Cards of Love

by Sierra Simone

  “And what is that?”

  She takes my cuffed wrists and moves them above my head, pinning both in place with one slender hand. “You needed someone to share it with. The sight. It’s been your burden for two lifetimes, for fifteen centuries, and you’ve been staggering under the weight of your duty for so long that you think that you’re ready to die now that your work is done. Rather than truly live.”

  “I—”

  I have no response. I’ve never considered that, never even thought of myself as burdened and struggling. Lonely, yes, but actually worn down to the point of apathy about being alive?

  Is that what’s been happening to me?

  “It’s okay, Merlin. You don’t have to understand right now. You only have to give me your mouth.”

  Still confused, I tilt my chin and offer it to her at her new angle poised above me. “Just let it happen,” she murmurs, and before I can ask what she means, her lips slant softly over mine. Warm and yielding and silky as I deepen the kiss to enter her mouth with my tongue.

  It’s like heaven, kissing her, as heady as it was that first time in the cave. As hypnotic as that Dr. Pepper flavored kiss twenty-three years ago.

  And then the magic starts.

  The glimmer of heat and rushing, swirling clarity thrums from her into me, warming every magic-starved inch of me, flooding my veins with the power I’ve had for so long that I’d taken it for granted. I gasp and arch beneath her, nearly squirming with the unbearable sensation of it, but the glimmer doesn’t fade between us, it doesn’t burn itself out as it normally does.

  Instead, it intensifies, it grows and grows until Nimue and I are glowing like twin stars, radiant and vibrant and connected to the shimmering threads of fate woven all around us. It doubles on itself over and over again, in a way I’ve never felt, never heard of, never even imagined, as if it’s feeding on the pull between Nimue and me, on our ageless love, on my surrender and her graceful rule of me. Every part of it transforms the magic from something finite and contained into a well-spring of bubbling, endless abundance. Until both Nimue and I are filled with it, I with complete magic and her with complete magic, both of us brimming and spilling over with it.

  I come.

  I come without her hand on my cock, without anything touching me except her enchanted mouth and her toy buried inside me. I come so hard I nearly roar with it—I growl and writhe and strain—my stomach and thighs contracting along with my cock to jet warm spurts of seed across my abs and chest. Nimue pulls away from the kiss to watch, but the magic stays, hovering around us like a golden cocoon, and she pulls out of me, frantically unbuckles the straps of her harness, and then reaches for one of my hands just as she manages to tug it around her thighs.

  I’m still pulsing with the last squeezes as she shoves my hand against her cunt, and it only takes the heel of my hand on her clit and two fingers wedging inside her pussy for her to follow me with a long, gasping noise and tears in her eyes. I don’t even get to the second knuckles as I feel her walls flutter and tighten around my digits, and then she’s grabbing onto me and rocking as her release rips through her, sending the magic glowing hotter and thicker around us as she rides out the strongest orgasm I’ve ever felt from her on my hand.

  It feels like it lasts for years—I’d happily spend the rest of my life exactly like this, glazed with my own cum and watching the most beautiful woman in the world fuck herself on my fingers—and when she gradually stills, her fingers are still digging into my chest.

  She looks down at my cock. “You’re still hard,” she whispers.

  “You’re still perfect,” I explain.

  And then she shucks off the rest of her harness and slings a leg over my hips, bringing that wet pussy against my organ and grinding on it. “Let’s see what my boy can do with it, then,” she says, and then we fuck again, the golden fog around us like the very breath of heaven.

  9

  The winter solstice is the longest night of the year, and when we emerge from the back room—me limping slightly with the best kind of aches—the storm has blown off, leaving a giant moon clear and bright over the glittering ice that the storm has left behind.

  The ice glitters for hours that night.

  After we shower and Nimue chains me to the bed, she climbs right into my arms as if she belongs there—which she does. Because my arms belong to her, like the rest of me, and as she settles in with her head resting on my chest and the gentle weight of the chain tugging on my ankle, I think I can’t remember ever feeling this content. This happy.

