Chapter 8: The First Feast
The world came back in pieces.
First, the weight. It was a warmth that pinned her to the furs, solid and breathing. Then, the scent—musky skin, iron, and something faintly sweet, like burnt honey. Finally, the sound: a deep, rhythmic thrum she felt in her bones before she recognized it as a contented growl vibrating through the chest her cheek was pressed against.
Sukuna hadn’t moved. Not really. One set of arms was wrapped loosely around her back, another braced on the stone bed, caging her in without pressure. His lower mouth was silent, his upper pair of eyes closed. The second set, lower on his face, was open, watching the cave’s shadows dance on the far wall. He was still inside her, both cocks soft now but present, a constant, stretching fullness that should have been agony. It wasn’t. It was just… a fact. A part of the landscape of her new body.
Megumi blinked. Her throat was raw. Her legs felt like they belonged to someone else. The mark between her breasts, the one the cult had branded into her skin, pulsed with a low, warm light, matching the slow beat of his hearts.
“You’re thinking too loud.” His voice was a rumble against her ear, rough from use but lacking its usual edge of mockery.
“I’m not thinking anything,” she mumbled into his skin. Her own voice was hoarse.
“Liar.” One of his upper hands moved, brushing sweat-damp hair from her forehead. The gesture was so casually intimate it stole her breath more effectively than any threat. “The little vessel is always thinking. Calculating. Waiting for the terror to return.”
She was. She had been. Waiting for the shift, for the ancient cruelty to reassert itself, for him to toss her aside or bite into her shoulder on a whim. The fear was a ghost, still there, but it was distant now, muted under a layer of exhausted, baffled satiation.
“Does it?” she asked, the question leaving her before she could cage it.
“Does what?”
“The terror. Does it return?”
The lower set of eyes slid to look at her. The red was deeper in the gloom, like cooled embers. “For you? Probably. You’re wired for it. Your whole life was a prelude to a scream.” He shifted then, finally pulling out of her with a slick, gentle sound that made her shiver. She felt unbearably empty, a void where all that pressure and heat had been. He saw her flinch. “But it’s my scream they wanted. Not this. They never imagined this.”
He moved, sitting up with a fluid grace that belied his size. For a moment, he was just a massive silhouette against the glow of the crimson pool. Then he reached down and lifted her as if she weighed nothing, settling her in the cradle of his two primary arms. He carried her away from the soaked furs, toward the edge of the chamber where a smaller, clearer thermal spring bubbled from a crack in the obsidian.
“The meat they send is always tainted with their prayers. The fear tastes like vinegar.” He stepped into the warm water, sinking down until it lapped at her shoulders. His lower arms worked, scooping water over her skin, washing away the evidence of their joining. It was methodical. Almost clinical. But his thumbs stroked over the peaks of her hip bones, a silent contradiction.
“You said… you were bored,” Megumi said, her head resting on his collarbone. The water was bliss.
“I was. For centuries. The same rituals. The same pathetic, gibbering offerings. They’d piss themselves the moment the shadows moved. Then they’d die. It was tedious.” He tilted her head back, rinsing her hair. His touch was firm, thorough. “You were different. You looked at me. Not at the idea of me. You saw the shape in the dark, and your eyes… they didn’t beg for mercy. They just accepted the dark. I hated it. Then I didn’t.”
She remembered. The first time, in the ritual chamber. The cold stone, the chants, the scent of incense meant to mask the smell of blood. She’d been resigned to being torn apart. When he’d loomed over her, she’d stared into the four red suns of his eyes and saw not a god, but a predator. And something in that acknowledgment had made him pause.
“So you kept me.”
“So I kept you.” He lifted her from the water, wrapping her in a dry, impossibly soft hide that hadn’t been there before. He carried her to a different ledge, where the stone was smooth and warm. A low table sat there, holding things that made her stomach clench and then growl.
There was a platter of fruits she didn’t recognize, their skins jewel-toned and translucent, glowing with inner light. Next to it, a haunch of some roasted meat, seared crisp, dripping with fragrant juices. No prayers. No symbolism. Just food.
He sat, arranging her sideways in his lap, her legs over his thigh. He plucked one of the glowing fruits, a purple orb, and held it to her lips. “Eat.”
