The Viper Read Online Free PDF Page B

life he had let her believe that he loved her. And perhaps he had done at times, for brief moments. There had been a lot of good things in their relationship … the children. But the feelings between them had always been lukewarm. His feelings toward her had been lukewarm.
    Wasn’t that also a kind of abuse, or at least an act of fraud?
    Now it looked as if he’d be on his own again, in a quiet house out among the fields between Klintebys and Sanda. The children had all left home, busy with their own lives. That was as it should be. He couldn’t burden them. But he felt so goddamn old.
    For far too much of his adult life he had been under the impression that life would just continue. Now he had realized that that was not the case. It wasn’t just that life was shorter than he had imagined. It also ended so much earlier.
    *   *   *
    WHAT WAS HAPPENING to her? It was dark. A pleasurable tickling sensation moved slowly up the length of her inner thigh, brushing gently against her vulva in two counterrotating motions, then up through her stomach, building into an intense feeling of arousal that spread through her entire body and made her start breathing more quickly.
    What was going on with her? Was someone there with her? Anders? No, there was no one there. Was she touching herself? She almost became a bit embarrassed, as if she had caught herself in the act.
    Where did she have her hands? Between her legs? No, one sticking straight out from her body, her forearm underneath the pillow where nobody slept, the other wedged uncomfortably behind her back. No, she was not touching herself. She had an invisible lover. She felt him moving inside her, gently and exquisitely slowly. And the tiniest movement sent jolts of pleasure surging through her entire body. It was like rapidly alternating showers of ice cold and scalding hot water, dangerous extremes constantly cutting each other off on the edge of pain, transforming torture into ecstasy.
    He moved inside her and she could not resist moving toward him, close and closer …
    But what was he doing to her? The slow, undulating movement seemed to go on forever, never turning the reversing, as if it was coming from inside, as if something were on its way out of her. She threw off the covers and sat up in the bed, completely naked, and stared between her splayed legs.
    The glistening, jet-black snake eyes stared coldly into hers from the protrusions on the creature’s head. Ice cold and unable to move she saw the zigzag pattern of the viper slither out from her vagina; her arousal vanished in an instant. The only physical sensation that remained felt like the cold from rocks plucked from so deep beneath the earth that they have not been touched by any warmth for a thousand years.
    The scaly snakeskin glistened, greased by her vagina. It moved more quickly now that it was outside her, rustling softly as it coiled through her pubic hair, out over her stomach. She didn’t feel the snake’s movements, just that profound coldness rising up through her back from the depths of the earth.
    It came ever closer, its head swaying gently back and forth apace with the movements propelling it forward. It reached her right breast, its black eyes seeming to see everything and nothing. It opened its gaping maw, bared its long fangs, and in the next moment it lunged. The snake’s teeth sank deeply into her dark red areola and the pain …
    Kristina opened her eyes. A few quick, panicked glances around the room to orient herself in time and space. The sofa in the living room, the afternoon sun low in the sky outside the window.
    Her chest was heaving rapidly and convulsively. She sat up slowly, her left arm completely numb, her other hand reaching unconsciously for her breast beneath the sheer, white wool of her cardigan. Her mind was completely blank. Not a single thought except for the memory of the terror she had felt as the snake buried its fangs into her flesh.
    Slowly she regained her