The light that drifted mistily through the creamy silk curtains was distorted, the shapes beyond the diaphanous fabric murky. The boy swayed in time to the marching of feet that carried the palanquin beneath him.
His bowed head bobbed limply. His skull ached. His mouth tasted sweet.
The images that floated behind his fluttering eyelids were ephemeral, flitting like butterflies just outside his grasping hands, impossible to pin down sequentially. He remembered the pale columns of the temple jutting up like the ribs of a behemoth in the cool, dark space. He remembered how easily the lock had come apart in his skilled hands, snapping like the slender bone of a hare between his fingers, and hoping idly that these provincial fortifications did not herald equally provincial treasures.
Rough hands emerging from the dark, a grip that threatened to bruise but still struck less dread into his heart than the words being hissed hot into his ear…
He instinctively moved to rub the recollection from his eyes and found, to his confusion, that he could not lift his hand. He jerked his arm upward, freeing it from the soft pillows beneath him, and discovered the obstacle had been his other hand.
His thin wrists were bound. The length of crimson silk had been pulled so tight the tips of his fingers were cast a faint purple, a thick knot bulging over his thumbs.
It was tied in a bow, as though he were a present waiting to be unwrapped.
The light filtering through the fluttering curtains around him abruptly darkened, as though a giant hand had been placed over his small den. It shook loose more images from the syrupy liquid of his brain; a man with dark hair and darker clothes, his face wrinkled and grave. A katana curved dangerously around the side of his waist.
“We have given enough daughters of Ashina,” he had said. The words were solemn, gilded with a sorrow that chipped and flaked to reveal the glint of anger beneath. “Now, the honour of being presented as the serpent’s bride is being given to a common thief.”
There was an edge to his voice that the boy could not quite place as he said, “There is no greater blessing.”
He had left the boy to be tended to by the woman that waited around the edges of the room like drab sparrows. They had washed him with warm water. He had struggled, and they fed him Buddhist sugars that melted on his tongue. The sugars were so laced with elixir that they glittered purple, and when his tongue and lips were sweet and his limbs were heavy he resorted to begging, pleading thinly to be released.
He didn’t know anything about their stupid legends. He wasn’t even from here. But every time he had opened his mouth to explain this, a pair of nimble fingers placed a sparkling candy, bruised purple, in his mouth and soon the words he sought were distant, vexing things like the flitting shapes of birds on the horizon.
His flaxen hair had been ornately arranged, jeweled sticks holding it in place, his lips painted brilliant red. The uchikake he wore was the vivid scarlet of freshly spilt blood, the trailing sleeves and train adorned with images of ripe fruits and the sinuous, twisting shapes of white serpents. There were black tracks running down his cheeks.
The palanquin he was being carried in was lowered so abruptly he pitched forward as it scraped with a bump on the ground, his reminiscence interrupted. Footsteps crunched on dirt outside, growing distant.
A voice murmured faintly and he could see the reedy silhouette through the gossamer fabric as though in a dream. The figure’s head was bowed, their prayer echoing strangely in this dark, cool place, before they too moved away until he could no longer hear them.
Silence. The crystalline dripping of water, the gentle hiss of steam.
He took a steadying breath, his vision still swaying though the seat beneath him was still. Every available space around him was laden with the shine of gold, swollen fruits, smooth gourds filled with rejuvenating waters. The irony of the treasures he had sought in the temple being heaped at his feet was not lost on him, and he searched the piles of glistening grains of rice and tokkuri bottles burdened with smooth sake for anything of use, silks rustling against his bare skin.
The silken bonds restraining his wrists and the sugars dulling his usually agile fingers hampered the effort and he grew frustrated, his lips tightening over the clench of his teeth. He abandoned the search with a sigh. Instead, he cautiously parted the pale curtains and peered out.
He was alone, and he was in a cave. These facts were immediately discernible even through the heady haze of sugar, something tangible to grasp.
The air of the cave was cool, bordering on being too cold for skin clothed only in thin silk. Sunlight, stained green from the wealth of flora clogging the jagged crack at the roof of the cave that allowed it in, poured in streams that illuminated whorls of swirling dust and pollen. A thin trickle of cool water flowed into a channel that fed the delicate blanket of purple flowers that carpeted the ground with lively pops of colour.
Something moved in the dark recesses of the cave and he shrank back. The fabric rustled into place, cutting off his view.
