She turns, and she should look ridiculous arguing with me while a bright pink cock swings from her hips, but she doesn’t. She looks sleek and angry and like every fantasy I never knew I had.
“You couldn’t do it,” she echoes, the righteous irritation plain on her face. “You don’t think I had a right to know that I did those things to you? A right to know that you died for me?”
“I didn’t want to burden you with it,” I explain. I know we’re supposed to be fighting right now, but my body is still scalding from her earlier attentions and I can’t tear my eyes away from the sexy leather harness around her hips. “You were so happy and free not knowing about it.”
“Yeah, happy and free away from the one man I ever loved,” she bites back. “And don’t play this off like it was all to protect me. As long as you never told me, you’d be free to resent me as long as you liked.”
“Yes,” I admit. She’s right about that, and I give her the point. “It was safer for me to stay away and keep you in ignorance. But it was also literally safer too. What if telling you somehow triggered the end of my path? Before my work was done?”
“And your work is done because Ash is dead,” she says flatly.
“He’s not dead.” My voice is kind. “He’s alive and safe. Hidden.”
Nimue puts her hand to her temple, closing her eyes, and I can sense what she’s doing. Using her new powers to probe out the truth of this. Her eyes move under their lids and her brows draw together, and her lips part the moment she can see it. Whether it’s a memory of mine or a true vision from the present or future, I don’t know, but she can see it.
Her eyes fly open. “You’re telling the truth,” she breathes, and then her too-big smile overtakes her face. “I can’t believe it. Ash is alive!”
“Like I said,” I murmur, “my work is done.”
That turns her attention back toward me, and the smile slips from her face. “And you feel ready to die.”
“Nimue.”
“No.” She holds up a hand to stop my words. “I’m not letting you do this to us. I didn’t bring you here to steal from you, or to kill you, or to watch you kill yourself. I thought I could learn what you knew the normal ways that people learn—by sharing. And if I’m honest, I thought spending a couple weeks fucking your brains out might convince you to fall in love with me again. And then we’d leave here and we’d both be full of magic and we’d have the rest of our lives together.” She looks very vulnerable as she confesses all this. “I’m not an evil temptress, and I’m not a young girl cowed by her mother. I’m a sociology professor. I’m a forty-year-old sadist, mother to a child I didn’t carry, and I’ve spent the last twenty-three years settling for mentions of you, the occasional run-in while you were off chasing fate. I’m tired of settling, Merlin.”
“I’m tired of settling too,” I say softly, searching her face.
“Then to hell with fate. Fuck destiny. This doesn’t get to end until I say so.”
“And when will you say so?”
The vulnerability on her face vanishes, replaced by feral, primitive desire. “Never.”
I reach for her, needing to touch her, needing to feel the truth of this never against my skin. “Then I lied earlier. I’m not ready to die. Not if I can have forever with you instead.”
“You’re mine now, and you belong to me,” she says, allowing me to take her hand in mine and nuzzle against her palm like a cat. Allowing me to then pull her close and roll my face along her stomach. “What were the last words I said in the cave?”
“Always back to you,” I say, kissing the flat knot of her navel.
“Always means forever, Merlin. You’re not going to die. And I’m not going to steal the rest of your power. If Ash can live this time, then that means that we get a happy ending too.”
I’ve never dared to let myself hope before. I peer up at her. “You think so?”
Her mouth is firm, but her eyes are liquid love. “I’ll make it so.”
I close my eyes with the kind of relief that rips through my body, leaving my nerves singing in its wake. “I’m yours.”
“I know you are,” she says smugly, yanking once at my hair. “Back on your belly. Stick your cock in the pussy I gave you.”
It takes a minute to position myself again, to allow Nimue to slick me with lube in all the places it’s needed again, but then I’m as I was, my erection buried in a quivering glove designed for dirty, desperate men, and my hole offered up to the love of my life.
“No,” says Nimue after a moment. “No, this isn’t what I want anymore.”
It’s hard not to whine at her words. I don’t care how it happens—while I’m licking her boots or fucking the indifferent crevice made by her lower legs pressed together or even just jerking off in a corner—but I ache to fucking come. I need to release all the pain and fear and misery I’ve dredged up by reliving the past, and I need to seal our pledge with my body. I need to prove my devotion and my belonging, and this is the way it has to be done between us. With utter, utter surrender.
Nimue climbs off the lounge. “Flip over,” she says. “Get the toy off your cock. I want to see it throb while I fuck you.”
And then her eyes meet mine, as blue as mine are near-black. “And I want to see your face,” she adds, a shy smile tugging on her mouth. “Because I love it and I love you.”
