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“And this is what happens to dauntless mortals in Faerie. They get ambushed back.”

“I can’t play this game without my weapon.”

“That’s assuming you haven’t just lost.”

“That’s assuming I can’t break free. I did it once already, and I’m a quick study. Ask anyone. I’ve never had to be schooled twice.”

“Such a gloater,” Puck drawls. “What else have you been taught, hmm? Are you proficient in anything outside of books and crossbows?” When he tilts his head, a strand of red slices across his cheekbone. “Have you learned what it’s like to swoon against a lover? To partake in the sweet and sour of his mouth? To feel his tongue trace the slot between your legs? To writhe as he laps up your cries like syrup?” His breath skates across my flesh. “In fact, have you ever unleashed such a primitive noise?”

Tremors build under my flesh, threatening to surface. If they do, he’ll notice.

I detest these questions. I detest the answers that surface in my head. I detest the aimlessness of them, the way my mouth fumbles to respond.

Most of all, I despise what these questions do to my body. And I resent that he sounds as aggravated as I feel.

“Have you ever lost control like that?” he intones, causing a flurry of activity, sparks fizzing in my limbs. “Have you ever spread yourself wide and felt the lurch of a man’s body between your thighs? Have you ever given yourself up to rapture? Allowed a lover to thrust—”

“Until I’m senseless?” I blurt out, needing to get the words out, needing to cut off his tangent. I smear as much mockery as I can into the reply, using a phrase from one of Lark’s many stories about her dalliances. She’d once said men love to make such a promise when it comes to sexual assignations.

However, Puck shakes his head. “Senseless? Rubbish.” His intonation burrows further down. “I was going to say until you’re clear-eyed and know exactly who’s fucking you.”

My palm cracks against his cheek before I register what’s happening. Puck’s jaw twitches, and that’s the extent of it. The slap barely makes a dent in his face, whereas my flesh stings, and my wrist smarts.

I steady my voice. “Don’t touch me.”

Well. He hasn’t once. Not once.

But I’d needed to utter the words, needed them to form a barricade around me. Yet I can’t tell if I’m trying to keep him out—or keep myself in line, in control.

His knuckles etch the pink imprint of my hand, caressing the mark that sears his profile. “Touching is for amateurs.”

Without looking away, he sets the crossbow on a lower branch, then flattens his hands on either side of my head. He entraps me within the snare of his body, infusing the space with cloves and pine.

“An amendment to the game,” he proposes. “You want what’s yours? Then earn it back.”

“So you can’t contend with me any other way?” I counter. “You require another contest to help you?”

Puck chuckles. “Getting ahead of yourself, don’t you think? You haven’t heard the conditions yet.” His gaze stumbles across my mouth and lingers there, tracing its shape. “But since you asked, I’d rather play than fight. As it is, I’m running out of cheeks for you to slap, unless you’d like to get kinky.”

“Earn my archery back, how?”

Puck’s gaze travels from my mouth to my eyes. “Three options. One, by telling me that overdue story I’d asked for in The Wicked Pines. Two, with a combative round of archery in which you best me. Or three—” his lips coil, “—with a kiss.”

Of course. Satyrs.

I make a point to ignore how quickly my stomach drops and make a greater point of grimacing. “And what? If I don’t like the kiss, you’ll return my weapon?”

“Nonsense,” he says. “I’ll give it back if you like it.”

That makes no sense…until it does. Not only does he expect me to enjoy it, but he expects me to deny it, and he expects me to fail at denial. That’s the test.

I’ve been kissed before. Lark and Cove don’t know this, but I once took a willing buck aside and gotten it over with. I’d figured it had to be done, like an initiation, as my sisters had already surpassed that milestone by then. Lark had said yes to a farmer’s son; Cove had embraced the cobbler’s daughter, since my older sister prefers both males and females.

However, Cove has remained chaste and doesn’t blather about such frivolity. Whereas to this day, Lark routinely makes a fuss about kissing—and flirting and having sex—jabbering about these subjects until I’m red in the face and she’s elated with herself.

I had chosen the most suitable of the bunch: the bookbinder’s son. I had propositioned him, and when he’d finally stopped choking on his shock, the buck had consented. At which point, I had snatched his hand, marched him behind the glassblower’s forge, and planted my mouth on his.

To say the least, it was what I had expected: two pieces of flesh puckered together.