For a moment, all he could hear was the pounding of his own blood in his ears. And then, quietly, unmistakably, the gentle crush of plants and dirt as something slithered near.
Something very, very large.
The boy swallowed. Carefully, he leaned forward.
He caught a glimpse of the heavy, sinuous body of the serpent through a thin sliver between the curtains and shivered, awe and terror carving hollows in his insides. He saw pale, glittering scales, eyes with a sheen like moonstone, and then the fabric fluttered and the shape was reduced to shadow beyond the gauzy curtains.
The shadow grew larger and larger until, with dawning horror, he was able to make out the sheer size of the beast. Surely the jaws of a creature that size could swallow the gauzy palanquin with the warm, fragile morsel that was his body inside it in a single bite. It didn’t even need to be a god to extinguish him with a single snap of its teeth.
The shadow grew close and rippled like a reflection in water. The shape changed, shrinking, its edges altering, until its silhouette was altogether more human.
The silhouette reached forward and parted the curtains. The boy looked at the Great Serpent in the shape of an unclothed man before him.
Its skin was the rich golden brown of hōjicha. Hair as pale as the serpent’s snowy scales fell in long, unbound strands down its chest. Muscles moved sinuously beneath bare skin. Its eyes were the unsettling hue of a marble statue, the thin, slitted pupil and milky iris almost indistinguishable. Its mouth was cruel, voluptuous in its animal hunger.
The boy opened his mouth as though to protest, to object - this can’t be right, surely? Surely the stories were metaphor, a mimed ritual for this god, a strange Ashina tradition, and now he would be let go - but his protests had not manifested on his tongue before the Serpent Prince had approached with a swiftness that made him flinch.
Its skin was cool as it reached for his chin and he quelled beneath its touch. It did not look at him - he didn’t think it could look at him, those pale eyes weren’t meant for seeing - as its palm stroked down the length of his throat. The boy had a vision of a snake’s coils wrapped tightly around the neck of a struggling deer and shivered. A forked tongue, long and black and inhuman, slipped from between its lips. It was smelling him.
Tasting him.
Fear blossomed in an unfurling stain of black in his vision. Without conscious thought he staggered forward and leapt from the palanquin, his body twisting like a bounding hart. He struggled, thrashing as his bare feet met the springy earth, but the sugars made him groggy and with his hands tied he could not maintain his balance when the serpent struck fast as the flick of a whip and sent him sprawling headlong in the flowers.
He hit the ground hard, the air leaving his chest in a whoosh through his painted lips. He scrabbled with bound hands to rise but was halted by a lithe weight slithering on his back. A tongue flicked against the delicate skin at the back of his neck and he had to swallow a moan behind his teeth.
A hand deftly plucked the jeweled sticks from his hair. Loose hair fell across his neck, flowing over his shoulders in cornsilk waves. The boy tried to rise to his elbows but a firm palm on his back forced his chest back to the ground. He strained, muscles taut, before yielding to the implacable pressure.
Seemingly pleased with his acquiescence, the hand continued its inspection. It swept across his trembling body, cupping swells of skin and presumptuously fingering the shape of smooth bone. They hadn’t bothered to give him the dignity of undergarments and so there was nothing but the diaphanous silk of the bridal kimono to roughly shove aside, exposing the back of his thighs to the cool air.
He shivered. Skin pebbled beneath that demanding touch. The serpent nudged his thin legs apart, fingers curling into the warm space between them.
He yelped at the sudden press of a cold tongue on tender flesh. He squirmed blindly, a mouse thrashing in a trap, and palms pushed firmly on his tailbone, pinning him to the earth.
The cool damp of the tongue was replaced by something hot and hard. He fell still.
The serpent rutted against him. Its hands pressed mercilessly hard on his lower back, holding him in place as its cock ground against the naked swell of his ass. Bound wrists prevented the boy from lifting himself and so his cheek ground into the dirt, grit clinging to the powder they had used to darken his eyes.
He was panting into the sweet earth. His breath was hot, panic throbbing in his chest, threatening to overwhelm. The serpent leaned its weight into him and he blindly kicked out, catching its leg with a blow that didn’t have the angle to inflict the damage he had hoped for.
Pain arced in an electric lattice through his nerves as the sharp length of wicked fangs penetrated his shoulder. The sound it dredged from his mouth was a drowned whimper as blood dripped down the curve of his arm, darkening his neck in a smear.
