11. Oral Hex
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Oral Hex
My head was spinning.
In all my years of magic, I’d never felt something like this before—tingly everywhere, like tiny feet were crawling over every inch of my skin.
Such a gentle sensation, but paired with the heavy heartbeat I could feel in my pussy and the soft caress of his antennae against my inner thighs, I felt like I was on fire.
Physically, I’d never been so sated.
Emotionally, it was something even deeper. A post-orgasm haze married with immense satisfaction that I was realizing wasn’t entirely mine.
“You okay, boss?” he asked, raising his head and slowly pulling his fingers out of me. The entire bottom half of his face was glistening, along with the bridge of his nose.
“Yeah—yeah. Um, what was that thing you did?”
The feeling of satisfaction surged.
“You liked that? Being part mothman does have some advantages.” A very dark pink tongue rolled out of his mouth, much longer than a normal human’s. He curled it, showing off the tip, and it was—hollow.
“Oh, like a proboscis.”
He grinned, and his tongue snapped back into his mouth. “Exactly.”
Underneath the thrumming satisfaction rolling off him, embarrassment surfaced.
“Most people think it’s freaky.”
“Hey.” I sat up and gently cupped his face. “I don’t ever want you to feel like that. Not around me.”
His red eyes searched mine, but it was impossible for us to get away with lying to each other. The emotional dissonance gave it away. The realization that I was being fully honest came to him quickly. I traced my thumb along his cheekbone and let him feel exactly what I meant.
“It’s who you are. And I liked it. A lot. In case that wasn’t clear from the crazy orgasm.”
The knot of embarrassment loosened in his chest. He turned his face into my palm and kissed the heel of my hand, then my wrist and up my arm, his antennae flicking gently.
“I see why Mugen likes these.” I laughed and tugged him up until he was lying beside me, his head on my pillow, one arm thrown across my stomach.
I ran my fingers through his hair. The curls were damp at the temples. He made a small, pleased sound and closed his eyes. After most hookups, I wanted the other party out before I could say something that would make it more awkward than it already was.
But Hawk heard me. He understood me, not just my words, but the deep part of me I’d locked away for so long I’d forgotten how it worked. I wasn’t sure it was working right even now, but I knew I didn’t want him to leave.
Not yet, anyway.
For a while, I just looked at him. The piercing in his nose. The flame tattoos that sprawled over his neck. The soft, dark fringe of his lashes. The mothman delivery driver who had crashed into my life…and was going to leave it soon.
His eyes flew open. “What was that?”
“Nothing.” A useless lie, but an automatic one. I deflected. “How did you get into delivery driving?”
He watched my face and must have decided it wasn’t worth pushing.
“Being part cryptid limits the normal jobs you can get. I like the road and motorcycles, and the pay is good. And it’s discreet, keeps me out of the family legacy.”
Now that caught my attention, along with a very old embarrassment that pulsed through him. It felt different, not shame exactly, but more like the particular exhaustion of a joke you’ve heard a thousand times.
“The family legacy? And what’s that?”
“Apparently, it’s running around nude and haunting Point Pleasant.”
I sat up on one elbow. “Hawk, is your dad the Mothman?”
“Yes.”
I heard the hurt in that too. It was a familiar hurt, one that spoke of a wound created by someone who should have been there for you. I laced my fingers through his, hating that he knew what that felt like.
“Guess he wasn’t around much, huh?”
“No, too busy posing for statues.” The hurt crested, and then he laughed, surprising me.
He hadn’t shoved it away but moved through it, feeling it, then letting it go.
“Last winter, we put a tramp stamp right over his shiny silver buttcrack, and it went viral, and he was pissed. We thought it was hilarious.”
“We?”
“Me and my brothers.”
“You have brothers?”
“I have a lot of brothers. Six, actually.” He shifted on the bed and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He clicked it on, and his home screen was a picture of him and a teen boy with the same dark, curly hair.
“He’s your—”
“Youngest brother. He’s about to graduate high school, valedictorian. That kid is going places.”
The smile on his face told me everything. How proud he was. The affection threaded through his voice as he said it.
No bond needed.
A complex feeling rose in my chest. I loved seeing his smile, feeling his pride, but vines of jealousy climbed my ribs. That’s how an older brother should be. He gave me another concerned look, and I pushed it down.
“You seem very close.”