  The glimmer has settled between us, but it’s still visible, a faint golden sheen over everything, and I feel as if every veil in my mind has been pulled back, letting in the past and the future. The present.

  Nimue.

  I feel her there in my mind, just as I know she can feel me in hers. We’ve shared bodies and souls and destinies, but this—this coupling inside the magic, this twin presence within the sight—is entirely new. It’s euphoric and dazzling enough that we lay in silence for a long time, simply wandering in each other’s thoughts and basking in the warmth of the newly fed power sparkling around us.

  After a while, Nimue wonders aloud, “Why do you think it’s different this time? This life?”

  I’ve thought about this more than I care to admit, and I’m apologetic when I answer. “Your mother.”

  “But she…” I feel Nimue’s eyelashes against my chest as she thinks about this. “But I don’t think she was any different than the first time. She was…self-absorbed. Ambitious. Inconsistent and unkind. The only difference between this life and our last is that she’s dead.”

  “Yes,” I say, and I let that be my answer.

  “Oh.” She presses her face into my chest as she understands what I’m getting at. “I see.”

  “Vivienne finished raising you, and you had the chance to grow into the woman you wanted to be, and not just the tool your mother needed to keep her kingdom strong.”

  She takes a deep breath, the delicate cage of her ribs swelling and then shrinking in my arms. “I never said I’m sorry, and I am, you know. Sorry. I’m sorry for what happened twenty-three years ago. I’m sorry for what I did fifteen hundred years before that.”

  I open my mouth, but she stops me with warm fingertips. “Don’t. I know you’re going to say that I was young, that I couldn’t have known any better, but look at me now! I’m forty and nearly made the same mistake all over again. I deserve the blame.”

  I look down at the top of her head, silky and dark and so, so treasured, and I hold her tighter. “I deserve blame too. I should have trusted you with the truth long ago.” I let out a long breath, realizing a hard fact. “If I’d told you, maybe we would have discovered how to share the magic together years before now.” And everything would have been easier. Better. That hard, lonely path I was so determined to walk alone because I thought it was my fate—what if it wasn’t fate keeping me alone, but my own actions? My own bitterness? If only I’d been willing to be honest and vulnerable with her in this life, who knows what we could have achieved together?

  At the very least, we wouldn’t have lost so much time that should have been ours. My body shudders with the gutting thought.

  I’ve wasted so much time.

  “Marry me,” I whisper into her hair. “Make me yours forever.”

  She kisses my collarbone, and then bites it, hard enough for my cock to stir from sore, sleepy life. “Is it not enough that we’re bound by fate and tied together by magic?”

  “It’s not enough until I’m your husband, because I need you to know that you’re my choice. And I need to know that I’m yours.” She looks up at me, suddenly looking paradoxically shy and mischievous all at once.

  “Merlin, I kidnapped you, flew you over an ocean, and have spent the last week fucking you until neither of us can walk straight. What about that makes you think you’re not my choice?”

  I do have to laugh at that. “So you will be my wife?”


  “I will.” She nestles back onto my shoulder and adds, “And you’ll marry me with a cuff on your ankle because I’ve grown rather attached to it.”

  “You know, the cuff doesn’t stop me from doing this…” I flip her onto her back and pin her hands above her head, rocking my hard column of need against her naked pussy—the first time I’ve dared to take charge since I was brought here. But I’m in her thoughts now, and I can feel that she doesn’t mind, that she welcomes it—even if I also can sense that she’s allowing it because she feels in love with and indulgent of me.

  I don’t mind.

  I think I’ve earned a little indulgence by now, don’t you?

  Epilogue

  Nimue

  He wears an ankle cuff when we marry.

  It’s not the practical neoprene one from Bardsey, but a handsome titanium thing I had custom made for him when we got home; it locks around his ankle with a special tool that only I have, and we’ve only taken it off when we need to fly somewhere. Otherwise, it glints against his skin day and night, when we fuck and when we shower and when I make him perform all manner of domestic and husbandly deeds completely naked.

