She sobbed, her whole body locked in helpless ecstasy, brain shriekingnot againwhile her hips twitched against him, still craving, still clenching. Hot tears welled behind her eyes from the pure, surrealwhat-the-fuckery.
His claspers shifted, tightening with what felt less like lust now and more like remorse. Like he was trying to soothe her gently without understanding the mechanisms. One of his arms hesitated midair, then gently curved behind her back.
“Tell me you didn’tknot,” she croaked.
“We do not call it that,” he murmured in a barely audible voice.
“Sig.”
“It is a…secondary anchor swell,” he offered, like that might somehow help. “To prevent slippage.”
“I swear tothe gods.”
She thumped a fist weakly against his chest. It landed like a wet sock. He didn’t even blink. Instead, he sighed and slid one arm under her thighs. He lifted her with ease, backed away from the table, and lowered them both back onto his chair in a graceless sprawl of tangled limbs.
They sat there. Fused. Her thighs trembling. Her brain short-circuiting. Her neighbor’s dick still very much lodged in a place no neighbor’s dick should ever be. And through it all, the mark between her thighs keptglowing, warm and low like the world’s worst afterglow candle.
Nell sucked in a shaky breath. Her senses began to realign, and with them, the pain.
She reached up to her shoulder, fingers grazing the torn skin, and recoiled with a hiss.
“Ow—shit—” She held up her now-bloody hand.
Sig’s eyes flashed. “You are bleeding.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” She wiped her palm on her thigh. “Did you have to break the skin?”
“I did not mean to,” he muttered. “None of this was…strictly conscious.”
With a groan of exhausted rage, Nell slumped forward in surrender and wrapped her arms around his neck “Ihatethis,” she muttered into his shoulder.
“I am sorry,” he whispered. “It was not my intention—”
“It wasn’t yourintention?”she barked, voice pitching into hysteria again. “My thighs are glowing, my brain is buzzing, and I swear to the gods, if your dick doesn’t retract in the next five seconds, I will cut it off and bury it in the community garden.”
His mouth opened like he might protest. Then, wisely, closed again.
Several moments passed.
Click.
The claspers finally,blessedly, released. His cock slipped out of her with a wet, obsceneschlup.
“Oh, thankfuck,” she muttered.
She moved too fast. and her legs buckled immediately, like the rest of her body had just remembered what it had been through. Her vision went gray at the edges.
“Wait—” Sig said, rising, reaching out instinctively.
“Don’t touch me!” Nell snapped. She looked around, wild-eyed, and found her clothes stacked neatly on the floor near the bed. She began gathering them with frantic, fumbling hands, like the action could gather her humanity back to her piece by piece.
Her shredded shoulder screamed. Everything between her thighs felt like a battlefield.
She yanked everything into the semblance of a place and grabbed her shoes with one hand, clutching her bra and underwear to her chest with the other like they were armor she was too weary to don.
“Don’t follow me,” she mumbled, not looking at him.
“I will not,” he said softly. “But—”