AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He’d corrected me often enough after I made him say his name forty times for me the other night that I was pretty sure I was saying it right, at last.
And I thought we’d been down here for at least a week.
It did feel like we were going up on the whole—but for every few hours up, there were a few back down, like it was hard to gain elevation inside of here.
“I mean, I’m not super concerned? It’s not like I have a lot left to get back to,” I said, as my voice echoed into the distance. I’d learned to center myself carefully on his leg-having-part when that happened, because it usually meant we were by a cliff. Even if I couldn’t see the edge, I was still terribly afraid of heights.
I’d started singing again. I couldn’t help it. I needed something to do to pass the time, so I wouldn’t goinsane, and because I couldn’t hold all my stupid feelings inside me otherwise.
I took a deep inhale and belted out, “In this web of stars, they both find their trance—in this electric night, a monster’s romance.”
Nia’n’an didn’t always let me sing—sometimes he made it clear that we’d cause rockfalls or that monsters bigger than the things he kept beheading would find us if I did.
And sometimes he wrapped me up to his chest, when we were on particularly narrow paths or there were dangers nearby, and I felt like I had to be so quiet I held my breath.
But no matter what situation we were in, I always, always, always felt safe.
In fact, it was him who wasn’t safe around me—because the wild lust in my heart showed no signs of abating, which was becoming humiliating.
“I know you don’t really want to be around me,” I told him, the next time we stopped to eat. I’d scooted off to handle my business, and when I came back, I’d just announced it. He looked at me strangely, and I realized he was weaving me a fresh pair of pants.
“I mean it,” I went on—more because I needed to convince myself than him. “You’re only getting paid to be here.”
It was what I had to remind myself every time I wanted to jump him—or every time he webbed me on a wall somewhere so he could go cosplay the Grim Reaper, while I hammered out as many orgasms as I could before hereturned. I had no idea how he hadn’t caught me yet, thank God.
He was the help.
I knew it.
He knew it.
My vagina was the only part that was confused.
Too bad I couldn’t pull it out and talk some sense into it.
But maybe if I talked out loud, I could talk some sense into the rest of me?
“I mean, you only want me because you don’t know who I am. You just see the outside everyone else sees. The money, the name, my dad,” I said, then shrugged. “You don’t really wantme. No one does.”
I was a good singer, and I liked making songs, but I was under no delusions about my actual quality. I knew people were only telling me I was good at things because my father paid them to—or because, through me, his money paid for the good stuff.
I just didn’t know what else to do with my life. And me pretending to be a singer was what had gotten people killed.
I leaned back on his bag, which was now nearly empty and started working on my next verse again. “A whisper in the dark...a soul’s resounding call—inside her spider’s arms, the girl finds her all...” I hummed along trying to find the next words, and then I gave a harsh laugh. “What the fuck am I trying to do? Or prove? After this—no one’s ever going to come to one of my shows again, spider-dude.”
He reached forward for my leg that had the cast on it. He carefully removed it every so often, checked on me beneath it, and then cased it back up again. I offered it over and he started to cut it off with the claws on his spider feet.
“I know that makes it sound like it’s about me, but it’s not, Nia’n’an. I mean, I’m sure by now my dad’s given everyone who died’s siblings a scholarship fund, but that’s not going to bring them back now, is it? No. They died. Because of me. And—nothing I ever do or sing is ever going to fix that, you know?”
I watched him inspect my leg again, and wash it down with some of the water from the bottle and his silk. “I mean, of course you don’t. Because you can’t understand me—thank God. Otherwise you’d be hearing me tell you how much I want to fuck you and-or write spider ballads all the fucking-Christing time.” I crossed my arms and sank back with a frown, as he rose up to bring his abdomen to bear, so he could grab threads from it and wind my leg and foot back up, making me feel like a very off-brand Cinderella.
When he was done, I moved to take my foot back, but he wouldn’t let me.
“It’s feeling better,” I said, in an exasperated tone. “Don’t you need to go out and play French Revolution for dinner?”
He crooned his name for me again and his hands, that had been chastely near my ankle, moved up to actually be on the skin of my calf. They were warm—warmer than the spider part of him, for sure. His abdomen’s shell was cold, and I was long past being frightened of his legs. I had theplate pattern of his back memorized by now, and I knew exactly how many scars the fights he went off and had to keep us fed were leaving on him.
“You get hurt by me, too. God.” Maybe he could sense my mood—like I sometimes thought I could sense his. “Don’t even try to make me feel better, Nia’n’an. You can’t. And—you shouldn’t. I don’t deserve it.”