The bright bolt of pain swelled and he realized dimly its teeth had injected him with something, some orphic venom brewed from a chthonic gland buried deep in the flesh of its strange and terrible body that was now coursing through his veins.
He shuddered as the serpent bit into the thin skin near the back of his neck again. He could feel how its cock pulsed against him as his blood spurted, dark and wet, on its tongue.
Chastened, he squirmed beneath its heavy body, thrusting himself back against it, but the serpent crouched over him. It reached for his fists balled tightly together and in one sharp motion pulled his arms straight in front of him. The boy gasped at the jolt to his throbbing shoulders.
He couldn’t see, his vision blocked by earth and the sweet-smelling flowers now that he had nothing to rest his chest on, but he could feel the sharp points of claws that crept along his wrists. Sharp as needles, they grazed the delicate skin on the inside of his arm.
There was a sudden pinch of hurt and he cried out, more from fear than pain, and instinctively pulled away. His arms moved independently and he could have wept tears of sweet relief to discover it had cut the cords that bound him.
His fingers buzzed painfully and he flexed them, happy for the splinters of pain that shot through the nerves. The shape of his knuckles were white beneath the purpled skin. He rolled his stiff shoulders and moved to rise to his elbows but was impeded by the sudden, awful discovery that the penance for his disobedience had not yet been paid to his god’s satisfaction as the scarlet silk that had been tied around his wrists was looped around his slender throat and pulled taut.
He thrashed and this time it was unconscious, instinctive, as the air was crushed from his throat. The serpent forced his body, swathed in the torn silk of the bridal kimono like the limp feathers of a crimson bird, down to the earth. His fingers clawed at the silk flat across his throat. He bucked beneath the serpent and it hissed with pleasure, thrusting the hard swell of its cock into the hot hollow between his thighs.
The boy twitched and moaned. The red that had been painted across his lips had smeared across his face.
The world became rusty, muddled as he heaved for breath. The Great Serpent’s body rocked against his, unyielding as it squeezed him. His vision blistered and the image of the coils of a snake curled tightly around its prey’s neck returned to him, great coils of muscle, scaled loops that were too solid… far too potent to resist…
His scrabbling hands grew lax. His fingers curled softly inward.
With one heaving motion, the serpent rolled him over onto his back. It was not difficult, his wilted body quivering like a plucked string as he gasped for breath.
He coughed, sputtering, his throat scratchy and too tight even after the silk around it loosened.
The serpent sat on his stomach. Its claws worked through the silk of the bridal kimono, efficiently slashing layers of gossamer with a tearing sound, until only his shivering arms were bound in the long, billowing fabric. His stomach was bare, his chest exposed, red and raw where it had been pressed into the rough ground.
The Great Serpent, his Great Serpent, was painfully, achingly hard. Its eyes shone moon white as it reached for him.
Its fingers filled his mouth. They hooked the space behind his teeth, stroked his tongue lovingly, pumped meaningfully into the satin that was the back of his mouth until he choked.
It wrapped its glistening fingers, faintly sweet from the sugar of his mouth, around its cock, wetting itself before shifting upward to slide its slick length over the line of his sternum. It ground hungrily against his bare chest, the smell of its skin like dying leaves and cool, black water filling his nose. It reached down and held the back of his head. Sharp fingers entwined in curling strands of hair. The head of its cock pressed against his lips until it had pried them apart and forced its way inside.
He tasted salt mingling with the sugar coating his tongue as it thrust into him, fucking his mouth. He choked, his throat raw from the intrusion of fingers and sore from the cord, and could feel how it throbbed as his mouth tightened around it.
His breath sputtered from his nose. He gripped the serpent's thighs to steady himself as it pumped into his mouth, dragging its length across his wet tongue. His back arched, lifting off the ground as he struggled to take it.
The corners of his storm-cloud eyes were damp, rain threatening to fall. He lifted his gaze to the serpent and thought - a thought perhaps clouded with the venom that pulsed through his blood - how beautiful it was, pale hair falling in waves across its bare chest as it filled his mouth sweeter than any sugar.
The serpent cradled the back of his head as it thrust deep to the back of his tongue. It held itself there, flesh hot and firm in his mouth. It wasn't until he was writhing beneath it that it withdrew.
