Page 13 of Spinning Out of Control

“I like this look,” I said, running my fingers through it. “I wish I could get my hair to do that naturally. I would make millions.”

“Oh?” Teracht asked, tipping his head.

“Back when I was modeling. Getting hair to do cool stuff wasn’t the easiest and would require a lot of shots and time to get it looking right. I know a couple art directors who would kill to have my hair stand up naturally like this.”

Teracht smiled, reaching up his segmented fingers to run them through my blond almost-shoulder-length hair. “I like your hair,” he said, tangling a bit of it around his finger. “It’s beautiful.”

I blushed but held still for him to touch it. I was used to people touching my hair anyway, and this felt like a pretty natural transition into him exploring me. His humanoid fingers ran through my hair, grazing my scalp lightly, then moved from my hairline to my face. He examined my ears closely and peered curiously into my eyes, his own dark ones unnervingly close to me as he did. I realized as I stared back into my own reflection in them that each of his eyes had a small eyelid that allowed it to blink, though they very rarely did, and they did not all necessarily blink at the same time. “Is your vision really good with so many eyes?” I asked curiously.

“Hmm? Not as much as you would think,” Teracht said, pulling back just a bit and waving his hand in the air around him. “It’s better than a human’s, with more lateral and vertical range. I can see almost all the way behind me without turning my head. But I am also more sensitive to light than a human would be.”

“Oh, do you not normally keep the lights on in here?” I asked.

“Not often, though I had dimmers installed so I can control them to a comfortable level.”

“Is this bothering you?” I asked, inclining my head at the airy, light-filled room.

“No, I’m fine,” Teracht reassured me, drawing my attention back to his lips. God, his lips were gorgeous.

“Can I see your… teeth?”

In response, Teracht curled back his lips and opened his mouth for me to peer inside. He had a tongue similar to a human one, though a little more slender and curled upward at the edges, like his own natural straw. I tried not to think too much about that, in either a good way or a prey way. His mouth was shaped similar inside to a human one as well. As he had shown me on our first date, his ‘teeth’ were a hard, flat shell on the top and bottom of his mouth in a similar shape to teeth and seemed to be made of the same material as his legs. “So, can you chew things?” I asked as I peered at them.

“No,” Teracht said, and he actually sounded a little disappointed. “My jaws are actually weaker than yours. I could crush small things like soft fruit, but my diet is better served as liquid.”

“What kind of liquid?” I asked curiously. “Do you like, drink blood?”

“I could, but in this world, I don’t. I drink many liquids, but mostly sports drinks and fruit juices. I mix protein powders into most everything too.”

“What about coffee and soda?” I asked.

Teracht made a face. “The bubbles of soda are strange. Coffee is bitter, and I like sweet things.”

I tried to imagine what surviving on an all-liquid diet would be like. I knew some people did it, and it was unfortunately not uncommon amongst models trying to lose weight and maintain their figure. “Do you have to pee a lot with all that liquid?”

That made Teracht laugh. “No. Most of it is converted into the various elements I use for spinning. I do expel waste for things that do not get processed though.”

Okay, so spider creatures did poop. I was curious, but that felt like a little too intimate to ask about. So, I just nodded. “You are really cool.”

Teracht blinked his human set of eyes. “I am?”

“Yeah. I mean, you’re a giant spider. You spin webs and can climb on the walls and have really awesome skin. That’s all pretty cool.”

He smiled shyly. “Thank you, Caleb.”

I nodded, then jumped a little as his hands caught my face and pressed a soft kiss to my lips. It only lasted a moment before he pulled back again. “May I look at you now?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Um, should I get naked?”

“Do you want to be naked?” Teracht asked.

I hesitated. My lower half was mostly undamaged from the accident, save for a few small scars on my right hip and thigh; the brunt of the glass, metal, and heat had caught my ribs, arm, neck, and face. Other than in surgery or in the shower, I was never naked anymore, and especially not in front of someone else.

Teracht seemed to sense my uneasiness. “It is all right if you do not want to.”

“I just… it’s not pretty,” I said, gesturing to my right side. That was probably obvious to him from my face and the part of my neck that he could see.

“But it is you,” Teracht said.

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