Page 50 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

“God, Mara.” He bent, inhaling deeply, lips brushing her hair. “I never wanted to leave. Never. But I couldn’t keep intruding on something so fucking important to you.” He pressed his feverish forehead to hers. “I want you more than anything. But I also don’t want you to forget Tristan. You can’t forget him. Not ever.”

“Why are you like this?” she muttered, every part of her at war. “I am offering myself to you, free of encumbrances.”

“Thank you,” he said. “But I can’t accept…” He laughed wildly. “Sorry, it feels weird to be talking about you like a birthday present. Let me rephrase all of this. I am all in favor of you moving on, and I’m honored you want to move on with me. I want to move on with you, too.”

“Oh.” Mara brushed her cheek against his. “Then—”

“But you can’t forget Tristan.”

Mara stepped back to glare at him. “You do not tell me what I can and cannot forget.”

“Please listen.” Ethan met her eyes, his gaze steady, unfazed by her anger. “I love you. Maybe since I found you sleeping. Maybe even before that, when I first saw you. I don’t know. I don’t know how any of this works. But I know I love you.”

She gasped, relief flooding her like a sunrise. “Ethan, I—”

“I’m not done with my speech.” He pressed a swift kiss to her forehead. “Mara, there is one thing that has been true from the moment I first saw you across a crowd. And that has been that you, Mara, queen of my heart, love Tristan.”

Her words scattered like finches before a hawk.

Ethan smiled, brilliant and pure. “I have never known a Mara who didn’t love Tristan, and that’s okay. Not just okay. It’s wonderful. Your garden, your soul... Your love for him is part of you, and that’s the you I fell in love with.” He heaved a breath, pressed a soft kiss to her knuckles. “You don’t have to cut him out of your memory for me to love you. I love you, the Mara I met, the Mara standing before me now. All of you.”

Relief crashed through Mara like a sandstorm, and she could not speak for a long moment. “You love me,” she said at last.

“I know it’s sudden,” he said, taking a step back, though he did not release her hands. “And I know it’s too soon for you to feel the same way. But I’ll wait. However long it takes, I’ll wait, and I’ll be yours until you know if I’m the one for you. Or…or I’ll leave. If you want me to leave, I will.”

A smile bloomed on her face. “You do not have to wait,” she said. “Or to leave.”

“I don’t?”

“Please, do not go.” Mara stepped forward into his space. “I love you, Ethan. From the very first, you confounded me, irritated me, but you also made me laugh. I told myself I only wanted your body, that it was nothing more, but I was drawn to you like a bee to a flower, and I could not stay away.”

She looked down at their joined hands. “That is why I let my garden go. It was for myself, for my own freedom, but it was also…a message. A message to you. I was prepared to partition my heart, to throw everything away just so you would be mine.”

“You don’t need to do that,” he murmured.

“I won’t.”

He bent and brushed his lips against hers once, twice, a sweet confession, a promise, and then his hands were in her hair and he was kissing her like she was the world. She kissed him back, reveling in the knowledge that he was hers, that she was his.

She was not sure who had conquered whom, but they could argue about it later.

He drew back a bare inch. “Please tell me,” he gasped, “that you had an ulterior motive in getting me alone here in your own private Rivendell.”

“My motives are not ulterior,” she said primly. “They are quite overt. I intend to remove your armor, and your clothing, and make love to you until you admit defeat.”

“That’ll do,” he groaned and kissed her again.

Chapter twenty

The Walls Fall

Mara did not waste time with niceties, swirling the sand up to drag Ethan down to the ground so she could begin untying his armor, beginning with the ridiculous elbow pieces.

Ethan watched her, eyes vague and unfocused, and she paused. “I did not concuss you again, did I?”

He blinked, focused on her face again. “No. No, I was just… Just still not really believing what’s happening.” He gestured around them. “It is kind of surreal. Not David Lynch surreal, thank god, but…some other kind of surreal.” He frowned. “I can’t think of a surrealist that isn’t creepy, actually.”

“Does it matter?” she asked, sitting up astride his stomach. His ridiculous padded codpiece prodded at her backside. “I am here, and it is real.”