a small animal @stare-kitty - Tumblr Blog

Male drider x trans male reader (nsfw)

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Commission number three! This one got away with me, for sure. Hope you folks enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!!

Content: trans male reader, some afab language to refer to the reader’s lower parts during non-penetrative, oral sex; chest area not mentioned. Kidnapping, some threat to life and mild injury (not from drider), brief mention of blood and stitches. Reader has submissive tendencies, enjoys being restrained, and the drider is gently dominant.

Wordcount: 10,123(!)

Running headlong into the dark pines that made up the forest which, according to your captors, had acquired such nicknames as the ‘The Bone Garden’, ‘Spectre’s Haunt’, and the ‘Blood Wood’ was probably not the wisest decision you’d ever made, but you’d been held by these thugs for four days of hard riding, and you were ready to risk it all to escape.

Had it really only been four days since you’d locked the door to your tidy little cottage on the edge of the village? With a gleaner’s bag slung over one shoulder and a basket in hand, you’d set out in search of the mushrooms that only grew at this time of year when the conditions were perfect — not hot and dry, not yet frosty, and just rainy enough. They loved the misty turn of the year almost as much as you did.

Without a care in the world, you’d stepped out along the weed-strewn gravel path that led through your herb garden, latched the wooden gate behind you, and meandered through the houses as the sounds of the village waking began to fill the air.

Gwyn had recently lit his forge and the rush of the bellows to stoke the heat reminded you of a dragon’s steady breathing; in and out, in and out. You’d snaked past the bakery just to swipe a fresh cinnamon roll before Garrick or Mercy or any of the woodcutters who also tended to rise early could finish them all off, and the orc behind the counter gave you the biggest one he had and a wink that made you just a little gooey inside yourself. “You’re a shameless flirt, Thom,” you said as you slid your coppers across the counter to him with two fingers.

“Hey, a man can dream, right, gorgeous?”

He was pretty fine himself, but he wasn’t really your type, and you’d made that clear when he’d asked you to dance at the first Spring Equinox dance you’d attended after moving to the village, then just a lowly herbalist’s apprentice. Ever since, you’d fallen into an easy banter of flirting that was destined to go nowhere, and it was harmless fun for both of you. You left the bakery with a smile on your face, and headed past Gwyn’s forge as you made your way north out of the village.

The smith, a colossal centaur with a dapple grey coat and a thick, white mane and tail that made anyone with long hair in the village green with envy, called after you and beckoned you over. “Headed north?” he asked with an uncharacteristic scowl.

“Yeah, why?”

“Take care, alright? Mercy said she’d seen sign of bandits in the area, and Willem said he’d heard talk of people being snatched when he took those fleeces to market last week. You shouldn’t be going out alone. None of us should really, not til things calm down.”

A little growl of frustration left you and you adjusted the gleaner’s bag on your shoulder. “I really need these supplies, Gwyn,” you said. “They’re ingredients I need to help fight off winter fevers, and if I don’t have enough, we could be in trouble come the cold in a few weeks’ time…”

“Can’t you take Garrick or Mercy with you? A good woodsman’s felling axe’ll do a hell of a lot more damage than that little sickle you’ve got on your belt…”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” you breezed. “I’m not going to be on the main road anyway.”

“Please take care,” he rumbled, and you smiled up at the enormous blacksmith. He might have had the shoulders of a rock troll and iron-shod hooves big enough to knock down a castle door, with a big burn mark all up his left arm from an accident at the forge a decade ago, but he was the gentlest and most softly-spoken person you knew.

You cursed yourself three hours later when your basket of rare, purple mushrooms lay trampled to a slimy paste on the floor of the clearing and a nasty looking wood elf with a sneer and a cruel glint in her eye had her bow trained on you, while a second elf trussed you up like a solstice bird. Your head was ringing from the surprise blow they’d dealt you to the back of the skull, and you were lucky you didn’t have a worse concussion.

“You’ll make a nice little offering for the mage,” the female elf purred while her companion straightened and marched you on unsteady feet back towards the road. “Humans like you always fetch a decent price. Something about your blood being universal for most rituals, I think…”

There on the dirt road, four horses were waiting, three of which were a normal size while the last was built like a castle wall and large enough to carry the orc sitting astride it. The orc had one milky eye and the brand of a murderer across his right cheek. “Shit,” you hissed when you saw that, and the male elf laughed cruelly when you flinched as the orc swung down and prepared to heave you onto the back of the spare horse.

Normally, if you were going to be tied up and bent over something for some rough treatment, this was not how it went. There was absolutely nothing fun or consensual about the way these bandits chucked you over the back of the horse and lashed your hands and feet to the tack so you didn’t slide off. The orc guffawed and spat off to one side when you cried out on impact as your ribs creaked and your lungs expelled all the air they’d ever contained in one ugly grunt. After that, you did just about everything you could to move with the rhythm of the cantering horse, but it was probably the most miserable experience of your life. When the group slowed to trot, the motion was so painful that you actually slipped into unconsciousness for a while, only to be jounced back some time later.

At the crossroads about ten miles north of your village — the furthest north from your little patch of paradise you’d ever roamed — they met up with a couple of other riders who had apparently been on a recce of their own to look for more people for this blood mage or whoever, but they got laughed at by the orc on his enormous, cantankerous horse for not finding any victims and rode off again without joining the party.

So, it was just you, alone in the wilderness, being taken gods-knew-where, by two feral elf siblings and a murderous orc. Stowed like a sack of potatoes over that rangy, stinking horse for five hours of hellish riding, you were barely conscious. When they eventually stopped to make camp that night, they did let you relieve yourself in relative privacy, but once you were done, they hauled you back to their pack animals and lashed you to a tree next to them so that you couldn’t hope to escape. You could still smell the stink of them though, and it was enough to turn your empty stomach.

