Temple of Loom’s Sunday-night knitting group had finally dispersed, and Morgan was wrestling with the front door. It had a tendency to stick and required a forceful hand. But hey, that was what she’d signed up for when she decided to convert a century-old farmhouse—warped door frames, drafty windows, creaky floorboards and all—into a yarn shop. Luckily, after four years of addressing all manner of architectural quirk, door-wrestling was one of her foremost skills, and the thing finally shut tight, taking with it a gasp of mid-autumn air tinged with chilled woodsmoke. She turned the lock. Officially closed for the night, and not a moment too soon.

She was giving the handle an extra jiggle when her phone buzzed. The sound, magnified to apocalyptic proportions by the wooden countertop where it rested, nearly made her jump out of her skin. With a grimace, she approached to give her screen a cursory look.

Check out your new match on MonstersKink! Mandrew liked you!

Morgan leaned against the counter edge, her thumb poised to swipe the notification into oblivion. At the last moment, she swiped upward.

God, she just couldn’t help herself, could she? She was addicted to the daily spark of excitement at an unknown quantity. And it was true, the profile that filled her screen was enticing for a moment.

Mandrew, 26.

Male.

White-water rafting instructor.

Gill-person.

Morgan frowned and pursed her lips as the flicker of temptation was replaced by a memory of her last encounter with a match of the aquatic persuasion. His name had been Caspian, and there had been instant chemistry. Some nights, when she was in need of inspiration, she still thought of his musical laugh, thick black hair, and the dazzling array of long, muscular tentacles he’d shown off to great effect during a lakeside date on the verge of becoming a lakeside hookup. There’d been only one snag: Morgan had convinced herself her mild seafood allergy couldn’t possibly extend to amorous encounters.

Lips had touched. Tongues had tangled. Tentacles had twisted, around her ankles, her wrists, her waist, suckers pressed fast against the inside of her thighs—

The wheezing and rashes had put a swift stop to things, and Caspian, his shiver-inducing wordplay, and all eight of those probably very capable tentacles had not texted her again. She suspected poor Mandrew would be disappointed in the same way, if not traumatized.

She swiped right.

Her phone was barely holding on at eight percent power, so she plugged it in and left it to charge on the counter while she tidied. Most everything was in good shape anyway, but she liked to survey her domain. The antique wooden shelves were stocked neatly with yarn in a full spectrum of colors, materials, and weights; the floors swept and rugs straightened. Tables of needles and notions shone in the dimmed light, and the bookshelf was disheveled in an aesthetically pleasing way. Exactly what she had imagined, more or less, when she’d bought the place and started to make it her own. With things running smoothly and the shop out of the red, moments like these were nightly reminders of how much she had to be proud of.

Yet rather than enjoy it, she missed the feeling of getting there—laying plans and seeing the markers of progress toward something big. As with most endeavors, the finished product was worth the effort, but what Morgan loved most was the way it all came together stitch by stitch and knowing her hands had laid each one. She was still learning to be happy with stability instead of immediately seeking the next thing that might prove a challenge.

Which was why she was, in a way, perversely grateful for her current predicament: for the last month, Temple of Loom had been enduring a moth infestation. As Morgan passed through the stockroom on the way up to her second-level apartment, she paused to assess the most recent pile of damaged silk and alpaca blends. Local, unusual, hard-to-replace stuff. Those fuzzy little bastards had expensive taste.

It was the weirdest damn thing, though. She’d seen moth damage before, even if she’d been lucky not to have them take a shine to her stock until recently. It’d have to be a veritable legion of the things to wreak the kind of havoc she was seeing. Not the usual frayed ends or tiny, ragged holes; not dead specimens on the windowsills or caught in cobwebs; not stray clusters of eggs or larvae (thank god).

This was, frankly, bizarre: balls partially unwound, entire lengths of yarn missing from skeins or hanks, uneven at the ends as if nibbled, several at a go. Two had disappeared entirely. The only other thing out of the ordinary was a thin accumulation of powdery dust on the surrounding shelves and floors. It was shiny and soft, like the iridescent eyeshadow she’d liked as a teenager, and left smears of bruisy dark blue, purple, and gray on her fingers when she touched it. She had mostly convinced herself it was dye residue. Yet with no signs of forced entry and nothing else missing from the shop or out of place, she didn’t have much of a case for any actual theft going on.

Moths, then. Probably? Either that, or she was self-sabotaging in a nocturnal fugue state, driven by a mounting sense of lifestyle claustrophobia. Frustrating as it was, at least it was a problem. That meant she could solve it. She’d already been salvaging what she could to make bags of scrap yarn for small projects. Not a total recovery, but better than cutting it all as a loss. Lemons into lemonade.

So what if it seemed increasingly like the most exciting things in her life were fucking monsters and waging war on unseen, winged archnemeses? It probably just meant she needed a vacation. She hadn’t taken one of those in… well. Four years. No wonder she felt like she was climbing up the walls some days.

Morgan scribbled a sticky-note reminder to order some more cedar balls in the morning (and maybe consider looking into a week-long getaway), slapped it down on the countertop, and headed upstairs for a bath. Going forward, she preferred to not be dealt any lemons to begin with.

~*~

 

Morgan Temple’s foray into the local monsterfucking scene had been a bit of a happy accident. When she’d somewhat jokingly told her friends Betsy and Leandra a year ago that her sex life had become too dull—which was to say, nonexistent—Betsy had sent a list of suggestions for new toys. It was thoughtful, and extremely Betsy; but Morgan had toys, and she knew how to take care of herself.

Enter Leandra, whose brand of helping hand was somewhat less direct.

“Now that we are pleasantly buzzed, let me repeat—you should download MonstersKink,” she’d told Morgan one night as they made their way from one bar to the next during Morgan’s last trip north. “Actually, it’s how I met Dani.”

“You said you met at a work party.”

Leandra had shrugged, a sharp-toothed, sheepish little grin creeping over her face, and the neatly coiled serpents she’d charmed into a calm coif for the night had squirmed and hissed their reproach.

“I took her to a work party. After a few dates and a few nights of mind-blowing, toe-curling—”

“Hey now, be gentle, I’m very lonely and sexually frustrated, remember? Woe is me.” Morgan joked, but she was sensitive, too. Annoyance over her lackluster romantic life reared its head at the worst moments. “You’re both very lucky, but I’m not looking for anything that serious.”

“A lot of users are there for casual stuff. Hookups, whatever. Monsters or humans. You’d hardly be the odd one out. Everyone’s just after a taste of the unknown.”

