Chapter 14: Progress of Pregnancy
The months that followed were a new kind of torment, a slow simmer where before there had been a roaring fire. The initial, frantic secrecy of the cellar was replaced by a grinding, public performance. Briya’s body changed, day by day, a living monument to the secret. Her waist thickened, her belly beginning a firm, undeniable swell beneath her tunics. But it was her breasts that transformed most drastically, becoming heavy, veined orbs that ached with a persistent, deep fullness, straining the seams of all her clothes.
Snake, ever present, ever the devoted friend to the happy couple, adjusted his tactics with the precision of a master strategist. The raw, claiming possession of the cellar was shelved. In its place was a campaign of meticulous, maddening attrition.
He found reasons to touch her. A steadying hand at her elbow as she navigated the inn’s uneven stairs. A brush of his fingers against hers as he passed her a tankard. His gaze, heavy and knowing, would linger on the new pull of fabric across her chest during meals, a ghost of a smile on his lips when she shifted uncomfortably under the weight of his look and her own anatomy.
Rain noticed none of it. His world had narrowed to a tunnel of delighted, anxious preparation. He was building a crib, his magic fumbling with simple cantrips to smooth wood and strengthen joints. He pored over herbal texts for remedies for morning sickness, which Briya suffered from only mildly—a fact Snake privately noted as a sign of his robust offspring. Rain’s touch was loving, gentle, always careful of her “condition.” His lovemaking, once a sweet and fumbling expression of affection, had ceased entirely out of a protective fear of harming the babies. He treated her like a cherished, fragile vase.
Snake treated her like a denied addict.
One evening, Rain was out in the stable, trying to magically reinforce the old wagon for the future journey to a proper home. Briya was in the common room, attempting to mend a cloak, her fingers clumsy. Snake slid onto the bench beside her, too close. The room was mostly empty, the fire dying to embers.
“You look tense,” he said, his voice low and conversational.
“I’m fine,” she muttered, not looking up from her stitching.
“No, you’re not. Your shoulders are up by your ears. That can’t be good for them.” He said ‘them’ so easily, as if everyone knew. He moved behind her on the bench. Before she could protest, his hands were on her shoulders, his thumbs digging into the knotted muscles at the base of her neck.
She stiffened, a jolt of alarm shooting through her. “Don’t—”
“Hush,” he murmured, his breath stirring the hairs at her temple. “Just being a friend. Helping the mother-to-be. Rain would appreciate it.”
His hands were strong, knowing. They worked the tension away with a skill that was utterly disarming. Then they drifted lower, skimming down her spine before sliding around to her sides, just beneath the heavy, aching swell of her breasts. He didn’t cup them. He just held his hands there, a breath away, his heat soaking through the linen of her dress. She could feel every callus on his palms.
“They’re hurting you,” he stated. It wasn’t a question.
She swallowed, her needle frozen in mid-air. “They’re… heavy.”
“Let me.”
His hands finally moved up, covering the full, straining curves. He didn’t grope or knead. He simply held their weight, lifting them slightly, taking the unbearable pressure off her ribs and back for a moment. A moan, purely of relief, escaped her lips before she could trap it. His thumbs began to move then, in slow, deliberate circles on the sore, tight skin, avoiding the sensitive peaks but soothing the deep ache. It was clinical and intimate all at once.
“Better?” he whispered, his lips now close enough to her ear that they touched skin.
She nodded, helpless, her eyes closing. It was a medical necessity. That’s what she told herself. A friend helping. The lie was as thin as parchment.
This became the pattern. In stolen moments—when Rain was fetching water, consulting a map, lost in a book—Snake would administer his relief. A massage of her neck that somehow always ended with his hands possessive on her hips. A foot rub by the hearth that left her trembling for an entirely different reason. And always, the attention to her breasts. He was a collector maintaining his most prized artifacts, ensuring they were preserved, their value increasing. He would note their growth, the darkening of the areolas, the increased sensitivity, with the detached interest of a farmer assessing livestock.
“Coming along nicely,” he’d say, his tone casual, as if commenting on the weather.
He never took it further. He never tried to kiss her, never undressed her, never guided her hand to him. He confined himself to these torturous, therapeutic touches. The promise of the cellar, the memory of being utterly filled and claimed, hung between them, a phantom limb she could feel but not grasp. Her desire, banked and smothered by guilt and fear, began to rekindle into a low, constant thrum of need. It was a thirst he pointedly refused to quench.
The only concession he allowed was the use of her mouth. It was never about her pleasure. It was a lesson in service, a reminder of her place. He would corner her in the empty pantry, the air thick with the smell of onions and dried sage. He wouldn’t speak. He’d just look at her, then down at the front of his trousers. She understood. The first time, she cried silently the entire time, tears mixing with the bitter salt of him. He stroked her hair, her ponytail gripped in his fist not to hurt her, but to guide her, murmuring, “Good. Just like that. You learn fast.”