She hesitated for only a second before parting her lips. The skin burst at the slightest pressure, flooding her mouth with a flavor that was like rain and lightning and sugar. She couldn’t stop the small, pathetic sound that escaped her.
A grin spread across both his mouths. “Good?”
She nodded, chewing. He fed her another piece, then a strip of the meat. It was rich, gamey, perfect. He ate too, but mostly he watched her, his expressions a strange concert: the upper mouth chewing thoughtfully, the lower one smiling softly.
“This place,” Megumi ventured, swallowing. “The pool that mirrors the sky… is it really a wound?”
“It’s a memory,” he said, picking up another fruit. “A memory of the first time this world was cut open. It bleeds because it hasn’t forgotten how. I haven’t, either.” He offered her the fruit. “Your cult worships the wound. They think it’s sacred. It’s just old pain.”
“And you?” The question felt dangerously bold. “Are you just old pain?”
All four of his eyes fixed on her. The air stilled. Then he laughed, a sound that started in his belly-mouth and rolled up through his chest. “Clever girl. Maybe. But I’m also the teeth that made the wound.” He traced the line of her jaw with a single, claw-tipped finger. It didn’t break the skin. “And now, so are you.”
He continued to feed her until she shook her head, full. He then laid her back on the warm stone ledge, the hide beneath her. He loomed over her, a mountain of muscle and intent, but the snarl was gone from his stomach, the cruel gleam absent from his eyes.
“You accepted me,” he stated, as if confirming it to himself. “All of me. That deserves worship.”
Before she could process the word, he moved. His head dipped, and she felt his tongue, broad and hot, lick a stripe up the sole of her foot. She jerked with a gasp. He did it again, slowly, dedicating absolute attention to the arch, the toes, the delicate bones of her ankle. A mouth opened in the palm of his lower right hand, its tongue lapping at the back of her knee.
It was absurd. It was obscene. It was the most focused attention anyone had ever paid to her body without violence.
He worked his way up, a devoted, blasphemous pilgrimage. The inside of her thighs, where she was tender and slick again from his attention. The dip of her hips, the plane of her stomach. His main mouth closed over one small breast, suckling deeply while the mouth on his palm attended to the other, laving the nipple until it was a hard, aching peak. He was mapping her with tongues, rewriting every neural pathway that associated touch with fear or duty.
Her breaths came in short, sharp pants. Her hands, which had been lying limp at her sides, twisted into the fur. A coil of pleasure, tight and urgent, was building low in her belly, different from the overwhelming assault of before. This was a slow, torturous construction.
“Sukuna…” It was half a protest, half a plea.
He ignored her, moving lower again, his primary hands spreading her open for the mouth on his stomach. The broad, flat tongue swept through her folds, and she cried out, back arching. It was too much. It was not enough. He worked her with a devastating precision, the dual attentions of his upper mouth on her breast and his lower on her cunt short-circuiting any thought but more.
The climax, when it broke, was a rolling wave that left her sobbing. He didn’t stop. He gentled his touch, letting her ride the aftershocks, then built her again with relentless patience. She came a second time, a sharper, brighter snap, her vision whiting out at the edges.
Before the tremors had even fully subsided, he was moving over her, aligning his body with hers. One massive hand cradled the back of her head. The other guided the head of one cock to her entrance, already slick and fluttering from her releases.
He pushed in. Just the tip. A thick, impossible stretch that made her gasp. He held there, his four eyes searching her face.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice gravel-rough.
Her green eyes, wide and dazed, found his red ones.
“This,” he said, sinking deeper with a single, relentless thrust that stole the air from her lungs, “is yours. This deity they meant to slaughter you for. He is yours.” He seated himself fully, hilting inside her, a possession so complete it felt like truth. He lowered his head, his forehead touching hers, a shockingly humble gesture. “And you,” he growled, the sound vibrating through both their bodies as he began to move, a slow, deep rhythm that touched her soul, “are my little vessel. My perfect, mortal wound.”
As he moved within her, a strange peace seeped into her marrow, warmer than the spring, brighter than the glowing fruits. The terror was gone. For now, it was just the rhythm, the fullness, and the four red eyes holding hers in the dark, reflecting a girl who was no longer just a sacrifice.
She was a claimed thing. And in this jagged, breathing cavern, at the edge of a weeping wound in the world, being claimed felt, for the first time in her eighteen years, like living.