The conversation had moved on, Morgan and Leandra had spent the rest of the night drinking and gorging themselves on quarter-pounders at McDonald’s, and she’d put the suggestion from her mind. The next morning, as she endured a hangover and waited for her rideshare to the airport, she swallowed her pride and created a profile on MonstersKink.

Since then, she had indeed tasted the unknown. An algorithm-curated menu, anyway, and generally speaking, the unknown tasted pretty good. It had certainly shaken Morgan out of her love-life malaise, and she’d embraced her new identity as a burgeoning teratophiliac. There had been Pietro, a vampire who’d been old-fashioned, jaded, and too high on how much human pop-culture was enamored with his kind. He’d clearly expected her to be impressed with him, and Morgan had already met plenty of un-undead men like that, thanks.

She’d had better luck with a werewolf named Cal, though he’d been adamant that she never spend the night during a full moon. Nothing she said could convince him she might want him at his most animalistic, and while she knew his reluctance came from a place of protective instinct, Morgan didn’t want to be protected. She wanted to be dicked down by a fully transformed werewolf, all fur and teeth and spittle, and if that made her a bit of an asshole, well, she was willing to own that. They’d parted on mutual terms.

There’d been others—shapeshifters, minotaurs, sasquatches. She’d had good times with a reptoid, but they were vacationing in warmer, drier climes this time of year, and so Morgan had been finding herself a bit dry as well. All said and done, while it had been a busy, enlightening year, bedding the occasional non-human partner wasn’t quite the life-altering descent into delicious debauchery many made it out to be. Monsters were just people, give or take the odd appendage or secretion or furry pelt.

People who had needs, quirks, expectations, and disappointments. People who got lonely. People who lounged in their bathtubs at midnight after a very late dinner of leftover beef lo mein, just as Morgan was now. The frothy purple suds of a bath bomb were significantly diminished, and the water was on the wrong side of tepid. She wiggled the stopper free with her toes and waited until most of the water had drained before standing and grabbing her towel. Her fingers and toes were pale and pruney; her legs, as she slathered them with their nightly layer of jasmine lotion, were wooly with the prickly dark hairs of her autumn-winter grooming routine; her hair was a damp mess of ash-brown flyaways as she pulled it into a stubby ponytail

Out in the kitchen, Morgan put a kettle on the stove before retreating to her bedroom, flexing her hands over the terry cloth wrapped around her body. The idea of taking a vacation was still nibbling at her with its overwhelming glut of possibilities. And why not? She loved that sense of potential; she less loved the idea of closing up for a week. That was a hurdle for later. Tomorrow was a day off. She could spend it weighing her options, the finances, and the logistics—tomorrow. Tonight, some extra self-care was in order if she had any hope of getting to sleep.

From her dresser drawer she pulled the silk nightgown her mom had sent her a few birthdays ago. It was dark gray, strappy, and hit at the middle of her thighs, with a weird lace applique of a butterfly right between the barely-there breast cups. It had probably cost more than Morgan typically spent on clothing in three months. Though it wasn’t her usual taste and just smacked of presumption that she had someone else to wear it for, it was criminally comfortable. The material was buttery and cool on her skin and inspired in her body an almost Pavlovian response that said, “time to relax and give all your cares the middle finger, because you are sexy, powerful, and very fucking at your leisure.”

Ten minutes later, Morgan was getting settled in bed. The pillows were plumped to perfection behind her back. Her chamomile tea was steaming on the nightstand. An intermittent wind gently rattled the windows, and a neglected pulpy paperback sat open and face-down on her quilt as she browsed Netflix. She’d find something benign enough to lull her to semiconsciousness or else get there via the mind-numbing scroll of titles. If that failed, she had just put a fresh set of batteries in her vibrator.

She felt good. Warm, clean, and cozy. The store was tidy and sorted. She had something new in the works. This had been a much-needed, quiet routine, undisturbed by the usual interruptions of—

Oh, balls.

Her phone.

When was the last time she’d checked it, or heard it and deliberately chosen to not check it?

She let out a groan of despair as the answer came to her. She’d spent a minute deliberating her monster matches and left the phone to charge on the counter. In the shop. Downstairs. After failing to convince herself she didn’t really need her alarm, Morgan tossed the remote aside and slipped reluctantly out of bed. It could have been worse; she could have realized this an hour from now, on the cusp of dozing off.

This is what she reminded herself as she trudged down the stairs, wrapped in a buffalo plaid housecoat, and through the blue-black darkness of the shop. Sure enough, her phone awaited fully charged beside the register. She swiped a few miscellaneous notifications away and felt a draft on her bare legs. The room had to be at least ten degrees cooler than her apartment, which was not right. Further inspection quickly revealed the problem: the front door was open. Barely, almost imperceptibly so, but easy for her to spot. She could have sworn she’d shut it tight earlier. She’d locked it too. She had.

But it was old. The door was old, the locks were old, everything about this place was old. A broken lock wasn’t a total shock, but neither was it the discovery she wanted to be making right before bed.

“Great, great, great.” She wrapped her housecoat more tightly around herself, then pulled the door shut with a grumpy jerk. She tested the handle, turned the lock, and tested that too. It seemed to be working fine. She unlocked and opened it and ran through the whole process one more time just to be sure.

Locked tight.

“Huh.”

It was possible she’d neglected to do it right earlier, too distracted by hypothetical vacations and quarter-life crises. Either way, she added “call a locksmith ASAP” to her list of concerns for the night, grabbed her phone and charger, and made for the way she’d come, floorboards creaking underfoot. Fuck Netflix, she was so putting the vibrator to work when she got back in bed.

She stopped dead after three steps. Over in the back corner, between the restroom and the shelf of sock-weight superwash blends, lurked a tall, dark figure. She wasn’t sure how she had missed it before. The shadows there were all wrong—deeper, velvety on the eyes. They had texture and weight. It was the kind of shock that hit her so hard and fast it left only a burning sting in her fingers and the back of her hands, like little stars had exploded just under her skin and were already fading.

The figure did not react, which was more unsettling than finding it there in the first place. As her eyes adjusted somewhat, she began to form an impression, and it was not especially comforting. A weirdo in what looked like a cape had broken into the shop and apparently thought she wouldn’t notice if they just stood very still with their back to her.

