I find it sitting on a bread stand in the center of the kitchen table—the table where Cairn spread my thighs and made me cum so hard my legs shook. The reminder makes my cheeks tingle with heat.
“Take a seat,” Cairn says as he appears in the kitchen beside me. His arm brushes mine lightly as he moves past me. “You like cinnamon toast?”
I scoff. “Of course I like cinnamon toast. Who doesn’t?”
Cairn tosses a glance back at me. “People who are allergic to cinnamon.”
I roll my eyes and plop myself down into a chair at the table. “You’re no fun.”
His lips pull up on one side as he fetches a couple small plates, a shaker of cinnamon, and a little jar of sugar. He returns to the table and cuts us two slices of bread, then smears them with butter and sprinkles cinnamon and sugar over the top. My mouth waters. My stomach grumbles again.
“You really are hungry,” Cairn says as he puts one of the plates in front of me. “Did you eat breakfast?”
I shake my head and take a big bite of the still-warm bread. It’s fluffy and almost melts in my mouth, and the cinnamon sugar makes me sigh in happiness. Around the bite, I say, “No.”
Cairn takes a seat across from me. His dark eyes narrow slightly. “Why not? I’ve told you to eat breakfast before you come.”
I shrug. After swallowing down my bread, I give him a small smile and say, “I was too excited to see you.”
There his cheeks go again, turning a little bit red. Is this a new thing, or was I just not paying enough attention before to see the way the color dances so beautifully across his skin? I decide I like it. A lot. It makes me want to say more things that’ll make him blush.
“So...” I take another bite of bread and tip my head at him. He looks at me like he’s worried about what I’m going to say next. That’s probably fair. “Have you missed me?”
His laughter is sudden and wonderful. He leans back in his chair, making it creak a bit beneath his weight, and then reaches up to scratch his beard. “It’s not been so long since we last saw each other.”
I give him a little smirk. “Is that a yes? You can admit it.”
One of his brows pulls up in the corner. I hold his gaze as I finish up my slice of cinnamon-sugar bread, not letting him off the hook so easily. When I don’t break our stare, he shakes his head and lets out another deep sigh.
“Yes,” he says at long last. The word is quiet, like it’s supposed to be a secret. “I missed you.”
My heart squeezes so hard I think it might pop. I lick the sugar from my fingers, then push up from my chair and twirl toward Cairn before plopping myself into his lap and wrapping my hands around his strong neck. He sits back suddenly, blinking in surprise.
“I knew it,” I say. My fingers play with the soft brown curls along his nape. Then my gaze lifts to his horns curling over his head. They’re ridged slightly, and their tips are tapered and sharp. I start to reach for one, then pause and say, “Can I...?”
He gives a small nod.
Slowly, I continue to reach out. When my fingers meet Cairn’s horn, he softens a bit, some of the tension going out of his body. I touch the base of the horn first, where it meets his head and is covered by his thick dark hair. It’s warm, perhaps from the blood flowing beneath. Then my fingers dance up the curling length. The horn is smooth between the ridges, and it’s cooler the farther from the base I go. It narrows into a sharp point, and I brush my thumb across it, feeling the slight bite against my skin.
“They’re amazing,” I whisper, admiring how even the gray autumn light slipping through the kitchen window makes them gleam.
Cairn huffs out a little breath. “You think so?”
“Mm-hmm.” I let my fingers glide back down the curling horn, and Cairn shivers. I glance down at him. “Can you feel that?”
He nods. “The closer to the base, the more I can feel it.”
Hmm.
I glide my fingers around the base of his horn, noting how his eyelids flutter closed for a moment. “And does it feel... good?”
Since I sat down on him, Cairn has kept his hands off me, one curled into a fist on the table and the other alongside his thigh. But now he reaches for me, his warm fingers finding the dip of my waist. He tips his head a bit so he can meet my eyes. “Everything you do feels good.”
Now he’s the one making my cheeks warm.
I shift atop him, letting my legs fall along either side of his hips. He tenses up again, and beneath me, his length twitches.
Sliding my hands down his warm, firm chest, I whisper, “Can we do it again?”
