Page 26 of Claimed By the Mothman (Greymarket Towers #1)

S ig flexed his claws against the windowsill.

He should not have walked her home, no matter how short the trajectory had been. He should not have let her touch him, however absurd, however gentle, however drunkenly blessed. He should not have stood there, silent and still, when her forehead pressed to his chest.

She had leaned in. She had lingered. And now her scent clung to him, sweet and bitter and alive, completely warm and human and something that had no business winding around his ribs like this.

He gritted his teeth. Dragged one trembling breath in through his nose. Let it burn.

She’d touched his chest and called him a tree. And, by all the gods, if she asked, he would allow her to climb him. He would beg her to.

“You’re so tall. Like—how did that even work when you fucked me on the table?”

He could still feel her around him. The way her cunt had clamped down around him, wet and greedy, fluttering with every thrust like she didn’t want him to stop.

How her nails had raked down his back, drawing lines of searing pain that only pushed him harder.

He had slammed into her so hard the table had buckled, groaned beneath their weight.

Her moans had turned frantic, sobbing with pleasure, every inch of her slick and open and giving.

She had come undone beneath him, not once, but over and over, like her body couldn’t stop.

Now the bond burrowed deeper with every heartbeat. He could feel it throb behind his teeth. In the base of his spine. But she had not yet chosen him. And so he stood there, sweating and hard and wild with need, and did not move.

He clawed his hand down the side of the windowsill, slow and trembling. “I will not go to her,” he whispered. “She has not chosen.”

“You kissed your hand before slapping it against my cheek. Does that constitute hate among humans?”

His cock twitched violently, straining against his trousers. His body was reacting in ways it hadn’t since his first heat-cycle, when he was a newly molted youth with trembling hands and no sense of control, mad with the scent of pheromones and fantasy.

His hand drifted low, palm grazing the flat of his stomach. Lower. A shudder tore through him. He stopped himself— barely —with a guttural growl.

The Broodhome rose in his mind. A cold, high chamber. Wind howling across the marble spires. Elders seated in a crescent of bone and silk, watching him with those glowing, ancient eyes.

You are Harbinger, they said. Life calls to the Harbinger because it is the only thing louder than Death. If you answer and take that bond, it will cost. Your thoughts will bend, and your purpose will blur. You will ache in your skin until you cannot remember who you were before.

He had been so young. So sure he would not falter. That he would be different. He had listened, but when the moment had come, he had taken her.

Gods help him, if given the chance once more, he would take her again.

And again. On the table, crazed with animal lust. In the dark hush of his bed, honoring the beauty of her body one inch at a time.

Against the glass of the window, answering her panting breath with his own groans.

Kneeling at the altar of her body, pressing his lips and his tongue to her, filling her and worshiping her as she writhed with pleasure.

He would tear down the moon and lay it at her feet if only it would make her smile.

The bond crooned now, raw and needy, and he couldn’t silence it. Swearing between his teeth, he let his hand drift down.

A touch of claw against fabric. The sharp crack of a seam straining. He tore his waistband open and freed himself with a groan, his cock already flushed and leaking, pulsing in time with the memory of her moans.

He wrapped his hand around his base and shuddered. He stroked once, remembering the way she had looked at him when she leaned in, flushed and glassy-eyed, pressing her forehead to his chest like she belonged there.

Twice—rougher—recalling the sound she made when he thrust into her, a wail of pleasure.

Three times now and he was gone—hips canting into his hand, chasing the memory of how her thighs had tightened like a snare. He imagined her under him as she shattered, whispering please, again, again with her lips swollen and her voice breaking. Her hands in his hair. Her tears. Her laugh.

It echoed now as release crashed through him—raw, violent, helpless —his seed spilling over his hand as he bowed over it, wings flared, breath shuddering.

The room spun. The city exhaled. And Sig stood shaking in the wreckage of it—body sated, but the ache somehow worse.

Because she hadn’t chosen him.

But gods, he had already chosen her.

—

Nell’s mouth was dry. Her skin overheated. Her hair—oh gods, her hair was stuck to one side of her face, matted by sweat or sleep or the shame leaking out of her pores.

Nell groaned. Rolled over. Groaned again. The sheets smelled like leftover perfume and mortification. Her dress from the night before was puddled on the floor like it, too, had given up.

