Chapter 359- Emotional Talks at Mid Night
Night fell.
The candles burned lower. The amber glow from outside dimmed, the citadel’s distant lights reducing to a faint pulse on the horizon. The room grew darker, the spider silk on the walls losing its shimmer, the strands becoming shadowed threads that caught only the smallest light.
The mother fell asleep first. Her thick body curled on the sleeping bag the spider woman had given her, her enormous tits pressed against the floor, her breathing deep and slow. The daughter curled against her, her small body fitting into the curve of her mother’s back, her dark eyes closing within minutes.
Soha settled in the corner, her pregnant belly propped against the wall, her dark nipples softening as her breathing evened. Her hand remained on her belly even in sleep.
The succubus lay near the door, her enormous pale tits rising and falling with controlled breath, her golden eyes half-closed, her tail curled around her own ankle. She was not sleeping. Her golden eyes tracked every movement in the room through half-lidded slits. But she was resting.
The dogs had settled in their corner. Rex lay with his broad head on his paws, his eyes closed. Mina was curled against his side, her tan body fitting into the curve of his larger frame.
The spider woman was across the room.
She had not slept. She sat with her spider legs folded, her human body upright, her dark eyes watching the candles burn down.
He was awake.
He sat against the wall, his coat folded beneath him, his hands behind his head, his dark eyes on the ceiling. He had not spoken for an hour.
The room was quiet. The breathing of four sleeping women. The faint click of spider legs shifting. The low, distant sound of something moving in the streets outside.
The spider woman moved.
Her eight legs carried her across the room in silence, the tips finding the concrete without sound, her silver fur catching the last candle’s glow. She stopped three feet from him.
He looked at her.
"I was just awake so that you cannot eat us," he said.
Her dark eyes flashed.
"Of course I’m not going to eat us. Why do you always blame me like this? I’m not a monster."
She halted.
The words hung in the air. Her face changed, the defiance draining, replaced by the familiar, weary acceptance of a woman who had been called monster so many times she had started to believe the word was accurate.
"He has... yes, I look like one."
She looked down.
There was a puddle on the floor. Condensation from the wall, nothing more, a small pool of water catching the candlelight. She stared at her own reflection in it. The silver-white hair. The dark eyes. The spider legs.
She bit her lip.
He moved.
He shifted to his right. His hand came out from behind his head and landed beside hers on the floor. Then it moved. Over hers. His palm covering the back of her hand, his fingers curling around her knuckles.
She looked at their hands.
"What are you trying to do?"
He looked at her.
"You look gorgeous. Haven’t you?"
She trembled.
Her spider legs scraped against the floor, the tips leaving small marks in the dust. Her human hand twitched beneath his, the fingers curling inward.
"You are just trying to manipulate me."
He chuckled.
"How do you know it?"
Her dark eyes met his. The flush was back on her face, the candlelight making her silver-white hair glow.
"Everyone just wants my power," she said. Her voice was quiet. Tired. The voice of a woman who had been approached before, again and again, by villains who saw her silk and calculated its value. "They want what I can make. Not... not me."
He looked at her.
"What power?"
She swallowed.
"I have the power to create wire. Web. Stronger than steel." Her voice found its strength, the pride of a craftsman describing their work. "I can create nets, weapons, binding strands. The tensile strength is higher than anything manufactured. Do you know how valuable that is? Nets that can hold zombie lords. Weapons that can cut through bone. So many things."
He raised an eyebrow.
"What would I even do with steel wires?"
She blinked.
Her mouth opened. Closed. The dark eyes scanned his face, searching for the trap, the angle, the calculation that she had learned to expect. She found none. He was looking at her with the same mild, unhurried curiosity he had shown since he arrived.
She tried to think of a reason he would need her wires. He had portals. He had kinetic control. He had energy manipulation. He had killed a zombie lord with two fingers. What would a man like that do with spider silk?
She couldn’t find an answer.
"Forgive me," she said quietly. "I don’t have to tell that."
She looked down.
He chuckled.
Then the sound came.
Soft. Rhythmic. The unmistakable, wet percussion of flesh meeting flesh. A slap, a pause, a slap, a pause. Coming from the corner where the dogs slept.
They both looked up.
Rex had mounted Mina.
The large male’s body was over the smaller female’s, his front legs gripping her sides, his hips driving forward in rapid, instinctive thrusts. Mina’s body was arched, her tail raised, her back legs braced against the floor. The sound of their coupling was clear and unmistakable in the quiet room.
SLAP SLAP SLAP SLAP
Cruxius watched.
"A bitch is getting pounded," he said.
The spider woman’s face went crimson.
"Sir, I don’t look at them. They are having their private time." She turned her head away, her silver-white hair falling over her face, her human hands pressing against her burning cheeks.
He leaned back.
"Well, if their master was not a virgin, she would have understood. Don’t you think the dog looks excited?"
Rex’s tongue was out. Hanging from the side of his jaw, the saliva dripping, his eyes half-closed with the mindless, focused pleasure of an animal in the act. His thrusts were deep, his hips slamming against Mina’s rear, his tail raised high.
"He’s trying to show off his skills," Cruxius added.
The spider woman trembled.
"Of course not. My doggy is not like that." She turned her head, her voice carrying the automatic defense of a pet owner. "Rex, stop that."
Rex did not stop.
His thrusts continued. SLAP SLAP SLAP. His eyes, which had been half-closed, opened. He turned his broad head toward the humans. His tongue was still out, his expression carrying the unmistakable, tail-wagging pride of a dog who was performing for an audience and wanted acknowledgment.
The spider woman saw his face.
Her mouth fell open.
"What has happened to him?"
She stared at Rex. At his proud, tongue-out, tail-wagging face. At his hips still driving into Mina, who was panting beneath him, her tan body trembling, her tail swishing with each impact. Rex was looking directly at the spider woman. At his master. As if asking for praise.
The spider woman covered her face with both hands.
"What has happened to him?" she repeated, her voice muffled by her palms. "He has never... he doesn’t usually..."
She didn’t know.
She didn’t know that the Aphrodisiac Touch had been radiating from Cruxius’s skin for the last two hours, filling the room, affecting every living thing in it. The dogs, with their simpler nervous systems, had responded first. Rex’s libido had been amplified beyond his normal seasonal patterns, his mating drive pushed into overdrive, his inhibitions removed. Mina had responded in kind, her body going into heat from the pheromone cascade.
The spider woman thought her dog was simply misbehaving.
Cruxius said nothing.
He had done it intentionally. The dogs fucking was a bonus, a distraction, a way to fill the room with the sound and scent of mating while the aphrodisiac worked on the spider woman’s more complex nervous system. While she watched her dogs and wondered what was wrong with them, the pheromones were seeping into her body, her arousal building without her awareness, her pink fold swelling beneath the silver fur.
He moved his thumb.
On her hand. The one he was still holding. His thumb traced a slow circle on her palm, the motion small, deliberate, intimate. The pad of his thumb dragging across the soft skin, pressing into the meat of her palm, circling.
She noticed.
"What are you doing?"
He looked at her.
"Just trying to get some emotional support. Can I not have it?"
She bit her lip.
"No, you don’t."