The Web Below

He doesn't rush.

Even when I beg him to touch me.

Even when my thighs tremble and my wrists flex against the silk he's bound them with-silk he's spun himself, warm and humming with faint, arcane pressure.

He watches me like I'm a secret unfolding.

"You're certain," he says again. Low. Careful. His voice is deeper now. Less distant. It makes my stomach flutter.

I nod. "Yes."

I want this.

I want to be seen.

Held.

Filled.

His eyes-eight in total, gleaming like violet stars set in obsidian-don't blink. But I see the way his jaw shifts. Hear the tremor in his breath.

He steps closer.

And I take in the full shape of him.

His upper body is humanoid-broad shoulders, carved chest, a cascade of white-silver hair down his back like the inside of a cocoon. But where his spine should end, it flows seamlessly into the massive spider half of his body-eight long, black legs arcing from a ridged, midnight-colored abdomen. Their movements are smooth, silent, terrible in their grace. His limbs brace the floor and walls around us like a web given shape. He is his own lair.

His hand, strong and dark, clawed at the side of my face, gently leaving a soft sting to my cheek. He strokes along my jaw with the back of his knuckle like I'm something fragile. Maybe I am. I'm small compared to him, barely five feet to his towering form. His torso is broad and smooth and inhumanly strong, but his touch remains reverent.

And when he leans down to kiss the corner of my mouth, I almost sob.

I'm already open. Already soaked. Already shaking in the webs he's strung around me like a harness-my wrists bound above my head, thighs spread and suspended in midair by silk that pulses with his magic.

This is not a trap.

This is a gift.

He steps between my thighs, and I see him again.

Not just him. His cock. Fully on display now, where his human torso ends and the anomaly of monstrous identity begins.

It's large. Larger than anything I could take without the help of silk or magic, girthy and dark, the shaft ridged in gentle, spiraling segments like the root of some ancient vine. Its skin gleams with a slick, semi-translucent coating of webbing, like fresh silk wound tightly over pulsing heat. It isn't fully opaque-faint veins throb beneath, and at the crown, a flared, soft-edged head glistens, already dripping a bead of fluid thick enough to stretch in a webbed string to the ground.

"It's... wrapped," I whisper, wide-eyed. "Like... armor."

He nods once.

"Silk-fused. Grown with me. Helps with... anchoring." Then, after a breath, "And it makes things feel better. For both of us."

He says it simply.

I should be afraid.

Instead, I lift my hips.

But my body aches at the thought. My legs try to close instinctively, to protect myself from something that size, that alien-except the silk he's bound me with keeps them spread, trembling and slick with need.

"Will it hurt?" I ask, voice quieter.

"No," he says. "Not unless you want it to."

The way he says it. It's not teasing. It's promise.

He steps between my thighs, and that thick, inhuman cock presses against my folds-warm, textured, pulsing with life. The ridges catch on my skin, not painfully, but enough to send shocks through my spine. The silk coating grips lightly, sticking and dragging along my lips as if memorizing me.

"Please," I whisper, already gasping. "I need it. I want-" I choke on breath as the head begins to press in.

I stretch around him slowly, impossibly.

He's thick enough that I can feel the inner walls of my core ripple, trying to adjust. The soft silk of his cock clings to my entrance, dragging every nerve with it, and it's like I can feel each segmented ridge pressing deeper, catching and stroking me in perfect rhythm.

My back arches. My bound hands claw at the silk overhead.

"Acheron-gods-"

"You're doing beautifully," he growls, leaning over me.

His fangs glint in the dim glow of the lair. I can feel his arms tighten around me, even as his back legs brace the walls, keeping us both suspended in the cradle of his web. I'm completely at his mercy-and I've never felt safer.

He starts to move.

Each thrust is deliberate, dragging those spiraled ridges along every inch of me. The silk coating adds a slick pressure, like it's made to stimulate and stretch at the same time. I moan-high, helpless, shaking from the fullness of him and the way he grinds deeper, the ridges tugging slightly as they move in and out.

I climax once-no, twice, before he even starts to lose control.

The web trembles as he begins to pound harder, more ragged. The base of his cock swells, locking me in place with a silken kiss deep inside. I cry out, legs shaking, as another orgasm hits-hot, shattering.

"I'm close," he warns. "Let me... let me fill you-"

"Yes!" I sob. "By the gods, please-"

He growls, spine arcing as I hear his pleasure lace my ears in ecstasy.

And then he releases.

Too much-a rush of thick, hot seed that fills me and keeps going, pumping in waves, silken-coated and heavy enough I feel it pulse out around him even as he stays buried to the hilt.

He holds me there-deep and tight and trembling-as my body milks him, every muscle fluttering, shaking from the stretch and the heat and the utter surrender of it all.

The silk doesn't let go.

It just cradles me.

When the aftershocks fade and I slump into his arms, he finally begins to unravel the bindings-gently, slowly, reverently.

I expect to fall.

Instead, he catches me, curling his huge form around mine in the center of the web.

Here is where I belong. With someone who understands me. Without the shame of hiding what I am.

His arms are warm around me, one humanoid, one more like the curved bend of a spider's limb, carefully positioned so I'm not resting against hard shell or sharp edges. Just strength. Just heat. I'm held with the kind of reverence no one's ever had for me. Not as a scholar. Not as a woman.

Not as prey that turned around and asked for the thing she feared.

Acheron doesn't speak at first. He just breathes. His chest rises and falls beneath my cheek. His hand strokes slow circles down my spine, avoiding the places I ache, but never losing contact.

I don't even realize I'm crying until one of the tears hits his skin and he murmurs, "Too much?"

"No," I whisper, choking a little on the word. "Not too much. Just... more than I thought I could feel again."

He hums in answer. Not a word, not quite. But the sound vibrates through his chest and into my bones. Soothing. Present.

He shifts, his legs folding inward beneath us in a motion more like weaving than sitting. The entire web adjusts--like it's alive, but only as an extension of him. I'm moved gently, my weight never unsupported. The silk doesn't pull or tangle. It holds.

He does, too.

"I thought you'd tear me apart," I murmur. "I used to read about your kind. They made you sound like monsters."

Acheron doesn't bristle. He only tilts his head slightly, those glimmering, inhuman eyes catching the low light of his lair.

"They aren't entirely wrong," he says. "We are predators."

"You didn't hunt me."

"No. You came to me." A pause. "And you didn't scream."

"I wanted to."

"Then why didn't you?"

I look up at him.

His face is still expressionless in that strange arachne way-too many eyes, too much stillness-but I can feel the question in his body. He's asking with his hands. With the web. With the way he's stayed close without overwhelming me.

I answer honestly.

"Because... I wanted to know what it would feel like. To be seen. Touched. Broken apart, but put back together by someone who wanted me whole."

His hand slows. Then stills.

"I don't understand you," he says softly. "But I think I want to."

It's such a simple thing. No promise. No claim. Just the choice to try.

I reach for him-my arms weak, wrists still tingling from the silk-and he lets me. He leans down so our foreheads touch. His skin is warm. His breath is soft. And the spider-lord of this web, this deep, dark place I once feared, kisses me like I'm the first thing he's ever wanted slowly.

We lie there for a while.

No fear. No noise. Just the web breathing gently beneath us and the steady, measured rhythm of our hearts.

I'm still sore. Still stretched. Still dripping full of him. But I don't close my legs. I don't pull away.

I stay.

Because now, I'm not just tangled in silk.

I'm home.