Their food was revolting, and their company equally repulsive. They joked loudly about all the cruel things they’d done to people in the past, and you sat there wondering why you hadn’t let Gwyn talk you into going out with the woodcutters. There were mushrooms where they were currently coppicing hazel for the winter, but no. No, you’d decided to be adventurous and clever, and to collect only the best mushrooms for your salves and tonics.

Four days later, you were almost ready to give up.

The mage’s castle they were taking you to was legendary in the northern reaches, and no one who was taken there against their will ever returned. Tales of blood magic and horrific rites involving chimera and creatures brought back from the dead had entered the local lore, and now apparently you were going to be drained of your precious blood for whatever this necromancer had planned next. And the price of that precious blood had been discussed and debated by the bandits for the last day.

Personally, you agreed with the female elf and thought you were worth more than a couple of weeks’ wages in gold, but you had no intention of allowing yourself to be squeezed dry like an orange for your blood. So, after the group stopped in a dark and snow-mottled pine forest after the fifth day of hard riding, you enacted your plan. You’d been plotting it all day, and hoped you weren’t too delirious and weak to pull it off.

When they’d let you relieve yourself the previous night, they’d not bothered to tie your hands together or watch you, since there was nowhere for you to go. You knew woodlands though, and you were pretty confident that if you gave them the slip in the dark, you could take care of yourself in the wild for a few days. Long enough to get back home anyway.

So when they started their daily round of bragging and trading boasts about how many vampires they’d killed or how they’d survived the venom of three different nagas in the same attack, you made your move.

If that darned twig hadn’t snapped, you might have got away with it, but when the male elf barked, “Oi!” into the gathering dark and swung his lantern around, you knew you’d messed up.

Breaking cover completely and legging it into the endless ranks of black-barked pine trees in the fading light of day seemed like the only option now, so you began crashing through the debris and dead branches that had gathered beneath the choking canopy of dense pine needles overhead.

These woods were different from any you’d known before, and something dark and foreboding lingered there like a shade above a gravestone. These woods were not kind. The air was not fresh and sweet like it was between the beech and oak back home. It pooled and festered, stagnant between the rough sentinel trees, and the lower branches seemed to reach their sharp, bare fingers towards your face as you ran like a rabbit from the pack of hunting dogs behind you.

Your toe caught a root and you stumbled, and in the space where your head had just been, an arrow whizzed through the air and sank into the tree ahead of you with a thunk that almost made your heart stop. Your lungs were burning already and your legs felt shaky and weak after your rough treatment and half-rotten rations, but a brush with death that close shocked you to the core. The water they’d given you had been rancid, and your stomach churned as adrenaline curdled in your gut, but somehow you forced yourself on into the darkness.

Their voices dwindled, muffled by the carpet of fallen pine needles, until a shout went up and another arrow flew past you. This time, it left a searing pain in its wake and you clutched at your ribs where the hunting broadhead had torn through your skin. Luckily, it was superficial, but it hurt like hell and it was bleeding. Blood might draw predators out of the darkness, if your blundering and their bellowing hadn’t already.

Shit, you hadn’t thought about the horrors that probably dwelled in a place like this.

The bandits had been crowing about the ghouls and rabid cannibals that supposedly haunted these woods, and you’d passed plenty of skeletons along the roadside on your journey, your down-turned head providing you with a first-class view of them as your half-lame horse had jolted past them at its permanent, slightly-panicked jog. They hadn’t all been pack animals and horses lying in the ditch either. Some of the skulls had been humanoid, and there had been the horns of a minotaur at some point. This was a place where living things entered unwillingly, and most of them never left.

Forcing yourself onwards, you clutched your stinging side, but they were closing on you. The orc was thundering through the forest like a boar on a rampage, and the elves were quick as shadows.

“You little shit!” the female shouted from right behind you. Something heavy hit you across the back of your knees and you tripped and fell hard onto your palms as a flung tree branch rebounded off onto the forest floor. The force of the fall sent your cheek smashing into the muddy ground and you cried out as she landed triumphantly atop you and turned you over, smacking you full in the mouth out of sheer frustration.

“Gotcha,” she grinned. “You’re gonna pay for running, little rabbit,” she added with a laugh as she hauled you to your feet.

You kicked her knee from the side as hard as you could and she yowled like a cat dropped into a bath, letting go of you to stagger sideways, limping. The thing about being a healer is that you also know the weak spots where it can hurt most.

Before she could turn on you again though, something moved in the trees behind you and you all froze. The orc crashed to a halt nearby breathing hard, and the elf’s brother came over to help her stand while she spat curses at you that would have made a pirate’s ears bleed.

“What is it?” the orc growled, low and tense.

“Fuck knows. Tie him up again and let’s get the fuck back to camp,” the female elf wheezed. “I’m gonna drag him behind my horse for the rest of the way there. Shit that hurts!”

“Quiet,” her brother hissed. “Something’s out there.”

“Then let’s get fucking moving!” she countered.

You turned to glance over your shoulder and caught the shape of something white drifting in the distant trees just as the orc spotted it too. His grip tightened on the haft of his huge war-axe, and he took half a step back. Until then, he’d been the one who’d seemed steadiest; unshakable and immovable as a cannon, and he hit just as hard. Now though, he looked spooked and scared.

“They say the Death-Spinner hunts in these parts,” he said, eyes wide as he looked from side to side. “A massive white drider that strikes from the shadows and wraps you up in his web and sucks you dry…”

“It’s been too long since someone sucked you dry,” the female elf sneered at him, though the remark came out feebly and she looked around her in a twitchy, nervous motion. “Your blue balls are making you hallucinate. Come on. What are you waiting for?”

