6
The next week is brutal. Glorious. Cum-drippingly magical.
Nimue binds me, beats me, jerks me, fucks me. She covers my face with her sweet cunt until she’s satisfied, she uses my penis to pleasure herself in any way she sees fit. In the morning, she washes me in the shower and grooms me, although she says she likes the silver-streaked stubble on my jaw too much to shave it.
She feeds me. Sings to me. Plays chess with me.
Sometimes I cook for her, the simple dishes I remember from my childhood, and she often has me read aloud to her, books of folklore and history and also the occasional murder mystery.
At night, she crawls into bed with me and tucks herself into my arms. And that’s the most glorious thing of all.
When I am in my right mind—that is to say, when I’m not hard for her, which is very rarely—I try to remind myself to keep the glimmer and sight to myself. The more sparingly I dole it out perhaps, the longer I can live, because once I’ve shared all I have with her, then what other reason will fate have to keep me alive?
But it’s not so easy as all that, oh no. Not when I’m gagged and tear-streaked as Nimue finally lets me come all over my belly. Not when she’s paddling me or flogging me. Especially not when she hooks her thigh over my hip in the quiet cocoon of my bedroom-cum-prison-cell and guides me inside her, grinding herself to a sweet, slow orgasm.
No, it’s not easy at all.
“I’ve wanted this since the day I met you,” she whispers in my ear as she fucks herself on my erection. “To break you open and crawl inside. To make your mystery my own and spend the rest of my life wrapped up inside it. Exploring it. Forever.”
I used to think myself a strong man. But no man is strong enough to stop a beautiful woman from eating his heart.
Sometimes I just stare at her and think how? How can she be so lovely and perfect? How can I still love her more than I love myself? When she is my doom?
The day of the midwinter solstice comes with a gloom of sideways rain and an assault of hateful wind. I wake to Nimue standing by the window, all shadows and rain-silvered as she watches the storm move over the island.
“It’s already the longest night of the year,” she murmurs. “But this storm makes it seem even longer.”
It does indeed seem like some kind of near-night outside, a twilight that lasts all day, and it also makes me never want to leave the bed.
Not that I could anyway, since Nimue chains me to it every night.
“Come back,” I plead, reaching for her. I want her silky head tucked under my chin, her slender hands cradled between my chest and hers as I hold her. I’ve waited for so long to have her once again, and God only knows how much longer I have left to enjoy it. Not long with as quickly as I’ve been surrendering bits of power to her. But it’s so hard to resist after she’s beaten me so beautifully, after she’s already crawled inside my mystery, as she likes to put it. It seems like the most natural thing in the world to press my lips to hers and let her take, take, take. Offer up the glimmer and glow of my sight, even as I feel more and more veils fluttering shut in my mind. Even as I feel my own magic flickering down to a cold death as I give it all away to the object of my worship.
Do I miss the power?
Do I regret its loss?
Yes, and no. Missing and regretting are two very different things. Just ask anyone who’s ever left something on a holy altar in order to prove their devotion. If you didn’t miss it, it wouldn’t be a very worthy sacrifice.
“We’re going to the back room,” she says, coming to the bed and gesturing for me to sit up. I hold out my wrists for her to cuff like a good boy, my cock already stirring in anticipation, and the ritual of it is by now familiar, domestic even. Perhaps how married couples feel watching their partner get dressed in the morning, going through the intimate and mindless routines of stretching and checking their phones and brushing their teeth—that’s how I feel now watching Nimue pull the cuffs out of the end table and wrap them around my wrists, dropping a kiss on the inside of each wrist before she fastens the restraints. Watching her hair move over her shoulders as she bends down to unlock my ankle and then attach the chain to my wrist cuffs instead, and the glitter of the key nestled in the dip of her collarbone as she stands up and tugs on the chain to check that it’s latched on properly.
If we had any other ending than the one fate has planned for us, I’d ask her to marry me right now. Instead, I look up at her as she finishes her work and say, “I love you.”
She places her hand against my jaw, running her fingers through the silver-flecked stubble that she loves so much. “I hope you’re ready to prove it.”
Even the cavelike back room can’t muffle the noise of the storm as we get settled, and there’s something hypnotic about the lashing rain outside as Nimue has me lie down on the lounge. I arrange myself the way I know she wants—kilt off, on my back, bound wrists above my head—as she gets whatever she wants to play with today. It doesn’t matter what, really. She’ll turn something painful into pleasure, or something pleasurable into pain—I’ve had more ruined orgasms in the last week than I’ve had regular orgasms—and whatever it is, I’ll happily endure it because it will be for her.
Finally, my suffering has purpose.
I am surprised though when she comes over to me, and she only has a bottle of lube in her hand—a hand that is currently gloved in purple latex.
She motions for me to let one foot drop on the floor so she can sit on the lounge. “I know you haven’t done this with anyone else,” she says, “but what about by yourself?”
I can surmise what she means. “No,” I say, my throat surprisingly dry. I swallow. “I mean, I’m not averse to it, but…”
I trail off. I don’t have a real objection, and Nimue seems to realize it, although she still checks. “This is a time when you could tell me no, Merlin. You could say enchanted. You could even just say, no, Nimue, I don’t want to try this.”
“It seems rather craven to accede to beatings but refuse this, don’t you think?”
