7. Flavia #2
“A high price.” But he looked intrigued. “But what husband would refuse his bride? Fine, show me your scars, and I’ll show you mine.”
With trembling fingers, I released the clasp. The wet fabric slid from my shoulders, landing with a wet thud on the surface of the spring. All of his eyes stilled as they focused in on me. His hard claws pressed against my back as he coaxed me forward between his submerged legs.
His hands reached out, tracing the numerous cuts along my arms, and over one particularly large burn beside my belly button.
His hands were huge, his fingers spreading so wide they could cover my entire stomach, but he moved them softly, the black skin that transitioned to long nails tracing like a painter’s brush over a canvas.
I hadn’t experienced touch as gentle as this since I was a child—when I was still cherished and loved.
“Your former husband did all this to you? He truly was a master of cruelty.” He said it without inflection, just another observation.
“Him…and his men.” As I said it, I felt the smallest hesitation in his hand.
“He let someone else touch what was his?” For the first time, I saw disgust in his face. “Men truly are such fools. I will not allow such blasphemy.”
“Possessive creature,” I murmured, though his words sent an unexpected thrill through me.
“When I claim something, I keep it.” His fingers traced along my collar bone. “Unmarked by others. Protected.”
Goosebumps raised on my skin as his fingers continued their exploration, their size apparent compared to the various parts of my body. Why did that excite me? Because I knew how easily he would destroy the Romans. That was the reason…no other.
“And my truth?” I asked, even as his touch made my breath catch.
His hand stilled, all of his eyes focused on mine. For a long moment, he seemed to consider whether to answer at all.
“I was not always bound to these woods,” he said finally, his voice quieter than I’d ever heard it. “Before the curse, I chose my prey. I decided when to hunt, when to conquer, when to kill, when to spare. The transformation... it took that from me.”
I studied his face, seeing something almost vulnerable in the way his additional eyes had stopped their constant movement. “What do you mean?”
“The hunger is not truly mine. It belongs to the curse, drives me to feed whether I wish to or not. For three centuries, I have been little more than a trap set by ancient magic, snaring whatever stumbles into my domain, into this forest.” His claws traced a gentle path along my ribs.
“But you...for the first time in three hundred years, I wanted something beyond mere sustenance. I was able to resist the hunger.”
The confession hit me unexpectedly. I had assumed he was simply a predator following his nature, but this... this suggested a creature slave to forces he could not control.
“So the great Devourer has desires beyond hunger?” I murmured. “How unexpectedly... human of you.”
His laugh was bitter. “It appears so. You have awakened a part of me I thought long ago consumed by the void within me.”
His fingers traced up and over the swell of my breast. I might have mistaken it for the same clinical touch as elsewhere, except he traced the pad of his thumb around my nipple until it hardened. That overly wide smirk returned.
“Your body still recognizes pleasure, little human. This is?—”
“I have a name, you know,” I interrupted.
His hand stilled, all of his eyes focused on mine. “Yes, a name given to you by those human invaders. Those who have desecrated these lands, and desecrated you. Wouldn’t you prefer a name that echoes with the wisdom of your ancestors, that resonates with the soul of this land?”
I froze in his grasp. “How did you know that my mother was Briton?”
He wound a lock of my silver hair around his finger, sliding it up until I felt his claws gliding over the back of my head. Then, with a harsh jolt he tugged me against his chest, his cheek brushing mine as I felt his lips graze the shell of my ear.
“I can taste it in you, smell it. They tried to burn it out of you, but your blood smells like mossy covered forests and night blooming flowers. You smell like these woods, an ancientness slumbering, waiting to arise again.”
His tongue snaked along my jaw and I shivered as he spread his fingers over my lower back, pushing me in closer to him. As my bare sex collided with him, there was no doubt I had awakened something within him, and it felt hard and terrifyingly large.
“I’m going to give you one last chance. You have seen what I really am, and survived. Never before have I let prey leave this grove alive but you...intrigue me. Say you wish to flee, and I will allow it.”
His grip didn’t loosen. “But if you still desire that revenge that burns in your heart so bright it burned away my poison, it’s time to test how brave you truly are.”
