Page 33 of Claimed By the Mothman (Greymarket Towers #1)

N ell heard the thud on her balcony. The sound stopped her heart for a beat…then set it singing.

Her legs trembled as she stood. She clutched her nightshirt to her chest, body still slick with want, the bond threading through in her core like a root system, sending heat through every part of her.

She stepped forward, unsteady but certain, and moved into the living room with breath snagged in her throat.

There he was, framed in the balcony doorway like a vision made flesh. Naked and star-kissed. His wings unfurled behind him in slow, shuddering arcs, and his trembling hands clasped into fists at his side.

Their eyes met, and the bond surged between them like a river about to flood. Their breaths synced. Their pulses matched.

Sig stepped forward, unsteady, as if afraid the moment would vanish if he moved too quickly. His mouth opened once, then closed, the muscles in his jaw tightening.

“I—” His voice cracked, rough and wrecked. “I felt you.”

Nell’s throat tightened. She reached out, slowly,like she was afraid he might shatter if she moved too fast.

“I felt you too,” she whispered.

Sig pressed his hand to the door frame, steadying himself, although his claws left shallow gouges in the wood. His other hand curled against his chest like he could cage the bond inside his ribs.

“Nell,” he said, her name catching in his throat like a shard of glass. “I…I wish for you to break the bond. I cannot—” He swallowed. “I do not know if I can bear a moment like this again, for the ache is eating me alive with every breath.”

His shoulders twitched, wings flaring like they were caught between fleeing and folding her to him.

“I do not know if I can survive the breaking of the bond, but I would rather collapse than continue to live in this liminal space.” His eyes flashed. “Or risk doing something to you that was not freely given.”

Nell stepped forward. “No,” she said, simply.

The word was small but devastating. His entire body recoiled, a shudder tearing through him like he’d been struck.

She took another step. Then another. She halted just shy of him, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his skin. Close enough to feel how hard he was trying not to move. Her fingers let go of the shirt, and it drifted to the floor like the last of her hesitation, leaving her naked before him.

“I refuse to let you make this decision for me,” she said, her voice low and sure.

His mouth parted—shaking, lost—caught somewhere between protest and prayer.

She lifted a hand. “I want this. I accept this.”

And the bond howled in a scream of joy.

Heat flooded the space between them. Her mark pulsed to life like a heartbeat. Sig’s mark flared and cast golden light across her skin, flickering and dancing over the curve of her stomach, her breasts, her thighs.

Nell reached out and laid a hand on his chest. The velvet-soft patch beneath her palm responded, warming, tightening with small quivers. A slow exhale escaped him, dragged from the depths of his chest like it had to claw its way past the wreckage of his restraint.

His claspers twitched as they stretched from him, flexing, trembling with need. The delicate limbs were downy at the edges, jointed in precise curves. One brushed her hip while the other reached higher, skimming the underside of her breast with feather-light reverence that made her gasp.

Her hand drifted lower, tracing his ribs down the slope of his abdomen. A slick seam pulsed beneath his glowing mark, and she brushed her fingers along it. His breath fractured into pieces.

“Nell,” he rasped, her name as reverent as a prayer.

Nell lifted her hand and brushed his strange, lipless, pliant mouth. “Sig,” she breathed.

“I do not…” he began, voice rough with emotion, “know the rituals. I do not wish to harm you again—”

She pressed her fingers slightly against his mouth, silencing him. “Here,” she said softly, taking his hand and guiding it to her breast. “Start here.”

She leaned into his palm and deliberately, slowly, coaxed his thumb across her nipple. It stiffened immediately and she sucked in a breath. Sig thrummed, low and harmonic, and gently repeated the motion, circling the bud slowly.

His other hand rose, framing her, and his fingers began to gently brush along the swell of her breasts, mapping them with a touch that sent tingles skittering along her skin.

She gasped, and she felt the heat of his gaze sharpen as he studied her, measuring the stagger of her breath, memorizing the exact moment her nipple drew tight under his thumb, weighing and way her hips tipped forward and begged without words.

Another pass of his thumb brushed her nipple, this time firmer, slower, and Nell whimpered. Sig’s head tilted, antennae quivering. “Is this… normal?” he asked, voice barely a whisper.

“Very,” she breathed.

