Chapter 357- A Pervert Meets a Spidey Lady
The apartment building was not an apartment building.
It was a gutted dental office three blocks behind the shopping mall. Two stories, the lower windows boarded, the upper windows cracked but intact. A faded sign hung from one remaining bracket, the letters too weathered to read. The front door was missing entirely, replaced by a curtain of dense spider silk that caught the faint ambient light and shimmered like fog.
The spider woman went first.
Her eight legs carried her up the steps with an ease that made the motion look choreographed. Each tip found its place on the concrete without sound, the silver hairs on her legs catching the light in brief flashes. Her human torso was upright, her small breasts pressing against the tight black top, her silver-white hair swaying.
Cruxius followed.
His eyes were lower than her face.
The spider body, bulbous and segmented, rose behind her human waist in a smooth curve. The surface was covered in fine silver fur, short and soft, the kind that would feel like velvet under a palm. The spinnerets at the rear were tucked beneath, and between the lowest segment and the joint where her human body met her spider body, there was a fold.
A pinkish fold.
He noticed it because the spider body swayed with each step, the segments shifting, the fur parting slightly at the junction. The color was wrong for the silver-gray of the rest of her. Pink. Soft. Slightly swollen. Visible only when her body moved at certain angles, the fur falling away to reveal the briefest glimpse of what could only be described as anatomy that had no business being on an insect.
He stared at it for three full steps.
His internal voice was quiet.
'Isn't she an insect?'
The fold pulsed once, the pink flesh compressing and releasing with the motion of her legs.
'Even with that body, she's seducing me without wanting it.'
He looked at his own face in a cracked window reflection. His expression was the mild, cataloging gaze of a man who had just realized he was a pervert of comprehensive proportions. He had fucked a succubus, a pregnant woman, a thick mother, her virgin daughter, and a Zone Master's pregnant wife. A spider woman's pink fold was barely a deviation.
He kept walking.
The succubus moved beside him, her golden eyes tracking his gaze, her lips curving into a knowing smile. She had seen where he was looking. She said nothing. Her tail flicked once against his ankle in the universal gesture of a woman communicating 'I saw that' without words.
The mother and daughter followed, their thick asses still warm from his grip, their faces carrying the exhausted blankness of women who had been through too much in forty-eight hours to process new information. Soha came last, her pregnant belly catching on the curtain of spider silk as she pushed through, the strands stretching but not breaking.
The interior was a single large room.
The ceiling was high, the walls bare concrete, the floor covered in dust and debris. A sleeping bag was rolled in one corner. A small portable stove sat on a metal shelf. Candles were arranged on every surface, their flames low and warm, casting the room in shifting orange light.
Spider silk was everywhere.
It covered the walls in layers, the strands crisscrossing in patterns that looked decorative but were clearly functional. The silk caught the candlelight and made the walls shimmer, the effect beautiful and unsettling in equal measure. Strands hung from the ceiling in loose curtains, dividing the room into sections. The windows were sealed behind thick webbing, the silk opaque enough to block the view from outside but thin enough to let light through.
He stopped in the doorway.
He looked at the webbing. At the curtains of silk. At the walls covered in strands.
"Are you going to trap us in the web to eat us when we sleep?"
The spider woman's human body spun around, her dark eyes wide with the immediate, reflexive horror of someone who had heard this accusation before and was thoroughly tired of it.
"I am not that foolish," she said. Her voice was tight, clipped, carrying the practiced patience of a woman who had answered this question a hundred times from a hundred different people.
He chuckled.
He released the mother and daughter. His hands slid off their asses, his palms dragging across the thick flesh one final time before separating. He slapped the mother's right cheek as his hand left. The sound was short, clean, the pale flesh rippling under his palm.
"Mmh~" the mother winced. Her thick body jolted forward, her enormous tits swaying under the thin dress. She moved toward the center of the room without looking back.