He dipped his head and that impossibly long tongue wrapped around my breast, the heat of it a sharp contrast to his cold hands and I trembled.
It reminded me of pain and hot irons. He pulled back and then blew over the wet skin, the cold sensation enough to cause it to pull tight and the smallest groan escaped me.
“Know this, my bride, if you stay, you are mine. This pretty little body of yours is mine and I intend to use it. Every whimper you make, every time your legs shake and you seize with more pleasure than you think you can handle, it will only prove exactly how much you belong to me.”
“Such promises,” I breathed, embolden by bravado and the unfamiliar sensation in my low belly. “I hope you can deliver on them.”
His eyes flashed dangerously. “Careful. You might get exactly what you’re asking for.”
The words rose out of me, born from the fire that had been stoked inside me by his venom. “I’m counting on it.”
His eyes went entirely black. “I will devour you until the delicious nectar of your ecstasy fills this endless void of hunger within me. But you must choose to stay. There can only be pleasure if it’s shared.”
He was giving me a choice. Something I’d never had before.
Something that had been taken away from him.
I could run, I could try and find a new home, perhaps among one of the tribes who were still rumored to survive to the north.
But if I did that, Tiberius and his men would live, and I would never be free.
I had made my choice while bleeding on the tiled villa floor, and I would not turn back now.
And the truth was, with all of his arms wrapped around me, and his broad chest pressed against mine, I wanted to know exactly what was hiding beneath the spring’s surface.
“We have a deal don’t we?”
He hummed with satisfaction, pushing me away from him.
He stood up out of the spring and my mouth fell open. What emerged from the water was not one, but two hard cocks, each bobbing slightly with his movement. He laughed as I attempted to school my face into something other than shock.
“Scared, little human?”
For the first time in my memory, I wasn’t.
Instead, the serpent in my belly was writhing, and my mouth watered as she drove me closer to him.
I reached out, one hand to each of his lengths.
The member on top was slightly smaller than the one below, and both pulsed with thick veins slightly darker than the surrounding greyish skin.
I ran my thumb along the dark vein that ran along the side of his larger cock until it twitched.
The serpent beneath my skin uncoiled further as I stroked him, marveling at the smooth texture, like silk over iron.
His breath caught, and for the first time since entering his domain, I felt something shift between us.
Power, flowing not just from him to me, but circulating like the strange currents in the glowing pool.
“Brave little human,” he murmured, his multiple eyes tracking my movements with an intensity that should have frightened me. Instead, that foreign heat pooled lower, a newfound hunger. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“No,” I admitted, my voice steadier than I expected. “But I’m a fast learner.” I leaned forward, mouth open as I guided him towards me, wanting to devour him.
His laugh rumbled through the grove, setting the leaves trembling.
In one fluid motion, he lifted me from the water, his chitinous arms cradling me against his chest while his human hands traced across my scarred skin.
Each touch left trails of that peculiar tingling, his venom singing in my veins, awakening nerves I’d thought dead.
“Patience. You are mine now, and you taste so sweet. There are so many ways I look forward to devouring you.”
Moss cushioned our descent, and above us, his web shimmered, droplets of moisture catching moonlight like scattered stars.
“Let me show you what it can feel like,” he whispered in my ear, one claw tracing the curve of my hip. “Even after all they did to bury it beneath pain.”
His tongue—impossibly long, impossibly hot—traced the scars along my ribs, and I arched beneath him, a sound escaping that I didn’t recognize as my own. Not a scream, not a plea, but something new. Something hungry. I covered my mouth, an old reflex.
All of his eyes looked up at me, and anger rose in them. “You are mine, including all those pretty sounds you make. Don’t you dare hold them back, they belong to me now.”
I had always tried to stay silent in the villa, my cries only causing me more pain. I’d been silent, wanting it all to end. But I didn’t want this to end. I wanted more.
I nodded at him, and he dipped his head between my legs.
His tongue ran over the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, before slowly sinking between my folds and deep into me.
My hips bucked at the sensation, and I let my moans float into the night air.
It wasn’t harsh or painful, but soft and somehow incredibly deep.
A pressure like nothing I had ever felt before.