Morgan licked her lips and quietly released a caught breath, curling her toes inside her thick socks in an attempt to dispel some further tension. She wasn’t sure what to do. Her stomach seemed to want to empty its contents onto the floor; she’d spent too much time sweeping earlier to make that acceptable. She had her phone clutched in her now white-knuckled hand, but calling 911 here would be difficult to do subtly, and who knew what this lurker might do if provoked? Even with a couple years of boxing classes under her belt, she’d never had to use them outside an instructional setting and didn’t relish the idea that this might be the occasion on which that changed.

Just to be on the safe side, she grabbed a lone knitting needle from a display to her right. She’d read this thing a few years back about how Victorian women used to wear long, lethal hat pins as a secret and stylish mode of protection. An eleven-inch metal knitting needle was sort of the same thing, right? Unmatched eye-gouging potential, if nothing else.

Newly armed, Morgan inched her way toward the door, keeping an eye on the intruder. She’d slip outside, walk to the diner on the corner, and make her emergency call from a safe distance. She could also get some coffee and eggs, because at this point sleep had gone from unlikely to absolutely-not-happening. Sure, she wasn’t wearing pants or shoes and probably looked like a deranged cross between a femme fatale and a lumberjack, but at this hour, she wouldn’t be the only person there who’d made dubious sartorial decisions. It was far more likely she’d be the only person in there, period.

Though she knew every creak and groan of the shop floors by heart, each time Morgan shifted her weight, the noise that registered in turn sounded many times louder than usual. As she neared the door and began to fumble with the damned lock yet again, she couldn’t stop looking at the figure in the corner. The shadows softened and bent around it, rendering it almost invisible but not enough to void out its eerie thereness.

Maybe she was just seeing things. It might be a jacket someone had left behind, or a sample she’d put on display and forgotten to take down. She’d feel like a real idiot, showing up to the diner and calling for help only to find out she’d mistaken a knitted swoncho for a burglar. She narrowed her eyes and looked harder.

The dark shape in the corner looked back.

She knew this not so much because she perceived movement, but because suddenly she was locking eyes with two large red orbs that could only be eyes. It (he? she? they?) was… peeking over its shoulder at her with almost coy regard.

“Hey, asshole,” Morgan blurted before she could stop herself, and with a degree of panache she didn’t realize she possessed past midnight, “Halloween isn’t for another week and a half. Pack it up and get the fuck out of my store.”

As if she didn’t feel enough like an idiot for that B-movie chestnut of an opening salvo, she brandished the knitting needle like she fancied herself a shorter and less-mustachioed Inigo Montoya.

The figure’s cape shifted, catching the paltry light in a way that was gently, darkly iridescent and highlighted a subtle pattern across the surface that reminded her of ripples on water slicked with spilled oil. It shook and parted as if to shoo an annoyance away, and Morgan realized she was looking not at a cape but a set of enormous wings. Despite her alarm, she felt a tingle of intrigue.

The voice that came from the figure was low, masculine, and calm, with a muffled whispery quality, as if its owner’s mouth was full.

“Give me a moment, would you please? I’m nearly done.”

“Almost done with what, exactly?” Morgan’s faced burned, and her tingle of intrigue ignited to outrage. She clutched her needle and took a step toward him. “I swear to God, if you’re jerking off into my yarn, I’ll make sure you never— “

There came a loud slurp, and the wings shuffled again with a hushed but not unpleasant sound. Neatly folded once more, they were nearly as long as she was tall. “Satisfying for some, I’m sure, but an insulting use of wool this delicious.”

Morgan stiffened. She’d been finding partially munched skeins every week for the last month. And this was, without doubt, the largest moth she had ever seen. Was it possible her moth problem was actually a mothman problem? She had never encountered one in the flesh, not even as a hypothetical on the app. They were supposedly related to fairies, but solitary and even more aloof.

The tingle returned.

“Well. That explains… some… things,” she said, shooting now for conversational instead of accusatory.

“Oh?”

Morgan reached for the light switch, and the room was bathed in a soft amber glow she rarely had the opportunity to appreciate during the day. At the moment she mostly appreciated that she could get a good look at the mothman. She’d half expected him to be distracted or disoriented by the lights, but he hardly reacted at all. Merely another shuffle of those wings, which were even prettier with some direct light on them. They looked remarkably soft.

She drew herself up. “You realize that what you’re doing is technically theft?”

“Hm. What if I told you I happen to consider myself something of a gentleman thief?”

Morgan let out a loud, very rude noise that sounded less like a laugh than like the air being let out of a partially inflated balloon.

The mothman grumbled, presumably working through another mouthful of precious yarn. “Sounds like you’re not impressed.”

“Not especially, no.”

He turned at last to regard her properly, staying near the wall, as if he had more to fear from her than the other way around. Morgan found that idea absurd and somewhat attractive, because he was huge. Imposing, anyway.

She was of average height herself, and he had to be over seven feet tall, if she included the foot-long antennae that had unfurled from the crown of his head like feathery fronds, curling at the ends and never quite still. His shoulders were wide, thanks to the wings that did indeed fold about him like a cape, and his waist tapered in a way that spoke to the grace with which he’d moved. Morgan was surprised by how very man-shaped he was, overall. Fluffier, of course, judging from the lustrous ruff of black fur that emerged from the collar of a slim-fitting leather jacket. She wondered if the fur resolved into sleeker, shorter hairs over the rest of his torso—and, she assumed, beneath his neat, dark trousers.

Not that Morgan was thinking about anything he might have going on inside his pants. Not at all. Just observing.

Even his face, which was far more insect than humanoid, was shockingly expressive. No nose that she could see, but sharp, angular, and furred all over with satiny black. No lips or teeth either. Instead, his mobile mouthparts were poised in something she could only read as a curious tilt. The globes of his eyes were enormous—several inches across apiece—and arresting, the thick band of bright crimson iris outlining dark, owlish pupils. If she was going to have to do some eye-gouging tonight, it wouldn’t be a challenge with those babies as her target. Though, now that she was facing him, she preferred the night not end in violence.

He shifted from foot to foot but sounded unruffled when he said, “I suppose you’ll be contacting the authorities.”

“Not sure yet.”

Morgan rocked back on her heels again and pressed a fingertip into the sharp point of the needle, tapping compulsively as she considered her options.

“A gentleman thief, huh?” she asked after a few moments.

 

“That’s what I prefer to think, yes.”

“What’s that, like… Carmen Sandiego, Arséne Lupin, Thomas Crown stuff?”

The mothman made a chortling sound. “Yes, exactly.”

“I always imagined someone like that would gravitate toward a more metropolitan area. This town’s lacking on the rare treasure front.”

“That’s a funny thing to say when you’re standing in the middle of the trove,” he replied.

“Come again?”

