Page 34 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

She was the desert, the soil and the plants, and he could not imagine leaving her.

He had to admit it. He was down bad.

Also bored.

Also horny.

He still had use of his hands, of course, but it was uncomfortable, pulling his dick out all alone in the desert, knowing that he wasn’t all alone, that Mara could at any time be watching him invisibly. Judging him. Maybe ready to bury him in sand like his lantern and his drone if he shouted her name at the wrong moment.

It just felt weird, and the one time he’d tried it, the weirdness had cock-blocked him—he wasn’t sure if that term could technically be applied to masturbation, but that was how it felt—and he’d ended up desperately envisioning the least sexy movies he’d ever watched just to get out of his horny quandary. (Eraserhead finally got the job done. Thank you, David Lynch.)

So here he was, lying on the ground with his ankle propped up on his cooler, both yearning for and dreading Mara’s inevitable appearance. Not even sure which feeling was stronger.

Thank god the dizziness had mostly receded. He still felt like shit, but at least he felt like coherent shit. Like he could hold his own in a conversation. Like if his fantasy came true and Mara decided to apply her gentle touch to his aching groin, he’d be compos mentis enough to give enthusiastic consent.

Though of course, the more compos his mentis became, the sooner he would have to depart. He’d promised he would leave, promised he would admit defeat.

And Mara was not likely to be lenient.

Which was why when she finally emerged from the sand, the morning sun lighting up her eyes, he let all his stoicism fall away and allowed his pain to show in his face.

“You are awake,” she said in a clipped voice.

“Good morning,” he replied politely.

“Hm.” He heard her it would be a better morning if you weren’t here as if she’d said it aloud.

She fell to her knees beside the cooler, and he held his breath in anticipation, letting it out on a sigh when her warm fingers stroked his calf just above the Ace bandage.

“How does it feel?” she asked, shifting to sit cross-legged and then setting his foot in her lap as she began to unwrap it.

“About the same.” He sighed as the compression was released. “Maybe better. I can probably drive, if you—”

“No,” she said sharply. “It will not be safe.”

Was she trembling? “I’ve driven with worse.”

“Because you are a fool,” she said, though her voice was soft again. She finished removing the wrap and started running her fingers over his ankle and foot. “It looks worse. This bruise.” She traced the green-purple splotch.

Ethan could feel himself melting into the sand at her touch. He closed his eyes and called on his de-hornifying savior David Lynch again before other parts of him perked up. “That’s because the swelling went down. Trust me. It’s getting better.”

“If you insist.” Her fingers kept tracing along his skin, up and down the instep. Thank god he’d turned his spray bottle of vodka on his feet the night before, so they weren’t as smelly as they could have been. He’d been going bootless since his injury, which could have been a real problem if Mara hadn’t somehow cleared his little campsite of cactus spines and bitey insects.

Almost as if she liked him.

She’d been silent for a long time, he realized, and he shoved up on his elbows. “Do you need me to wrap it again myself?”

“What?” She blinked at him. “Oh. No. No, I will…” She looked down at his foot in her lap. “I have been thinking.”

“A dangerous pastime,” he joked.

She didn’t laugh. Her fingers curled around his calf. “I wish for you to leave,” she said, flickering a glance at his face. “But as you must remain a short while longer, I have been considering…a truce. A compromise.”

“I thought the war was over. You won.”

“I did.” She darted another sidelong glare at him. “You are making this difficult.”

“That’s my specialty,” he said. “Or so I’ve been told.”