Jory Strong: Spider-Touched

“I want this,” she said. “I love you.”

“I feel the same for you.”

He touched his lips to hers and spoke the forbidden incantation. Separating himself.

Limiting himself to this world.

She deepened the kiss, and like a pattern made whole, he felt her spirit weave with his, felt the spider twin itself and become a part of him, taking up residence on his chest, above the heart that beat only for her.

Slowly he became aware that his brothers were no longer there, but humans were converging on what remained of the maze. “Where do you want to go?”

“Home.”

The word formed an image in his mind. Echoed and became his.

Home. Not the Constellation, but a cabin where laughter and love had saved a young girl’s life. Where childish drawings slowly morphed into the beautiful recapturing of the world around her, where books lay on tables alongside knives and guns.

He folded his wings around her and by will alone took her to the bedroom that was hers.

Her joyous laugh filled him with song.

The love shining in her eyes and flowing between them threatened to take him to his knees.

“Araña,” he said in a voice that had once sent armies of men to their deaths and made humans prostrate themselves before him.

Don’t think I’ll allow anyone else to worship you but me, she spoke into his mind, shocking him, replacing images of his remembered past with erotic ones, demonstrating to him how thoroughly their souls were bound.

Dark eyes challenged him, absorbed him as her hands went to his wings, the touch sending liquid ecstasy through the both of them. “I want you,” she whispered, opening the floodgate to need and the rush to get rid of clothing.

When nothing remained to separate them, they fell naked onto the bed. His body covered hers and Araña moaned at the erotic feel of his wings against her splayed thighs, at the contrast of soft feathers and hardened warrior.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, buried her fingers in his hair.

She welcomed him into her body as thoroughly as she’d welcomed him into her heart and soul.

And as his mouth took hers in a shared breath, the twin spiders touched, joined as one. Djinn and angel. Fire and ice melting away the past to form a new future.