Page 17 of Something Handsome This Way Comes

Milo groaned as Grievance gently began washing him, rubbing soap up and down his body while Milo hung limply off him, letting himself be pampered. Grievance didn’t seem to mind, and Milo fucking loved that.

“Thank you,” Grievance said after a while, as he rinsed shampoo from Milo’s hair. “For letting me have that. To pretend.”

Milo shut him up with a playful smack to the cheek.

“Do not thank me for sex. That feels icky.” Then, more gently, he added, “Just keep trying to put a baby in me, and I’ll never complain.”

Grievance groaned defeatedly, and Milo felt his forehead fall against his back.

“How’re you so perfect?”

“Not perfect. I make mistakes all the time. You should know, you see me stumble through life every day.”

Grievance licked the water up Milo’s spine, sending a fresh wave of goosebumps racing down his legs.

“Perfect for me, in every imaginable way.”

Milo smiled to himself.

“Grievance?”

“Hmm?”

“Take me to bed.”

Thick arms wrapped around his shoulders, trapping Milo in his favorite cage in the world. Grievance pressed a kiss into his curls and held him tighter.

“For you, my mate, I would grow wings and carry you to the moon if you asked it of me.”

Milo burrowed himself into his monster.

He really was the lucky one.

CHAPTER THREE

grievance

Grievance still didn’t understand coffee.

It smelled wonderful. Warm. Bitter. Earthy. Like roasted acorns and autumn rain.

It also made Milo wrinkle his nose every single morning before taking a sip, muttering something about “not being awake enough to person yet.”

If something required suffering before it became enjoyable, Grievance failed to see the appeal. Still, watching Milo make it had become one of his favorite parts of every morning.

Outside, October leaves skittered across the apothecary path while Marigold happily munched breakfast from her hay pile. Milo stood at the Bunsen burner, now heating Mr. Wetherby’s daily potion, while wearing his favorite oversized pink knitted sweater.

Grievance loved that sweater. It swallowed his mate whole. The sleeves hung over his hands until only his fingertips peeked free, and every time Milo reached for something, he had to push the fabric back with an impatient little huff.

It made him look so small.

And the best part was, since the sweater hung on him like a dress, he usually abandoned the idea of pants altogether. Something Grievance had greedily taken advantage of on more than one occasion.

Milo poured steaming water through the little copper brewer while Pip hung upside down from the spice rack, watching with all four eyes and munching on a mealworm.

He watched Milo stir his cauldron with one hand while pouring a generous helping of pumpkin spice creamer into his coffee with the other.

“Wasn’t it your grandmother who said, ‘Never conjure where you cook ’?”