“He’s got other names too, you know,” her brother interrupted, reaching for you with a jerky movement that halted when the steady rhythm of something moving nearby rose above the whispering of the wind in the canopy. “Soul-Eater, The Weaver Ghost…”

“Please, the Death-Spinner is just a myth…” the female on your right hissed.

“Decidedly… not,” came a thin, harsh voice from the trees ahead, and your captors just bolted.

The supposedly tough bandits – the ones who had been talking about selling an actual person to a bloodmage to use in some disgusting ritual; who had joked just the previous night about flaying a minotaur like a cow on a butcher’s block; who had told you that there was nothing out here that would give a single, flying fuck about you – had fled with no more than a shriek and the clatter of boots in the dead underbrush, and left you alone with the being they called ‘Death-Spinner’.

“Better and better,” you spat, still tasting blood in your mouth from where the elf had cracked you across the mouth. “First it was ‘sold to a blood mage’ and now it’s ‘death by drider’.”

A pearlescent pale leg speared down out of the gloom that gathered between the black pines, its ivory chitin shining softly. Shaped like a thin, curved shard of polished bone, the limb moved with slow, silent grace, and it was joined by a second, needle-slender limb, then a third and a forth, until the white underbelly of the creature loomed large into your limited pool of light, followed finally by the lower part of a humanoid torso, and the large, armour-plated abdomen of the creature.

The whole of the eight-legged being was utterly colourless.

White and pendulous as the moon, the drider’s chitinous body looked like drifts of wind-blown snow that had then set into solid ice, swirling and churning across its body to rise in small peaks and troughs at the joints and high points of its legs and over the swollen curve of its abdomen.

The humanoid torso melted upwards at the hips from the body of the spider, and two, smaller, pincer-like limbs — pedipalps — were angled slightly inwards, both ending in single, wicked talons and looking like they were ready to spear you through the middle in the blink of an eye.

The drider wore no clothes, and patches of white chitin formed a kind of armour up its humanoid torso: over the hips but skirting around its lean belly, then up over its shoulders like pauldrons and creating natural bracers and gauntlets along its long, wiry arms. Its hands, you saw as it dipped a little lower into the faint glow from the elves’ abandoned lantern, were clawed, but its slightly curved talons weren’t like those of a mammal. They were simply an unbroken extension of the chitin that covered its hands and forearms.

Its face remained mostly out of sight, wreathed in the upper shadows of the trees, but you got the impression of two reddish eyes glinting at you in the dark, and long, silk-white hair flowing down its back.

“You’re bleeding,” came the slightly hoarse tenor that made your skin prickle. A creature that large should have a deeper voice, but the mellifluous timbre of the drider’s tone made you think of sirens luring sailors to their death with sweet songs and empty, deceitful promises.

“Only a bit,” you choked out, stepping back and catching your heel on the branch that the female elf had used to trip you. When you fell hard onto your backside, you caught the glint of steel in the sea of rust-red pine needles all around you, and realised that one of the elves had dropped their precious sword in their haste to escape this creature.

In a rush of blind panic, you snatched up the unfamiliar weapon and held it aloft. “Stay back!” you barked.

The laugh that rippled out of the drider chilled your blood.

“Please,” it crooned, and then it loomed down out of the shadow and into the light, squinting its two scarlet eyes against the sudden brightness. “As if a little stick like that could hurt something like me.”

The sword fell from your fingers as weakness washed through you, and you bit back a sob. “Please,” you said instead. “Please, they brought me here to sell me to a necromancer, but I… I don’t want to die like this either.”

“Die?” the drider said, and its red gaze flickered to the wound in your side. “You won’t die from that. A few silk stitches and a rest, and you’ll be good as new…” It frowned again, its white eyebrows pulling in like a loose thread in a perfect tapestry. “You’re filthy,” it said, and you noticed a diagonal scar cutting across its pale mouth as its lip pulled up on one side in a gesture of revulsion.

“Yeah, well, you try being thrown over the back end of a bandit’s horse for five days and see if you’re still that pretty at the end of it,” you retorted, exhaustion making you bold and just a little bit stupid.

The drider laughed, the sound like autumn leaves rolling down the road, and you paused. It sounded genuinely amused.

“Come, human,” it said, holding out a clawed hand. “Let’s get you somewhere where you can rest in safety.”

“Safety? What… What about… all that ‘Death-Spinner’ stuff?”

The drider paused, its huge body hanging in the twilight like a pearl. “I have no interest in consuming sapient creatures, but the rumours help to keep people out of my forest. It’s as much for their safety as mine,” it went on. “There are nastier things even than me in these parts.” The self-deprecating venom in its tone drew you up short.

“You don’t seem so bad…”

“Thank you,” it replied with flat sarcasm.

You took three more steps towards the drider before your legs gave out. In a flash faster than thought, the drider darted at you, and before you could even flinch, strong, armoured arms had caught you and lifted you up.

“You poor thing,” it crooned, and you looked up properly into its face for the first time. “You’ve really been through it, haven’t you? Easy now. I’ll take care of you.”

“Why?” you breathed, trying not to let your treacherous muscles relax into the solid frame that held you. You felt the chitin of its chest against your shoulder as it bore you along in a strangely smooth, gliding motion, the dark trunks of the trees whipping past in a blur.

“Evidently I have a soft spot for brave and lost creatures,” the drider smiled. “My name is Feluän, by the way.”

You exhaled your own name in return, and then said, “Isn’t Feluän an elven name? Some prince or something…?”

“You know your history,” the drider chuckled. “Yes, he was a prince of the snow elves a long time ago. I came across it in a history book I picked out of a caravan that was destroyed by a band of gnolls once. Their tastes run more towards beer than books…”

“I chose my own name too,” you said, the consonants feeling thick and slurred as the tiredness seeped throughout your whole body and the pain in your side mounted. “You’re a male drider then? If you named yourself after a prince, I mean. I don’t know anything about your kind really. Never… Never met one before.”

