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And he nods. “Please don’t go.”

His plea melts like wax, fluid and flaming, a slow ooze down my skin.

“What are we?” I ask. “Are we reluctant enemies? Forbidden friends?”

“We’re not enemies. But like fuck are we just friends.” Puck’s timbre sneaks between my legs, reaching the seam of my thighs. “From the second you came back to me, I’ve been hooked. Your studious glower, your smoky voice, that determined huntress chin. Pink creeping across the tops of your luscious tits every time I made a wicked comment.”

I wouldn’t describe my bust as luscious. It’s as flat as my visage, unless one counts my overgrown nose.

Not that I’ve wasted time mulling over these facets. My looks are immaterial to me. I don’t need my face to do anything but see, smell, and taste.

Yet that’s not the tone with which Puck describes me. Nowhere close to that.

“Every time you looked at me with the barest tinge of lust,” he says. “Every time you put me in my place, and every time I made you laugh, it was glorious, and I could barely stand it. And these cruel, fucking leggings.” He roves over the material clinging to my limbs. “They’re going to be the end of me.”

I can’t move, can’t breathe.

“But most of all,” he continues, “seeing those smart, little spectacles perched on your nose has undone me numerous times. I’ve thought about you wearing them while astride my lap, jutting your hips and riding me to the brink of insanity.”

“You’re already insane,” I utter.

“And growing madder by the hour,” he agrees. “I’ve stroked my cock to fantasies of you, pumping myself hard to the memory of your laughter, your brusque scowl, the expression you’d wear while your body convulsed around your fingers. I took that self-pleasure last night, and I’ll do again soon, and I’ll do it so thoroughly—,” he whispers, “—you’ll feel when I come.”

Moisture builds from within, pooling slick and warm from my body. I want that. He knows, I do. What he might not know is that I want to be there, watching him.

He murmurs, “My obsession will stop when I no longer care about you more than my kin. It’ll stop when you quit consuming my mind, every hour, day and night. It’ll stop then—which is to say, never. Unless you order me to stop.”

My breath skitters out. “I should want that.”

But I don’t.

“What else should you want?” he wonders. “Educate me. Have you ever acted without thinking and then trusting where that took you? Flung your inhibitions to wind? Have you ever run naked through the forest?”

I haven’t. One time, Lark had persuaded Cove to do it with her. I had disrobed only to my nightgown and only for them. I hadn’t done it for myself.

I stare at him, refusing to shy away and needing to hear more. I know lots of things. But I don’t knowthis.

Puck pushes the words out, as though his mouth is stuffed with cotton. “The leaves grazing your knees. The moon bathing your navel. The chill rushing across your nipples. Your hair, as free and wild as it is now.”

He hasn’t touched me. Yet we’re panting, venting.

His whisper hits the ledge of my ear, then the column of my neck. My pulse leaps, rapping against my throat. Fables forgive me, but I want his mouth there, speaking against that delicate tempo.

“I know what you can do. I know what you’re capable of,” Puck mutters. “What I want to know is how you feel while doing it. I want to know what you’re capable of feeling. I want so fucking badly to know, Juniper.”

My name on his tongue. Three syllables puff against my lips, which part in response.

I understand what he’s saying. How can I act with my head, if I haven’t practiced acting with my heart? For once, I don’t know. I’ve only relied on books to achieve something and hunted to atone for something else.

“Now.” He tips his head lower, lower still. “Come. Here.”

I want to, but it’s my turn. “What about you?” I ask, my voice faint, a thin line of space remaining between his mouth and mine. “Have you ever taken a dalliance so seriously that you paced yourself? Have any of those consummations had a lasting effect, beyond immediate gratification? Have you ever had an affair of substance? Has it ever been that relevant to you?”

The questions probe his face, shifting it in a new direction. To all of my inquiries, he answers with a shake of his head.

“Have you ever hooked yourself around another body?” he asks. “Have you known what it’s like to be filled sweetly, ridden hard? Your tits heaving, your sighs untamed, your core soaked? Do you know what it’s like to bind yourself with someone, to unleash with them? Have you ever felt reckless, cresting to a pinnacle, then pitching over the edge?”

Other than when I slipped my fingers between my legs, no. But I sense it close, so close. Wetness coats the apex of my thighs, the nexus of which throbs.