* * *
She was swaying whenshe returned to consciousness later that morning, after sleeping for several hours curled in his arms.She could not see.Her wrists were bound securely in the springy web, and the sticky, silken strands moved down her body in an intricate diamond pattern, cupping her breasts and wrapping over her hips in a way that rendered her motionless.Her ankles were bound as snugly as her wrists, her legs splayed open in a way wouldn’t have been able to manage for long on her own, her positioning reminding her of a carnival she’d attended long ago, and the beautiful, bird-like woman who’d used columns of silk knotted around her body to traverse the air.Ladybug tensed when the web bounced with his movement, feeling him near, her eyelids fluttering uselessly beneath the blindfold.She could feel the heat of his mouth hovering over her sex, could almost feel the wetness of his tongue sliding against her,neededto feel the tingle of his venom ...but he held back and she whimpered as his fangs scraped the delicate skin of her inner thigh, struggling against her bonds.
“Let me have you, little bug.”
She was unable to answer, unable to form coherent thought, as mute and insensible as she’d been a dozen other times before, although not for reasons as pleasurable.His tongue was a molten heat, stroking against her slickened folds and licking her clit with a slow, tortuous motion.It had been a very long night, and he’d proven a devoted student, as dedicated to his craft as she was to hers.The delicate petals of her sex were a mystery to him, she’d discovered, so different from females of his own kind, and he’d diligently suckled and stroked, using fingers and tongue to bring her to climax in between his own until she was too over-sensitized to continue, earning another flash of that rare smile.
Now he did not hold back, employing the tricks he’d learned over the course of his study until she was writhing.His fangs dragged over the delicate skin of her inner thigh as his tongue delved, fucking her in a slow undulation as her clit was trapped between two kneading knuckles.A hand at her hair, a hand at her breast ...she had studied him as well, and learned his favorite places to lavish attention.When his tongue carried a glimmering droplet from his fangs to her hooded pearl, Ladybug was unable to stifle the way she whined, nor the way she struggled against the webbing binding her.
“Let me have you, little bug,” he repeated, a whisper against her thigh before her clit was sucked into his mouth and flooded in venom, words dying her throat, supplanted with a half-strangled sob as he sucked and lapped until she was a quivering, boneless heap, thankful for the web as she came against his tongue.“No god has ever been gifted with such a sweet nectar.”
A strand was plucked and the web swung, positioning her in such a way that his mouth was suddenly beneath her, allowing him to drink from her pulsing cunt like a chalice.
By then she understood his request.He wanted to bite her, for his venom to make her pliable once more; wanted to mount her again, to fuck her until she was practically unconscious, and itshouldhave terrified her.She should have been horrified, frightened that there was no end in sight to the way he used her body, for that intoxicating smell still weighed upon her and Anzan was nowhere near satisfied, his cock still heavy and erect — perhaps not as swollen as it had been in her room the previous night, but his climaxes still yielded a warm gush of silvery fluid into her at regular intervals, with no end in sight — but she only felt delirious with pleasure, his venom filling in the gaps of her body’s ability to withstand being fucked repeatedly.
It was her own fault, though, Ladybug reminded herself.She’d asked, at some point the previous night, if araneaen heats always lasted this long, if he would ever find relief ...only to be shocked by his answer.
“It’s never been like this before,” he’d admitted darkly, remaking a portion of the great web to place her in a new angle.“They come on twice a year, but without a receptive female the urge quickly passes.”
“Wh-what do you mean?What receptive female?”
He’d pressed his lips in a grim line before continuing, lifting her like a doll to fit into the new configuration.
“Females in my culture are ...I do not know the word for it in your tongue.They determine mating.They are revered above all others.”Ladybug swallowed, thinking of his deference from that first moment out on her sidewalk.“Our males go into heat, but it is up to the female to decide if she is receptive.If there is a female who wants to mate, our heats will continue so that she might find us.But ...I don’t know why this happened,” he added wryly.
Sheknew the reason though, gasping as he entered her from behind, a hand around her throat, a hand cupping her breasts, two hands holding her hips with a bruising force as he rutted.She had lain in her bed, night after night, listening to him pace, her arousal growing as the smell of him increased.He’d been putting out a pheromone forher.And you left him wanting for
nearly a month.How could she deny him now?
“Then have me,” she wheezed, head still spinning from her climax, an echo of her words from the previous night.His tongue danced over the line of her femoral artery, his sharp fangs grazed her skin ...but still he refrained, toying with her the same way her little garden cat toyed with the prey she captured in Slade Manor’s tall grass.
“What do we say, little bug?”
She twisted,needinghis venom, the smell of his heat still fogging her mind.It would be over soon, she was certain, and then she would wait, wait for the smell of his arousal to reach her when the seasons changed again, and then she would not makehimwait again.
“Please.”
* * *
When she was cut looseat last, she was placed in the claw-footed tub in the bathroom across from her own bedroom, the water steaming hot as he gently rubbed feeling back into her limp, exhausted limbs.Ladybug had her first thrill of fear when she directed him to her work kitchen to fetch the loose herbs that would bring down the inflammation in her well-used body.The speed with which Anzan left made her jolt, the speed and the silence, returning after just a brief moment with the exact herbs she’d requested.He could have been coming downstairs the whole time, she realized.The silence of all those months before his heat had made him clumsy and heavy with need ...he could have been moving silently throughout the entire house, examining her work space, standing over her bed as she slept, his numerous legs moving over each other in a seamless, graceful ballet.The notion that Zulya’s words all those months ago had merit made her choke with laughter, sliding into the water until her mouth burbled beneath the surface.It’s the quiet ones indeed!