“Hush for now,” he said, squeezing you a little more tightly into his arms and drawing a moan unbidden from your lips. Gods, even in these circumstances, it felt so good to be held like this. “But yes, I am.”

The journey through the dark forest passed in a hazy blur, until you had the vague impression of torchlight and soft firelight and you were laid down on the softest surface you thought you'd maybe ever touched in your life. A long, deep groan left you and you suddenly didn’t care what happened to you.

“I’m going to stitch you up,” came the drider’s voice from somewhere nearby. “It might hurt. I can use a little of my venom to numb the area if you like…”

You nodded, not wanting any more pain, and out of the corner of your eye, you watched the drider’s white body move in the blurry shadows of the cave. He loomed over you and pressed the tip of one clawed finger to his upper canine, before bringing it to your side where he’d hitched up your shirt just enough to access the glancing wound from the arrow. A blissful numbness crept like winter ice across your skin, and you let the drider tend to you.

Tiredness claimed you not long after, but you had the distinct impression of a warm cloth being wiped gently across your face and hands before blackness washed in and you slept.

Over the course of the next few days, Feluän tended to your wound, and you forgot to be afraid of the strange creature. Centaurs had always held a fascination for you, with their animal lower halves and their humanoid upper bodies, and the way the drider moved was no less fascinating. When he wasn't tending to you, he was weaving linen and silk into the most wondrous bolts of fabric. His cave was dotted here and there with trinkets that he’d clearly pilfered from the sporadic ‘visitors’ to his part of the world, but aside from that, the cave was just that: a grotto carved out of a rise in the ground in the middle of a dank, desolate forest.

“You live alone?” you asked on the first evening you felt strong enough to get out of bed without his help. Until then, he’d forced you to stay still, and honestly, you’d been only too happy to let him boss you about and carry you around. He was sweet, but he didn't take no for an answer, and he didn’t let you wheedle your way out of anything either. Your best ‘puppy-dog’ eyes had crumbled his iron resolve a bit though, and finally he’d let you get out of his soft, cosy bed to join him by the gentle light of flames in the fire pit at the centre of his cave.

Feluän nodded. “Yes. I have spent my whole life alone. Driders are not sociable with each other by nature, and most people fear us too much to want us anywhere near them, as you saw yourself when your captors realised I was there.”

“Thank you for that, by the way,” you said as you took the carved wooden cup he offered you. It had some kind of sharp, pine-needle tea in it and he looked embarrassed that that was all he could offer you to drink apart from water. In the few days you’d been there, you’d had some kind of game broth which, while nutritious, hadn’t been particularly flavoursome. “I didn’t think I’d find anyone out here more intimidating than that orc, but you managed it.”

Across the fire, his ruby red eyes glittered and he laughed, tilting his head in your direction. He didn’t always meet your eye, you realised, and you wondered if his albinism affected his eyesight. “I live to serve,” he purred.

“The way you behave, I’d say you live to be served, but what do I know?”

Again, he laughed. “You offering, little human?” he said, cocking a white eyebrow in a way that made you feel a little dizzy.

“I might, if the rewards for service were worth it,” you replied archly, sipping the sharp tea. Its flavour reminded you of the tinctures you brewed at home, and of the people who would need you as the autumn drew to a close and winter began to coil around the edges of the village. Your shoulders dropped, and you sighed, steam from the cup swirling in front of your eyes for a moment.

“You clearly don’t think I could offer you much,” he said dryly.

“It’s not that,” you said. “It’s… I have a responsibility to the people in my village. I’m a herbalist, and the whole reason I was captured was because I was out looking for ingredients that would help fight winter fevers. If I don’t get home before the snows settle in, they’ll suffer.”

He shifted his weight where he was resting casually with all his long, spiny limbs tucked close to his pendulous body, and you realised he was feeling uncertain. “It must be nice,” he began in a new, faltering voice that you’d not heard from him before. “Nice to have people… who need you. Who… Who look to you for protection…”

You laughed softly and shook your head. “I wouldn’t say I provide any kind of protection — you want an orc or a centaur like Thom or Gwyn for that — but I help people where I can, and they’ve been good to me. I was apprenticed with their previous healer, and when he passed, I took on his mantle.”

“Tell me about them?” Feluän asked, red eyes blinking slowly in his frost-pale face. His long, white hair fell down loose to frame his high cheekbones, and the scar on his mouth was the only element in his face that interrupted the otherwise perfect symmetry of him, and it made you want to press your lips to it and see what it felt like beneath your kisses.

You looked away.

“Tell me about them before I take you back tomorrow?”

“Wait, take me back? You’re coming too?”

“You’ll never make it out of these woods alive without me,” he said with a shrug. “I didn’t go to all this effort to keep you alive just to turn you loose for the ghouls and shadow wraiths to tear you to pieces when the sun sets tomorrow night.”

“Shadow… wraiths?” you croaked, eyes flitting to the cave entrance where the dark night pressed in against the tiny light of the fire. You shuddered and Feluän smiled to reveal his double set of canines, the larger, outer pair of which were actually hollow fangs that could inject his paralytic venom into his prey.

“Don’t worry, little one,” he said with a rumbling, seductive purr in his tenor that went right through you to your core. “I’ll protect you. You’re safe here anyway. It’s warded.”

“Right.”

“Your people?” he prompted, and you started with Gwyn the dappled centaur. By the time you’d listed almost everyone in the village, your mind was slow and your eyes gritty with sleep.

Some time earlier, Feluän had moved behind you so that you were resting your weight between his lethally-taloned pedipalps, buttressed up on either side by something that could skewer through you in the blink of an eye, and his hand had recently moved to card idly through your hair.

The world tilted slightly as you dozed off halfway through a sentence about Thom the orc who ran the bakery and made the most incredible fruit pies in autumn, and you realised that Feluän had picked you up again and was carrying you towards his wide, soft bed of silk webbing.

