Page 152 of Something Handsome This Way Comes

They stayed like that for a few more seconds, allowing their senses to slowly return. Milo’s vision cleared first, until he could identify each glow mushroom bordering the clearing. The air was filled with the music of autumn nights: rustling leaves and the hooting of horned owls. It smelled like cold, if cold were to have a smell. Crisp and awake. And last came feeling. The cool press of silky grass against his stomach. And the heat of his mate pressed against his ass, their bodies still connected.

Grievance was slow to pull out, letting Milo’s body grip him one last time until he came free, his spent cock resting against Milo’s bare thigh with a wet slap. Then Milo felt soft lips press to his mating mark.

“I love you, Milo. My mate. My everything.”

Milo hummed contentedly into the grass as Grievance continued to trail gentle, worshiping kisses down his spine, across his shoulders, and back up his neck, all while murmuring sweet things into the night.

Eventually, the kisses slowed.

The clearing had gone quiet around them. Not silent—the forest was never truly silent—but peaceful. Crickets chirped beyond the circle of glowing mushrooms. Rustling branches whispered overhead. Milo might have stayed there forever. Naked in the grass. Warm beneath his mate. Thoroughly worshiped and far too satisfied to remember how his legs worked.

Then he noticed the lantern. It stood at the center of the clearing, dark beneath the moonlight.

Waiting.

“We should light it.”

Grievance lifted his head from where he’d been kissing Milo’s shoulder. “Feels odd to do it now.”

“Why?” Milo asked, genuinely curious.

“After it just watched what I did to you, I hardly feel like it’ll listen to my prayers.”

Milo laughed and rolled over. “It doesn’t work like that, my love.”

“I know. All my prayers have been answered already.”

And the devotion in those eyes told Milo he might have something to do with that. Grievance climbed to his feet and held out a hand. Milo accepted it, though standing proved considerably more ambitious than he’d anticipated. His knees immediately wobbled. Quickly, Grievance caught him around the waist.

“S-sorry,” Milo said, leaning heavily against him.

“You can always lean on me, my mate. And not just when you’re too shaken to stand. I want you to lean on me when you are tired. When you are frightened. When the world is too loud.” He lowered his head until their foreheads touched. “When you simply want to.”

“Then I’d be pressed against you all the time,” Milo said.

Grievance’s grin flashed in the moonlight. “Sounds perfectly fine to me.”

Together, they crossed the clearing. Milo had lit the old Lantern plenty of times before. For festivals. For prayers. For luck. Sometimes simply because he liked seeing its warm glow between the trees.

But tonight felt different.

Maybe because he knew what this place had given Grievance. Once, that light had found him when he was frightened, hurt, and alone. It had led him through the forest until, somehow, impossibly, he had ended up in Milo’s backyard.

Milo glanced at the man beside him.

His mate.

His Veya.

His impossible, beautiful something.

“What are you smiling about?” Grievance asked.

“You.”

“There’s that strange streak about you again. Not many people smile at monsters.”

“I do at my monster.”