By the time her pregnancy bloomed fully into the second trimester, Briya was a live wire of frustrated need. Her belly was a taut, prominent dome. Her breasts were monumental, heavy milk-tanks that leaked faintly at the most inopportune times, leaving embarrassing, sticky patches on her dress. Rain adored it. He talked to her belly, sang to it, marveled at every kick. His joy was a spotlight, and she squirmed under its blinding, innocent heat.
Snake watched. And waited. The teasing touches continued, but now his eyes held a different glint. The patient fisherman seeing the line go taut.
The breaking point came on a night thick with summer heat. Rain, exhausted from a day of unsuccessful magic aimed at enchanting a mobile for the crib, fell into a deep, immediate sleep. Briya lay beside him, slick with sweat, every nerve ending screaming. The babies were active, tumbling inside her, a constant reminder. Her breasts throbbed. Between her legs, a different, sharper ache pulsed, an emptiness that was a physical pain. It had been months. Months of his hands and his mouth and his voice and nothing else. The memory of his possession in the cellar was all she could think about, a talisman she clung to in the desert of her marriage bed.
She couldn’t stand it.
She slipped from the bed, her movements awkward with her new weight. She didn’t think. She pulled a light robe over her shift and padded out of the room, down the silent hall. She didn’t hesitate at his door. She turned the handle. It was unlocked. He’d been expecting her.
His room was as described: a pocket of opulent darkness. Velvet drapes shut out the moon. The air was stale with spiced wine, male sweat, and the residual scent of their last encounter, which seemed to have seeped into the very mahogany. A single candle guttered on a bedside table, its light dancing over tapestries that depicted scenes of conquest that now felt less like art and more like instruction.
Snake was not asleep. He was seated in a high-backed chair by the dead fireplace, a cup of wine in his hand. He was shirtless, his lean torso a landscape of muscle and old scars in the low light. He watched her enter, saying nothing.
Briya stood just inside the door, the threadbare innocence of her nightclothes suddenly ridiculous. The words she’d practiced vanished. All that remained was the raw, humiliating need.
“I can’t,” she started, her voice a rasp. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Do what?” he asked softly. He took a slow sip of wine.
“This… this waiting. This teasing.” She took a step forward, her hands clutched at her swollen belly. “It hurts.”
“What hurts?”
“You know what hurts!” The words came out a hissed whisper. “Everything. I need… I need you to…”
“You need me to what, Briya?” He set the cup down. The click on the wood was deafening. “Use your words.”
She was shaking. The last vestiges of her pride, the ghost of the swordswoman she’d been, dissolved. She let her robe slide from her shoulders. She gripped the hem of her thin linen shift and pulled it up, over her head, and let it fall to the floor.
The candlelight played over her. The transformation was profound. Her stomach was a high, round curve, skin stretched tight and gleaming. A dark line ran from her navel down into the shadow between her legs. Her breasts were colossal, full and low, the nipples dark and pronounced against the pale, veined skin. Her hips had widened, her ass rounding even further to balance the front weight. She was the image of fertile abundance, a sculpture of pregnancy. But her eyes were desperate, shattered.
“Look,” she pleaded, her voice breaking. “Look what you did. This is yours. All of it. And I… I need my husband. Please.”
The old title, the one from the cellar, slipped out. It wasn’t a mistake.
Snake’s controlled facade cracked. A raw, hungry sound escaped him. He rose from the chair, and she saw the formidable evidence of his own months of denial straining against his trousers. The sight sent a fresh flood of warmth between her thighs.
“My masterpiece,” he breathed, crossing the room to her. He didn’t touch her yet. He circled her, his gaze a physical scrape on her skin. He looked his fill, from the heavy fall of her crimson hair over one shoulder, down the slope of her back to the swell of her ass, down her sturdy legs. He came to stand in front of her, his eyes on her belly. He finally reached out, placing both hands on the curve, spanning the width of it. He felt a kick, strong and insistent, against his palm.
A possessive, terrifying joy lit his face. “Strong,” he murmured.
Then his eyes locked on hers. The patience, the strategy, evaporated. What was left was pure, unrefined hunger. The months of restraint had forged a weapon, and now he was unleashing it.
“On the bed,” he said, the command leaving no room for anything else. “On your hands and knees.”
She scrambled to obey, her body cumbersome. The sheets were cool and smelled of him. She got into position, the weight of her belly hanging heavy, a vulnerable pendulum. She heard the rustle of his clothes, the sound of a vial, and then he was behind her. There was no gentle testing, no careful preparation. He was done with preliminaries.
