Cards of Love: The Moon (New Camelot Book 4)

by Sierra Simone

  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?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t see any limit as craven.”

  “It doesn’t matter, because it’s not a limit. You’re already inside me in every other possible way, little moon. In my mind, in my blood, my breath, my heart. What’s this compared to that?”

  She beams. “I like that way of looking at it. And I do promise that I will reward your trust. Tuck your knees to your chest, please.”

  It’s an undignified position, but dignity has never been the point. Even if it had been, I lost it the moment I woke to the sound of a match striking in the dark.

  And anyway, is dignity more valuable than trust? More precious than vulnerability? More cherished than surrender?

  I pull my knees to my chest, and Nimue clucks her approval as it exposes the untouched part of me that she wants.

  “Breathe,” she counsels, and then she spreads the lubricant on her finger and presses it against the firm rim of my anus. “Breathe.”

  She pushes.

  I breathe.

  It’s cool at first, but everything quickly warms, and it’s the pressure that truly makes me uncomfortable rather than the temperature.

  “How does it feel?” Nimue asks once she has her finger in to the second knuckle.

  “Full,” is my honest answer. It may be an obvious one, but it’s all I have. It’s not truly painful, nor is it pleasurable, but the last week with Nimue has trained me to accept any sensation as welcome, simply because it comes from her.

  She adds a second finger.

  I inhale into my stomach, unable to keep from closing my eyes at the invasion, but my erection flexes happily, already wet at the tip, and then when Nimue curls her fingers forward to press against—something—I—I—

  “Feel good now?” she purrs, gently rubbing against my prostate. It’s like my guts have been replaced with hot, roiling pleasure, but it’s different than what I’ve known. It’s urgent, turbulent and vital deep in my belly, and it’s
the most indecent thing I’ve ever felt. The most base and carnal and human.

  “I don’t know if good is the right word,” I manage, but my cock is getting impossibly harder and bigger as she toys with me, and she seems satisfied with the answer it gives. There’s several more passes and circles she makes inside, shifting her rhythm every time I seem to get too close to the edge. Within two minutes, I’m misted with sweat along the bunches of my arms and the groove of my clavicle, and I’m squirming.

  Like a whore, I think, and somehow that makes it even hotter. Squirming like a whore against the hand of the cruelest woman I’ve ever met.

  Nimue uses her other hand to run idle circles over the hard scrunches of my abs, taking care not to brush against my leaking erection as she does. “Tell me,” she says softly, meeting my gaze, “when we share the glimmer between us, does it take anything away from you? Does it make your gift any less?”

  I let out a small exhale of wounded lust. She’s done this on purpose, gotten me past the point of clear thought, clear speech, in order to find out more about what she wanted. But of course she did. That’s the arrangement, after all, and she never lied to me about that. She’d use sex to take my sight, one kind of power to take another.

  Although, I can’t believe she doesn’t already know this. She used to know. In another life. “Yes,” I say, and I’m stunned when she actually flinches at my words.

  Her hands don’t stop their wicked work, so I can’t even properly react when she says, somewhat miserably, “That’s not what I wanted, you know.”

  “What did you want?”

  She closes her eyes, slides her fingers free of my body. I make a betrayed little whimper as she does.

  “I wanted to share it. Have it, but for you to have it too. I’m not a thief, Merlin.”

  But you were. And you are.

  She stands up and tugs off the breezy, flowing dress she’d been wearing. Underneath, rather than panties, she wears a harness. No bra, as always, and the tips of those perky breasts are erect and straining. “On your stomach, please. Head on your arms, looking down.”

  I desperately want to watch her now—I’m undeniably entranced by the leather and metal sitting so snugly around her lean hips, the straps that hug and highlight the high curve of her ass. I want to see what happens next, what type of toy she fits inside the harness and how it looks as she walks toward me. Whether it casts a shadow on her legs or sways with her movements. I want to see her face, I want to see if this arouses her, I want to see if her breath hitches with anticipation as she regards the place she’d like to fuck.

  But all of this is denied me. I get to my stomach and I’m forced to listen to all manner of intriguing noises as she gets ready. And I’m not at all prepared when her footsteps approach and her hands slide around my hips, tugging me up the slightest amount, and then my throbbing arousal encounters something cool and slick and oh my bleeding God—

  I cheat and look down the length of my lifted stomach to see her hand fitting a tight, tight, silicone sleeve over my organ, something so tight and soft and wet that I have to clench my ass and thighs and belly to keep from jetting my much-needed release inside it. At the same time, I feel a spike of humiliation, which no doubt was Nimue’s intention because she catches it on my face right away.

  “Don’t like that, Merlin?”

  “Would rather fuck you,” I mumble, dropping my head back on my arms.

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible, because I’m going to fuck you,” Nimue says, pushing my hips back down so that now my toy-sheathed penis is trapped between my stomach and the lounge. The pressure is insane, and it’s all I can do not to thrust into it.

  “Besides,” she adds, “you haven’t earned me yet today. You haven’t proved that you’ll cherish it.”

  “I would, I would cherish it,” I plead and then groan as I feel her straddle my legs. The cool heft of her toy cock rests against the seam of my buttocks, and her added weight drives my hips—and therefore my cock—deeper into the slick cinch of the fake pussy.

  I shudder.

  She laughs. “I think you can’t even hold back from fucking a silicone cunt, Merlin. How could you truly appreciate my perfect one instead? It would be like giving champagne to a dog.”