He greedily gulped cool air. He pressed gentle kisses into the glistening flesh that lingered against his lips, the tip of his tongue lapping at the slit of its swollen skin. The serpent shivered, and he could feel how the hot pleasure coiled through its body.
It shifted on top of him, its tactile hands grazing the hollows of his hips, the sensitive space on the underside of his knees. It parted his legs and slid between them. He felt its fingers where skin met skin and between them, a hole to get inside him. He tensed and the serpent put a firm palm on his stomach, holding him in place as it readied itself.
Its cock was slick from his mouth. He could feel it, eager between his thighs. The light filtering through the crack in the cave had grown dim, casting the space in hues of bruised, dusky purple but the boy hadn't noticed, his gaze captivated by the sinuous body between his legs, by the cool touch that prepared its bride on his marital bed of flowers and soil.
There was a dim sense of pain as the Serpent Prince thrust against the delicate cluster of nerves. It found purchase and pushed steadily until it was inside him. He groaned as it stretched his insides, panting into the sweet, cool air as the serpent moved into him.
He could think of nothing but this as the serpent filled him up with a delicious ache. It leaned across him, its weight reassuring as it thrust into his body, rolling its hips against his. The muscles of its naked torso moved in sensuous pattern, slithering beneath the skin, and he gripped its arm, the other hand holding desperately to the smooth skin of its waist as it filled him deeper and deeper.
The worst part was how it hurt where he was already hurting, the skin raw and tender. His breath came in soft gasps. But he could feel how hard it made his Great Serpent when it hurt him and so he stopped trying to resist the pain and let it thrum through his nerves as it thrust into him, hard and fast.
His gasps became quiet sobs and then whimpered moans, words he didn't understand the meaning of falling broken from his lips, half-whispered prayers hoarse in his throat as the serpent fucked him brutally into the dirt.
He was shivering. His legs were trembling. His cock was achingly hard pressed between their stomachs and the friction was enough to send him uncontrollably over the edge. His body tensed in spasms, spurts of heat making a mess of his bare stomach as he made animal whines, and the serpent groaned as his ass tightened. It pumped feverishly into the tight heat of his body, the curve of its fangs visible between parted lips.
The serpent's hand reached for his throat and he gladly offered it, lifting his chin to expose the slender curve of his neck. His moans vibrated through its palm and it tightened until his breath was a tremulous whisper.
That was enough. The serpent's thrusts grew quick and shallow, each one pulling a soft whimper from his raw throat. He felt the rush of wet heat and his fingers dug into the skin of the serpent’s arm as it quivered against him, its breath a ragged groan.
It was still inside him when it leaned down and, with a tenderness that surprised him, delicately pressed its lips to each shivering eyelid. He murmured a thankful prayer and briefly surrendered to the blackness creeping across the edge of his vision.
He had the sense of strong arms, of being carried as easily as a kitten. His body ached and ached. He tasted salt.
It was the warm water of the rejuvenating spring that brought him back to this world. His bruised, battered body sank gratefully into the heat, shivering with delight. The Great Serpent’s lean body was a comforting weight against him and he let his head fall back, a dark bruise encircling his throat like a band.
He looked up at the face of the serpent and felt such a wild surge of affection that tears sprang unbidden to his eyes.
His lips parted, though he didn’t know what he intended to say. The voice of one of the women who had washed him drifted hazily through his head, vibrating with dusky import he had not grasped as she had placed a meal of tender vegetables speckled with green seeds before him.
“These seeds only grow in the Sunken Valley, you know. Near the wedding cave.”
The serpent leaned down to flick its tongue into his mouth. He tasted blood. It raised the corners of his lips into a smile.
“It is where you are going to offer yourself in marriage to the Great Serpent.”
The serpent’s body tensed. It flickered like a flame, rippled like a reflection over water.
“They say if you wish to become a bride, you must enter the belly of the Serpent in the Valley.”
The boy looked adoringly up at the serpent as understanding flooded his body with warmth. The Serpent Prince’s mouth parted and then kept parting, its jaw unhinging to reveal layers of needle-like teeth. The serpent’s bride wept great tears of relief as pale scales erupted from the skin, the silhouette of a man uncoiling into a shape of such fierce beauty and raw power that he was humbled to witness it.
His cheeks were wet with tears as the folds of that sublime mouth enveloped him. Trembling, incandescent with joy, the Serpent Prince’s bride opened his arms and accepted the strange, wondrous love he was granted.