“Your shop is aptly named. My specialty is fiber crime, and you have some of the most uniquely delectable yarn I’ve ever had the good luck to stumble upon. A temple indeed.”

This time she did let slip another small chuckle, nonplussed. Morgan liked to think she had a healthy dose of self-esteem, and sure she took pride in this place, quirks and all, but she’d never considered anyone might take the name as a suggestion of that much self-importance.

“Look, it’s just a pun. There’s a movie called— “

“I’m familiar with the Indiana Jones franchise, Miss Temple.”

She narrowed her eyes. “How do you know my name?”

“The newspaper article,” he said, lifting his chin toward the counter, “on the wall there. Sounds like they were quite impressed with what you were planning here.”

Morgan didn’t need to look to know what he meant. When she’d started out, the local paper had rather romanticized the story of a young, aspiring business-owner who was buying a long-neglected old farmhouse in the center of town to give it a new lease on life. She’d found it a bit much, but one of the women in the knitting group had gifted her a framed copy of it, which now hung behind the counter.

“Right. Guess so.” Belatedly, she wrinkled her nose. “It’s Morgan. No one’s called me Miss Temple since high school. If you’re going to rob me, at least do me the courtesy of not giving me flashbacks of being called to the principal’s office.”

“Morgan,” he repeated, a smile in his voice. “It’s a pleasure and a privilege to meet the purveyor of such fine fibers.”

Despite the situation, she found herself smiling too, and bit her tongue to rein it in. “What about you, then? Got a name?”

He inclined his head as if to bow.

“Arséne.”

After a beat, Morgan raised her eyebrows and threw an exasperated look out the window. It had started to rain a little, just a fine mist that hung suspended under the flickering streetlight on the corner.

“Uh-huh.”

She could have done some self-examination to figure out why she was being so chummy with the person who’d cost her a few hundred dollars in sellable yarn over the last month—who’d broken into her store to get at it so skillfully she hadn’t seriously considered it might be a person. She could have questioned the fact that she found “Arséne,” which she refused to believe was his actual name, charming. Not in the transparently creepy, affected way she’d encountered too many times, but with a benign ambivalence that made her think he’d only pose a danger to her if she were made out of wool. He was having a bit of fun.

The tightness low in her belly was something she hadn’t felt in a while. The little naughty twist of nerves and lust. She was getting hot and bothered over a dapper insectoid burglar. Very inopportune, very unwise, very much the sort of thing she should not have been entertaining right now. Except, she wanted to have a bit of fun too.

Morgan walked around to the counter and hoisted herself up to sit atop it. The wood was chilly against her thighs and butt—a pertinent reminder that she was wearing only cotton briefs beneath her housecoat and nightgown. Her legs dangled over the side, heels bumping softly against the front. She was pretty sure she’d seen porn that started like this, though it had been a busty troll and a stoic bank teller and they’d fucked in a vault atop stacks of obviously fake hundred-dollar bills.

What a surprise, thinking about porn did not help her predicament.

“So, what, that’s it then?” she said. “You stop in here every week or so and pick my lock for a tasty snack?”

If he’d caught any innuendo, he maintained his poker face. 

“That’s about the sum of it, yes,” Arséne agreed in the tone one might use to describe an uneventful day at work. “Actually, on the subject of your locks, I’m a master of B&E, not to boast—”

“Oh, of course not.”

“—but in this case, now that I have your ear, you might like to know that your lock really is of poor quality. A child with a hairpin could probably manage it with little trouble.”

“Thanks for the concern, but I’m calling a locksmith tomorrow, trust me.” She paused before adding, without malice, “And maybe an exterminator.”

“Touché.”

“You left the door cracked. There’s a trick to closing it. I’m surprised a master of B&E like yourself didn’t catch that.”

“Sounds like I’m losing my touch. A humiliating night all around.”

She nearly pointed out that he wasn’t the one who’d neglected to wear pants, but she changed her mind. “You could’ve avoided the humiliation by just coming in to buy some like anyone else would.”

“I only work at night,” he said. “And, frankly, doing that would be much less fun. The thrill is in the risk of being caught, see.”

She could too easily imagine that being the case.

“Have you ever been caught before?”

“No. You’re the first.” He didn’t sound very put out about it.

“Tell me then, Arséne, how does it feel now that you have been?”

Something in his eyes changed, a flicker of intensity, and the way they fixed on her held new weight. “Still thrilling, actually.”

Her heartbeat sped. If she’d been flirting, or even flirting with flirting, Morgan was now positive he was flirting back. This was probably part of the gig for him, right? The possibility of impromptu meetings with intriguing strangers? Was it presumptuous to think she’d intrigued him?

Only one way to find out.

“Come over here and show me what I’m gonna find half-eaten tomorrow morning,” she told him.

For the first time, Arséne looked surprised. “You’re remarkably cavalier about this.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m still pissed about how much yarn you’ve ruined,” she said. “But you’re also the most interesting person to walk through this door in four years, and you caught me on a good night. I’m in a forgiving mood.”

He chuckled.

“Go on then—what was it tonight?” she pressed. “You obviously enjoyed the alpaca blend from Daffodil Farm last week. I’m surprised you didn’t take the whole thing.”

“I considered it, but I try not to be a glutton,” he admitted, turning to the shelves and dragging one four-fingered hand lightly over the display before selecting one and starting toward her. His long, taloned feet clicked softly over the floorboards. “This caught my eye tonight.”

Arséne stopped a respectful distance from her, just out of arm’s reach. This close, she was taken again by his size and could pick up the hint of a scent. It was unusual, but complex and pleasing—a sort of clean, warm animal musk, dry and peppery. When he held up what he’d chosen, she stared blankly for a few moments before registering that it was a hank of pure silk yarn, medium weight, naturally dyed to a warm, pretty pink. Half a hank, anyway. It seemed she’d interrupted him in the midst of quite a feast.

She took it and rubbed a few frayed ends between her fingers. Another one for the discount scrap bags, she supposed. “I’m curious what you consider gluttony to be, if this is your idea of self-control.”

“I have a special weakness for silk.”

He was no longer looking at the yarn, but at her thighs—or rather, at the part of her thighs covered by her silk slip where the housecoat had fallen open. His antennae were twitching. The ends curled and uncurled, and the fine, feathery hairs along the length of each were practically vibrating. She began to idly speculate about whether they would tickle if they were to, say, slowly stroke down the space between her breasts, fanning outward to fondle and tease, and just like that, her face was burning, her nipples hard beneath her pajamas, and her sensible cotton briefs indecently damp.