  To prove her point, she rocks her hips forward over me, which make my own surge forward again, simulating a thrust.

  More groans from me. More thrusts from her as she forces me to degrade myself by fucking the toy.

  It only serves to fuel the humiliation. Nimue doing this to show that I don’t deserve her body, that I’m beneath her and too bestial to appreciate it, and then I’m proving her right by moaning for this cheap replacement instead. Her fingers find my dark entrance again, and the humiliation doubles, trebles.

  But the shame breaks and eddies around the tender patience in her voice when she repeats, “Breathe,” and presses the blunt tip of her toy against my hole.

  I try to breathe.

  It doesn’t work.

  The stretch is unholy, dark and forsaken, and I arch and pant underneath her at the push.

  Shh shh shh, she shushes, and then when that doesn’t settle me, she says—still tenderly—“Bite your arm, Merlin.”

  I bite my arm.

  The hard column slowly goes inside me, and I fuss and fret underneath her, caught between the inexorable glide of Nimue’s cock and the squeezing slick of the toy cunt, literally trapped between pain and pleasure. She finally cases herself completely in my ass, and carefully lays herself over the top of me, her long, sleek limbs sweetly covering my own. She gives an experimental thrust from this position, which nudges against my prostate and of course sends my erection stroking inside the fake pussy. All at once the dirty, belly-clenching discomfort becomes clamorous pleasure before it shimmers back into pain.

  I shudder. And shudder some more.

  Nimue strokes my shoulders and arms, she finds my jaw—tight from biting my arm—and caresses that too. “How does it feel?”

  I stop biting my arm. “Like I’m being fucked in the ass,” I hiss out, and she laughs. Hums to herself as she gives another thrust and the pain-pleasure-pain cycle flares up again.

  Shh shh shh, she says as I whimper.

  Again and again it goes, and she’s slow enough to keep me from feeling like this is more punitive than exploratory, but fast enough to keep it just on the edge of torment.

  Even so, the pain-pleasure-pain cycle begins to morph and shift, until the pain ebbs nearly completely away and all that’s left is this…this feeling. It feels too elemental to truly be labeled pleasure, too unfamiliar to be comfortable, and yet it churns inside my belly, it tightens and snarls in a place I’ve never really felt before. A place between Nimue’s cock and my own, a secret place in the cradle of my groin that I never could have found without this.

  My blood is hot, hot with animal lust, and I’ve never felt more like a beast than now, with Nimue stretched out on top of me, filling my private place, and my cock fucking into something tight and wet, and I’m panting and grunting, truly like a beast at work, and that’s when Nimue leans down and whispers in my ear, “Tell me about our first life together.”

  I’m mindless now, just needing to be fucked until I erupt inside this substitute pussy, and so I murmur, “Take it with a kiss,” even though I know if she does, it very well could be the last of my sight, the last few drops of magic left in my well.

  But I don’t even care anymore. Nothing matters, nothing matters except for her and her and her.

  She can have it all, as long as I can have her, for however short a time.

  “I want you to tell me. Without magic.”

  “S’easier,” I mumble, my head rolling on my arms now. Bleeding Christ, I’m so close, I’m so close. “S’easier with magic.”

  She sounds unhappy when she speaks, and that clears my head somewhat. Even after everything—or perhaps because of everything—the thought of her unhappiness scrapes at my heart.


  “I don’t want to take any more from you,” she says. “Not until I know all of what’s happened between us, including the parts I can’t remember.”

  I hesitate. It’s a hard story to tell, even not suspended between two vulgar delights as I am.

  “Please,” she says softly. “Tell me what happened to make you resent me.”

  I try to speak, but she gently presses her forehead to my temple to silence me. “I see it in the way you look at me sometimes, Merlin. I know you love me, I know by some incredible design you’ve only ever loved me, but I know you resent me sometimes too. That you’re afraid of me. And I think you’ve always been, ever since we first met…in this life.”

  “You’re different than you were then,” I murmur. The feel of her forehead warm on my temple is almost better than a kiss. It’s reassuring, patient, close. “Maybe then doesn’t matter now. Not if you’re different.”

  “I still need to know. And I can’t do it by taking more magic from you—at least, I can’t take any more from you until I know the truth. Please.”

  I take in a deep breath, feeling cool air rush between my stomach and the lounge as I do. “Okay,” I agree. “I’ll tell you.”

  She pulls out but stays where she’s at on top of me, as if she knows I need some reprieve if I’m to manage words, but as if she’s also loath to break the visceral connection between us.

  I’m loath too. It’s a hard story to tell, and having my body thoroughly possessed by her as I tell it might make it easier.

  I kiss her fingers where they curl over my bicep and begin.

  7

  You were born fifteen hundred years ago to a queen and her consort in a place called Ynys Witrin, and you were born a princess, but also a priestess, because your mother was no ordinary queen.

  And Ynys Witrin was no ordinary place.

  Nyneve was the Lady of the Lake, and Ynys Witrin was the Isle of Avalon, and she guarded both mortal and immortal realms from that place. She watched over the kingship of Britain and signaled her favor to worthy rulers by passing the sword of Excalibur. She gave her wisdom and advice to those same rulers when needed. And she also tended to the sanctuary of worship that was the isle itself. All gods and goddesses, the gods of old and Christ, had their temples and shrines there.