He slapped the daughter's smaller cheek. Lighter. The sound was higher, thinner, the tight young flesh barely moving under his palm.
"Ah~" the daughter gasped. Her small body hopped forward, her dark eyes flushing. She followed her mother.
He looked around the room.
The silk curtains shifted in a draft he couldn't feel. The candles flickered. The walls shimmered.
He tilted his head.
"There are two life forms here," he said. His voice was flat. Observational. The tone of a man whose Kinetic Control had registered two distinct heartbeats in the room, both small, both rapid, both coming from behind a curtain of silk in the far corner. "They seem to be hiding."
The spider woman went still.
Her eight legs froze mid-shift, her human torso turning toward him, her dark eyes widening with the slow, creeping dread of someone who knew exactly what he was about to say.
"So you really brought people here to lay eggs in their body?"
"OF COURSE NOT!"
The scream came out at a volume that made the candles stutter. Her face was red from her collar to her hairline, her silver-white hair trembling with the force of her indignation, her hands clenched at her sides.
"Those are just my dogs!"
He raised an eyebrow.
"Dogs?"
A bark came from behind the silk curtain.
Not a normal bark. A deep, resonant sound that carried the distinct timbre of a large animal with a large chest. It was followed by a second bark, higher, sharper, the sound of a smaller animal responding to the first.
The silk curtain bulged.
Two shapes pushed through the webbing, the strands stretching and parting around their bodies. They emerged into the candlelight.
The first was large. A male. His body was thick, the muscles visible beneath short fur that was dark brown and patchy. His chest was broad, his legs thick, his head wide. He moved with the rolling, confident gait of an animal that had evolved past normal dog limits. His eyes were intelligent, alert, scanning the room and the newcomers with an awareness that was more than animal.
The second was smaller. A female. Her body was slender, the fur lighter, tan and white, her legs thinner, her head narrow. She pressed against the male's side, her body angled behind his, her eyes darting between the humans with the nervous energy of a creature that had learned to be afraid of things that walked on two legs.
They were a couple.
The male moved to the spider woman first. His broad head pressed against her human hip, his nose pushing into her palm. The female followed, her slender body circling the spider woman's legs, her tail low but wagging.
The spider woman knelt. Her spider legs folding beneath her, her human torso lowering. She wrapped her arms around both dogs, her face pressing into the male's fur.
"How are you?" she whispered. Her voice had changed entirely. The indignation was gone. The embarrassment was gone. What remained was the soft, private tenderness of a woman greeting the only living things that had never judged her. She rubbed the male's ears. "Rex, how are you, boy?"
She turned to the female, her hand stroking the tan fur.
"And Mina, my sweet girl, did you miss me?"
Both dogs licked her face. The male's broad tongue sweeping across her cheek. The female's smaller tongue lapping at her chin. She laughed. The sound was genuine, unguarded, the laugh of a woman who had forgotten for three seconds that there were strangers in her home.
Cruxius watched this.
"Aspira," he said. He used the name the succubus had used earlier, his voice carrying the warm, conversational tone of a man making casual conversation while simultaneously torturing his host. "Having two dogs. Are they for the emergency food supply?"
The spider woman's head snapped up. Her dark eyes were wet. Her face cycled through four emotions in two seconds before settling on exhausted despair.
"See, why do you treat me like an alien? I'm not a monster."
He looked at her. At her human torso, her silver-white hair, her dark eyes. At the spider body beneath her, the eight legs, the silver fur, the bulbous abdomen. He let his gaze travel the full length of her without hurrying.
"You look like one though."
She bit her lip.
Hard. Her teeth sinking into the soft flesh, her dark eyes dropping to the floor, her human hands gripping her own arms. Her spider legs shuffled, the tips scraping against the concrete in an anxious, repetitive pattern.
He looked down.
At the junction. The fold. The pink flesh, now visible as her body had shifted from the kneeling position. The soft, swollen lips, slightly parted, the color bright against the silver fur.
He reached down a bit sneakly.