Page 39 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

That sent Mara to her feet. “They do not hold joy,” she spit out.

“Then what—”

“Be silent!” She whirled in sudden agitation, staring out at her garden. The colors of it were weeping. Screaming. Her grief laid bare for any eye to see. How could Ethan even think—? “Where do you see the joy?” she railed bitterly. “Where?”

“Mara,” he said in a placating tone of voice. “I am just asking—”

“I do not wish to answer these questions,” she spit at him. Every inch of her skin was hot. Hot with rage, hot with grief, hot with the desire she’d foolishly allowed him to stoke.

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to know—”

Mara sobbed and fell to her knees, everything bursting out through her skin all at once. She could feel the cacti around her reacting, more flowers growing from bud to blossom in bare moments, but she did not care. She had been holding herself back for days, inhibited by the necessity to remain cool, to remain kind, and it was too much.”

His lands landed on her shoulders then. “Mara. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“You never mean it,” she shot back, raising her face to his. Sandy tears were flowing from her eyes now, and she bitterly cursed them. Cursed the fact that she could not even weep properly to mourn a human. “You did not mean to invade, did not mean to disturb me, but you still invaded. You vex me! You disturb me! You—”

She did not know which of them had moved, but his thumbs were on her cheeks and his lips were on hers, wet and hot, and she moaned and fell into the kiss. It was sweeter than it had any right to be, and she pressed herself closer, pushing Ethan back, climbing into his lap, straddling him as she kissed him and kissed him.

And then she was apart from him, belatedly realizing that his hands were on her shoulders again, but not to comfort her this time. To hold her away.

“Mara,” he said in a rough voice. “This is a bad idea.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You humans and your hangups. It is just bodies seeking comfort. Seeking pleasure.”

“This isn’t what I want.”

“Isn’t it?” She arched against him. “Your body disagrees.”

“Okay, I do,” he groaned. “I really, really do. But I don’t.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “I said something that upset you. Something wrong. What did I say?”

“I do not know,” she said, petulance welling up inside her.

Ethan carefully stroked her hair back from her face, looking into her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

She looked at him, feeling suddenly naked in a way that had nothing to do with the physical joining she craved. “You do not want to hear it.”

“I think,” he said slowly, “I need to hear it, whether I want to or not.” He smiled, eyes gentle as the rain. “It’s okay. I’m a grown-ass adult. I can take it.”

Mara gazed at him for a long moment, something shifting inside her. Not in a small way. No, it was like the continents smashing together, crushing their simple, smooth plains into jagged mountain ranges. Everything in her was sharp and harsh, and nothing was right at all anymore.

“Very well,” she said at last.

She was already broken; he might as well cast his scientist’s eyes upon the pieces.

Perhaps he would understand it better than she did.

Chapter fourteen

Regrets

Ethan watched Mara settle back onto the sand. Her body was poised, calm, but he hadn’t spent days parsing her every word and expression to not be able to see that it was a false serenity.

He didn’t know her enough to know the truth, but he could tell when she was lying.

Her hungry kisses had been somewhere in the middle—a half-truth sent forth like a decoy to distract him from the real, painful truth underneath. The missing link that would explain everything he’d experienced since his arrival, explain Mara’s mixed signals, the way she alternated between indomitable strength and fragility, the push and pull they’d been tangled in since he first saw her sleeping at the fringes of her garden.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he said when her silence stretched on. “I don’t want to…” He swallowed. “I don’t want you to be in any pain.”