His bowed head bobbed limply. His skull ached. His mouth tasted sweet.
The images that floated behind his fluttering eyelids were ephemeral, flitting like butterflies just outside his grasping hands, impossible to pin down sequentially. He remembered the pale columns of the temple jutting up like the ribs of a behemoth in the cool, dark space. He remembered how easily the lock had come apart in his skilled hands, snapping like the slender bone of a hare between his fingers, and hoping idly that these provincial fortifications did not herald equally provincial treasures.
Rough hands emerging from the dark, a grip that threatened to bruise but still struck less dread into his heart than the words being hissed hot into his ear…
He instinctively moved to rub the recollection from his eyes and found, to his confusion, that he could not lift his hand. He jerked his arm upward, freeing it from the soft pillows beneath him, and discovered the obstacle had been his other hand.
His thin wrists were bound. The length of crimson silk had been pulled so tight the tips of his fingers were cast a faint purple, a thick knot bulging over his thumbs.
It was tied in a bow, as though he were a present waiting to be unwrapped.
The light filtering through the fluttering curtains around him abruptly darkened, as though a giant hand had been placed over his small den. It shook loose more images from the syrupy liquid of his brain; a man with dark hair and darker clothes, his face wrinkled and grave. A katana curved dangerously around the side of his waist.
“We have given enough daughters of Ashina,” he had said. The words were solemn, gilded with a sorrow that chipped and flaked to reveal the glint of anger beneath. “Now, the honour of being presented as the serpent’s bride is being given to a common thief.”
There was an edge to his voice that the boy could not quite place as he said, “There is no greater blessing.”
He had left the boy to be tended to by the woman that waited around the edges of the room like drab sparrows. They had washed him with warm water. He had struggled, and they fed him Buddhist sugars that melted on his tongue. The sugars were so laced with elixir that they glittered purple, and when his tongue and lips were sweet and his limbs were heavy he resorted to begging, pleading thinly to be released.
He didn’t know anything about their stupid legends. He wasn’t even from here. But every time he had opened his mouth to explain this, a pair of nimble fingers placed a sparkling candy, bruised purple, in his mouth and soon the words he sought were distant, vexing things like the flitting shapes of birds on the horizon.
His flaxen hair had been ornately arranged, jeweled sticks holding it in place, his lips painted brilliant red. The uchikake he wore was the vivid scarlet of freshly spilt blood, the trailing sleeves and train adorned with images of ripe fruits and the sinuous, twisting shapes of white serpents. There were black tracks running down his cheeks.
The palanquin he was being carried in was lowered so abruptly he pitched forward as it scraped with a bump on the ground, his reminiscence interrupted. Footsteps crunched on dirt outside, growing distant.
A voice murmured faintly and he could see the reedy silhouette through the gossamer fabric as though in a dream. The figure’s head was bowed, their prayer echoing strangely in this dark, cool place, before they too moved away until he could no longer hear them.
Silence. The crystalline dripping of water, the gentle hiss of steam.
He took a steadying breath, his vision still swaying though the seat beneath him was still. Every available space around him was laden with the shine of gold, swollen fruits, smooth gourds filled with rejuvenating waters. The irony of the treasures he had sought in the temple being heaped at his feet was not lost on him, and he searched the piles of glistening grains of rice and tokkuri bottles burdened with smooth sake for anything of use, silks rustling against his bare skin.
The silken bonds restraining his wrists and the sugars dulling his usually agile fingers hampered the effort and he grew frustrated, his lips tightening over the clench of his teeth. He abandoned the search with a sigh. Instead, he cautiously parted the pale curtains and peered out.
He was alone, and he was in a cave. These facts were immediately discernible even through the heady haze of sugar, something tangible to grasp.
The air of the cave was cool, bordering on being too cold for skin clothed only in thin silk. Sunlight, stained green from the wealth of flora clogging the jagged crack at the roof of the cave that allowed it in, poured in streams that illuminated whorls of swirling dust and pollen. A thin trickle of cool water flowed into a channel that fed the delicate blanket of purple flowers that carpeted the ground with lively pops of colour.
Something moved in the dark recesses of the cave and he shrank back. The fabric rustled into place, cutting off his view.