“Hey, watch out, revealing your weaknesses to me.” She busily scrubbed goosebumps from her arms. “Doesn’t that go against the gentleman thief code?”

“It can be our secret.”

“Ooh, yeah? How about your real name, then?”

He tutted and shook his head. “Was Arséne not convincing?”

“Shockingly, no.” Morgan twined her fingers in the ruined yarn. “So tell me more about why you like this.”

“It’s the texture. The perfect, cool glide along my throat. And the taste, and the smell of it most of all, you have no idea, it’s…” The mothman’s antennae continued to work, so fast she felt a shift in the air near her ears as they swept back and forth. “Think of the most appetizing smell you know, and how much it makes you want to indulge yourself, and you might have some idea.”

Her mind went inexplicably to freshly toasted bread, buttered and drizzled with jam. She squished the yarn in her hand. When it came to the appeal, she got it. Not that she was about to take a bite, but she remembered the first time she indulged in buying expensive yarn, how lush and luxurious it had been, how it had probably set her on the path to opening her own shop. Who was she to judge the passions it might inspire in another?

Arséne leaned closer, like a moth to a—

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

The mothman straightened up and took a step back, though his gaze was stuck on her legs, then roaming upward.

“Self-control becomes difficult,” he said, “when faced with something so delicious.”

Morgan swallowed. “Yeah, it does, huh.”

“Anyway.” His wings stretched outward a bit, then resettled. He was so close she could have touched them. “I couldn’t have asked for better before I moved on, so I thank you.”

Absurdly, she felt almost insulted.

“‘Moved on’?”

“You caught me in the act. It’s only fair to admit my time here has run its course,” he said simply. “Unless…”

“Unless?”

“You have anything else you recommend?”

“I can think of a few things.” She did reach for one wing then, just to catch it with the tips of her fingers and brush the tiny overlapping scales. Traces of shining dust stuck beneath her nails. When he did not balk, when he moved nearer still, she inched her knees apart. The silk over her thighs slid higher. “Recommendations, I mean.”

His mandibles were working open and shut. He was leaning very close now. An antenna brushed her cheek—feathery soft as a first kiss—and she shivered. God, those things were more nimble than she’d realized.

“You being such a connoisseur, I’m very interested in hearing them.”

“Sure you don’t have to get going? I’d hate to hold you up.”

“I was getting the impression that’s exactly what you want.”

“Good instincts.” Morgan tapped a heel against the counter, then threw to the wind what little caution she had left. “Here’s a question for you: how do you feel about sex with humans?”

“I’m open to it.” If he’d had lips, she was certain he would have been pursing them in sly consideration. Instead his mandibles did that funny, hungry little tilt again, and the glint returned to his ruby eyes. “Is that what you recommend?”

~*~

 

When Morgan had first set up the activities room, she’d envisioned it as a space for classes or the knitting group, maybe even for spinning and dyeing. She had not considered its potential as a place to take strange mothmen for casual sex, but here she was, doing just that, because the front room was too public even at almost two in the morning, and her apartment was too personal.

She slipped her housecoat off and left it hanging on the side of a chair, then turned and leaned against the table. With an appraising look down at herself, she passed her hands over her hips to smooth the cool fabric against her skin before catching Arséne’s eye again.

“You know what this is made of?” she asked.

He scoffed, mandibles flexing, and his talons rapped on the floor with impatience. “What a question.”

“In that case, I hope you still have an appetite.”

Arséne started toward her, but she held a hand up, pressing it to his chest until he came to a halt.

“Not so fast,” she said. “Get undressed. Can’t have you going anywhere, can I?”

“Where do you think I’d go?”

“I don’t know, your— lair, or something?” Morgan hopped up onto the edge of the table and let her toes scrape the floor as she tugged her hair loose from its tie. “Wherever a gentleman thief lies low between heists.”

“It’s really more of a basement apartment,” he said casually, ambling around a bit as he unzipped his jacket, which seemed to fit more like a harness beneath his wings. “Sorry to dispel the illusion.”

“Sounds like a lair to me.”

He made an amused sound and tossed his jacket aside. The ruff of thick fur around his neck and shoulders was shorter as it reached his chest and shone like obsidian over the lean, well-defined muscles of his pectorals and abdomen. She supposed a strong chest and shoulders that must be a requirement for flight. As if he’d read her thoughts, Arséne spread his wings to their full breadth for a few moments, and every bit of him stretched and flexed to impressive effect.

“Well now you’re just showing off. Can you fly with those?”

He flapped twice, sending a gust of air toward her before his wings folded behind his shoulders once more. Particles of iridescent dust settled on her thighs. “Yes.”

As he removed his pants, he watched her as if her rapt attention amused him. This was one of the parts Morgan always found most exciting: the revelation of anatomy foreign to her and the exploration of a body unlike her own. Yet when her eyes settled between his legs, she was still a bit surprised—where she’d been expecting to find a cock, erect or otherwise, was… well, a span of more glossy fur, more smooth muscle, and the hint of what might have been a narrow slit.

A surprise, then, but an exciting one that made her want to run a finger along it to see how he would react. She squirmed where she sat to relieve the eruption of heat in her chest that flooded densely downward like an overheated core on the brink of meltdown.

“Good with your hands, then?” she asked.

“Not to rely on tired euphemisms,” Arséne said, “but consider this a ‘grower not a show-er’ situation.”

She snorted. “And when do you… grow? Typically?”

He was near enough now that she felt the puff of air when he laughed. “With you looking like this? It won’t be long.”

“I didn’t realize the old slip-and-socks combo was such a turn-on.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He dropped to a crouch before her, a hand at each of her knees sliding higher, opening her legs until they rested on either side of his shoulders. His earlier words about silk, how the feel and smell of it were so irresistible to him, returned to the fore of her mind, and she wondered how it was he smelled anything when he didn’t appear to have a nose, if he could smell her, the wetness between her legs or the sweat at her throat or the toothpaste on her tongue. Yet as his hands drew further up her thighs, blunted claws dragging gently over her chilled skin, his antennae sprang to motion again. They swept over her abdomen and pressed against her ribs, the fine feathery hairs curving and catching against the fibers.

“You smell gorgeous,” he murmured, voice muffled against the skin of her inner thigh. The antennae stiffened and curled again, almost tickling her now, searching, feeling, and—she understood now—smelling. “I couldn’t say it before, but you’re like flowers. A whole garden.”

Morgan gasped as one of his fingers grazed the crotch of her underwear.

“Why couldn’t you say it before?”

