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“Are they holding their breath now?” I blurt out.

Puck’s gaze scrolls across my features, mapping out every nook and cranny. “You might say that. They have complex breathing patterns and cycles. In other words, they only go deep once an hour.” His mouth wreathes into a grin, his eyes dipping to the southern regions of my dress. “Unlike a certain breed of Faeries.”

The recollection of his breath skidding across my nape and the indiscrete touches he’d depicted trespass into my mind. Mortification scalds my cheeks. That, plus another unforgivable inclination, an appetite for something I can’t name. A craving that had been dormant until he’d spoken about wet fingers and private sensations.

I point at him. “Listen to me, satyr. Let’s get one thing straight.”

His freckled nose crinkles far too cutely. “Only one? Boo.”

“This penchant for one another ends here.”

“Penchant? What does that even mean?”

“Don’t play dumb. I’m talking about this connection between us.”

“It’s called attraction, luv. Say it with me.”

Well. “This attraction means nothing. What you said…that I listened…it meant nothing.”

“Is that what you felt while I pumped ideas into your head? Nothing?” The satyr encroaches upon my space. His words travel, somehow managing to reach low, scorching a path across my thighs. “Because the arousal I scented under your skirt? That sure as fuck didn’t seem like nothing. If you ask me, it was everything.”

“That’s quite enough,” I utter, my voice a tendril of air.

But he isn’t finished. “Frankly, the thought of you touching yourself drives me out of my fucking mind, just like the exquisite sight of you wielding a weapon. To say nothing of how it would feel to pleasure you with my own hands. In fact, I wager it’d be the only type of magic actually worth having.”

“I said, that’s enough. I don’t care to hear anymore.”

Puck sketches a flamboyant bow. “Ever at your merry service. But since you brought it up, who said anything about it meaning something? After everything that’s happened, we were pent-up, caught up in the moment. We were shaking off the final dregs of sleep, and my kind can smell desire at twenty paces. It was a verbal tease, the least of what my tongue can do to you, and I’d barely gotten started. Naturally, a teeny bit of vocal foreplay means nothing. It rarely does to satyrs, much less sex itself.” He inches backward, albeit at a gradual pace that I can’t say is entirely deliberate. “Lust is practical. Anything beyond that isn’t.”

At least, that’s something I can agree with. I’m hardly a romantic like Cove. “Good,” I say.

“Spectacular,” he replies. “Are we done, then?”

I nod, yet we idle in place. The scoundrel transfers his attention to my mouth, and my own gaze commits the same crime, stumbling to his plush lips.

At last, we swerve toward the path and traverse the route without speaking. Eventually, I sniff the air. “No discernible scent.”

The Fae contemplates that. He grabs a wad of dirt from the wall, crushes it in his fist, and releases the granules. We study the flecks’ descent, which betrays not the slightest shift, nothing to indicate a current, nor an exit source.

“There goes that,” Puck remarks. “On the other hand…”

“…rule out the possibilities,” I fill in.

He concurs. “It’s too messy down here to be the work of brownies. They’d have taken a broom to the passage. Leprechauns, hardly. Satyrs or fauns, definitely not. Centaurs prefer the surface rather than the depths. Nymphs would loathe to get their frocks or faces tarnished. Dryads are too busy tending to the upper story.”

“So not Faeries,” I conclude.

Which leaves the fauna. When our gazes drop to the ground, I feel like a numskull. The irony is offensive, that two hunters wouldn’t have thought to do this immediately.

Puck and I kneel, the better to investigate. Handfuls of walnuts encrust the floor, indicating the type of trees looming outside these trenches. Also, a series of enormous, overlapping paw prints materialize once I broaden my gaze.

Upon second inspection, a thread of copper hair shimmers from the wall, and several large indentations imply these otherworldly dwellers had filled this trench to capacity. That would be unusual, if the Fae fauna lacked the magic to shift sizes.

We trade a keen glance. Puck flicks aside walnut shells and stray fibers of moss from the prints, the better to sketch the tracks. He manages to do so without disturbing the pattern, executing the barest sweep of contact.

It’s a mammal with five paw pads and four claws. If I had to guess…no, I don’t have to guess.

Once more, Puck’s eyes land on mine. We hold like that, deducing the enterprising animals who’d constructed this passage, the satyr’s knowing gleam matching my own.