For a moment, all he could hear was the pounding of his own blood in his ears. And then, quietly, unmistakably, the gentle crush of plants and dirt as something slithered near.
Something very, very large.
The boy swallowed. Carefully, he leaned forward.
He caught a glimpse of the heavy, sinuous body of the serpent through a thin sliver between the curtains and shivered, awe and terror carving hollows in his insides. He saw pale, glittering scales, eyes with a sheen like moonstone, and then the fabric fluttered and the shape was reduced to shadow beyond the gauzy curtains.
The shadow grew larger and larger until, with dawning horror, he was able to make out the sheer size of the beast. Surely the jaws of a creature that size could swallow the gauzy palanquin with the warm, fragile morsel that was his body inside it in a single bite. It didn’t even need to be a god to extinguish him with a single snap of its teeth.
The shadow grew close and rippled like a reflection in water. The shape changed, shrinking, its edges altering, until its silhouette was altogether more human.
The silhouette reached forward and parted the curtains. The boy looked at the Great Serpent in the shape of an unclothed man before him.
Its skin was the rich golden brown of hōjicha. Hair as pale as the serpent’s snowy scales fell in long, unbound strands down its chest. Muscles moved sinuously beneath bare skin. Its eyes were the unsettling hue of a marble statue, the thin, slitted pupil and milky iris almost indistinguishable. Its mouth was cruel, voluptuous in its animal hunger.
The boy opened his mouth as though to protest, to object - this can’t be right, surely? Surely the stories were metaphor, a mimed ritual for this god, a strange Ashina tradition, and now he would be let go - but his protests had not manifested on his tongue before the Serpent Prince had approached with a swiftness that made him flinch.
Its skin was cool as it reached for his chin and he quelled beneath its touch. It did not look at him - he didn’t think it could look at him, those pale eyes weren’t meant for seeing - as its palm stroked down the length of his throat. The boy had a vision of a snake’s coils wrapped tightly around the neck of a struggling deer and shivered. A forked tongue, long and black and inhuman, slipped from between its lips. It was smelling him.
Tasting him.
Fear blossomed in an unfurling stain of black in his vision. Without conscious thought he staggered forward and leapt from the palanquin, his body twisting like a bounding hart. He struggled, thrashing as his bare feet met the springy earth, but the sugars made him groggy and with his hands tied he could not maintain his balance when the serpent struck fast as the flick of a whip and sent him sprawling headlong in the flowers.
He hit the ground hard, the air leaving his chest in a whoosh through his painted lips. He scrabbled with bound hands to rise but was halted by a lithe weight slithering on his back. A tongue flicked against the delicate skin at the back of his neck and he had to swallow a moan behind his teeth.
A hand deftly plucked the jeweled sticks from his hair. Loose hair fell across his neck, flowing over his shoulders in cornsilk waves. The boy tried to rise to his elbows but a firm palm on his back forced his chest back to the ground. He strained, muscles taut, before yielding to the implacable pressure.
Seemingly pleased with his acquiescence, the hand continued its inspection. It swept across his trembling body, cupping swells of skin and presumptuously fingering the shape of smooth bone. They hadn’t bothered to give him the dignity of undergarments and so there was nothing but the diaphanous silk of the bridal kimono to roughly shove aside, exposing the back of his thighs to the cool air.
He shivered. Skin pebbled beneath that demanding touch. The serpent nudged his thin legs apart, fingers curling into the warm space between them.
He yelped at the sudden press of a cold tongue on tender flesh. He squirmed blindly, a mouse thrashing in a trap, and palms pushed firmly on his tailbone, pinning him to the earth.
The cool damp of the tongue was replaced by something hot and hard. He fell still.
The serpent rutted against him. Its hands pressed mercilessly hard on his lower back, holding him in place as its cock ground against the naked swell of his ass. Bound wrists prevented the boy from lifting himself and so his cheek ground into the dirt, grit clinging to the powder they had used to darken his eyes.
He was panting into the sweet earth. His breath was hot, panic throbbing in his chest, threatening to overwhelm. The serpent leaned its weight into him and he blindly kicked out, catching its leg with a blow that didn’t have the angle to inflict the damage he had hoped for.
Pain arced in an electric lattice through his nerves as the sharp length of wicked fangs penetrated his shoulder. The sound it dredged from his mouth was a drowned whimper as blood dripped down the curve of his arm, darkening his neck in a smear.