Oh, no.

She pressed a palm to her forehead. Memory skittered across her brain like spilled marbles.

She’d called him a tree. She’d kissed her own hand and slapped his face. And worst of all—

"You’re so tall. Like—how did that even work when you fucked me on the table?"

She buried her face in the pillow and her whole body seized like it was trying to self-destruct.

“Oh my gods,” she whispered. She thrashed weakly, limbs tangled in her sheets like she was mid-exorcism.

The blanket wrapped around her legs with the cling of consequence, and her traitorous, vengeful core throbbed like it had something to say about everything that had—and hadn’t—happened.

“No,” she said out loud, to the gods, to herself, to the ceiling that definitely was judging her. “We are not doing this. We are not having horny regret. We are not fantasizing about the exact angle he used to wreck my cervix.”

She made the mistake of picturing it again and flung the blanket off her like it had personally conspired against her.

She stumbled into the kitchen, her feet slapping softly against the tile, her breath coming in short, uneven bursts.

Her oversized T-shirt clung in all the wrong places.

Her nipples were stiff peaks beneath the thin fabric, achingly sensitive.

She wasn’t sure if she was going to cry, scream, or orgasm from sheer pressure, but by all the gods and monsters, she was not going to do it now.

Now was tea. Tea was civilized. Tea didn’t have glowing red eyes, or clawed hands that had held her so perfectly open, or the memory of her own legs trembling, her voice gone hoarse—

“Nope,” she muttered fiercely, yanking open the cabinet. “Not sex. Not spiraling. Just tea. ”

She opened a cupboard with more force than necessary. She needed to get him out of her head before she did something truly unhinged, like knock on his door and beg him to ravage her again.

“Godsdamn it,” she snarled, whirling around to pick up a teacup and saw a square of pale parchment on the counter. It hadn’t been there last night. She was sure of it.

Carefully, like it might combust in her hands, she peeled the cup away and unfolded the paper. It smelled faintly like dusk and dust and something sweetly spiced.

Her eyes scanned the delicate, inhuman script: Do you prefer bergamot dried or fresh?

Her breath caught. She ran her thumb over the folded edge. It felt… weird. Like it had once been part of something living.

She should throw it away. She should burn it.

Instead, she pressed it to her lips.

And then—blushing furiously—she tucked it into her junk drawer.

She didn’t need bergamot. She needed a lobotomy.

But gods help her, she wanted to write back.

—

The garden always breathed easier after rain. City rain, yes, but the soil didn’t seem to mind. It released itself in scent, exhaling something ancient beneath the planter boxes and trellised vines.

Sig pressed his claws into the damp earth. The plants were singing to him—soft, sleepy songs that said: we are here, we are living, we are part of this world. It soothed him.

The ache inside him was still hungry, still hot beneath the sternum. But leashed, now. He was still ashamed at how he’d come apart last night like a youngling in heat. Still, it had quieted his primal urges enough that he could function.

Even as her laugh haunted the back of his ears, even as the memory of her—flushed, delighted, wanting to climb him like a tree —shook him loose.

He closed his eyes. Steadied himself.

A breeze stirred the rosemary, and Sig inhaled instinctively. Grateful.

“You’re up early.”

Sig glanced over his shoulder.

Carol stood at the garden gate, wrapped in a lavender shawl. A pair of gardening shears glinted in her hand like secrets she intended to cut free.

“So are you,” he said.

She arched a brow behind her sunglasses. “My herbs won’t prune themselves. What’s your excuse?”

“I needed the sky.”

Carol’s expression softened slightly. She stepped closer and began trimming the rosemary with surgical precision.

“You know,” she said, tone light, “I’ve met Harbingers before.”

Sig stiffened. Just slightly. The bond hummed once in his chest, then stilled.

“They don’t usually attend dinner parties,” she went on. “Or participate in charades. Or…” She sniffed delicately. “Bond to humans.”

She shot him a look over her glasses—too sharp, too knowing. For just a moment, Sig was reminded that Carol, though human, had lived at Greymarket Towers long enough to collect the scent of otherness like dust on old books.

He ducked his head. “I did not mean it. It was too soon.”

He blinked at her, then shifted his focus to the thyme. Gently, he began pinching away browned tips with the edge of a claw, like he needed the task to anchor his hands.