Page 15 of On the Menu

“Please,” she said with her mouth full. “Strathvyn, I need to,” Cara pleaded. “So good.”

He was ready to burst inside her anyway, and denying her was beginning to hurt them both. The ache in his cock was making his form blur, and her whimpers were turning desperate.

“We’ll go together,” he murmured against her lips. “One.”

“Oh, fuck, count faster,” she squeaked, her thighs fighting to cling to his hips, burying him as deep as he could go.

“Two.” He slotted his lips around hers and sighed out. “Three.”

Inhaled.

Felt her soul touching his, something so pure and soft painting over something so desolate and dark.

For the first time ever—it wasn’t swallowed up. It wrapped around him, wrapped around them both, light and shadow, an autumnal light that was gold and orange.

Cara shuddered around him, wailing into his mouth, and he emptied into her, silent in awe of the pleasure and the connection.

His cum pumped into her and down, overflowing her almost at once. He didn’t want to crush her smaller form, but he also couldn’t seem to move. Even his shadows were spent, slowly retracting into his chest as if chased away by their afterglow.

“You gotta teach me how you do that,” Cara whispered, stroking his hair.

“It’s a long story.”

“We have time.”

Epilogue

Stray was aware of the light changing, although he had to admit he was confused about how he and Cara were sprawled naked in front of a fireplace they didn’t own, in a warm, cozy cottage full of dark brown wood and leather that he’d only seen once.

“Are we dreaming together?” Cara asked.

She was twined with him under a woolly blanket, bodies fused like interlocking puzzle pieces.

“We must be. But this can be a dream come true.”

Cara looked at him. “I want to wake up. Make sure you’re still here. What’ll happen if I open my eyes?”

“We’ll have to go furniture shopping and plan a wedding,” he said, smiling.

The next thing he felt was her hand on his shoulder, shaking insistently.

“How? How? And did you mean it? Was it a dream?” Cara demanded, her eyes full, her lower lip almost bitten in half with sudden worry.

Stray sat up and pulled her to his chest as they lay in bed. “It’s morning. You dreamed—but I was there. We were there together, in the waking world and the sleeping one. That’s part of who I am and what I can do. I’ll tell you everything you could ever want to know—as long as you promise you’ll love me for who I am now, not who I used to be,” he vowed.

“I can do that,” Cara nodded eagerly. “If you can tell me what you said we’d have to do when I opened my eyes.”

Only for the merest fraction of a second did he consider teasing her by pretending to forget or name something ludicrous.

But that’s not how you treat the woman you love. Your soulmate.

“Well, we have to get dressed first,” he watched her shoulder tense, “before we shop for furniture and plan a wedding,” he concluded.

“Oh, Stray! Really?”

Cara flung her arms around him and held him close. Her lips peppered his face with kisses, and her scent was changing by the second, into not just one or two sweet notes, but a symphony.

A garden and an orchard, everything summer, spring, and fall, a bouquet and a banquet.