She’d never been very good at people, but the stoic, unsmiling araneaen was different, and as he washed her hair, his impossibly long fingers gently detangling the long strands, she began to talk.She told him of the Aunts, how they’d doted on her as a child, calling her their little ladybug, teaching her the old ways.Everything she knew of the craft had been learnt at their side, adherence to tradition of both family and sisterhood, and she missed their instruction and wisdom, the love that had filled their household.
“I never really had friends, so I don’t care that I don’t have them now.Does that make sense?You can’t miss what you’ve never had, so it doesn’t bother me.But I’ve never lived alone before, I’ve nevernothad anyone who cared.I miss them so much.”She swallowed her sob, closing her eyes and focusing on the rhythmic pressure against her scalp.“It was supposed to be different when I joined the circle, I was supposed to be one of them.But if I’d never been one of them before, why would that one night make things different?”She thought of the endless coven meetings, the conversations that happened around her and over her head, never included; of the whispering sisters and the unspoken social rules she’d never understood.
“Hexennacht isn’t a true sabbath, but it was always my favorite celebration.”The night of witches, not a sabbath of observance and thanks, but a wild night ofrevelry, of sisterhood and craft.She had always loved the unbridled bonfire night of Beltane eve, loved screaming into the wind, to all the witches who had come before her, her mother and grandmother, an unbroken line of Brackenbridge witches.“And it’s ruined forever now,” she lamented, eyes overflowing as she spoke, wondering if Anzan would be able to tell the difference between the bathwater and her tears.“This was the year I was meant to take my seat, I’ve been an initiate since I was a teenager, but this year ...this is when I was supposed to be a fully credentialed member of the coven.”She told him of the Hexennacht ritual, ending with all the sisters taking to the sky as one.“But I wouldn’t make the flying ointment.There are a dozen different recipes, all used for centuries, but the new High Crone ...she said we had to use the recipe she provided, no substitutions.”The recipe was barbaric and archaic, one that had been outlawed for centuries, but the new crone, Authricia’s replacement, was eager to stretch her control over the circle.
“A baby?”Anzan interrupted, hands stilling in her hair.“That’s uncivilized even by the standards ofmykind.What kind of baby?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she shook her head, hands trembling beneath the bathwater at the memory of that night.“There are places in the city that traffick in such things, but it doesn’tmatter.It wouldn’t have worked.”She turned in the tub to face him, gripping the porcelain edges tightly with whitened knuckles.“Real magic requires sacrifice, every true witch knows this.If you’ve a spell that calls for rendered fat that must be human, you must carve it from your own belly.The sacrifice of another will not work in your stead, everytruewitch knows this.I would not compromise all I’ve been taught for the sake of their false smiles, so they cast me out.”Her tentative composure broke, and Ladybug was unable to keep her shoulders from shaking.“Cast out of the circle, the only woman in my family ...and they didn’t care.What am I supposed to do?Who am I supposed to be?What am I, if I’m not a witch?”Her voice has risen with her anguished tears, rattling against the smooth tiles of the walls, trapped in the steam from her bathwater.“But I don’t care,” she continued after a moment, resolve replacing the despair.“I’m not going to let them stop me from practicing.I don’t miss them.A witch does not need a coven, and Iama witch.”
Anzan was silent as he rinsed the lather from her hair, and as it had been for the better part of the last four months, his silence was a balm.It didn’t matter if they went back to their separate existences after this night, for he would be just upstairs, a silent, comforting presence as he had been all this time.Alone, together.
“In the place where I’m from, marriages are of great importance.”His voice was as serious as it ever was, and Ladybug raised her eyes, tipping her head back to watch him as he spoke.A tightly brokered business, he explained, and the competing clans were vicious.“A daughter’s bride price can lift a family from poverty,” he explained, “but a son might bankrupt a clan unable to pay a bride price.Two sons is ruinous.”There was no greater dishonor for a clan than having a son reach mating age without a secured marriage.“When we come of age, unmated sons are cast out.The elders do not want the smell of a younger, virile competitor near the wives, and the family who could not pay is rid of their shame.There is no remorse for the sons who are sent away.We’re not welcome anywhere we go, for the violence of our kind is well known to all, but it matters not.They’re relieved to be rid of us.”
“Cast out?”She craned her neck back, watching his black eyes blink in a wave, the dark fringe of lashes on his cobalt eyes lower as he dipped his head in a slow nod.Cast out.Just as she had been.The aunts had always told her that the Fates were a mysterious force to be respected, and there had always been an altar to the divine trio in her home growing up.Being a landlord was hardly something she’d imagined for herself, yet somehow Clotho had conspired to make it so, sending someone just might understand her feelings of isolation and loneliness in the process.Cast out.There were some things that transcended species, a lesson well learned in a place like Cambric Creek.Not so different at all, Ladybug considered.
“Prepare for your feast night, little bug.”Once the last of the water had drained from the tub, Anzan stood over her with the fluffiest towel from the linen closet, staring down at her bare form.“Just as beautiful as the nights you sing your strange songs to the moon.”
