Nimue immediately senses the problem and reaches behind herself to circle my shaft with her fingers and squeezes—hard.
The mounting climax crashes into the obstacle of her grip, and even my toes flex with the agony of it. “You’re pitiless,” I pant. “Cruel and hard-hearted.”
“You were about to come,” she explains poutily. “Before I even had a chance to enjoy you.”
“It seemed that you were enjoying me earlier,” I manage, but my would-be rebuke only makes her mouth tilt up.
“Yes, I was. Very much.”
With hard effort and a final shaky gasp that I can feel in my spine, she manages to slide all the way down onto her fingers, and then once she removes them, she’s completely flush against my pelvis. My cock is so far buried in her that it’s hers now, it belongs completely to her, and she seems to feel the same, because she begins stroking my stomach and chest possessively as she rocks herself on my hips.
“Don’t come,” she orders.
I swallow. “Nimue—”
“Don’t,” she repeats, in a tone that brooks no arguing. And then she goes back to the work of making herself release with my body, riding me all angled forward so her erect little clitoris can catch friction against the hard flat above my cock.
It’s nearly impossible without her fingers clamped around my base, and I struggle. I writhe underneath her, I arch and I strain and I beg.
And Nimue remains merciless through it all, simply humming and tracing the sweat-slicked flesh over my clamped muscles and tendons, as if my labors were a mere curiosity and not torture.
“Nimue, this is the first time for me since the last time I was with you,” I admit hoarsely, trying to force some pity out of her. “A person can’t last after that long.”
She pauses her movements, looking down at me. Her smile has faded into something puzzled. “You meant what you said earlier then,” she says slowly. “About not fucking?”
“I’ve only ever fucked you, Nimue. When I left, I left that part of me with you.”
She seems stunned by this, settling back so her ass rests against my thighs. “Is that why you came back? After the night at the lake?”
“I came back because I decided it didn’t matter if you loved me or not. It only mattered if I loved you, and I thought—hell, I thought—” Even now, buried inside her, knowing that the flush on her cheeks and chest is all from me, the memory stings. “I thought maybe I could find a way past you being with Jack. I thought I could share you if I tried hard enough. I thought: Merlin, some people are made to be with more than one other, and I’m not but you are, and maybe if I just accepted that—”
“When did you come back?” she asks, leaning forward. She braces one hand by my head so the other can stroke at my hair, and the shift of her tight glove over my thick length is enough to make me curse.
“Dawn,” I force out through the pleasure and the strain of keeping my orgasm at bay for her. “The cleaning crew was still working to set the place back to rights and I was able to slip right into the house. I went to your room just in time to hear you come through the door. Come for him.”
“Oh Merlin,” she murmurs, her eyes blinking with tears. Her hand tugs tight in my hair, as if to anchor me to her, as if to assure us both that we’re together now. “I’m so, so sorry. I was angry and hurt and it was so easy to let him help…”
“I know,” I say heavily. “And it’s just as well. Turns out I wasn’t strong enough to share anyway.”
“I don’t want you to share either,” she says. “Because I can’t. I can’t share you. I never want to take that cuff off your ankle, Merlin. I want you to belong to me forever.”
I think I’m crying again.
“Don’t ever take it off then,” I whisper. “Keep me.”
“You’re kept, my love.”
Our eyes lock and heat gathers at my fingertips, along the crown of my scalp and the bottoms of my feet. It’s heat and light and power, and I’ve never done this before, not in this life, except once with Ash and that was only a kiss.
This time, when I offer my lips to Nimue, my body is as close to hers as a body can be. Pressed against her, nestled inside her, marked and bruised by her.
“I’ll give what I can to you,” I breathe, “if you’ll kiss me.”
She kisses me, and all the heat and light and power surge up in my body and then into hers in a transmission that feels like it rips a piece of my soul right out of me.
And I give it gladly, so long as I’m giving it to her.
This was what I wanted all those years ago by the lake. I wanted to suffer for her. And if the welts on my body please her, if the part of my soul that I’m feeding into her soul pleases her, then I’m content.
