Cards of Love

by Sierra Simone

  “No!” you said, stepping between us. “You said you wouldn’t kill him!”

  “It hardly matters,” Nyneve rejoined, “whether he dies or lives the next forty years in this cave. He’ll be trapped here either way.”

  “It matters to me,” you said, and for the first time, I could see how my power had changed you. You stood taller, your eyes brighter, your voice ringing bell-clear. “I love him.”

  Nyneve looked unimpressed. “It does not matter who you love. You are married to Pelleas and you serve me.”

  At your mother’s cool anger, your resolve wilted. You were young, Nimue, so young. Not even eighteen and terrified of your mother and carrying the child of a man who wasn’t the man you loved.

  “If you’d like,” your mother offered, “I can rip his power from you and take it into myself. And then you can stay here on Bardsey with him all the rest of your days.”

  You chewed on your lip. I could see you were thinking about it, and that was enough for me, I think. To hear you announce you loved me and then to see you consider giving up everything—magic and status—to live in this little hovel in order to stay with me?

  It was enough.

  Because I knew what Nyneve also knew but you did not, which was that it was impossible. I knew little about power transference, but what I did know was that it was unlikely you’d survive it, to say nothing of your unborn child.

  “Think on it,” Nyneve said, and stepped down the cave’s path to leave you and me alone, but not before she gave me a look that confirmed my worst suspicions. A look that told me exactly what my own options were if I wanted you to live.

  She’d kill you if you didn’t cooperate because you didn’t matter to her. The magic did.

  You entered the cave, leaving the protective ward behind you, as if you trusted that even in my bitterness and betrayal I wouldn’t hurt you. You were right. All I did was open my arms so that you’d nestle against my chest as you had countless times before.

  “I’m so sorry,” you cried against my chest. “I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know that I would…”

  You trailed off, because you knew that not knowing we would fall in love was hardly an admissible excuse for my captivity. Yet I understood. It was easy to manipulate someone you cared little about, anyone could do that. But manipulating people you loved and respected—that was a cruel game indeed. One I was forced to play in my next life to the extreme.

  I kissed your hair. “I’m glad I got to see you one last time. Even after everything…don’t doubt that my heart is glad to see you. Glad to have spent these weeks with you, no matter the outcome.”

  You lifted your tearful face to mine, your eyes blazing with honesty. “No. I want to stay here with you, and I’m going to, I don’t care what the cost is.”

  “The cost might be your life,” I told you plainly. “And your child’s. Nimue, you have to go home with your mother. Go home to your husband.”

  You screwed up your face then, in a sort of determined pout that made me want to kiss you, and kiss you I did, not caring that your mother and her retinue were just out of sight. You sighed hungrily against my lips, and then you were fumbling with your dress, with my tunic and trousers. It was foolhardy with the others so close, but we were quiet, and anyway, I couldn’t starve myself of one last time. Why should I have? What would have been the point of denying ourselves?

  You took hold of me and guided me to where you were already wet and opening, like a flower, and you impaled yourself on me. We both watched as I sank inside, spreading you with my ruddy flesh, and then you wrapped your arms around my neck and rolled your hips against mine until we were both sweaty and damp and on the edge. I clapped a palm over your mouth as you came; you did the same for me. And for the last time in that life, I spent my seed inside you.

  When it was over, I rested my head on your collarbone. “Nimue,” I begged. “Go. Go back to your husband. Keep my magic and use it to keep Arthur safe, that’s all I ask. Please.”

  “No,” you said fiercely. “My mother will never hurt me.”

  “Can’t you see she already has?”

  You shook your head.

  Christ, you were stubborn.

  “She can take whatever she wants, and then we’ll have forever together,” you said earnestly. “I pledge it, Merlin, I vow it. I won’t leave you.”

  Maybe not all of my sight was gone, because I could see how you thrummed with your vow, with your intention, and I knew nothing I could say would convince you to leave. And if you didn’t leave, there was the very real possibility you would die, and your child along with you. And Nimue, whatever you might believe of me, you have to know I never resented the child for not being mine. I loved him for being yours, and the thought of the babe perishing too was too much for me to bear.

  I kissed you as our bodies separated below. It was a gallows kiss—full of desperate hunger and clinging need, and I poured all the years we’d never have into it. I poured all my fervent hopes and demands—that you would guide Arthur well in my absence, that you’d try to steer Britain toward peace, that you would be happy. That you’d keep singing, to your baby, yes, even to your husband, and that you’d spend the rest of your life merry and well.

  That you’d never forget me, which was a selfish wish, I know, but am I not entitled to a little selfishness now and again? After two lifetimes dedicated to the service of others?

  You were breathless when the kiss ended, your cheeks flushed and your eyes so sweetly blown to black, the way you looked when you wanted my body again even though you’d only just had it.

  “Say goodbye to your mother,” I told you, my hands still roaming everywhere on your body, because letting you go felt impossible. “Let her take what she needs to take. And then come back to me.”

  “Always back to you,” you murmured, brushing your lips against mine before you stood. And there was this moment as you left the cave that you turned back and faced me, a slightly puzzled look on your face. You also looked nervous—no doubt worried about what your mother would do when you told her—but brave. So brave. I knew looking at you then that you would survive the loss of me, that you would still thrive. But if your mother killed you? Would I survive?

  No. I knew it with the grim certainty only the sight could give me. And I gave you a reassuring smile that seemed to steel your strength; you smiled back with the kind of smile that said I’ll be right back and you walked down the path to find your mother.

