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I belong here as a human, not as one of them. And that’s precisely how he wants me.

I bask in Puck’s naked torso. Smooth plains of flesh wait at my disposal, a blank page meant to be covered with my marks. My knuckles curl and release, restless, unsure.

He takes a step nearer, our foreheads bumping, and nods. I bite my tongue, and my huntress hands resume their exploration. I sketch his shoulders, his ribs. I run wild across the veins of his forearms. I slide across his navel. I scale his chest and aim for the heart.

Under my palm, that organ beats like a man’s, like an animal’s, like my own. The tempo goes mad, thrashing in sync with my pulse.

Puck watches my progress. His eyelids shudder as though drugged or glamoured. In spite of his escalating heart rate, he appears to have the sensual patience befitting his kind. As masters of seduction, I imagine satyrs don’t rush things.

Curious, I test that theory. When the pads of my thumbs catch his nipples, his upper body hitches. The sensitive crests toughen under my ministrations, and my lungs tighten as well.

We inch closer while I fondle him, our sighs filling the hollow. As he disarms me, I show him a new kind of restraint.

Then again, perhaps I was wrong to assume he could endure. Puck’s resolve collapses. He snakes his arm once more around my midriff and thrusts me into him. And like this, he introduces me to euphoria.

His mouth skims my wrist, then works its way up my arm. We move in tandem, my head arching as he reaches the plunge of my neckline, then higher to the left strap.

When he hooks on to the cord of material, it urges me out of the trance. The poacher tattoo inked into my lower back tingles as though in warning.

Even if I trust him, I still can’t let him see the marking. The only ones whom I’ve shared it with since childhood have been my family.

I get my bearings and straighten, the movement giving Puck pause. He halts, dazed. I blink at him, equally hazy. Somehow, I manage to communicate without speaking, my fingers landing over his: My clothes stay on.

Confusion surfaces, then vanishes. These Faeries may think me prissy, but he knows better than that. He knows better than to assume I’m self-conscious about my body.

Yes, I long to be naked with him. But no, that’s not possible.

I take his hand and rest it on the neckline, inching the material down. “Like this.”

Whatever conclusion he makes about my preferences, a secret sort of aspiration darkens Puck’s irises.

He lifts me off the ground and lowers us onto the bed of grass. I land astride him, my thighs splayed around his waist. The skirt trembles up my calves, the jade leaves shivering around his leathers.

Puck wastes no time. His fingers curl into the bodice and stretch it down. My left breast pops from the neckline, blooming fully in the half-light.

On a hum of appreciation, he admires the swell of flesh.“Éck ferde ade smajja fade.”

My cheeks flood with warmth, but not from embarrassment. No, the lusty weight of his stare causes frustration, and the lilt of his language causes excitement. Both fuse together, driving me to my wit’s end.

My nipple is a hard stud under the onslaught of his gaze. With his arm fixed around my waist, he bends forward. And his mouth seals around the bud.

I splinter apart. Crying out, I clutch the back of his head. My spine curls so far back that I see the branches quivering above us. Suspended like this, my moans vault into the swirl of white, gold, and teal starlight.

Puck balances me with that single hand, his other one braced…I don’t know where. I don’t know anything—not a damn thing. His tongue swats the nipple, licking and then drawing the apex into the cavern of his mouth. Every gentle tug wrings another captivated moan from me.

At last, he strains the bodice, freeing the other breast. His lips work me into a stupor, sucking and pulling on the tip. His tongue sketches me, drawing around the bud, then flicking against it.

The disorder progresses from one stimulation to the next. Puck shifts direction and, in one heated stroke, laps across the underside of my breast. He wanders from there, kissing his way back to the crest, his lips spreading around my nipple and towing it into his shameless mouth.

The material’s ruined. It’s limp, exposing the fall of my breasts.

And well. I just don’t care.

He yanks me back to him, our mouths colliding. As our lips fasten into a pent-up kiss, the dell rotates. Puck reclines me atop the grass, the blades yielding beneath my weight. Sprawled before him, with my knees upturned, the skirt rucks up my thighs.

The Fae holds my gaze. He works on his breeches, thumbing the buckles free. It’s an exercise in self-control, for all I’d like to sit up and shred those pants to ribbons. At the same time, I savor the patches of flesh revealed to me, the tantalizing exposure of it.

The waistband loosens. The closures flap open. And that masculine part of him rises from the vent.