He shrugged, one shoulder against the pillow. “We are. Dad wasn’t around much, and Mom’s human. Somebody had to teach them how to fly without hitting anything.”
I had a feeling it was a lot more than that. He said it casually, but I felt the hurt beneath it. If his youngest brother was in high school, that meant he had just been a kid when more than his fair share of responsibility had likely settled on his shoulders.
And he’d done it.
He’d stepped up, and by the look of it, still was.
I loved my brother.
Once.
When we were small and neither of us knew yet what he would grow into.
I remembered him at seven, showing me how to press flowers between the pages of a book.
I remembered him at nine, sitting on the end of my bed, reading me passages from the family grimoire in a dramatic whisper, making shadow entities on the wall.
I remembered him at twelve, teaching me my first Latin conjugations because our tutor had gone home and I had begged him to. He’d complained, but he had done it.
Then I remembered him at eighteen, pouting when I’d been named valedictorian of our private school, and not him.
I remembered him at twenty-four, doing all the press for our newest drug that I’d invented—not stolen—as the stock price soared.
And I remembered him at twenty-seven, in the drawing room downstairs, looking me in the eye and saying those same Latin words that had once bonded us as our stock price tanked.
Only this time, my throat closed around every sound I would try to make for the rest of my life.
My chest tightened, and Hawk rolled back toward me. “Hey, you can talk to me, you know. Might as well take advantage of this bond, right?” He gave me a soft smile, like he was afraid I would run away again.
But it wasn’t me who was going to leave.
Not that I blamed him. Everyone left eventually.
“I’m glad he has you. A good brother to look up to.”
He shook his head. “He’s so much smarter than I’ve ever been. Only thing we have in common is we both got the most human from our mom.”
He swiped and showed me a picture of him and all his brothers.
They were more moth, to say the least. One had a fluffy ruff around his neck, and others were much fuzzier overall.
One’s face was almost completely moth-like, huge glowing red eyes taking up most of it.
It was obvious why they would have issues blending in somewhere that wasn’t used to the supernatural.
“Why don’t they come live somewhere like Pumpkin Hollow?”
He frowned. “There’s a reason I have the motorcycle. Moths, we…can’t stay still. Need to be on the move. Even if they moved here, it wouldn’t last. We were meant to fly. Even Motthew. I swear, sometimes I wanna nail that kid’s boots to the floor.”
“Motthew?”
“Yeah.” He pointed to the youngest. “And that’s Motholemew, Mothigan, Timothy…”
I glanced between the phone and him.
“And your name is…Hawk?”
Red crept under the dark tattoos on his neck, and he scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, that’s what people call me.”
“But your actual name is…” I let the question hang in the air as he blushed harder.
“Don’t laugh.”
“I would never.”
“Mothgomery.”
That was so fucking adorable. “What should I call you?”
“Lucia, you can call me whatever the fuck you want.”
Goddess, did this magic give us both unlimited stamina too? I had a feeling absolutely no research was getting done ever again if all it took was a few bats of his long eyelashes to have heat swirling at tectonic levels between us.
“Lie down.”
His embarrassment rose again.
“Actually, maybe I should just…” He shifted like he might try to leave.
But he wasn’t getting away from me. Not tonight, at least.
I sat up on my knees and pointed to the bed in front of me.
“Hawk. Lie down.”
He hesitated, but rolled over. I helped him position some pillows beneath his back to protect his wings, then looked down at the mess that was my sweatpants. A huge dark stain spread around the tent over his cock, way more than precum accounted for.
“I can go clean up—”
“Stay.” I pressed a single finger to his chest to keep him in place.
He didn’t fight.
“Good boy.”
His eyes went wide, and a pulse of heat so strong passed through the bond that my magic slipped free, all the marigolds on my windowsill blooming at once.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and I tugged down his pants and underwear together.
He sprang free, sticky cum covering his lower abs and very pretty cock.
Thick veins, like the ones on his hands and wings, ran along the surface, and I counted six barbell piercings in his Jacob’s ladder, with an unusual gap between rungs three and four.
Everyone left, but I was going to make sure he remembered me for the rest of his life.
I gripped his cock around the base, squeezing gently until more glistening liquid spilled down those metallic ornaments.
“Lucia, please…” It was more whimper than words, and yes, I liked that very much.
I was going to have him doing that again.