Page 39 of Moth to a Flame

Lucia was nearly as nocturnal as me, so we would sleep until late afternoon, then wake and take a quick motorcycle ride over to Gertrude’s to pick up her daily translations and often some sort of homemade dinner.

Tonight, I was reheating veggie ravioli when Lucia wandered into the kitchen in one of her more revealing black lace dresses.

She gave me a soft smile as I placed a steaming mug of tea into her hand and kissed her cheek.

“You know, I never really ate breakfast before you.”

“First, you can’t really call it breakfast if it’s at three p.m. Second, you need energy for that big brain of yours.”

“And what about you?” She eyed the spoon in my mouth and then the empty jar on her counter. “My bees are going to have to start working overtime.”

I’d finished what she’d had, but had woken up two days ago to three fresh jars laid out. She must have collected it from the apiaries behind her greenhouse while I’d been focused on getting the last broken panel down.

“Moth metabolism. Sugar is the only thing that really keeps up, and honey is way more nutritious than the fructose you can get at the store.”

She smiled and stepped closer, running her fingers through the hairs at the back of my neck until a tingle went up my spine.

“Is that why you’re so sweet?” she asked, sounding innocent despite the evil grin on her face.

Heat rushed up my neck. “Oh, you mean my…”

She chuckled softly, leaning in and gently tugging on my earlobe with her teeth until my cock twitched painfully. “I don’t only mean that.”

She ran her hand down the front of my jeans, and I groaned. “Hey, we made a rule—no sex until you get at least one line of translation done.”

She pulled back, pouting. “I didn’t see you enforcing that yesterday.”

Guilty. But she’d been ovulating, and her pheromones had been off the charts, and she’d been entirely feral. How was a guy supposed to resist that?

“Yeah, but the full moon is coming up soon, so we really should⁠—”

She stepped back immediately, and it felt like the bond had been doused in ice water.

But why?

She wanted this bond broken, didn’t she? She certainly acted like it, spending every waking minute without me between her thighs working on the counter-spell. She was the one who had made the rule!

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. You’re right.”

“Lucia…”

“Let’s get to work. Not much time left.”

She walked away, and the bond tugged, so I followed. Near the door, she shrugged on her jacket, but as I got closer, the pain didn’t lessen.

“Is it that glyph you were stuck on? Should I call Gertrude?”

“No,” she said harshly. Then she took a deep breath and shoved the pain down. I hated when she did that. “No, I’ll figure it out. I always do.”

The new glass for the greenhouse had been delivered that morning, so I grabbed it off the porch and carried it to the greenhouse, following after her. Like I always did.

She settled into the chair we had brought out there for her to work in, her fingers striking the keyboard with more aggression than necessary. Her sadness and frustration were bubbling like a cauldron in her chest, and if she had been a storm witch, there would have been a very angry cloud over her head. Instead, the vine behind her twisted until the leaves looked more like blades than photosynthesizers.

I wanted her to talk to me. I understood the instinct to shove it all down, to let the list and the work keep you from working through it. Hell, I’d done it for years. But I didn’t want her to do that, and it was about more than the fact that I could feel how it was tearing her apart inside.

I wanted her to trust me, because the truth was, I trusted her. This last week had been one of the lightest and most enjoyable of my life. And it wasn’t the sex.