Along Came a Spider Read Online Free PDF

seemed to fade into a dream I was terrified of waking from.  The smell of rich, dark chocolate overpowered my senses as two steaming cups were placed before us.
    Mocha smiled as she delicately sprinkled a soft rain of chocolaty powder onto two frothy heads of steamed milk.  “A very special blend,” she remarked, topping off the delicate artistry with a sprinkling of chocolate shavings.  She pushed one cup toward me.
    As I lifted it towards my trembling lips, steam moistening my beard, my brain was drowned in sweet cocoa, cinnamon and fragrant spices that made me think of warm trade winds laced with the fragrance of hibiscus.  My memories seemed to fade into swirling clouds of mocha.
    I started to blow gently on the steaming brew, and her eyes flared in irritation.  “Caution is like bits of death,” she whispered sternly.
    The power behind those dark eyes driving me, I gulped and swallowed.  The hot liquid seared my lips and burned like fire going down my throat, burning like molten iron in my chest.  I took a deep breath, my flesh prickling with heat, the ice clinging to my coat seeming to melt and turn to rising steam, as if my blood were an inferno.
    “Good,” she said with a wry smile, stroking my hand, as if rewarding me.  As my blood raced, I felt a part of my very being bleeding into her through our interlocking fingers, as though she had pulled a thread, a tapestry unraveling.  I glanced up, then gasped in disbelief.  My reflection in the window was subtly but undeniably changing.  The lines in my face were fading, my hair streaking darker even as my heart rate accelerated.
    I was only dimly aware of her paying the tab and leading me into an elevator that led to rooms upstairs.  I was helpless, and I didn’t care.  In my lusty youth, I’d never dared progress beyond a meaningless physical encounter.  Through the years as my youth had faded into ‘distinguished’ age, I’d never married, never dared become entangled with any woman I couldn’t dazzle or control.  Like the naïve student girls I could easily seduce with intellectual bluster that passed as wisdom and stories of far-flung travels.  Effortless, pretty little conquests that made me feel alive for a night or two.  I always had to be in control, like a researcher with his experiments.  The thought of surrendering myself to life’s wild rapids had always petrified me.  Until that night.
    Words had always been my life.  But for once, I can joyously report that they fail me completely in describing what followed.  Tangy salt licks in flaming darkness, like the moon over the sea.  My tongue was a probing explorer in her dark, sweet nether regions, a taste like honey and mangos coating the throbbing walls…
    She drew from me, my seed like sweet ambrosia on her tongue by the look of delight on her face.  The longer she drew, the longer and stronger I became.  She opened herself, coiling her legs around me, crushing me like a boa constrictor, her nails like claws digging into my back as I thrust deep, deep, deep to the center of the world.  She moaned.  Then, she turned with almost superhuman strength, gaining the dominant position and sliding down me as if I were a pole of sturdy oak.  Sweet, delicious agony filled me and I wanted it never to stop.  The bed seemed to turn to fire, blood-red flames against pitch blackness.  She was draining me, like a succubus.
    And, the miracle beyond the dark miracle was that the more she took from me, the stronger I became.  I didn’t feel fatigued or emptied.  For you see…it wasn’t energy or virility she was leeching out of me.  It was time.  My age, my experiences…all those empty, wasted years…were flowing out of me and into her.
    She changed before my terrified, awe-stricken eyes, her form as fluid as thought, her size and shape morphing as in a dream.  Against a shifting background of stars, nebulae and spiral galaxies, I saw immense, iridescent wings of multicolored,