve her—maybe he'd done something in a past life for which his reward was this woman. Or maybe she was a reward for the suffering and poverty he'd lived in for most of his life.

Or maybe he was just plain lucky. Extremely lucky.

But as she leaned down into him, her free hand looped around the back of his neck, and kissed him—long and deep and sweet and wonderful—he decided that he didn't care how or why this was. Just that it was, and that she loved him—he was deliriously happy with that.

He lay back down again, holding her around her waist and forcing her to come down with him and sit astride his hips. She giggled against his cheek and then began mouthing slow, soft, warm kisses down his neck, her hands smoothing over his shoulders and chest. He purred, enjoying her delicate touches, but when her hands came in contact with his badly scraped-up shoulders and chest, he felt a biting sting and gasped. She quickly moved her hands, instead resting one on his cheek and the other on his arm.

He hugged her flush against him and rolled them over—she squeaked in surprise to find him now hovering over her, and wound her legs tightly around his waist. She was smiling, and so was he; he buried his face in her neck and sighed. She seemed perfectly content to simply lay there together, and in truth he was, as well. He shifted so that he wasn't crushing her, letting her lay on his chest, while she nuzzled the slope between his neck and shoulder and draped her arm around his stomach.

That wonderfully intoxicating peace settled back over them again while he held her snugly to his chest. She curled up against him, her arms and legs tangled with his and her head on his shoulder. Her hair was tickling his chin and his cheek. He revelled in their close contact, softness of her skin, her warm body, her breath on his neck. From this angle, he saw her eyes slowly slide closed as she began to drift off. He repositioned the cloak and shawl and loose clothing on top of them, shielding their bare bodies from the chilly air in here.

If the evidence wasn't right there, quietly dozing on his chest, he might have thought that the events of the previous night were all some sort of incredibly realistic fantasy: wonderful to think of, but simply far too amazing to even fathom being real. But it had happened, and it was true. Scraps of the night played over and over again in his head—the pleading look on her face when she first confronted him in this little cupboard, the way she rolled her head back when he touched her, those pleading whimpers and little mewls of pleasure.

Even the stinging scratch-marks all over his chest and shoulders and back felt strangely good to him, reminding him of what they'd done that made her score him like that with her fingernails. Of course, he'd done something somewhat similar to her. When he reached his own orgasm, he only vaguely remembered where they were; he remembered just enough to know that he had to stay quiet, and instinctively went to clamp his teeth down on the nearest available part to present itself—her shoulder—to muffle the sound that rumbled up in his throat.

He tenderly kissed her shoulder, smoothing his lips over that awful bruised spot where he sunk his teeth, wishing that he could kiss the mark away. The bite was now magnificently colourful, and he sorely regretted doing it.

He felt her slide her hand under his chin and tilt his head up; he looked once into her deep black eyes before she claimed his mouth in another sweet kiss. He decided that he would subsist on her kisses alone if it was at all possible.

Djaq sat up and tilted her head to the side to look at the ball of her shoulder, poking the bruise experimentally. "You really bit me, didn't you?" She observed.

"I am sorry about that, you know," he apologized, gently stroking her bruised shoulder with his thumb.

"It is all right," she said, nuzzling his cheek. "At least this I can hide—you will have a lot of scratches to explain away." She traced her fingers along the scratches on his shoulders. "Unless… unless you want to tell them?"

Even though she'd suggested it, she didn't look terribly thrilled by the prospect of letting even their closest friends know something so personal and private. Well, Allan already knew about it after walking in on them, but he didn't think that he'd actually tell anybody about it. Even he wasn't that crass. At least, he hoped he wouldn't say anything. It was their own business, and he didn't fancy telling anybody. He wanted to keep her and this to himself.

"No," he said firmly. "That's none of their business, is it? And anyway—" here he felt his face heat up. "I think they think that we already have."

She nodded as her cheeks tinged pink. "They probably do."

Of course, the chances were fairly slim that the rest of the group didn't already know that something had happened—they weren't stupid. After their confession in the barn and their closeness on board the ship and the time they'd spent alone, their friends would have to be collectively dumber than a farmyard chicken not to assume that something had happened. And even if their friends were that oblivious, it would be very hard for the pair to hide their… coupling… from them past this morning.

There was no water for washing and they had no change of clothes, so the only things they had to put on were their rumpled, slept-on clothing and they had no choice but to go through the rest of the day looking and smelling suspiciously like sex. Their clothes were wrinkled, obviously slept on, and their hair was dishevelled and sticking up at amusingly odd angles; the distinctively musky smell of sweat and sex clung to their skin and clothes.

"Look at this," she gasped in surprise when they finally decided that they should get up and began to get dressed. She was standing there naked on top of her pile of clothing, twisted around at the waist to inspect her backside in the partial light in the cupboard.

He was more than happy to oblige, hungrily taking in her beautiful figure and her dark skin. But as he looked at her he saw, once again, just how animalistic and rough he'd been with her last night: her hips and waist, her buttocks, and the tops of her thighs were dotted all over with dark bruises from his fingers where he'd grabbed at her and held her so forcefully.

"I am marked like a spotted horse," she sighed, twisting around the other way to see herself.

Will laughed.

He soon discovered that Djaq was luckier, and that she could cover up all of her telltale marks with her clothes; he, on the other hand, had all of those scratches all over his upper body, and though most of them were out of sight, a few of them were clearly visible above the neckline of his shirt and tunic. Putting his cloak on had helped a bit, but it was still possible to see the tops of the marks peeking out over his clothes.

He took her hand as they left the cupboard, and kept it as they walked out across the ship's deck to meet Robin and the rest of the group for breakfast. Nobody said anything as they walked into the circle together. Much looked up at them in his curiously naïve way; John cast a sideways glance at them but remained silent; Robin didn't even stir, just stared blankly ahead of himself, his expression stonily vacant. Only Allan smiled at them—he shifted his position to make room for them.

From the way he was actually sitting with them, it appeared that their friends had let their once-former comrade back into the group, if only tentatively. He was set slightly apart from them, though, and let Will and Djaq sit between himself and the rest of the gang. They settled down together side-by-side, Djaq sitting close to him and leaning on his shoulder.

Much passed around bowls of weak, watery, tasteless porridge—all that he could scrape up out of the ship's food to feed them with—and they began to eat in silence. Will looked over at Allan, who would normally have been complaining to Much about the lack of food quality, but he was slurping his porridge and making faces and saying nothing.

The silence was gloomy, heavy. Robin barely touched his food, instead just pushing it around the bowl with his spoon. John was only just over his seasickness and ate slowly and cautiously. For the first time, there was a distinct lack of connect between the members of the group; they were all in their own little worlds, cut off from each other and consumed in their own thoughts. It felt so strange.

If anybody thought anything about Djaq and Will's close proximity, their rumpled appearance and wrinkled clothes, their day-dreamy expressions, or their linked hands, they didn't say anything about it.

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Aren't they sweet together? Djaq and Will are inherently cute. There has to be some scientific or mathematical equation to prove it empirically. Or maybe they just are. I hope you enjoyed the read—I like writing those sweet little 'morning after' scenes. If the scenes get any sweeter than this, this story might actually cause cavities upon reading.

Feedback is, as always, greatly appreciated. If you have something to say—good or bad—but you don't want to leave a review on a lemon fic, please feel free to email or PM me if you'd like.