Page 31 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

“And if science cannot explain it?”

“Then…then at least I tried.” And now that I believe in magic, maybe I won’t feel like I failed.

“Hm.” Mara sighed. “In that case, there is one thing I yet do not understand.”

“How I was planning on figuring it out?”

Mara rolled her eyes. “I do not care for your science. No, I need you to explain that.”

She pointed right at his black and red codpiece.

His penis, encouraged by the attention, tried to point right back at her, despite the athletic cup.

“It’s a codpiece,” Ethan said swiftly. “I wear it for protection.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Like a condom?”

That made Ethan laugh, which made a stab of pain go through his head, which—thankfully—made his erection deflate somewhat. “Not that kind of protection. How do you even know what a condom is?”

She waved his question away. “It seems like it would protect your chastity quite well.”

“My chast—” God, was she trying to kill him for real now? “It’s athletic protection. Protects from cup shots and cholla alike. A cup shot,” he hurried to explain, “is when someone aims a blow at your groin, which isn’t the most chivalrous of strikes but, you know, can be kind of funny. As long as you’re protected. Which I clearly am.” That had been a lot of words; they seemed to swirl around his head, dragging him back into concussionland.

She furrowed her brow. “So why is it…decorated?”

“Trust me,” he said woozily. “This was the height of fashion in the fifteenth century…ish. If anything, this is tame. The Landsknechts—now they really go all out. Slashes and puffs and…” He cleared his throat. “Anyhow.”

“Like a peacock,” Mara said, curling her lip.

“Sure.”

She cast him a mocking smirk. “So will you be unmanned if I remove it?”

“No.” If you look at me like that while you do it, definitely not. “It’s just clothing. And armor. Armored clothing.”

“A pity,” she said.

And then her hands were on the ties of his codpiece and oh shit oh shit. He was wearing jeans underneath, sure, but they weren’t going to hide much, not sweaty and damp as they were, and he had to do something, so he sat up suddenly, welcoming the rush of queasiness that engulfed his head and his stomach and sent his libido down under a wave of dizziness.

“Lie down, fool,” Mara bit out sharply, and a wave of sand passed over Ethan’s chest and dragged him back down onto the ground.

“Don’t talk that way,” he said, half-joking, half-serious. Because damned if he didn’t find that bitchy tone hotter than Phoenix in June.

But apparently his anti-erection ploy had worked, because Mara disposed of his codpiece without comment and moved on to untying his leg and knee armor. He still felt somewhat aroused, but without the pressure of the codpiece and its plastic groin cup, it was harder to parse whether his attraction had again taken obvious physical form, and he wasn’t in a state to look. His head was fuzzier than ever after his hail-Mary sit-up, and he didn’t feel connected to his body. Even Mara’s touch seemed far away now.

Mara hadn’t said anything, which was a good sign. He hadn’t entirely figured her out yet—probably wouldn’t even if he had a thousand years to do it—but surely she would have registered a complaint if she’d noticed an unseemly bulge in his jeans. So he must have successfully quashed his body’s natural reaction. De-rected the erection. Unstiffed the stiffie.

It said something for how his day had gone that such a tiny, pointless thing felt like a victory. Or not even a victory. A silver lining to the cloud of his defeat.

Thank god Mara hadn’t noticed.

Mara had forgotten how obvious human male arousal was. It was in a way exhilarating, to know that a man suffering grievous injuries still had the energy to find her attractive, to know that his body wanted her, however chivalrous he insisted on being. Tristan had been the same, once.

If Ethan had been anyone else—and in his right mind—she might have acknowledged his arousal, perhaps admitted her own needs, followed by a joyful, simple union of bodies. Bodies were easy, joining and parting as whims caught and passed. Bodies were simple.

Sometimes she yearned for simplicity, for the days when grief was unthinkable.

But Ethan would never be simple. Not even when he was addled by a blow to the head. And she was not simple, either. Not anymore. She could not escape the maze of her own self, her feelings, her thoughts.