Page 42 of Claimed By the Mothman (Greymarket Towers #1)

H e was trying to be helpful. This, in itself, was a complication.

The electric kettle wheezed, puffing steam in irregular bursts like a creature in pain. Sig stared at it warily. The human contraption had claimed, through a sticker on its side, that it would sing when ready. Thus far, it had only hissed like a cornered animal. He did not trust it.

He did, however, trust her . Which was why he stood here, blinking down at a box of Soothing Citrus Wellness Blend and wondering what kind of sap-witted, nectar-addled insect had signed off on this flavor.

He had felt her light dim yesterday, recoiling from the Edward’s presence like a prodded wound. Last night, he had poured himself into her again and again, hoping to ease her pain. Now, in the hush of morning, her light glowed again. Still bruised, but healing.

He would do anything to help it heal. Even this. Even tea.

The citrus scent crept through the apartment like ghost’s breath. Beneath it, softer notes lingered: the perfume of her soap, the sleep-warm scent of her skin, the memory of her voice breaking on his name.

He adjusted the kettle’s angle as if that might appease it. It spat at him. He hissed back softly, so as not to wake her.

This was love, he reminded himself. And love, apparently, required boiling water.

Nell padded into the kitchen, her hair damp and curling at the edges. The robe she wore had slipped crooked on one side, her collarbone peeking out from beneath it like a secret.

Sig turned toward her, the box of citrus tea still clenched in one clawed hand. His heart did something inconvenient in his chest.

She didn’t speak. Just crossed the floor, curled her fingers around the mug in his hand, and pressed a kiss, slow and certain, into the center of his chest.

He chittered quietly, and one claw rose, grazing the edge of her jaw.

“You made tea,” she murmured.

“I attempted to,” he confessed. “The kettle protested. But I prevailed.”

She took a sip. A pause. “It’s perfect,” she said, with a soft smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

Her lie struck him as the most exquisite offering he’d ever received. The tea had steeped too long. The temperature was wrong. By any human metric, it was a tragedy in a cup. But she honored the attempt. Somehow, that made him love her even more.

He pulled her close and folded his wings around her. She didn’t resist, but let her breath mingle with his. The hum of her body, warm and wet from the shower, soaked into his skin.

And then she sighed. “I’m going in to work today.”

Sig churred in surprise—a soft, uncertain sound that cracked at the edges.

“You do not wish to stay with me?” He kept his tone careful, modulated, as if gentleness might hide how the words struck him like a lash. “You do not wish for me to worship you the way you deserve?”

One claw dragged slowly down the curve of her back, the other slipping beneath the hem of her robe to find bare skin. His palm met the slope of her hip. He made a low sound of longing.

“I desire the taste of you on my tongue.” Sig dipped his head and unfurled said instrument, which unrolled with sinuous ease and grazed the damp curve of her shoulder. She arched into him with a gasp.

“Beloved,” he said, voice breaking open with want. “Please. Stay.”

Nell pressed into him, just for a heartbeat—her breath catching, her body softening in that telltale way he had already learned to crave. Her pulse fluttered beneath his mouth. Her fingers curled into the fabric at his waist.

Yes, he thought. Stay and let me make you forget everything else.

She sighed and stepped back. “Sig.”

His claws hesitated, still ghosting over her skin. Reluctantly, he let her go. One finger lingered at the tie of her robe, then slipped free. He looked at her like the world was ending because, in a small and tragic way, it was. His antennae drooped with despair.

She cupped his jaw and smoothed her thumb across it like she was soothing a wild thing. “We did it three times yesterday,” she said gently, her green eyes flashing with tired amusement. “And again in the middle of the night.”

“I am not yet satisfied,” he said, utterly unrepentant. “I am forsaken.” He pulled away and crossed his arms over his chest in a solemn, theatrical huff and stared mournfully at the wall.

“You’re pouting.”

“I have been denied the chance to ensure your pleasure is so profound you lose the ability to pronounce consonants.”

Nell laughed, the sound burbling from her throat like a spring water over stones. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“I found strawberries,” he added bitterly. "They are ripe. I had plans.”

As if summoned by the sheer force of overstimulation, Nell took another sip of tea and said casually, “Also? Goldie texted me. She said, and I quote: If you don’t show up to work today, I’m assuming he ate you and I’m coming over there with garden shears and removing his dick myself. No jury would convict me .”