As he drew a feather-filled silk duvet up around your ears and you hummed with deep satisfaction, you heard him murmur, “I wish I could live somewhere like the place you described for me tonight. I wish I could know ‘home’ as you do, but I fear I would never be welcome somewhere like that.”

“They’d love you,” you mumbled. After all, you were half in love with him already and it had only been a few days.

The journey south took about a week. On the first day, you were forced to ride on his back after only a few miles due to the lingering ache in your side. “If you don’t get aboard, I will refuse to take you anywhere at all,” he said sternly, and a thrill of heat shot down your spine at the steel in his tone. “Do as you’re told, human.”

“Fine,” you croaked, ignoring just how much you liked the way he seemed to mingle concern, respect, and command in a single sentence. “Bossy.”

You did enjoy having your arms around his middle as you rode behind him though. And he was quick when he got scuttling along.

Your pride did have you walking the next day, and before too long, you got to see the ‘Death-Spinner’ in action. In the rocky lower slopes of the pine forest, before it melted into a dewy, autumn meadow, a roar shattered the silence and a bear reared up from the thick grass, as surprised by your exit from the trees as you were by her.

Feluän hissed like a snake and immediately drew himself up, lashing out with his long front legs. Like twin swords, the lowest section of his legs flashed in the misty air and the bear threw herself up onto her hind legs with another bellowing roar.

The drider jabbed at her faster than your eyes could follow, nicking her ear and her shoulder in turn with left and right forelegs, his huge body filling the space between you and the threat like a bulwark. The bear turned on the spot and thundered away, and he dropped silently back to all eight legs and looked down at you. In the starker light of the meadow, he was squinting and his red eyes didn’t quite land on your face.

“Are you alright?” he asked, bare marble chest heaving. His clawed hands were curled at his sides and his arms looked incredible, and suddenly it was very hard to focus on anything but how gods-damned beautiful this creature was. He barked your name and lowered himself down, still squinting. “I can’t see very well in full daylight like this. I need you to tell me if you’re alright.”

“I’m fine,” you croaked at last, trying to swallow your inconveniently-timed arousal. “Are you? I’ve lived in the woods a long time, but I’ve never been that close to a bear before.”

“She really didn’t want to tangle with me,” he laughed, and you caught the way his articulated joints sagged in relief as his white hands found your shoulders and he squeezed you tightly for a second.

“You can’t see very well? What do you mean?”

He smiled sadly and let go of you. “As I understand it, people born like me, without pigmentation, often struggle with their vision, and bright sunlight in particular. I do anyway. Why do you think I chose the darkest place I knew of for my home?”

“I… I hadn’t really thought about it. You sure you want to be out here then? You didn’t have to walk me all the way home you know?”

“I want to,” he said, gesturing for you to continue on your way across the open meadow.

The overnight frost had melted a little, but it still lingered at the foot of the thicker tufts of grass and it crunched softly as you walked through it. Not Feluän though — he moved as silently as his spectral nickname suggested, but you did catch him tilting his head a little and inhaling, as though scenting the wind. His lips parted softly and you caught your best glimpse yet of his double set of canines. His tongue shifted a little behind his teeth, as though he was tasting something on the air, and you looked away. Everything about him was sensuous and it made you want to touch.

You were perhaps a day’s walk from the village now, but he still hadn’t turned back even though you’d told him you could manage alone from there.

That night at camp, you sat together as you had back in his cave, with you resting between the two smaller limbs that jutted out from his spider’s shoulder area. They twitched from time to time as he ate the now-roasted rabbit he’d skewered earlier for dinner with the talon at the end of one of them, and when you’d finished your meal, you reached out without thinking and ran your fingers down the chitin that covered them.

He jumped slightly and then went very still, but as you brought your hand closer to where the limb met his chest, he drew in a shuddering breath that made his whole body rock.

“Does that tickle?” you asked, wondering how much sensation he had with all that natural armour.

“Not exactly,” Feluän rasped. “It’s… It’s been a while since I’ve… since anyone’s — ah…” he gasped and his chest heaved. The little bone he’d been idly cleaning with his tongue dropped from his fingers to land in the carpet of beech and oak leaves around your feet.

“You want me to stop?”

“No,” he replied immediately. “Gods, don’t you dare stop.”

“Alright.”

You stood and faced him, and ran both hands up his ‘hips’ at the base of his humanoid torso. He shuddered again and sucked in another sharp breath. Gradually, you moved your touch up over the marble contours of his abs and ribs until you could reach no higher. “Come down here then,” you said quietly.

His scarred upper lip twitched and he surged down towards you, snatching you up in his hands and lifting you away from the fire. He pinned you against the smooth bark of a nearby beech trunk, and held you there four or five feet off the ground. His hands were secure around your waist as the spears of the two pedipalps lanced into the tree on either side of your face and you gasped, feeling heat rushing to your groin.

“The things you make me want to do to you, human,” he purred around a snarl, red eyes glowing in the night. His huge body was pale, standing out starkly against the darkness, and you felt a familiar, tingling weakness washing through you as he held you pinned there and growled those lustful words into your ears. You wanted him to take control. You wanted to submit to whatever pleasures he had in mind. It made your head go vague.

“What’s that then?” you slurred softly, dangling blissfully in his hold. “What do you want to do to me?”

“I want to tie you up with my silk,” he said, leaning in so he could kiss up your neck. He nipped at you, but not enough to break the skin or inject you with his numbing, paralytic venom. The trail his kisses left was cold though, and your flesh tingled. “I want you trussed and immobile for me while I give you every pleasure I can think of. Your body is so soft compared to mine. So vulnerable. I want it all. I want all of you.”

“You can,” you smiled. “Please.”