The bright bolt of pain swelled and he realized dimly its teeth had injected him with something, some orphic venom brewed from a chthonic gland buried deep in the flesh of its strange and terrible body that was now coursing through his veins.
He shuddered as the serpent bit into the thin skin near the back of his neck again. He could feel how its cock pulsed against him as his blood spurted, dark and wet, on its tongue.
Chastened, he squirmed beneath its heavy body, thrusting himself back against it, but the serpent crouched over him. It reached for his fists balled tightly together and in one sharp motion pulled his arms straight in front of him. The boy gasped at the jolt to his throbbing shoulders.
He couldn’t see, his vision blocked by earth and the sweet-smelling flowers now that he had nothing to rest his chest on, but he could feel the sharp points of claws that crept along his wrists. Sharp as needles, they grazed the delicate skin on the inside of his arm.
There was a sudden pinch of hurt and he cried out, more from fear than pain, and instinctively pulled away. His arms moved independently and he could have wept tears of sweet relief to discover it had cut the cords that bound him.
His fingers buzzed painfully and he flexed them, happy for the splinters of pain that shot through the nerves. The shape of his knuckles were white beneath the purpled skin. He rolled his stiff shoulders and moved to rise to his elbows but was impeded by the sudden, awful discovery that the penance for his disobedience had not yet been paid to his god’s satisfaction as the scarlet silk that had been tied around his wrists was looped around his slender throat and pulled taut.
He thrashed and this time it was unconscious, instinctive, as the air was crushed from his throat. The serpent forced his body, swathed in the torn silk of the bridal kimono like the limp feathers of a crimson bird, down to the earth. His fingers clawed at the silk flat across his throat. He bucked beneath the serpent and it hissed with pleasure, thrusting the hard swell of its cock into the hot hollow between his thighs.
The boy twitched and moaned. The red that had been painted across his lips had smeared across his face.
The world became rusty, muddled as he heaved for breath. The Great Serpent’s body rocked against his, unyielding as it squeezed him. His vision blistered and the image of the coils of a snake curled tightly around its prey’s neck returned to him, great coils of muscle, scaled loops that were too solid… far too potent to resist…
His scrabbling hands grew lax. His fingers curled softly inward.
With one heaving motion, the serpent rolled him over onto his back. It was not difficult, his wilted body quivering like a plucked string as he gasped for breath.
He coughed, sputtering, his throat scratchy and too tight even after the silk around it loosened.
The serpent sat on his stomach. Its claws worked through the silk of the bridal kimono, efficiently slashing layers of gossamer with a tearing sound, until only his shivering arms were bound in the long, billowing fabric. His stomach was bare, his chest exposed, red and raw where it had been pressed into the rough ground.
The Great Serpent, his Great Serpent, was painfully, achingly hard. Its eyes shone moon white as it reached for him.
Its fingers filled his mouth. They hooked the space behind his teeth, stroked his tongue lovingly, pumped meaningfully into the satin that was the back of his mouth until he choked.
It wrapped its glistening fingers, faintly sweet from the sugar of his mouth, around its cock, wetting itself before shifting upward to slide its slick length over the line of his sternum. It ground hungrily against his bare chest, the smell of its skin like dying leaves and cool, black water filling his nose. It reached down and held the back of his head. Sharp fingers entwined in curling strands of hair. The head of its cock pressed against his lips until it had pried them apart and forced its way inside.
He tasted salt mingling with the sugar coating his tongue as it thrust into him, fucking his mouth. He choked, his throat raw from the intrusion of fingers and sore from the cord, and could feel how it throbbed as his mouth tightened around it.
His breath sputtered from his nose. He gripped the serpent's thighs to steady himself as it pumped into his mouth, dragging its length across his wet tongue. His back arched, lifting off the ground as he struggled to take it.
The corners of his storm-cloud eyes were damp, rain threatening to fall. He lifted his gaze to the serpent and thought - a thought perhaps clouded with the venom that pulsed through his blood - how beautiful it was, pale hair falling in waves across its bare chest as it filled his mouth sweeter than any sugar.
The serpent cradled the back of his head as it thrust deep to the back of his tongue. It held itself there, flesh hot and firm in his mouth. It wasn't until he was writhing beneath it that it withdrew.
