She had continued the short journey down the drive to drop her sack in the green waste bin, peeling off her gloves as she returned to the edge of the holly. Her new gardening gloves, a bright Kelly green, dotted with tiny radishes and carrots. One of the many little gifts from Anzan, thoughtful and specific to her.And these women don’t see any of that. They don’t care to see beyond his legs.
“A real estate agent? I-I’m not selling my house.” She thought it best to be straightforward, just in case she was mistaken about their motives. “This house has been in my family for more than a hundred-and-fifty years. The Brackenbridges have been here since before Cambric Creek had a name. I’m not going anywhere.”
Ladybug wondered, after an awkward goodbye, if she was simply being paranoid. Always having to guess what other people really meant despite the plainness of their words resulted in occasionally guessing wrong, when she hazarded a guess at all.Why can’t people simply say what they mean? Why does every conversation have to have a hidden protocol?She would likely ever know the answer. She’d been asking the question all her life and wasn’t any closer to knowing.
The black cat was there, sitting on the edge of the porch railing, his body facing the hedgerow. She flushed, wondering if he’d been listening.Perfect. Now you have to worry about being embarrassed in front of eavesdropping cats.
Straightening up, she resisted the urge to stamp her foot in the cat’s direction, pulling open the side door instead. The staircase up led directly to the attic, and that’s where she would go. Ladybug decided it would be best to put the conversation with the women out of mind, filing away the notion ofordinancesfor another time, seeking Anzan’s many arms and quiet consideration to slow the panic that was suddenly jumping in her veins.
The night of the dark moon, Anzan fired up the patio heaters he’d bought her for Yule, and she’d stepped out onto the flagstones, shivering in her robe.
The cat was there, watching her from the garden wall as she moved through her ritual to the dark mother, but Ladybug decided she could not begrudge his presence that night.It’s his dark mother as well.Chalice, athame, ring. A circle unbroken beneath the moonless sky.
Every once in a while, the dark night was punctuated with a shower of rainbow color, neighbors celebrating the start of the lunar new year. As the fireworks increased, Ladybug moved through her ritual positions joyfully. As she spun and whirled, the cat joined her, like a shadow at her feet.Herewas the camaraderie of the absent circle, no coven required. She was not the only one who celebrated the moon.
By the time Anzan had helped her slip back into her robe and they were sipping the deipnon wine, the cat had vanished.
“I will never get tired of watching you sing your strange songs to the moon, my little bug.” He was holding her aloft, so that she did not freeze her toes on the icy cold stones, once her ritual was complete. “Every month I think perhaps it will seem more of a commonplace routine,” he went on, pushing a lock of her hair behind her ear, gently tracing the curve of her cheek with the hooked talon, “and every month I am struck by your beauty as if it was the first time.”
She breathed into him when he kissed her. They were the same, and she would never tire of watching him either.
The fireworks had not abated when she and Anzan headed back into the house, only now the bright explosions of light were being accompanied by the black cat caterwauling on her roof. She was reminded of how inhumanly fast Araneaens truly were when Anzan reared back, launching the apple he’d held in one of his hands at the roof like a cannonball. The cat screeched, ducking out of the way at the last possible second, disappearing from the roof line.
She had learned much about Araneaen mating culture. Anzan would go into heat twice a year, putting out that thick, plummy smell that wrapped around her like a fog, and his cock would be a turgid agony until his seasonal lust was slaked. Otherwise, his segmented shaft remained asleep, nestled in his chitinous carapace, andshewould need to be the one secreting the pheromone to arouse his ardor.
It was something she was working on in secret, dabbing her efforts at her pulse points like perfume, hoping the smell would catch his nose and leave him pacing and desperate, but she’d yet to produce anything with a noticeable effect.
That didn’t mean their intimacy was restricted to his heats, not that she would have minded if it was. Sex was an expression of adulation to the seasonal goddess, the mother and her consort, to be experienced with anyone who was taking part in the ritualistic worship . . . or else it was an act of the most sacred bond between lovers. She was used to being alone in the world and satisfying a biological impulse was like scratching an itch, something she could do herself. Ladybug had fast discovered scratching her own itches was no longer necessary. Araneaen culture being matriarchal meant he was nearly fanatical in his desire to pleasure her, with his hands, with his tongue, anyway he could.
They had created their own devotional routines. That was how she found herself back in the attic, pitch black in the moonless night, suspended from the ceiling. The webbing he’d bound her in was a harness, a beautiful braided bridle that curved around her breasts and over her hips, holding her legs open for her.
“My beautiful little witch.” His voice was a low croon against her skin, his breath moving down her stomach.
She loved letting him have her in the dark. Ladybug was barely able to make out his outline in the confined space, but Anzan’s many eyes were just as keen now as they were in the middle of the sunny afternoon. She was blind and helpless, completely at his mercy, and she loved it.
“So small and soft. I shall never tire of celebrating your dark moon, little bug.”
Ladybug whimpered when his mouth closed over her cunt, his tongue serpentining through the petals of her sex like a snake through a garden, coming to alight on her clit. He licked over her slowly, worrying the little bud with his tongue, back and forth, until her breath came out on a shuddering moan. She was unable to see the action, but she knew the instant he pressed his tongue to one of his fangs, carrying a single drop of his potent venom to her most sensitive spot.
Fire flooded her. It was as if her blood was gasoline and he’d lit a match. Ladybug arched against her bonds, whining and helpless. One drop was enough, they’d learned. One drop of his venom to the exposed bud of her clit, its hood pulled back as he laved the aphrodisiac venom directly onto it, all of her nerve endings catching aflame at once.
“Let me hear how I please you, my little mate.”
He didn’t need to make the request. She wouldn’t have been able to hold in her high keens if she’d tried. Anzan’s tongue moved with speed and precision no human would be able to replicate, and her panting breaths came out as high-pitched wheezing whines, the first shallow orgasm tightening through her. He did not slow. She would come like this several times more, and every time she flooded his mouth, he would pluck a string of webbing and change her position, letting her come against his tongue as he drank her up.
The cat began to yowl sometime around her third or fourth release.
Ladybug could not be bothered to sit up angrily at the added noise, for Anzan had just filled her with the two fingers whose claws he kept short and filed for this exact purpose, stroking her inner walls as his tongue stroked her clit, the tension within her ratcheting ever tighter. Control was slipping away, and she was glad to surrender it.
The dark moon was a time of renewal. New projects, new plans, new resolutions. Tomorrow, she would need to address the Holt issue. Tomorrow she would need to send him off for good, to remind him that Willow was gone, that there was nothing left here for him. Tomorrow.
Tonight, she was going to sleep like a stone, cradled in her monstrous mate’s arms, after he made her shake apart.
The room was lit with red light, a renewed burst of fireworks sizzling through the sky as she fell apart. Ladybug arched a final time, the noise ripping from her throat nearly a scream as she came against his tongue, clenching around his fingers. The caterwauling from the roof was a discordant counterpoint, but as her head dropped back, bouncing in the springy confines of the web, the sound receded. The after-effect of the fire was that the world went black, consciousness abandoning her as readily as she’d abandoned control, but it didn’t matter. Anzan would be there, cutting her free, gathering her in his arms, keeping her warm and safe.
Tomorrow she would deal with all that needed dealing with, but tonight was for rituals beneath the new moon . . . and their ritual together.
The following morning, she walked down to the work kitchen with purpose, never slowing as she crossed the room to the back door.