“Because then you would’ve known I’ve been thinking about ripping this off you since the moment you called me an asshole and threatened me with a knitting needle.”

She choked back a laugh. “Oh, yeah, tale as old as time. It’s—shit.”

He was massaging her there now, fingering her over the cotton of her underwear with just enough confidence to make her lose track of her words, teasing her train of thought astray.

“It’s jasmine,” she managed. “Lotion.”

 Arséne hummed appreciatively. “Maybe it’s that.” He pushed the gusset aside and drew the smooth side of one claw against her lips. “But you’re sweetest right here, I think.”

The timbre of his voice sent another jolt through her before he withdrew and took the hem of her nightgown between his mandibles. He gave it a little tug closer to his mouth, almost playful.

“Sure you’re not too attached to this?”

“Rip it to shreds.”

“As the lady wishes.”

He did not quite rip it to shreds, though there was greedy urgency to the way he traveled up her body from the hem and fed the fabric into his mouth with practiced, fluid movements. Under the sound of her own breath, Morgan heard a chorus of tiny rips and tears as the fabric fell away from her skin inch by easy inch like grass parting before a prowling beast. Her thighs were bared, her hips, her stomach, her ribs, and then her breasts as Arséne snipped neatly through the last stubborn threads holding the neckline together.

She felt like a piece of candy he was unwrapping, and the ill-fated nightgown was a tattered thing in no time, lost bravely in the line of duty. The press of heated fur against naked skin pulled a sigh from her lips, and the cool air drew more goosebumps over her body and his hands began to explore.

Warm, smooth palms drew slow lines down her sides, thumbs pressing gently between her ribs as if searching for something. She was about to ask, but the question emerged as a strangled yelp when she felt his hot breath on her breast, and then his mandibles closing around her nipple—lightly, so lightly—and then his tongue flicking against the tight, sensitive peak.

“I was wondering,” she began. “You don’t have lips, so—”

She sighed again as his antennae fanned over the sides of her throat.

The blunt, shining claws of his thumbs dug teasingly once more at her ribs. “We’re managing so far.”

His tongue, a long, curling, nimble thing, returned to her breast before she could reply, twisting against her nipple as his mandibles pinched and tweaked. Morgan let her eyes fall shut and arched her body into his, grinding against the hard ridges of his torso. Now that she could touch him, she found that the downy fur concealed a hard, almost armored physique, though his wings were still soft and delicate as they settled around her like a blanket, and her mind receded into a blissful haze.

Fleeting awareness of what he was doing was constantly rerouted by the next surge of pleasure. His antennae caressing her face; his hands taking over to caress her breasts; his mouth at her neck, tickling her ears, toying with her hair; a passing touch at her navel, a feathery brush at the inside of her thighs, a firm press of something soft over her cunt, sweeping around her calf, slipping sinuously behind her shoulder to pull the ragged remains of her nightgown away, lifting her oh so slightly—

Seriously, how many hands did he have?

Morgan opened her eyes at the same instant Arséne was sliding her underwear down her legs. Her mouth dropped open from shock as much as pleasure.

“Holy shit, you have tentacles.”

That was the only thing her brain could process—because, while his hands were occupied, four long, flexible appendages protruded from his sides and continued to have their way with her. The one that had been rubbing between her thighs gave a jaunty twitch, and she responded with a shaky moan.

“Nothing wrong with them,” she amended. “I’ve dabbled. With tentacles. Just wasn’t expecting them.”

For the first time since their meeting, Arséne looked genuinely abashed. Weird time for it, what with him having her basically naked except for her socks, and him being very naked himself and touching parts of her that hadn’t been touched by any hands but her own in months. His mandibles danced, and he snapped the elastic waistband of her underwear against her knee.

“They’re not tentacles. They’re”—and then he made a sharp, very high-pitched sound that verged on a squeak. “Or coremata, in human language.”

“Sounds elegant.”

“It means something like, ah… feather duster.”

She chuckled, then sat up properly. “Feather dusters, huh?”

Carefully, she reached for one and ran her fingers along it. They were each several feet long and thick enough that she could only just close her hand around one. It warmed and trembled against her skin. The entire length of it was covered in rows of thin, silvery hairs that glinted in the lights and reminded her of whiskers. The sight of the coremata all undulating was distracting, but the softly bristly feel of the one in her hand was very pleasant when she guided it back to its work between her legs.

“What do they do?”

Arséne slid her underwear past her feet. “They spread pheromones.”

“I’ve heard those don’t work very well on humans.”

“They don’t.” He brought the little scrap of lace and cotton to his mouth. His tongue passed over it once to taste the traces of her left on them. It seemed to satisfy, for he groaned with enjoyment, and she indulged the throb of want as she dragged the corema harder against herself and felt it kneading back. “Not that they don’t have other uses.”

“Oh, there’s lots of potential here,” she agreed.

His head was ducked, hands pushing her legs further apart so he could watch as she rubbed it along her lips and the way she squirmed when those fine little hairs kissed her clit. The others had returned too, skimming along her sides and breasts, curving behind her neck.

She traced one long corema to its source, a sort of vent hidden between two of his ribs. It reminded her a bit of the slit between his legs. Emboldened and curious, she brought a hand there and pressed her fingers through. It was hot inside, velvety and damp, and something thick and curled twitched against her fingertips. Arséne’s claws tightened, almost painful on the underside of her thighs.

Looping her arms around his neck, she pulled him down to her and kissed him. She was no stranger to kissing someone who didn’t have proper lips, and his mouth was still warm and wet, his tongue soft against her own, and his mandibles stroked gently at her jaw and cheeks.

Maybe she was a little wrong about the pheromones. Everything she was doing now was the result of equal decision and desire, but it was like her nerves had been coaxed into high alert. The minutest touch of his hands or those gloriously weird, whiskery coremata slithering over her skin made her feel like she was having the most intimate massage of her life. The build of pressure and pleasure erupted suddenly, and just a bit of foreplay had her in the throes of an orgasm more intense than she’d had in months. It wasn’t fair, really, that he could do this to her—even less fair she couldn’t do it to herself unless she sprouted a few more limbs. Definitely not now, when her own limbs felt just shy of useless and her body was overcome with a wash of heated euphoria.

Breathless, she urged him closer more roughly than she intended and nearly slid off the table. But his body was there, and instead something hard nudged back. Not the flexing length of the corema; this was rigid, smooth, and hot.

Morgan dipped her chin. “Oh. Hello there.”