His lips twitched into another little snarl and he kissed you again. Your tongue tingled and you swallowed, realising a drop of his venom had landed there. “I can’t,” he said, stepping back and lowering you slowly to the ground. Your knees were too weak to take your weight at first and he steadied you.

“Why not?” Disappointment stung through the creeping haze in your head and helped to clear it a bit.

You glanced along his curved, spider’s abdomen and saw that a clear fluid was dripping slowly from a point on his underbelly. His obvious arousal looked obscene, and your core tightened at the sight of it. When he saw where you were looking, he shivered. “That’s what you do to me,” he croaked. “But I’ve lost too much control of myself tonight. I might hurt you.”

“Kiss me again?”

“No. My mouth is full of venom.”

Your breath caught and you bit your lip. “Please?”

“No.” He sounded angry now, and you looked away, ashamed of still wanting something he didn't want to give. When he saw the expression on your face though, his whole demeanour changed and he softened. “What is it?” he asked.

You shook your head, stepping back. “Forget it. You’re going home again tomorrow anyway. You’ll forget about me in no time.” But you wouldn’t forget about him.

Feluän’s lighting-fast reflexes left you breathless all over again as he snatched for your wrist when you turned away from him. “I will never forget you,” he hissed fiercely. “I can’t. You think I give every lost wanderer I find in my forest a personal escort home? If I had my way, I’d never leave your side again.”

The grip he had on your wrist was tight enough that it was just shy of painful, and you gasped, eyelids fluttering. You glanced down at where his claws were pricking into your skin and then slowly raised your gaze to his face. “Not helping…” you smirked softly.

He closed his eyes slowly and eased his grip just a fraction, and then he opened his eyes again, moved both hands to your face, cupped your jaw, and kissed your forehead. “Best I can do for the moment,” he said apologetically.

“You don’t have to go back, you know?” you said, giving voice to the idea that had been floating around your mind for a few days. “I mean, I know all your stuff is back there, but there’s a really cosy place that’s only a hundred yards or so from my cottage on the edge of the village. I think it would be perfect for you. You could… You could live there? If you wanted…”

Feluän raked his claws gently across your scalp and you shuddered. “And what of the rest of the village? What would they say about a monster taking up residence in their midst?”

“You’re not a monster,” you hissed, grabbing for his wrists and clinging to him while you glared up into his face. Gods, he was so beautiful, with his sharp features and red, gemstone eyes and his silver-white hair. “You’re not. How could they not love you once they got to know you?”

His throat worked and he lowered his spider body down, drawing his legs in so that he was as close to your eye level as he could get. “Do you really want me to stay?”

“Yes,” you breathed. “Please. I — The thought of you going back to that horrible place with all those bones scattered everywhere, and no life — there’s no life in those woods, Feluän. It’s —” He silenced you with a kiss.

Your lips turned numb almost immediately but you felt his tongue brush yours as he growled and reared over you, overpowering you with just his presence. “The way you said my name,” he said. “No one’s ever spoken my name before. Say it again. I want to hear you say it again.”

“Feluän.”

“When we’re not camping in a forest, I’m going to take you apart, my beautiful human. I’m going to tie you up and take you to pieces when my mouth isn’t dripping with venom.”

“Could be fun for you to have your way with me while I can’t move…” you said.

“You wouldn’t be able to feel it either,” he said, deliberately moving away from you and breathing hard. “Gods, I’m a mess,” he chuckled. You glanced down and saw that he was leaking a little webbing too from the gland at the tip of his abdomen.

“So am I,” you said wryly, because you absolutely were.

“I know. I can smell it,” he said. “Taste it too.”

“Fuck,” you groaned. He’d smelled it earlier as well then, back in the meadow after he’d protected you. “You’d better live up to your promise, Feluän. I’m not letting you go home without feeling some of that silk around my wrists first.”

“Say my name again and I’ll give you anything you want.”

Getting to sleep that night proved difficult to say the least, but it helped that you both talked quietly, with you lying in his arms again, and when you woke to the gentle caress of his knuckles against your cheek, you blinked your eyes open and smiled up at him.

“You’re so beautiful,” you whispered, awestruck by the creature looming over you. Honest delight lit up his whole face and he laughed quietly, helping you to your feet and brushing the dry leaves from your clothes and the borrowed cloak he’d lent you.

“How do you want to do this?” he asked as you kicked the cold ashes of the fire apart and made sure you left the forest as you’d found it. “You said we’re within a day’s walk of your home now?”

You nodded. “We’ll probably meet a few of the woodcutters on our way in — they’re working about three or four miles from the village at the moment, cutting hazel for fences and ash for firewood. If we meet anyone, let me do the talking?”

Feluän agreed, and you set off along the main road together.

“I’ll introduce you in the village if you like, and explain where I’ve been, and then I’ll say I’d like you to stay. If… If you want to.”

“I do,” he said. “I don’t have anything in that cave that I would particularly miss, but I could still go back and fetch it if I wanted to.”

The first people you met were indeed Garrick and Mercy, and when the satyr and the half-orc-half-elf saw the drider, they hefted their axes in their hands and stepped warily into the clearing they’d made beside the road. Mercy spotted you and called out your name, and you and Feluän held up your hands.

It took some persuading to let the two of you approach, but when you were close enough, Mercy dropped her axe and hugged you. “We’ve been so worried,” she said, squeezing you tight. With her muscles, it was enough to make you wheeze. “Gwyn and Thom and Gale searched for you for days but even Gale’s werewolf nose lost your scent when it rained. Gods, they’ve been beside themselves.”

“I’m only alive because of Feluän,” you said, gesturing to the pale drider who was waiting on the road. All his eight legs were drawn up tight and he looked tense and wary. At that distance, and in the clear, wintry light, you suspected he also couldn’t see very far, and for someone so powerful, he was probably feeling quite vulnerable. “I’d like him to live here with us. He was living alone in that dark forest, and I don’t think anyone should have to live alone like that. Not if they don’t want to.”