  I’m not sure if it’s the magic he was born with or simply good genes, but the only sign of Merlin’s age are the faint lines around his eyes and the silver threading through his hair. His body is the lean length of muscle and masculinity that I remember from my youth, his eyes are still crackling and glittering with boundless mystery, and his cock is still youth embodied, in that it’s endlessly hard for me. He takes a beating beautifully, begs me to hurt him, bite him, fuck him, and when I reward him with letting him fuck me in turn, he rails me like a man half his age.

  What more could a merry little sadist want?

  Well, one thing.

  And I have that too.

  Sharing magic with him is more intimate than sex, more exotic than kink, and it’s elemental and spiritual and exhilarating and entrancing and I can’t get enough of it. A long time ago I told him I wanted to crack him open and crawl inside his mysteries forever, and now I can. I can indulge my obsession with him on every level, and the way I possess his body, he possesses my mind, my thoughts, my soul. All I have to do is think of him, and there he is, boundless in his secrets and hidden corners of his heart. Mine to explore for the rest of our lives.

  It’s a marvelous April evening as I watch him return from his walk with Greer around the lake. He’s just told her the truth of all our lives and given her the key that will take her and Embry home to Ash. And when he mounts the steps to my sister’s expansive patio—currently festooned with lanterns and flowers for the wedding—I catch a glimpse of his cuff bright and shining on his ankle.

  How could it have taken me so long to learn how we needed to love each other? When the answer seems so obvious now?

  The look he gives me as he sees me standing there in my thin dress, the lanterns no doubt illuminating the curves and lines of my body underneath it, is nothing less than scorching. The same dark smolder he gave me as a prisoner in a cave once upon a time, and the same hungry stare he gave a Catholic schoolgirl twenty-some years ago. My body, already warm from the brief flash of his ankle cuff, heats even more. I think I’ll be dragging him to a dark corner of Vivienne’s mansion very shortly; a quick shove to his knees and a hand twined in his raven hair while he tongues my pussy would do very nicely.

  But for now, I settle for the pleasing shine of his wedding ring on his finger as he reaches for my hand to kiss it, following it with a kiss to my neck. I brush up against his thoughts, sending him the images of exactly what I want to do later, and he groans quietly into my throat.

  Let’s go now, I hear him think. Let me please you now.

  You always please me, I think to him fondly, and then run my fingers through his thick, dark hair. My wizard.

  He scoffs aloud. I please you more on my knees.

  Let’s enjoy the party a bit longer. Then, if you behave, I’ll let you enjoy me.

  I can hear his answering grumble even through our thoughts. I just laugh.

  We each grab a glass of champagne and wander over to the far end of the patio, where the reception crowd is thinner and we have an unobstructed view of the lake. The sun has just finished setting, leaving a faint pinkish, lavender glow above the mountains while fog creeps over the mirrored water.

  I think of another lake, long ago, also fog-draped and still. I think of the cruel queen who died, and the sister who I ruled with because we decided that two queens united in strength made more sense than a bitter struggle over which of our gifts mattered more to Avalon.

  I think of all that Merlin’s accomplished with Ash and Embry and Greer, and I think of the tasks that now lay at my feet, the duties that the sight has given me. Helping Embry and then Kay. The pain and strife about to be stirred up between Mark, Tristan, and Isolde. The quest Galahad will face when he comes of age, and the destined storms already swirling at Lyr’s heels. There is so much to do, and yet, still so much to celebrate and revel in.

  I take my husband’s hand, loving the feel of those long, elegant fingers wrapping around my own.

  “I dreamed of you and this lake, you know,” he says out loud, his eyes on the water. “You were going to empty my blood into it, and still I loved you.”

  “I don’t do blood-play,” I tease, bumping my shoulder into his, but he doesn’t smile back. Instead he turns to look at me with his heart in his eyes and I suddenly want to bleed for him, to die for him like he did for me. I want to give him my bones, my grave, and eternities of devotion.

  I’ll always be devoted to him. I’ll protect him and beat him and care for him with every sinew and inch of me. I vow it to the Goddess.

  “I would have done it, