Chapter Text
Wanted, wanted: little mouse.
Hair: blonde. Lips: scarlet.
Where is she hiding in his house?
Why are you hiding, darling?(*)
There she lay.
There she lay, his temptress : face down, her hair unbraided, her body naked but for the lace of her knickers, on their enormous four-poster bed.
There he stood.
There he stood at the door, rapt. The red pillow, the excessive, creamy silk pillow she lay on was so soft and deep that her face was almost hidden, but he could still see the high curve of her cheek, her small flushed ear. There was something innocent about the way her legs were splayed, childlike about the way her hands were tucked under her breasts.
Her innocence is nothing but a sweet little lie, and this sweet little thing doth lie, oh doth she lie.
His Archduch*ess lay there, passive, soft, his belle de jour, his sleeping beauty. A delicate snore escapes her lips. Such a perfectly mortal thing, a defenseless thing, an irresistible bait.
His Archduch*ess is elsewhere, in realms where he is barred from entry. Scarcely anything escapes his control now; yet her dreams are her sanctuary. He watches her inhale and exhale in slumber's grasp, he notes the rhythmic ebb and flow of her lush bosom's rise and fall.
Her eroticism is his oblivion.
Her skin, oh her skin, is pure liquid silk and it's so soft to touch and utterly void of even the smallest blemish. He yearns to see this vixen flayed bloody raw to strip her perfect skin of its tyrannical hold over him.
He kneels before her splayed legs like a suppliant, but it's futile to beg for mercy from her: for she, his Archduch*ess, is bereft of mercy – her cruelty dwarfs his own.
He touches the satin fabric of her undergarments which are dampened by her desire. “What do you dream about, mouse?", he asks, his fangs nibbling the tender terrain of her thighs. "Whom do you dream about?".
She remains silent, ever the tease, ever the provocateur, and he feels a rush of desire which is almost painful.
Who could she possibly be dreaming about that would cause the wet stain on that beige satin, that nymph harlot of his?
He kneels and he pulls away her knickers to probe her, and his tongue encounters her wetness, thick and syrupy - she is in the middle of her lunar cycle. His body jolts at this realization and aching need - she is fertile - she commands him to perform his duties.
More sons, strong, powerful hellspawns, more sons to pit against each other, to ensure the survival of only the ones who prove their mettle, to ensure his legacy for eons to come. Daughters bring naught but a handful of cubs, his sons will have thousands of women swell for them.
Her eyes flicker half-open and all he can see is the stark white.
“Raphael?” she asks in her dream, as if not sure; and why is she not? Who else does the vixen expect to lay between her legs in their bedroom?
He lullabies her with his soporific enchantment, not ready to part with the power that is being her voyeur and violator.
“Sleep, my darling wife”, he hushes, and her face softens and her lips part and she tosses her head back and lets a small, child-like whimper.
He showers his sleeping beauty with lascivious caresses, the skin of her thighs gooseflesh under his fingertips. He is generous with his attention, tasting her juices as if they hold the secret to who occupies her thoughts, as if his tongue could coax the truth from her.
She whimpers and moans but betrays nothing, her lips and mind sealed.
She need not tell; he has a vast imagination.
He imagines catching her in flagranti with his own brother, their bodies obscenely knotted, her small hands grabbing his spiral horns and her slim ankles forming a vice around Valefar’s back. He imagines: her crying out vulgarities, his brother flicking his tail in delight.
Oh, that whor* of Babylon, that Messalina, Circe, Jezebel, oh, his bane and downfall, hiding behind her veneer of porcelain skin and rose-tinted nipples and the scent of honeydew.
Wildly, he pursues the shadow of her infidelity. He positions her supine and unfurls her under his weight. Her transgressions, so vivid in his imagination, make a savage out of him.
He imagines how he decapitates his brother before her very eyes and stakes claim on her beside the still-warm corpse. Oh, would she whine and sob and garble apologies and plead for mercy, oh, would he give her none.
He sheaths himself inside of her, in this silky soft scabbard, which is his right, and she gasps and winces and she utters a soft ‘ow!‘, and he tastes the pang of pain off her lips, her Boticellian pink lips, the color of raw rose.
His claws tug at her skin, marring her, and this is his right too. Tears form in the corners of her eyes, and oh! such tears she has! never before had he seen tears of that size and brilliance. His tongue pilfers them from her skin, to which she responds with a slight toss of her head.
He punishes her for the phantoms of any other that might have haunted her golden-tressed little head, and her lax and defenseless body shakes with the cadence of her chastisem*nt.
Many dream of pressing their weight onto her, oh, of that he has no doubt. Other devils covet her, and rightly so; let them squirm in the throes of envy and desire, let them gag on their impotence, and let them watch, for they will never have her because she is his and only his.
She dares not dream of any other. She dares not think of any other. She dares not look. She dares not dream…
Oh, but she does, the little serpent, the viper. What does she do when he does not look? He recalls his father's frayed lips whispering too near her round little ear as Mephistopheles dubs her his cherished daughter-in-law, and she musters a forced smile. He remembers her overdone laugh at Mammon’s tasteless jest, eyes gleaming. What does she hide, what does she plot?