Garrick jutted his small tusks and said, “Driders aren’t exactly sociable creatures. What’s he gonna do around here?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” you said a little defensively. “While I was recovering in his care, he was processing and spinning flax and weaving bolts of cloth, so he could help Rowan, but I don’t think his place here should be determined by what he can do for us, do you?”

Garrick’s eyes darkened with shame, and he shook his head.

“I’ll catch up with you later. Right now, all I want is a bath and a change of clothes.” Your own shirt had been washed while you’d been recovering, and Feluän had stitched it up, but it was still stained with your blood and more than a bit travel-worn now.

The approach to the village was deserted, but when you stepped out from the shady road and into the brilliant, afternoon sun that bathed the thatched houses in stark light, Feluän grunted and closed his eyes, shielding them with one hand and wincing.

“You alright?” you asked.

“It’s so bright,” he rasped. “I… I can’t even see you and you’re right next to me.”

You paused and said, “This way. We’ll take the side road and go along one of the deer paths through the trees to the cave home I’ve got in mind for you. You can meet everyone tonight when the sun’s gone down.”

“I’m sorry.”

Shaking your head, you frowned. “No, Feluän. You have nothing to be sorry for. Let’s go.” You laid your hand on his foremost left leg, and changed direction, heading for the tall oak and beech trees that bordered the village.

You passed by your cottage, though you did point it out to him, and continued up the slope to the small, rocky outcrop where the old cave had sat empty since its previous occupant had moved to be nearer to her relatives. “This used to belong to Dinara,” you said. “She’s a dwarf, but the cave isn’t at her scale, don’t worry.”

He laughed, and now that you were in the shade, you noticed that his eyes were meeting yours again, and he wasn’t squinting so much. “Come here,” he said, and he lowered himself down to kiss you. “Thank you. I’m sure it’ll be perfect.”

“If it’s not, I know people will help you alter it. They helped me build my house when I moved here, so you could always just build something new if it doesn’t suit.”

“You make them sound like good people,” he smiled.

Squeezing his hand, you said, “They are. They’re going to love you, I promise.”

“So long as they don’t try to hack me to bits with their axes… The one you called ‘Garrick’ sounded ready to cut my legs off earlier.”

“He’s protective, not unlike you,” you said wryly. “Come on. Let me show you the cave and see if you want to live there or not.”

“If you’re nearby, it’ll be perfect,” he said smoothly, and you immediately tripped, making him laugh.

In the end, the empty cave house suited him perfectly, and, as you’d predicted, people were wary to start with, but when they heard how he’d saved you and taken care of you, and brought you home, they welcomed him like a long-lost relative — something that clearly moved him deeply. He did bristle when Thom swept you up into his bone-crushing, baker’s arms outside the village inn that night and nuzzled his tusks against your neck and expressed just how worried he’d been about you though.

When you returned to Feluän after Thom had set you down and promised you a week’s worth of free pies and cakes, Feluän was prickly and distant, until you grabbed a hold of his pedipalp and refused to let go as he turned. The moonlight flashed along the polished chitin and the limb straightened as he turned away while you held it, but he twitched back to look at you with his red eyes blazing quietly.

“Feluän…?” you purred. Oh, you liked the way he clearly wanted to be possessive of you but was forcing himself to behave. It made you flush hot all over.

“What?” he hissed, still scowling.

You caressed your hand up the limb to his shoulder and splayed your fingers wide. He gasped.

“You promised me something…”

“What was that?” he said, spreading his legs a little wider, as though he needed the extra stability to brace himself upright all of a sudden. You enjoyed seeing that the effect you had on each other was mutual.

You drew back your hand from him and he rocked forwards as if seeking the contact again. You brought your wrists together and held them out as though waiting to be tied up before looking up into his face.

His white eyelashes fluttered and his red eyes rolled closed for a moment. “Where?” he asked in a whisper. “Where do you want to go?”

“I’m not sure you’ll fit easily in my cottage…”

“You’d be surprised,” he said, “But I’ll take your word for it. I don’t have any furnishings in my new home yet.”

“You can sling me a silk hammock,” you said boldly and he groaned audibly. “You like that? You like the idea of me lying on your silk?”

He choked softly and nodded, jaw working.

“What?”

“I’m trying to keep my venom to myself this time,” he said carefully. “If I don’t let it out, I can put my mouth wherever I want to this time.”

“And where’s that?”

“Let me tie you up and you’ll find out,” he snarled, baring his double canines, patience fraying.

“Take me home then,” you whispered.

He picked you up, letting you loop your legs around his humanoid hips and holding you there with his arms and his two pedipalps while he scuttled away from the village and up the hill to the cave where an oil lamp was already burning softly on a shelf.

The cave wasn’t so much a cave as a rock-hewn home, with an additional masonry front covering the opening from the elements, and stone shelves cut into the rock inside for storage, and a shelf at the back for a bed and a huge stone bath as well. Spring water was plumbed directly into a copper cylinder for hot water beside a fireplace with a chimney built into the mountainside. It was a vast improvement on his former, tunnel-like home in the forest, and someone had brought up a load of firewood for him.

Before he’d left his new home to greet the rest of the village earlier that evening, Feluän had lit a fire in the grate and it had since filled the space with warmth, driving away the lingering damp of disuse, and as he made his way on his long, skittering legs to the back of the cave, you kissed the chitin of his shoulders and watched the firelight lick along the sculpted shape of his natural armour. He shivered and then rose right up, tucking his abdomen under him and slinging a web across the shelf where the mattress would be when you eventually found him one. For now, a low, secure hammock of web would more than suffice.