He positioned himself and pushed forward. The stretch was breathtaking, a searing, impossible fullness that made her cry out into the mattress. He was larger than her memory, or perhaps she had simply forgotten the shocking scale of him. He didn’t pause, didn’t ease in. He seated himself to the hilt in one brutal, conquering thrust.
“Gods,” he grunted, his hands clamping onto her hips like vices. “Forgot how perfect this is. How you’re made for this.”
He began to move, and it was nothing like before. This was not the controlled claiming of the cellar. This was a raw, frantic release. He fucked her with a devastating, piston-like rhythm, each stroke deep and punishing, driven by months of pent-up desire. The bedframe, that monstrous iron construction, slammed against the wall with a rhythmic, groaning thud. The sound was obscenely loud in the silent inn.
Briya was beyond thought. The pain of the stretch melted into a crescendo of overwhelming sensation. His relentless penetration touched something deep, something that made her see stars. Her breasts, swaying heavily with each violent impact, ached wonderfully. She was so full—of him, of his children, of his will. She was a vessel, and he was proving he still owned every inch of the container.
“This,” he panted, his voice ragged, “this is what you needed. Not his gentle little hands. This. Admit it.”
“Yes!” she sobbed, the word torn from her with each drive. “Yes!”
“Who do you belong to?”
“You! You!”
“And who’s in here?” He hammered into her, his fingers digging bruises into her flesh.
“You are! Only you!”
Her climax hit her like a seizure, a wave of intense, shattering pleasure that seemed to originate from the very core he was battering. She screamed, a muffled, desperate sound into the sheets, her body clamping around him in rhythmic pulses.
It triggered his own release. With a guttural roar he buried himself as deep as he could go, flooding her with a heat that felt branding. He held there, pulsing, for what felt like an eternity, his body bowed over hers.
But he wasn’t done. The dam was broken.
He withdrew, turned her onto her back, her belly a proud mound between them. He looked at her, her face flushed and tear-streaked, her body splayed and used. His eyes were wild, insatiable.
“Again,” he said, his voice hoarse.
He took her again, in a different way, his mouth claiming hers in a bruising kiss as he entered her, somehow finding a new angle that made her gasp. This was slower, deeper, more intimate and somehow more devastating. He watched her face as he moved, his expression one of ravenous fascination. He kissed her throat, her collarbones, took one of her heavy, leaking breasts into his mouth, suckling roughly as he thrust. The dual sensation—the pull on her nipple and the deep, grinding friction within—drove her to another peak, this one a slow, cresting wave that left her whimpering.
He followed her over, his release quieter this time, a shuddering sigh against her damp skin.
He still didn’t stop. The night blurred into a carousel of position and possession. Against the wall, her hands flat on the cool tapestry. On the edge of the table, him standing before her. Each time was a re-conquest, a reassertion of a dominion he had never really relinquished. He was exhausting a hunger that had been building as long as hers had, and his stamina was boundless. He used her mouth again, not as a lesson, but as a simple, brutal claiming. He took her from behind once more, his pace finally slowing as dawn tinged the edges of the drapes grey.
Briya was a ruin. Sore, dripping, trembling with exhaustion and saturated pleasure. Her body was a map of his attention: bites, bruises, the sticky evidence of his possession both inside and out. She lay on her side, her great belly before her, utterly spent.
Snake collapsed beside her, his own breathing labored. He draped a heavy arm over her hip, his hand splayed possessively on her stomach. He was silent for a long time, just feeling the life stir under his palm.
“You came to me,” he said finally, his voice a low rumble of pure satisfaction. “You broke. I knew you would.”
She had no answer. He was right.
“This changes nothing with him,” he said, the strategic mind reasserting itself even in his exhaustion. “You’re just a pregnant wife with… needs. Needs your gentle husband can’t meet. You’ll come to me when you need to. And you will need to.” He pressed a kiss to her shoulder, a strangely tender gesture amidst the wreckage. “My beautiful, greedy thing. My masterpiece.”
As the first real light of dawn threatened the room, he nudged her. “Go. Before he wakes.”
Moving was agony. Every muscle protested. She gathered her shift and robe, her movements slow and pained. She dressed, the fabric clinging to her damp, marked skin.
At the door, she looked back. He was already asleep, a faint, triumphant smile on his lips, one hand still curled as if around the curve of her absent belly.
She crept back to her room. Rain slept on, undisturbed. She slid into bed, the smell of Snake, of sex, of their long night, clinging to her like a second skin. As she lay there, the first genuine kicks of the morning began, strong and vigorous, a silent applause from within for the father who had finally, thoroughly, reclaimed his throne.