He greedily gulped cool air. He pressed gentle kisses into the glistening flesh that lingered against his lips, the tip of his tongue lapping at the slit of its swollen skin. The serpent shivered, and he could feel how the hot pleasure coiled through its body.
It shifted on top of him, its tactile hands grazing the hollows of his hips, the sensitive space on the underside of his knees. It parted his legs and slid between them. He felt its fingers where skin met skin and between them, a hole to get inside him. He tensed and the serpent put a firm palm on his stomach, holding him in place as it readied itself.
Its cock was slick from his mouth. He could feel it, eager between his thighs. The light filtering through the crack in the cave had grown dim, casting the space in hues of bruised, dusky purple but the boy hadn't noticed, his gaze captivated by the sinuous body between his legs, by the cool touch that prepared its bride on his marital bed of flowers and soil.
There was a dim sense of pain as the Serpent Prince thrust against the delicate cluster of nerves. It found purchase and pushed steadily until it was inside him. He groaned as it stretched his insides, panting into the sweet, cool air as the serpent moved into him.
He could think of nothing but this as the serpent filled him up with a delicious ache. It leaned across him, its weight reassuring as it thrust into his body, rolling its hips against his. The muscles of its naked torso moved in sensuous pattern, slithering beneath the skin, and he gripped its arm, the other hand holding desperately to the smooth skin of its waist as it filled him deeper and deeper.
The worst part was how it hurt where he was already hurting, the skin raw and tender. His breath came in soft gasps. But he could feel how hard it made his Great Serpent when it hurt him and so he stopped trying to resist the pain and let it thrum through his nerves as it thrust into him, hard and fast.
His gasps became quiet sobs and then whimpered moans, words he didn't understand the meaning of falling broken from his lips, half-whispered prayers hoarse in his throat as the serpent fucked him brutally into the dirt.
He was shivering. His legs were trembling. His cock was achingly hard pressed between their stomachs and the friction was enough to send him uncontrollably over the edge. His body tensed in spasms, spurts of heat making a mess of his bare stomach as he made animal whines, and the serpent groaned as his ass tightened. It pumped feverishly into the tight heat of his body, the curve of its fangs visible between parted lips.
The serpent's hand reached for his throat and he gladly offered it, lifting his chin to expose the slender curve of his neck. His moans vibrated through its palm and it tightened until his breath was a tremulous whisper.
That was enough. The serpent's thrusts grew quick and shallow, each one pulling a soft whimper from his raw throat. He felt the rush of wet heat and his fingers dug into the skin of the serpent’s arm as it quivered against him, its breath a ragged groan.
It was still inside him when it leaned down and, with a tenderness that surprised him, delicately pressed its lips to each shivering eyelid. He murmured a thankful prayer and briefly surrendered to the blackness creeping across the edge of his vision.
He had the sense of strong arms, of being carried as easily as a kitten. His body ached and ached. He tasted salt.
It was the warm water of the rejuvenating spring that brought him back to this world. His bruised, battered body sank gratefully into the heat, shivering with delight. The Great Serpent’s lean body was a comforting weight against him and he let his head fall back, a dark bruise encircling his throat like a band.
He looked up at the face of the serpent and felt such a wild surge of affection that tears sprang unbidden to his eyes.
His lips parted, though he didn’t know what he intended to say. The voice of one of the women who had washed him drifted hazily through his head, vibrating with dusky import he had not grasped as she had placed a meal of tender vegetables speckled with green seeds before him.
“These seeds only grow in the Sunken Valley, you know. Near the wedding cave.”
The serpent leaned down to flick its tongue into his mouth. He tasted blood. It raised the corners of his lips into a smile.
“It is where you are going to offer yourself in marriage to the Great Serpent.”
The serpent’s body tensed. It flickered like a flame, rippled like a reflection over water.
“They say if you wish to become a bride, you must enter the belly of the Serpent in the Valley.”
The boy looked adoringly up at the serpent as understanding flooded his body with warmth. The Serpent Prince’s mouth parted and then kept parting, its jaw unhinging to reveal layers of needle-like teeth. The serpent’s bride wept great tears of relief as pale scales erupted from the skin, the silhouette of a man uncoiling into a shape of such fierce beauty and raw power that he was humbled to witness it.
His cheeks were wet with tears as the folds of that sublime mouth enveloped him. Trembling, incandescent with joy, the Serpent Prince’s bride opened his arms and accepted the strange, wondrous love he was granted.
