Page 61 of The Minotaur's Valentine

“Nap time later.” Milo chuckles as he places a long bundle wrapped in black velvet on my lap.

After I peck Milo’s cheek (I have to tug him down to pecking distance first), I unwrap the bundle, folding back the velvet.

“Milo!” My gasp fills the workshop.

My present is a fairytale dagger, smooth and sleek, shining like moonlight, and made of silver. The hilt is a thing of pure artistry. A whirling snare of vines with embedded thorns leads to a single rose at the top, a dark red stone pressed into the center. There’s a tiny skull and a snake somewhere amongst the vines.

It’s every dangerous-looking thing I wished I could buy at the edgy goth store in the mall when I was a broke teenager in one shiny, homemade package. It is attitude and wishes made real, made useful, made with love and beauty. And magic. Milo is magical, in so many ways.

I’m choked up.

“Libby?”

“It’s... it’s so fucking perfect. It’s little and pretty and totally badass at the same time.” I hiccup a sob that I can’t stop. “You see me.”

“Well... I watched you.” Milo smiles softly, hand resting on my shoulder, completely covering it with one warm palm.

He sees me. He was watching me. Yeah, there’s a lot of wordplay in my head right now as I sniff in and try to stop the tears.

Milo is who I’ve been looking for, without even knowing it.

Chapter Forty-Nine: Milo

Libby loves her present. You know how I can tell? One minute she’s sniffling and fondling the dagger like it’s some rare prize from the Byzantine Empire, and the next moment she’s plastered to me like that face-sucking thing in Alien (but in a good way).

I love the way her soft, small body curls around mine, and the way she uses my horns like handlebars to pull herself up and give herself leverage until her body wraps around my chest, her legs over my elbows. She rests her head to my forehead eye-to-eye with me.

“You are a big hunk of pretty damn perfect.” She smiles, her pink nose and watery eyes pressed to my muzzle.

“Well, you're a little pint-size piece of perfect,” I tell her.

“Milo.” Libby heaves a deep, contented sigh and nuzzles into me.

I can't help but immediately get hard when her nuzzles are accompanied by her spread legs pressing her warmth to me, letting me catch a single sweet note of her womanhood, all soft and ready for me.

“Libby...”

“Yeah, baby?” Her voice holds that breathy note that makes me pant.

“We never got to finish trying out the—”

The phone rings.

I call my phone all kinds of names.

“That’s your phone,” Libby stops her effortless seduction to point out the obvious.

“I’ll get it.” I don’t let Libby clamber down. I pin my arm under her thighs and hoist her up. With a little squeak, she grabs my ears (ow) and straddles my shoulders. “Be careful of those horns.”

“I will, believe me!”

I so do not want to end up in the Pine Ridge emergency room with an impaled girlfriend. How would we get there, anyway? I couldn’t drive her there. Do you remove horns from the wounded? Shouldn’t someone have told me that in all my twenty-odd years?

“Milo, hurry!” Libby squeezes her thighs to the back of my thick neck and another waft of that inviting scent tickles my nostrils.

Whoever this is, they’re going to get a very, very short conversation.

I answer without even registering who’s on the other end. “Hello?”

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