  Once even the tendrils of your blowing hair were out of view, I reached for the last of my power. It was very faint indeed, only a dying ember nestled so deep it might as well have been already dead. But I called to it, sang it to my fingers and my hands, reached my mind deep into the roots of this island to feed it.

  Just this once, I begged the island. Help me just this once.

  Bardsey answered, its buried saints and priests answered, and the smell of apples ripe and crisp flooded my senses as my body flooded with power—but power for only this one act. Bardsey would help me right here, right now, for my desperate sacrifice, but I knew the moment I attempted anything other than what I had planned, the power would vanish.

  It’s a curious thing about power. About fate. They have minds of their own, and looking back at it all now, I know that it could have happened no other way.

  I knelt at the opening of the cave and pressed my hands against the rocky ground, seeking out the rocks themselves, their anchors and their seams, their faults and weaknesses. I closed my eyes. I remembered our kisses, the way it felt to fuck you, the snug warmth of you sleeping against my chest.

  I imagined you singing.

  The legends got another thing wrong, you see: it wasn’t you who entombed me alive, but me. I brought the rocks of the cave crashing down; I chose my death so you wouldn’t risk yours.

  And still I loved you.

  The earth shook with my love that day.

  8

  “Merlin,” Nimue whispers, stunned. S
he looks devastated.

  Horrified.

  Ashamed.

  “When I left you by the lake all those years ago, it wasn’t only about Jack Pelleas,” I confess to her, though I guess she’s surmised as much by now. “I left because I wasn’t ready to die again. Not until I’d seen Ash to the end of his path.”

  Nimue rises off my body; I miss her warmth immensely. “And you’re ready to die now? That’s it?” she asks bitterly. “Jesus, Merlin. Jesus fucking Christ.”

  I press up to my elbows, my still-hard cock sliding free of the silicone sleeve as I sit up on the lounge to look at her as she stands facing away from me, her hands braced on the leather bench. I give her the truth. “I think I am.”

  “Well, I’m not ready for it,” she snaps. “Not at all. Shit, Merlin, did it never occur to you to tell me this? Tell me what happened the first time?”

  “Every day since I met you. Every hour after I left you by the lake. I rehearsed speeches and wrote letters. Twice I flew to Seattle just to find you and tell you, and twice I realized I couldn’t do it.”

  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.”

  This I like very much. “Any way you want me,” I say, proving my words by doing as she asks. I’m on my back with my cock naked and wet in the cool air. “But please, please have me. It hurts.”

  She clucks and tilts her head. “But I like it when you hurt.”

  My belly clenches with how much her words affect me, and my cock strains upwards, leaking fast and hot at its head, resting back on my abs and then bobbing up again, as if reaching for her touch.

  Nimue crawls onto the lounge and moves herself between my legs as I used to move between hers. She gives my hole a courtesy brush with the cool tip of her penis and then she wedges it against the pleated rim. I breathe without her telling me, she gives me a reassuring smile and shh shh shh. And then she fucks her way inside. Once again, the breach is toe-curlingly harsh, biting and deep and violent in the most consuming way.

  I can’t believe I’ve lived without it all these years.

  The harshness peels away any defenses I have against her, the bite and the depth flays me raw…the violence binds me to her and makes me hers. There’s no part of me she doesn’t own, no part of me that isn’t open and available to her. There’s no discomfort that she can’t transfigure, no modesty that she won’t shred open into rich, bleeding love.

  Her eyes stay on the place where she sinks inside me, until after several slow glides that massage the blunt head of her dildo against my prostate. Then she drags her eyes up to my rigid length, currently leaking all over my stomach, and finally up to my face. The love and apology I see in her eyes steals my brea
th away, leaves me thoughtless, entranced.

  “You are so handsome when I fuck you,” she tells me.

  “You are so beautiful always,” I respond. “No matter what you’re doing. I’ve seen living magic and breathing legends, little moon, but you are the wonder of my eyes, you are the sight that steals my breath every single time.”

  “I’m done stealing, Merlin,” she says, her eyes soft and burning all at once. “I’m done taking what’s not mine.”

  “It’s yours,” I say. I plead. “It’s all yours. Everything, everything I am and have, and please. Take it, take it, take it.” A blade of sheer agony digs between my shoulder blades at the thought of her not taking what’s hers, of her stopping anything that we started here.

  She shakes her head, lowering her face to mine. Her lips still moving in gentle, languorous rolls. She lays a hand flat over my heart. “This? Is this mine?”

  “Yes,” I breathe up against her mouth.

  Her hand trails lower, grips my shaft. “And this?”

  “You know it is, Nimue.”

  “And where I’m fucking you?”

  “Yours.”

  Her lips are the barest brush away from mine now. “And your hands? The arms I love to sleep in at night? Those black eyes and that sinful mouth that kisses me everywhere?”

  I try to kiss her now, and she doesn’t quite let me. “Of course, little moon.”

  “I think,” she says slowly, closing her eyes, “I think this was what I was supposed to take all along. I think this was the power I was meant to steal. Not your magic, but you, I was supposed to take you. This was how we were supposed to be, but I didn’t know the first time…”

  I nearly laugh, but I’m too fucking sexed up, too desperate for Nimue to score the insides of my soul with her ownership. “No, I don’t imagine you grew up in post-Roman Britain knowing you wanted to fuck men with a fake cock.”

  She gives me a deep, stabbing thrust for my lip, and I moan. But she also smiles. “Then we were meant to go through this life again. To learn what it was I really needed from you. And to learn what you really needed from me.”