Last Dance

She knelt in the dirt before him. Feeling the chill of the clay through the knees of her jeans.

His golden eyes observed her, fathomless, a devourer transcendent of hunger or cruelty. He simply watched and waited, as if he knew why she had come.

She unfastened the buttons of her shirt, one by one, slowly, a ritual she had practiced many times, many nights. She forced herself to breathe slowly now, in and out. In and out.

Her shirt at last parted open, and the warm skin of her navel trembled at the kiss of the death-cold air. She shrugged her shoulders free and slipped out of the shirt, pausing to fold it carefully. She straightened the collar, feeling the grain of the cotton threads beneath her fingertips. Every sense of her body tightened now to a burning focus.

The scent of rotting vegetation, sickly sweet, filled her lungs. In and out. In and out.

Her next breath came too quickly as her insides twisted with mingled fear and anticipation. She squeezed her thighs together and balled her fists, her nails biting into the palms of her hands. She found her calm again in his golden eyes, and the fluttering qualms of mortal terror soon passed.

She brushed her sweat-damp hair from her eyes and smiled again as she breathed deeply, smelling his dry musk in the air. In and out. In and out.

She cupped her breasts in her hands, feeling her nipples, hard and sensitive now, through the silk of her bra. With deliberate slowness, she reached back and unclasped the tiny hooks, freeing her heaving breasts from their silken bondage.

She folded the bra and laid it neatly atop the shirt on the ground beside her.

She straightened her back and faced him again, her hands at her sides. His body tensed and shifted slightly as his eyes surveyed her bared chest.

She let her own gaze fall to her pointed nipples, rising and falling atop their pale mounds of soft flesh in desperate anticipation of what was to come. No, they belonged to him now, the first of the many gifts she presented to him, her devourer, her master.

He tensed again as she stood slowly. He shifted one great coil of his tail to block her escape, but she made no move to run.

Her lips parted slightly. She was panting softly now, hardly able to control herself. She had feared that she might try to run when the moment came, and she imagined the sudden weight of him upon her back as he seized her, crushing out her life before he consumed her body. The thought made the ache in her loins return seven-fold, and she doubled over in a groaning shudder.

He had blocked the exit completely with his body now, still watching her, content in the knowledge that she belonged to him now. He seemed in no hurry to feed, and she thanked him with a silent, trembling smile.

Her hiking boots now faced her, side by side, next to the shirt and bra. She felt the dampness of the clay through the soles of her socks. How long before all that remained of her was the clay itself, cold and lifeless? She would remain with him forever, another lump of the clay that formed his earthen throne upon which he would lay, dreaming through the long centuries.

Would he remember her taste when civilization lay in ruins?

She peeled her jeans, slowly down her long legs, savoring their warmth for the last time. She stepped out of them and folded them gently, her palm lingering on the warm, damp mound of denim that had covered her burning sex. Her own musk now mingled with the scent of the snake in the air.

She laid the jeans beside the shirt on the ground. She no longer thought of them as her belongings. They were human things, and she had shed that identity the moment she had set foot into his domain. She was his now, prey and sustenance, nothing more.

She heard him moving toward her now, ready to claim his offering.

She turned to face him. Her hands explored her body, feeling each part, making herself ready for him. Her middle finger probed between her lips, stroked and moistened by her tongue. She ran her fingertip across her teeth, imagining what it would be like for him to take her in. What would his teeth feel like upon her soft, helpless flesh? Would he be gentle, or cruel?

Her lethal curiosity would not go long unsatisfied.

She stepped forward and lay herself down across one of his coils.

“Take me,” she whispered as he opened his jaws above her head.

As she felt his heat close around her face, she could no longer control her breathing, but then there was no further need to now. A whimpering moan escaped her lips as he took the light from her, and she felt the first pricks of his needle-like teeth in the yielded flesh of her naked breasts.

Her shaking hand slipped down between her legs as she gave her body to him. Her finger found the quivering source of her ultimate surrender, and her muffled cries of terminal passion became the music for this, her last dance.