Page 5 of Can't Get No Satyrfaction

Her bright smile caught him off guard. Most humans had no interest in his name. But this one? She beamed like he’d offered her a gift. The sooner she was out of reach the better.

“Do you know the way back to your car?” he growled.

She blinked up at him, looking adorably confused. No. Humans weren’t adorable.

“Yes. Why?”

“So you can return to your car and leave before you run into any more danger.”

Her small shoulders straightened as she raised her chin defiantly

“I’m not going back to my car.”

“You are not equipped to survive in the Elderwood. What would have happened if I hadn’t come along?”

“Technically, you didn’t come along, Fluffy came along.”

“You mean Bront came along.”

She rolled her eyes at him, and he tried not to find it charming.

“Fine, Bront. But my point is, I would have gotten out of here somehow, sooner or later. Everything always turns out all right in the end,” she assured him with a sunny smile.

“No, it doesn’t.”

He intended for the words to come out as matter of fact. Instead, they carried the weight of his own pain and loss, and her expression immediately softened. She took a step towards him and put her hand on his arm again, those small fingers impossibly delicate against the hard muscles of his forearm.

“No, I suppose it doesn’t,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t stop hoping, or even expecting that it will. Someone who expects that good things will happen is far more likely to have them happen to her than someone who does not.”

“I don’t believe in that nonsense,” he snapped, unsettled both by her attempt to comfort him and the feel of her fingers against his skin.

“You don’t believe in the power of magical thinking when you live in the middle of a magical forest?” She shook her head and laughed. “But that’s all right, you don’t have to believe, I believe.”

She bent down to pick up her backpack and he hastily averted his eyes from the faded denim drawing taut across her pretty little ass. Pretty? He didn’t find humans pretty—most of the time, anyway. He could admit that there were a few, a very few, exceptions.

And Sylvie is one of them, his traitorous thoughts whispered, but he ignored them. He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at her.

“You should return to your car,” he repeated. “If you do not, I am not responsible for any harm that may befall you.”

“Okay,” she said cheerfully. “You’ve done your duty and warned me off. I’ll do my best not to fall into the clutches of any more sneaky vines.”

“The vines are not the only danger in the Elderwood.”

“I’m sure they probably aren’t. If you’re that worried, you could always come along and show me yourself.”

For one brief instant, he almost agreed. No. She was human, and he was most certainly not. They did not belong together. If she chose to endanger herself, then that was her decision.

“I will not be accompanying you,” he said firmly, but she only nodded and he bit back a growl as he turned to his dog. “Bront, time to leave.”

The middle head gave him a speculative look, but the other two were blissfully enjoying their scratches and didn’t even bother to open their eyes.

“Come,” he ordered.

“Do you think he’s that bossy with women as well?” she muttered into one of the dog’s ears, but he had excellent hearing and he heard every word. Did she mean… No. he hastily tried to force his thoughts in a different direction.

She looked up and gave him an innocent smile as she patted the dog’s big heads one more time. With a last reluctant nudge at Sylvie’s hand, Bront finally obeyed him, but he was clearly unhappy as he followed him back into the undergrowth, and he tried to convince himself that he was not equally as reluctant to leave her.

CHAPTER 3

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