Sig straightened to his full height, scandalized. “I would never.” His voice dropped an octave, wounded and affronted. “I did not consume you. I merely—” he gestured vaguely.“—rendered you temporarily unable to stand.”

Nell covered her mouth in an attempt he realized to keep tea from spraying everywhere.

“The Goldie,” Sig clacked, tone darkening like a thundercloud, “is a menace.”

“She’s protective,” Nell said, eyes gleaming. “And you’re being dramatic.”

“I am not dramatic,” he sniffed, wings fluffing out in protest. “I am simply devoted.”

Nell, very wisely, did not comment. But she reached up, smoothing the line between his brows with her thumb.

“I promise I’ll come home early,” she said gently. “We’ll order some food and then you can do whatever you want to me. All evening. Full worship permissions granted.”

That, at least, drew a sound from him. A low, pleased churr that started in his chest and spilled out in soft vibration. “I will wait, then. And I will make it count.”

Nell rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. She kissed him and then made her way toward the bathroom, her robe fluttering around her ankles like a trailing sigh.

He watched her go and already missed her.

He stood in the kitchen long after the kettle had cooled, the citrus scent turning stale in the air. The mug sat half-finished on the counter. Her lips had touched it. That was something. A relic of her presence.

He exhaled, sharp and quiet. He wanted to follow her. Wanted to lay his body across the doors and forbid her exit until every inch of her had been kissed into forgetting.

But he did not. Because she had asked him to wait. And he would wait. And then, later, he would worship.

Sig closed his eyes.

And somewhere beneath his skin—where the bond curled like thread soaked in light—he felt it stir. Not fear, but the shape that comes before it.

—

Nell pushed open the library’s front door with one shoulder, her hair still damp at the temples from a too-fast blow-dry. Her thighs ached. Her pelvis ached. Her soul might be bruised. Something deep inside had been jostled loose and was still humming.

Sig had pouted like a wounded faerie prince when she left. It had been both adorable and deeply unfair.

She wasn’t running from him, but she just needed a break. A moment of normalcy.

She’d had more orgasms in the last forty-eight hours than in the previous fifteen years. Sig seemed pathologically committed to worship-as-sport. He had no shame, and definitely no refractory period. She was beginning to suspect his kind didn’t experience friction burns. Her kind absolutely did.

She smiled, then flushed. She could still feel the exact way his tongue had unspooled against her thighs. But she needed to remember who she was. Nell Townsend. A person. A whole self. Not just the trembling thing he touched like she was sacred.

The familiar hush of the library wrapped around her A low thrum of pages whispering to themselves. Temperature wards breathing through the walls.

“Oh my GODS. You’re ALIVE.”

Goldie launched herself from behind the circulation desk like a hex in motion, all bangles and momentum. She flung her arms around Nell like she was a life preserver and she, a passenger on the Titanic.

“I was this close to calling your emergency contact! I had a backpack packed! A stake, my grandfather’s exorcism kit—just in case I had to banish your sex demon before it swallowed you whole.”

“Goldie—”

“I asked for one tasteful nude ! Or a sketch! Or just, like, something so I’d know you were still breathing! Instead, I get silence and nothing!”

“I saw your texts,” Nell exclaimed, wincing. “I had … other things in my hands. I mean—on my hands!” Except, literally, other things in my hands.

Goldie shrieked and then grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “I did a tarot spread for you and pulled The Tower four times. Then The Lovers reversed. And then The Moon. That’s just the universe whispering, ‘hee hee, everything’s cursed.’ You can’t blame me for being worried!”

“I’m here now,” Nell said, managing a tired laugh.

“Yeah, but are you?” Goldie leaned in, eyes sharp. “I was seriously worried you got monster-married wrong and he soul-siphoned you into a blissed-out husk. I had a smudge stick ready and a spray bottle of holy water.”

Before Nell could respond, Mrs. Kephra’s voice drifted from the archives, dry as dust and twice as pointed.

“You didn’t need to come in today, dear.”

“I needed the air,” Nell said truthfully. And a break from being worshipped into the carpet.

Goldie made a strangled squeak. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”

Nell slipped behind the returns desk. Her opal ring pulsed, and she rubbed it absently with her thumb.

Goldie noticed. Of course she did. “So,” she said, tone suddenly casual. “You two did the whole cryptid-bond thing? Officially hitched?”

Nell hesitated. Too long. “Yeah,” she said. “The bond sealed.”

Goldie drummed her fingers against the desk. “So no more weird light shows? No vanishing staircases? No glowing red doors?” Her voice was light and falsely high.