He thrusts her open, he lays her bare, his fingers and tongue and manhood know naught the limits of his possession, and yet the only truth his interrogation elicits are her soft moans.
Oh how cruel she is to him! Always has been. Mocking him even when asleep with that La Gioconda smile of hers. Man covets; woman is coveted. This is a woman's singular yet significant edge. Woman knows of her power and will abuse it given the opportunity.
After all, what's power for if not to abuse?
He seizes her by the wrists and tries to kiss her, but she tilts her head to the side and his lips meet only her cheekbone. He stares into her soul taking in her lust, pride, ambition; but her soul is not his; it's hers.
Yet.
"I adore you, my little mouse", he breathes into her sleeping face. These insipid, cliche, mortal words mean nothing but he wants to taste them and they taste bitter. He thinks surely now, she would snap out of reverie just to open her lips into a scornful laugh at his confession.
But no, she sleeps, an expression of capricious boredom on her languid features, her cheeks flushed from his kisses.
She will use this weakness against him. The others will too, those others who always wanted to see him fail, ever since birth. All those others waiting for their turn to mock him, cheering for his downfall.
Weakness is a contagious disease, the most contagious of all diseases. Let it inside his Layer, his domain and his marriage and watch them crumble and bury him underneath.
His Archduch*ess despises weakness, and so she must, or she wouldn’t be his Archduch*ess. She cannot know of any of his weaknesses, and she will not. The failures on the Eastern Blood War Front, the rebellions, the debt chokehold Mammon has on him, the legions who still pledge their allegiance more readily to his father than to him.
She cannot know that or... his fears.
What fears?
He has none . He fears not. He, the Archdevil of Avernus, is feared. He claimed his power, he took his thrones, he forced the first Layer to his knees; he needs but to maintain it, to control it, to…
Never let her go.
She will never dare to leave him. She knows that. There is just one escape from him and that is death.
“Do you know that, mouse?”, he says, his thrusts underscoring his question, his hands around her alabaster neck.
She stirs. She moans. He hushes; she should sleep. So he could tell her all the things he shouldn't.
If only he would just have more power. More souls under his command, more treasures in his coffers, more armies marching at his beck and call, more layers of Hells—these are what he needs to truly possess her.
Power is the only thing women ever respect, mortal or not. He's seen this tale play out a thousand times; they chatter of love but only kneel before the mighty. Should a stronger contender emerge, should he exhibit any frailty, they...
No. No. She will never leave him. Nobody can give her what he can.
He feels her walls flutter around him and he knows: she bewitched him.That's why her sweat, her tears, her juices taste so divine, that’s why he is hopelessly shackled to what is between her thighs. She bewitched him to try to weaken him and…
She. Will. Pay. For. It.
"You are becoming a heel, son", he hears his father's acidic voice; he hears it always, every day, a never-ending reminder of his shortcomings. "Let her taste your whip, let her taste it daily, or she will make you a slave to hers”.
The old coot is right. He ordered her to get his firstborn back in their house; and she made her little face, and she pleaded “you promised, Raphael, please, you promised”, and what did he say?
Nothing. He is becoming a heel, a wretched lovesick fool.
He let her get away with too much. What hasn't he given her? The Archduch*ess swims in riches, his beautiful, passionate, cruel, and despotic mistress who wantonly changes her whims every passing day.
His most prized possession, the crown jewel of his hoard, and yet this treasure thirsts for more of her own.
Women.
They never have quite enough, no matter how much you give them. Glasia sits on piles of gemstones, Fiera has her own temples upon temples of souls, Baalphegor got an entire plane as her tribute. Yet, is their thirst ever quenched?
Never . There is always another man who could give them more . He needs to compete with everyone, every single day, and he needs to make sure his Archduch*ess has more today than there was yesterday, so she would never, ever... He dances to the tune of the infernal chant, the empty promise of infinite growth: more, more, more.
He needs more from her too, and he takes more, hips grinding with a savage rhythm, forcing his wife down into the mattress.
You can only hurt those you love, and they are the only ones who can truly hurt you back.
His thoughts wander to her whip, he thirsts for her strike, longing for her to lay pain upon him, longing for his Venus in Furs to mark him as her captive, to see the passion flare in her sharp blue eyes as she raises her unforgiving hand. Oh, cruel thing, cruel, capricious thing, his little mouse.
Pain is their shared delicacy, both of them the finest of gourmets, and they spoon-feed it to each other every night.
He unleashes the hot poison of his loins into her and her toes twitch, her mouth agape, and there's a strand of saliva down her chin and that too he claims as his own. His thumb rubs her between the legs until he sees right through her body to watch her womb contract; once, twice, thrice, the little ripples through her body, and he is satisfied with her satisfaction.
He is more charitable than he thinks.
He draws his tongue across her damp brow and whispers words of love that would never see the light of the day. She's already basking in admiration and flattery; no need to slake her insatiable ego any further.
The Archduch*ess sighs and curls away from him, knees to her chest, leaving him to stare at the cleft of her buttocks and her slit moist with his seed.
She will wake up come morning with a dull ache between her legs and might even have the audacity to reprimand him for his nightly fervor but he knows, he knows, ever since the first day he made her his own:
She loves it.