She drew a hand down his chest, then lower until she reached the curve of his cock, which had emerged at last from its hiding place. It was soft as velvet and hard as marble, the length of it slightly ridged. Only the head was bare and pearly, tacky with thin, shining moisture. When she closed her hand around the shaft, it twitched against her palm, and she could feel the heat of a racing pulse just beneath the skin. It twitched again with a sustained, rapid motion nearly invisible to the eye—was it… vibrating?

Arséne gave a quavering moan, every inch of him aquiver for an instant, then his mouth was at her ear. “Stand up a second.”

Only a little confused, Morgan hopped to her feet and stood aside as he sat where she had just been, his feet planted flat on the floor, talons scratching at the wood. He turned her with his hands at her shoulders and coaxed her backward, where the hard length of his cock pressed against her ass and then slipped between her thighs to nudge at her wet lips. She rocked back and forth, letting him drag his length along her most sensitive parts. The faint vibrations made her knees buckle with the intensity of the sensation it provoked when she was barely over the first orgasm.

His arms slid around her, and antennae brushed the sides of her face, catching in the mess of her hair. “Sit back.”

Morgan eased backward, lifting herself on her toes and taking him in her hand to guide him to her entrance. Her palm was slippery when she felt the head of his cock push inside, and she whimpered as she began to sink down, his hands beneath her armpits to take some of her weight as she settled over his lap.

“I was expecting a quickie against the counter,” she said. There was a drip of wetness on her thumb when she released his shaft. Before she could wipe it off, one corema wrapped around her wrist and brought it to his tongue. “After this I’m going to need to replace the table.”

Maybe an exaggeration; maybe not. She stretched her legs wider, watching the way his cock pushed deeper as a corema returned to play with her clit. Arséne nipped at her shoulder.

“I’ll send you a new one.”

“Psh. What, with all that sweet fiber crime cash?”

“Wait and see.” The laugh that began in her throat emerged as a moan as he thrust upward, slow and deliberate, gauging her reaction. “Good?”

“So good.”

“And this?”

A corema coiled loosely around each of her wrists to keep her arms stretched gently overhead as his hands found her breasts again, plumping and kneading as if he found them fascinating. His tongue tickled along her collarbone.

“Mmm hm.” Morgan rocked from side to side, lifting herself with her thighs draped over his and taking advantage of the resistance from his coremata at her arms, then sinking deeper as she came back down. The fourth corema wrapped across her belly to give her freer range of motion without the risk of toppling forward. She rose and sank again, breath ragged as she found the perfect angle. “You know—oh, shit. Shitshitfuck, what are you… do not stop doing that—”

Arséne had begun to fall into rhythm with her, thrusting upward at the end of each descent, harder each time, but it was the vibration of him deep inside her that did it. Who the fuck had a vibrating cock? She’d half convinced herself she’d hallucinated that part, but it put every toy she’d ever tried to shame. She wanted to ask how he did that, if it was intentional or reflexive or something else entirely, but didn’t trust her words to emerge as anything other than a garbled mess. Perhaps some things were best left a mystery.

The table groaned beneath them, and the legs shrieked against the floor on a particularly enthusiastic thrust of Arséne’s hips. Morgan could imagine the old floors scratched in the daylight, herself scrubbing at new scuffs with the toe of her sneaker or maybe letting them stay. They added character, surely. She could imagine how this looked now, too—her naked body spread out, sweaty, shaking, her cunt obscenely wet and on display as it was fucked by a mothman whose lap felt sort of like a velvet sex chair, which was something she definitely would not be telling him, or anyone, ever, but would be saving for many fantasies to come.

She let her head relax, hair hanging around her face as her breasts bounced against his palms and her ass bounced against his hips. Though his fur muffled the sound of skin meeting skin to a sweet susurration, his wings draped and trapped the heat building between them, the smell of sex and heated fur and salty skin, and the peppery aura of his body mingling with hers. His fingers tightened at her nipples, claws pricking as a corema intensified the friction at her clit until she cried out at the force of another orgasm. It might well have sent her sliding to the floor if he hadn’t been holding her in place.

Arséne slowed the steady pumping of his cock into her body as her cunt fluttered around it, and the vibrations gentled. She let herself slump against him as the pleasure peaked and coursed, her breath coming in shallow gasps. It was the kind of orgasm she’d read about but never actually experienced. For something so explosive it should have been short-lived, but it kept going as if fed by its own intensity. By the time her head began to clear and the tremors showed any sign of fading, she couldn’t believe he was still going. Morgan ground roughly back at him and gave a playful tug at her arms, testing his grasp, then stretched her body forward as much as she could to take advantage of how pliant her muscles felt.

“Want to take this off the table?” she asked. He let her slip one arm free, and she reached down to touch him as he slid into her again. The base of his shaft buzzed against her fingertips.

“As in…?”

“You told me you could fly.”

“I did, didn’t I.”

Abruptly, his wings flared, and Morgan eased herself up and off of him. It felt good to have both arms free, and though the empty feeling of not having him inside her was annoying—especially when she could feel the aftershocks left by his anatomy’s unique qualities—it didn’t last long. Arséne looped an arm behind her and lifted her against him like she weighed nothing. It was more of a turn-on than it should have been, and with the coremata cradling her back and ass, she hitched her legs at his hips and felt him slide easily back inside. The muscles in his chest and shoulders rippled with effort as he spread his wings again and lifted them off the floor with a powerful downward flap.

It was an impressive feat of coordination and sexual prowess and made her wonder if this was how he usually did things. It couldn’t be so simple, surely? The ceilings were high, but the room itself wasn’t very large. Arséne didn’t seem bothered. If anything, he was showing off again, and she stood to reap the benefits.

She’d never had sex in midair before. Even suspended just a few feet off the ground, it was exhilarating, between the slight rise and fall of their bodies with each sweep of wings and the way he seemed even more in his element now. It was like being weightless, and she was giddy from the blood rushing to her head, from her blood rushing in general. He seemed to lose himself more by the moment, grunting and panting as he fucked her from above. His sides expanded like bellows where her hands clung. He was making those weird squeaking sounds again, which she supposed was very mothy of him and was charming in its own way. As his mandibles plucked their way down her throat, she tipped her head back to take in the inverted view.  That shiny dust from his wings was everywhere now, clinging to her thighs, smeared on her arms, striped over her breasts and stomach. It drifted like snow to the floor with every stroke.