He pitched you back onto it and you bounced softly while the drider’s huge body filled the air above you. The power and ‘otherness’ of his body made you hot beneath the skin and set your core burning, and you squirmed softly while he lowered himself down around you, all four right limbs braced on the wall to your left to give him the best angle. It was unnatural and eerie and creepy and wonderful and strange and everything you wanted in that moment, so you raised your hands above your head and crossed your wrists invitingly.

“You’re so good for me,” he purred and you arched upwards. The web hammock was substantial enough that you didn't feel in the least like your bodyweight was going to tear through it, but it left you feeling exposed and at his mercy. He undressed you carefully, his claws peeling the fabric back until you were as naked as he was. His spider’s body twitched and that clear fluid dripped down onto your shin, betraying his own arousal even as your own was made all the more evident to him.

He parted your legs with one clawed hand and carefully pressed the heel of his palm against where you were soaking wet. “Look at you,” he smiled, eyes glinting. “I can smell you. I can’t wait to taste you properly.” Then he licked his hand clean and your brain went blank for a moment as you watched and heard him groan.

His silk was cool as he wrapped your wrists tightly enough to immobilise your arms and then he secured the line to one of the others, pinning you in place as securely as any rope tied to a headboard ever could be.

“Fuck…” you cursed, arching your spine and spreading your legs. Your clit was swollen and sensitive already, but when he slid his arms underneath your thighs and brought his face close enough that his breath shivered across your wet skin, you gasped and bucked.

Feluän’s tongue teased you to start with as he simply savoured the taste of you, but when he got to work in earnest, his claws pricked your skin and he held you down while you tried to writhe and squirm. You weren’t shy about the sounds you made, and when you saw the way his abdomen was moving in time with his tongue on your body, you realised he was every bit as turned on as you are. You knew that driders didn’t mate the way humans did, and that when he came, he was most likely going to make a mess all over you. The thought of it made your eyes roll.

His nose nudged against your clit as he delved deeper into you with his tongue, moaning and kissing and sucking and devouring.

“I’m getting close, love,” he whispered in the tiny silence that blossomed around you when he drew back to adjust his grip on your legs. You’d never been rendered immobile like this by a partner before, with your hands tied and your legs clamped in his grip, and you felt your body clench in the absence of his tongue. He laughed, low and seductive. “So are you, aren’t you?”

Mind a blur with pleasure, you just nodded and keened.

“When I come, can I come over you?” he asked, and he sounded utterly wrecked.

“Gods, please,” you gasped, bucking weakly. “Please, anything, Feluän. Please… I need… I need you to… please…”

“Need me to do what, love?” he asked, licking teasingly over you with the tip of his tongue, savouring you without returning to his earlier endeavours to make you come. It was too much and nowhere near enough and you let out a broken sob. “If you don’t tell me, I can’t do it,” he said provocatively.

With a growl of frustration and effort, you wrangled the words into the right order in your hazy mind. “I need you to make me come, Feluän.”

“That’s good,” he praised and you arched upwards, legs parting a little wider for him. “Gods, you’re everything,” he whispered as he leaned back down and closed his mouth around your clit.

You gave another wild yell at the barrage of stimulation, and under a minute later you came with a heaving shout against his mouth. Waves of pleasure swept through you, and only a second after you stuttered out his name again, you heard him give a tiny ‘oh’ of surprise before he reared up, his whole body tensing and starting to shake, before his own release gushed over the spot where his mouth had just been. The heat of his come against you there sent you over the edge again and you thrashed beneath him. He was still coming when he lowered his humanoid torso down atop yours again and pulled you close, one clawed hand around the back of your head.

“Oh gods,” he said, his whole body twitching and coming while he cradled you beneath him. “Oh gods, you’re everything. You’re perfect… gods… oh…”

Eventually, his orgasm faded and he staggered, all his legs moving out of sync as he tried not to crush you while the strength fled his limbs and he collapsed onto the webbing.

You’d never been such a mess after sex, and you’d also never come quite so hard.

He reached dazedly out with one of his taloned pedipalps and carefully slashed through the silk holding your wrists together, then he raised his head a little more to regard you. “Are you alright?” he asked. “That wasn’t too much?”

“Perfect,” you mumbled. “You made a big mess though,” you said when you felt his release sliding over your thighs and hips.

“I’ve never made that much mess,” he said and he looked genuinely embarrassed when he pushed himself upright.

“Good job there’s a bath over there,” you said, eyeing the basin that was practically a small swimming pool. It was certainly big enough for a drider to soak himself in relative comfort too.

Feluän staggered over to it and turned the bronze tap that started a flow of hot water from the gigantic cistern beside the fire and then returned to you. “Can I carry you?” he asked, looking shy for the first time in your relatively short acquaintance.

“You’re going to have to. I can’t feel my legs,” you said.

“I didn’t — My venom —” he sputtered in horror. “I —”

“Oh, it’s not you,” you chuckled as you floundered to sit upright. “I mean, it was you, but not your venom.”

He deflated comically in relief and laughed as he scooped you up and bore you towards the tub. Glancing back, you saw that his come was all over the webbing and had dripped through onto the floor.

Feluän set you down on the shelf that ran around the edge of the bath washed you off while it filled. The gentle action of his caring, attentive hands on your body soothed you and worked you up again, and when you moaned and bucked weakly into his hand, he raised an eyebrow. “Again?” he breathed, as though hardly daring to believe it.

“Please?” you whispered, eyes half-closed where you floated in the warm water.

He was careful with his claws, using only the pad of his finger against you, and when you came with a little sigh and heaved into his arms a few minutes later, he smiled at you and leaned down to kiss you.

“I want to do that to you every day,” he said over the rush of water into the bath. “I don’t want a day to go past where I haven’t seen you make that face for me.”

How could you refuse an offer like that when it was so generously made?

__

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