Page 101 of Claimed By the Mothman

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. Hersoulmight 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 forone tasteful nude! Or a sketch! Or just, like,somethingso I’d know you were still breathing! Instead, I get silence andnothing!”

“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. “Isthatwhat 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.

“I’d like to think so. But—” Nell looked down. The ring was still, but her pulse wasn’t. “I haven’t, like, received an official memo or anything.”

She reached for her chair and froze. A small piece of parchment lay on her desk. It hadn’t been there when she first looked. She reached out, slowly, as if it might bite. The second her fingers touched it, ink bloomed black and fluid, curling like smoke in reverse.