Page 61 of Claimed By the Mothman

His hand touched her back so gently she thought maybe she imagined it.

“Yes,” he said.The word vibrated through his chest, and she felt it deep and low, like a second heartbeat thrumming beneath her skin.

“Are you going to say something poetic now?” she asked, eyes closed.

“Not unless you ask me to.” His voice was steady, but a tremor hovered beneath it.

She tilted her head up to him, heart stuttering. His eyes held on hers, unreadable yet open.

“You should go,” she whispered.

He nodded. Just once. “Goodnight, Nell.”

He stepped back, pulling away from her with agonizing care. She watched him go, heart pounding like it was trying to bruise her ribs from the inside.

Unlocked her door. Stepped inside. Turned. Shut it. Immediately slid down the back of it in a slow, full-body collapse, her palms dragging down her face.

“Oh my gods,” she whispered into the dark. “Isaid I wanted to climb him like a tree.”

She dropped her hands and stared up at the ceiling like it might grant her mercy or smite her outright. “And I kissed my hand andslapped his face with it.”

A groan tore from her throat and she rolled onto her back, sprawling across the entryway floor like the crime scene outline of a woman who had perished of lust and poor judgment. The scarf bunched under one shoulder blade. Her dress was halfway up her thigh.

“I need to move,” she muttered.

She did not move.

Her face was on fire. Her stomach was butterflies. Her heart was jazz percussion—improvised, relentless, a little unhinged.

But her chest… Her chest felt warm with something akin to joy.

“I am never drinking again,” she told the ceiling.

The ceiling said nothing.

But somehow, it felt like it was smiling.

Chapter 11

Sig 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 wouldbegher 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 andgiving.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?”