He made a low, purring sound—softer than a growl, deeper than a sigh—and skimmed his hands upward, slow as heat rising. His claws traced the soft lines of her throat, the delicate curve beneath her jaw. One finger gently swept along her cheek, and she shivered at the touch.

Sig curled forward, folding downward in one fluid motion until he pressed his forehead to hers. One hand cupped the back of her head while the other moved to steady her hip.

His antennae ghosted forward, brushing against her cheeks, her brow, the corners of her mouth. Light and trembling. Testing. Tasting .

“Where you turn, I will follow,” he breathed, the words carrying the shape of ritual. “Where you rest, I will guard. You have called me, and I come.”

His mouth claimed hers and Nell melted into the heat of it, her back arching, her body already electric with need.

Her lips parted instinctively, and Sig captured her lower lip in a gentle bite.

He deepened the kiss, stroking into her mouth.

Nell moaned against him as their tongues tangled, heat curling in her core as he claimed her in this small, molten way.

Something sinuous and alien uncoiled between their tongues. Nell’s eyes flew wide and she pulled back with a soft, startled gasp, lips parted.

A second, slender appendage hovered just beyond Sig’s mouth. Pale and delicate, it flexed in the air, and Sig stilled. “Nell?”

Nell didn’t respond right away, because her eyes were locked on this strange appendage that was so very other… but also beautiful and erotic in a way that defied explanation.

“Do that again,” she whispered.

He obliged without hesitation. The proboscis slid between her lips again, joining the kiss with slow, deliberate intent. It twined around her tongue in a motion both tender and possessive, a second pulse within her mouth.

His tongue followed, moving alongside it, smooth and searching. The two sensations danced together, and her sense of self unraveled, undone by the double rhythm of him inside her mouth. She couldn’t tell where her mouth ended and his began, couldn’t track which breath was hers, which sigh was his.

Sig pulled back just enough to breathe against her lips: “Let me worship you.”

He dropped to his knees. Even kneeling, he nearly matched her height. He pulled her close again, pressing another kiss to her lips—soft, sealing, claiming . Then he began his descent, trailing downward in a series of reverent kisses.

His antennae fluttered against her skin, brushing her cheeks, her throat, her collarbone, lower. They skated across her neck, and she sighed when he kissed the spot where his bite had once pierced her, memory mingling with arousal.

His mouth hovered over her breast, face so close she could feel the heat radiating from him. A low trill escaped his throat, then slowly, he sealed his mouth around one aching peak.

She cried out. He suckled gently, pulling her with a rhythm that was slow and obscene in its tenderness. The proboscis followed, curling along the underside of her breast, mirroring the motion of his tongue as it wrapped, squeezed with a subtle contraction.

Her knees buckled, and he caught her effortlessly, one clawed hand sliding to the small of her back. He raised his mouth to whisper, “You are mine to taste, to steady, to keep. ”

Nell shivered against him, clutching his shoulders to steady herself. “Then—keep going. Please.”

Sig churred, and he moved his mouth to the other breast with the same patient worship.

His tongue dragged slowly across her skin, tracing the shape of her pleasure, the tremble of her surrender.

His proboscis moved in a spiral, wrapping her nipple tighter, then releasing, then tightening again.

It licked down the curve of her breast, and her whole body convulsed with the shock of it.

“I did not know,” he murmured, a low clack echoing under his words, “how sweet it would be to have you come undone beneath my mouth.” He drew the tip of his tongue in a slow, deliberate line down her sternum as she panted, her head thrown back.

“So reactive. So ripe. Every part of you sings for me.”

Her brain broke. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t speak. Her body was molten, her nerves flooded with static and need.

“I—can’t—bed,” she whimpered. “I can’t make it.”

Her knees folded and the floor caught her in its gravity, taking him with her. They landed in the nest of tangled pillows still strewn across the floor from Goldie’s last movie night. Nell fell to her back, her legs falling open between them.

Sig bowed over her. His nostrils flared as he caught the scent of the sheen between her thighs. His eyes darkened, blown wide with a desirous hunger. “You are…” He exhaled like the syllables cost him. “You are blessed ash. You are the first light through sacred smoke. You are offering. ”

Nell gave a little broken sound, reaching up for him. “Touch me again,” she whispered. “Please.”

He churred, a low, sub-harmonic thrum from deep in his chest that vibrated through her, and kissed her mouth, all tongue and teeth and breath. “As you wish.”