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Laying flat on the bed, Arthur and Vespa heaved with uneven breaths, their sweaty skin glistening in the light of his room. Both of them were disheveled, but while Arthur still looked out of it, Vespa seemed to be recuperating faster, crawling along the bed up to him and placing her hand on his chest, rubbing against it.
"Honey, you can go another round for me, right?" She looked at him with a smug expression, teasing, trying to get him riled up. "I still haven't had enough to satisfy myself."
Arthur, knowing exactly what she wanted, took her hand and rubbed his own against it, meeting her eyes.
"Who do you take me for? I ain't some lowly demon who can only last a couple rounds. I still got all night left in me."
"Oh really?" Vespa's smile sharpened. "Then let's put that to the test."
And so they did.
They tossed and turned for the rest of the night, getting lost in the body of each other, folding into one another until the sun had started to shine through the windows and cast a warm light across the room.
The sight that laid out before them was nothing short of a battlefield. Arthur and Vespa lay sprawled across the bed looking like they'd each just run a marathon, with Arthur looking like he'd lost weight, his cheeks slightly hollow, his skin pale from the drain, and Vespa looking like she'd been dipped in a vat of sticky liquid, her dark skin glazed and glistening from head to toe. Both of them were completely out of it.
However, even in his perilous state, Arthur knew there was one last thing to do.
His bloodline called out to him from his chest, radiant with a heat different from the fire he felt in his loins. This wasn't lust. This was his own bloodline telling him it was time. Time to make Vespa his. To mark her as one of his own.
And so, pushing off the bed with the last of his strength, Arthur positioned himself over Vespa, who didn't even realize he was looming above her.
"Honey, you still there?"
Vespa's eyes fluttered up to him, some of the glassy look fading as she focused on his face.
"Yes, babe. I'm still here." She licked her lips. "You wanna go another round?"
Shaking his head, Arthur wore a wary look on his face, as if going another round might mean he wouldn't see the next day.
"I actually have a different idea. See, all night you've been using your bloodline to take advantage of me." He held her gaze. "I think it's time I get to use my own."
Vespa blinked in surprise. The fact that Arthur hadn't used his bloodline this entire time, that he'd gone toe to toe with a succubus who had the Queen's blood running through her veins on nothing but raw skill, really said something about his abilities.
"Oh?" She tilted her head, genuinely curious. "And what can your bloodline do that you haven't already done to me tonight?"
"Well, that's going to be a surprise." Arthur's expression didn't give anything away. "So how about you just relax and let me do my work."
Arthur sat across Vespa's chocolate-colored stomach, and took his hands and placed them along her breasts, gripping hard enough to make her moan.
"Ahh, Arthur—"
Having been touched and used by Arthur all night, Vespa was familiar with his hands by now, but her bloodline made it so that every time felt just as good as the first, every interaction hitting with the same intensity as if her body had been designed to never grow numb to pleasure.
And then the tattoo along Arthur's chest started to glow.
A blue hue radiated from his skin as an ancient feeling filled the room, heavy and vast, pressing against the walls like something old had just woken up. Vespa, even in her haze, looked up in surprise at the runes and glyphs spiraling through the air above them, her amber eyes widening with a recognition that suggested she knew more about what she was seeing than Arthur did.
Before she could comment, the symbols circled around her body and flooded into her chest through his hands, sending waves of pleasure crashing through her that made everything they'd done all night feel like a warm-up.
"AHAHAHA—!"
Vespa moaned louder than she had all night, her body convulsing in pleasure as the Mark burned its way through her, making her feel like she was on cloud nine, her back arching off the mattress, her tail snapping rigid, every nerve in her body firing at once.
Arthur, seeing her body seized up in pleasure, smiled knowing that this would satisfy her for the night and that she wouldn't have the energy to continue. He didn't even care about the strategic value of what he'd just done, didn't care that he was gaining a succubus as a marked woman, one that would let him cultivate even faster than before.
All he cared about in that moment was the fact that she wouldn't be asking for another round, because he genuinely didn't think he could survive one.
With a final flash of light the glyphs and runes faded, leaving just Arthur and Vespa in the quiet of the morning. Along Vespa's ankle a flash of light could be seen, and from it something began to grow, crawling up her leg all the way to her inner thigh, wrapping around the dark skin in coils of luminous white.
A serpent of pure white ink took shape, winding along her left leg in a spiral that looked almost alive against her deep ebony complexion.
And then a second flash appeared at her left wrist.
The same white light bloomed against her dark skin and began to crawl upward, another serpent taking shape as it wound its way up her forearm, coiling past her elbow and wrapping around her bicep in the same deliberate spiral as its twin.
It finished just beneath her armpit, the serpent's tail tucking itself against her skin as if it had always been there. Both marks mirrored each other, twin serpents of pure white etched into her left side, one on the leg and one on the arm, each scale rendered in fine detail that made the ink look like it was breathing.
The blue light pulsed once more, bright enough to fill the room, and then faded.
Vespa's body went limp.
She lay there trembling, her chest heaving, her amber eyes wide and unfocused as the last of the convulsions worked their way out of her. The serpent tattoos glowed faintly against her dark skin for a few seconds before settling into something permanent, white lines woven into her ebony complexion like they'd always been part of her.
Arthur pulled his hands from her breasts and sat back, still straddling her stomach, looking down at what the Mark had chosen.
His eyes traced the serpent on her leg, following the white coils from her ankle up past her calf, over her knee, and along her inner thigh where the head came to rest. Then he looked at her arm, where the second serpent wound from her wrist up to her shoulder in an identical path. The white ink against her dark chocolate skin was striking in a way that turned her body into something you couldn't look away from, each serpent vivid and sharp against the deep tone of her complexion.
He ran his fingers along the one on her arm, tracing the scales, and the tattoo pulsed warm beneath his touch as if it recognized him.
"Beautiful."
The word left him before he could stop it.
Vespa blinked slowly, her breathing still ragged, her face coming back to reality as her bloodline worked to settle what had just torn through her. She lifted her left arm in front of her face, turning it in the morning light, her amber eyes following the white serpent that now coiled permanently around her skin. Then she looked down at her leg, tracing the matching design from her thigh to her ankle.
Her lips parted.
"Honey." Her voice came out barely above a whisper, still shaking at the edges. "What did you do to me?"
Arthur looked down at her, his expression flat for a moment before the corner of his mouth curved up.
"Welcome to the Webb family, Vespa." He held her gaze.