Her lips come to rest on the curve of my spine,
right between my shoulder blades. “Such a body,” she breathes. “The perfect body for me. Strong and supple.” She squeezes a flank and my head drops forward as I try to catch my breath. “Such a shame that you keep it so buttoned up all the time. How do you find your pleasure, Merlin? Do you have a mistress, maybe? Or a male lover tucked away somewhere outside of DC? Or maybe you like escorts—bloodless and efficient, just like you.”
Would she even believe the truth? That there’s been no one since her? No one before her? No one else in this life or any other life?
“I don’t,” I say, my words breaking into a moan as she casually inspects the heft and weight of my balls. “I don’t find release. I don’t fuck.”
She presses her cheek to my back. “That’s impossible; am I to believe that this giant, gorgeous cock is trapped and lonely all the time? That this sensual, masculine mouth never kisses? This body is perfect for fucking. It’s wasteful not to be using it to give pleasure to those who need it.”
She sounds like she’s lecturing one of her college students right now, and I almost enjoy it.
Fine, not almost, I do. I do enjoy it. Being lectured, being tutted at. Being fondled and petted.
“Mount the bench, bend over, and stretch out your hands,” she says, smacking the side of my thigh and walking over to a wall of toys.
“Don’t I receive some kind of safe word at this point?” I ask, but I also obey her.
“Yes, of course.” She is tapping her chin as she stares at her wall, as if trying to decide which piece of artwork she likes best. “How about enchanted?”
I close my eyes, glad she can’t see the pain that is surely creasing my face right now. “Yes. Enchanted.”
“And your limits?”
“I again am forced to point out the irony of a captor asking such a question.”
Nimue selects a sturdy riding crop from the wall and turns to face me. “I accept the irony, Merlin. Now what are they?”
I’ve honestly never been in this position before—never needed to contemplate my limits because my entire life up until this point has been limits. A narrow, lonely path, a giant arrow of destiny pointing me toward my work and away from anything else.
And now that my work is through? My path walked?
“No limits, Nimue.”
Her normally happy mouth folds into a pout of disapproval—which, unsurprisingly at this point, sends a fresh surge of blood to my cock. “This is not a game, Mr. Rhys, and the stakes are very real. Bluster and false courage are pointless.”
I’m about to die, how much more real can the stakes be?
She doesn’t know you’re going to die. She doesn’t remember.
A gash of lonely anger opens up in my chest. Was it so much to ask fate that I could love someone who wouldn’t cause my death? Couldn’t I have had that one thing?
“No limits,” I repeat firmly.
Her little frown deepens, only serving to make her look sterner. More beautiful. “I hope you’ll use your safe word when you need it.”
I already know I won’t, even as she clicks my cuffs onto a latching restraint on the far end of the bench with a final-sounding click. Even as she adds a cuff to my other ankle and secures both to the lower part of the bench. I’ve already decided to savor these last days of mine—I’m certainly not inclined to shorten them by surrendering earlier than absolutely necessary.
Of course, that’s an easy thought to have before the first crack of the riding crop. It’s much harder to think about resistance and perseverance afterwards, as pain stripes along the muscles of my ass and thighs, as Nimue pauses to flick—gentler but still hard enough—the leather keeper of the crop against my most sensitive places.
She’s possibly the merriest sadist ever to exist; she hums as she trades out the crop for a rattan cane and proceeds to give me a caning fiercer than any British school headmaster’s. And when she tells me that she’s going to make “the last set count”—and then proceeds to give me six strikes that would buckle my knees if I weren’t already kneeling and slumped over the bench—she sings.
Sings.
I don’t even know what she’s singing, what the words are or what the melody is, because I’m babbling and begging and near to screaming now. Tears are spilling from my eyes in a way wholly unfamiliar to me; my entire body feels like it’s made of pain. Hot, scorching pain, and the pain is around my ass and thighs, yes, but it’s everywhere else too. It’s turned my stomach inside out and shoved it up into my chest, it’s made the very air into scalding concrete and the clench of my hands into something like thumbscrews.
Never have I ever been so much in my body, this form I normally disdain as a vehicle for the soul and the mind, but now the form has taken control of me. I am this writhing, keening body, I am this pain, I am the dusky, swollen erection that still leaks and flexes even as I’m crying. And what comes with the pain is a gift—a dizzy kind of euphoria that sends my sight reeling, bringing me back memories and visions and magic. My whole body is sparkling with it as Nimue puts the cane away and comes back to run an approving hand over my abused flesh.
I look up and meet her stare, which is awed and possibly just as dazed as mine is. She’s breathing hard, her face flushed and her pupils blown so wide that her eyes have become pools of black with the barest rim of blue.