Their aerial tangle lasted, at best, fifteen seconds, though it was a fifteen seconds she would not forget. Nor would she forget the feel of Arséne colliding with the ceiling as he attempted to take them higher, the sound of his wing clipping a shelf as he banked sharply left, the crash of a few wooden yarn bowls hitting the floor, or his “fuck!” of affront as he tumbled both himself and Morgan to the ground in a heap of Icarian disgrace.

Her ass would undoubtedly have a bruise, and her breath was lagging somewhere overhead. When it found her a moment later, she was laughing, winded and delirious. Arséne had rolled beside her, one wing draped awkwardly over her leg, but every inch of her body was still alight with his touch.

He groaned and pushed himself up to lean over her. “Are you—”

Before he could go on, she surged upward and covered his mouth with hers, hands gripping his shoulders, pressing him onto his back.

“I’m okay,” she assured him with a loopy grin and threw a leg over him.

“Want to try that again?”

“I want to make you come. And then I want to take you upstairs.”

“What’s upstairs?”

“Higher ceilings.” As she slid down his body, her wetness left a shining trail on his fur. With a shiver, she traced the sharp ridge of his hips as she settled over his thighs. “More space. Fewer shelves.” She gripped his stiff cock, stroking firmly, teasing the smooth, dripping head between her fingers until she felt the telltale vibrations of his arousal mounting. “There are some exposed beams I bet we can have some fun with.”

If he had a retort to that, it was lost when she swept her tongue over his length, adding her saliva to the already soaked fur, then took him in her mouth and sucked until her cheeks hollowed. The fur was so fine and soft it tickled the roof of her mouth. Her hand drifted to caress his balls where they were tucked firm and tight against his body, almost hidden entirely along the seam where his cock had emerged. When she pressed her fingers along the edges, his hips gave a jerk, and she encouraged it again with deeper pressure. He was vibrating so hard in her mouth her teeth were numb, her tongue tingling, and her jaw aching as tears began to prick at the corners of her eyes.

She probably should have considered that something that felt so good throbbing against her cunt might feel less transcendent in her mouth. Nothing she couldn’t handle. Morgan was pulling back for a breath when Arséne bucked upward with a shout, and his cock pulsed mightily as he orgasmed without warning. Hot cum dribbled over her tongue and over her bottom lip, thicker than she’d expected and sticky sweet. A few drops landed on her breasts, little white pearls beading on her skin and mingling almost prettily with the iridescence of the wing dust as he popped out of her mouth.

Arséne was sprawled breathless on the floor, wings stretched flat, but one corema slipped up to her chin as if to clean her up. It dabbed at her mouth and chest for a few moments, almost delicate, then retreated with its fellows into the vents along his ribs. His cock too was already half concealed again, curling inward until only that intriguing seam remained. Settling back, Morgan spread her hands over the edges of his wings, massaging the soft edges with care, and was rewarded with a contented hum.

“That was… very nice, Mister Arséne.” She shifted up his body, taking care not to settle too much weight on his wings. With him pinned beneath her, she leaned her face close to his and whispered, barely containing a laugh, “Though you know what would be extra nice?”

“Not being dropped from the ceiling?”

“Your real name, so I know who to thank for the bruise on my ass tomorrow morning.”

His mandibles prodded teasingly at her cheeks. “Still on that?”

“I’m persistent.”

“And ‘Arséne’ will sound so much nicer when you’re screaming it later.”

“Wow, cocky!”

“How about…” He grasped her arms and held her in place, then lifted his head to take one of her breasts in his mouth, nibbling until her arms trembled. “If you can get me to come first, I’ll tell you.”

“And if not?”

“You’ll still have had several of the best orgasms of your life.”

Morgan bit her lip. “A win-win indeed. I hope you’re getting something out of this.”

His mouth quirked in the way she now realized meant he was smiling.

“In that case”—one of his taloned feet slid up her leg—“let’s get you upstairs and out of these socks, Miss Temple.”  

 

~*~

 

Morgan slept through all three of her alarms, and when she finally woke, the sun was well into the sky and the pillow had left deep creases in her cheek. God, she was sore. The good sort—the sort that felt more like reward than recrimination and was her due after several hours of acrobatic sex with a very enthusiastic partner. If she closed her eyes and let the early sunlight tickle her eyelids, she could detect the echoes of a tingle along her limbs. She stretched her legs and arms, arching until her back gave a pleasing crack. The bed was empty but for her. Arséne had gone sometime after she’d fallen asleep, she supposed, and something about that felt exactly right.

For a thief in the night, he had been good as his word. Their hours together had been full of novel pleasures, including a more successful aerial attempt, and while she’d returned the favor in kind, she had not once gotten him to finish first. He’d done far too good a job distracting her. “Arséne” it was, then, an anonymity befitting the weird little romp they’d shared.

And that was that. A night of fun from a most unexpected source. One of those chance meetings that left a person short one silk nightie and convinced they needed to look into some bigger, better vibrators.

Yep, one of those.

She rolled to her feet. More of that iridescent dust splotched her skin and floated in little clouds from her tangled sheets when she shook them out. As she shuffled naked past the kitchenette to the bathroom, she slowed. Her housecoat was laid neatly atop the counter, and beside it was a small paper bag and one of her sticky notes from downstairs.

Wrapping the housecoat around herself to fight the chill, she picked up the note. Her eyes were drawn to the bottom. Written tidily in black Sharpie were the letters “A-r-s,” which had been crossed out and followed by the name Matt and a phone number. Her face warmed in a most incriminating fashion.

Matt. Huh. Morgan’s mind drifted back to a few hours before, when she had, indeed, been screaming his name and lots of other colorful words. He’d probably had a point. Ecstatic cries of “MAAAATTTTTTT!” didn’t hit quite the same way during an illicit tryst. No offense to Matts anywhere, of course, but it wasn’t Arséne, was it? And neither was he.

She bit her lip to fight a smile and read the rest of the note.

Morgan,

Had a great time last night. I’d love if it happened again. I owe you a few dinners, don’t you think? In the meantime, enjoy breakfast.

Glad you caught me.

Matt

She peeked inside the bag and saw one of the huge pumpkin muffins from the diner, studded with seeds and smelling deliciously of cinnamon and nutmeg.  Heavenly. Grinning, Morgan tucked the note into the pocket of her housecoat and headed for the shower. It was going to be a good morning. Clean up, have brunch, call the locksmith, and settle in to plan that vacation, which she was absolutely, undoubtedly going to be taking as soon as possible. While she waited for the water to get hot, she typed a quick message into her phone.

Thinking of taking a road trip soon. Gonna hit a few yarn shops along the way—want to come with? No reason we both can’t eat well.