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He stared at me, put my leg down, and made the circle gesture at me.
“Sure, whatever, but in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t going to cut it,” I said, making him his circle back.
Then he handed me the lantern and moved to pick me up.
I thought we’d been stopping for the night—or whatever passed for it inside Threadstone’s caverns.
“What’s happening? Are we in danger?” I struggled in his arms to look around. “I don’t really want to go in the sack, Nia’n’an.” But he wasn’t trying to web me anywhere for my own safety. “I—I don’t understand.”
All I could tell was that it felt like we heading down—which meant we were losing ground. I didn’t know why. I huffed a sigh, but relaxed into him.
“I really should be on your back,” I said. Because when he carried me on his chest like this, his arms were all warm and muscly and his hands felt so commanding. “I mean it,” I protested weakly, as my cheek pressed against his chest plate. I reached up to trace one of the gouges on it with my fingers. I didn’t know why, but all of a sudden I wanted to cry, and I wasn’t a crier.
I was more the type of girl that numbed her emotions down, because I was never allowed to have any.
But that didn’t matter to my tears, which started leaking from my eyes. I tried to hide it from Nia’n’an, because I suspected it’d only make him think I was crazy, which was embarrassing.
I mean, he probably knew all sorts of spider-ladies who were not second-hand murderers and who were very, very sane.
Then he shifted the way he was holding me, so that one strong arm braced my back and wrapped to hold both my knees, and took the other to press my head against him, as he bowed his head to mine and crooned to soothe me.
He was being nice to me, and somehow that only made the rest of my shame burn more brightly.
“Stop it, Nia’n’an,” I said, trying to push his head back, putting hands on either side of his fierce jaws, which didn’t scare me anymore. Then his eyes flickered past me, and he moved his hand so I couldn’t turn my head to see our new surroundings, although I knew we were in a larger space now; I could hear it with my ears. “Are we in danger?” I whispered as he slowly released me.
I quickly turned my head, held the lantern out, and gasped with surprise. “Oh. My. God.”
It was a medium-sized space, like a small concert-hall—but it was pierced through with gemstones and crystals in an incredible variety. Thin purple shards like wizard’s staffs might have, and pieces that looked like jagged frozenorange lightning. Smooth dark green mirrors pooled on the walls, like windows to other worlds.
He walked us through it, and all I could do was gawk at the beauty, our lantern light refracting all around. It was stunning, simply stunning, and no piece of artwork in the above world would ever capture its beauty, no matter how hard the artist tried.
And then, just when I thought things couldn’t get better—I saw steam rising.
From a hot pool.
“Nia’n’an!” I struggled, and he set me down, carefully giving me one of his strong arms to balance off of. I looked up at him with ultimate betrayal. “Couldn’t we have come to the beautiful cavern full of gemstones and hot water first?” My voice rose in an arc, far more excited by the possibility of a bath than the impossible wealth surrounding me. I let go of him and got down to do my little three-limbed crab shuffle over to the edge of the pool. “Is it safe?” I asked him, miming drinking, bathing, splashing it over my whole entire body.
He laughed at that—it was a rare sound from him, but I liked when he made it—and then gestured with his hands that I should continue.
I squirmed out of my clothing immediately. I doubted any part of me held any interest for him, seeing how soft and squishy I was by comparison, and also half the world had seen me naked already—I’d had an asshole of an ex once, so there were plenty of my pictures out there on the internet. But he did come near and cut me out of my castwith his hands and his front pair of feet, which made it easier to get my couture spider silk pants off.
After that, I just rolled into the fucker. I kept my eyes closed in case there were any strange minerals in the water that might be bad for them, but as the heat soaked into my tired muscles and aching bones, I knew nothing in my life would ever feel as good as this bath again.
When I resurfaced, shaking my hair out like a dog, Nia’n’an was waiting for me at the edge—perhaps looking a bit anxious.
“Don’t worry,” I said, grabbing my own tits. “I float.” I laughed at myself, and then I rocked my head back, so I truly was, starfishing myself out on the water, remembering when I’d met Nia’n’an and I’d done the same thing on the ground after he’d stopped me from jumping off of a cliff.
My spider-dude seemed to have an unerring sense of what I needed, when I needed it, and this,I thought, opening up my eyes to look at the panoply of colors and beauty above me,only proved it.
Again.
I didn’t even know how long I floated there. I didn’t care. I could’ve stayed there forever and been quite happy.
Except . . .
“The only thing that could make this moment any better would be weed,” I murmured, but I knew that was a lie.
I wanted sex.
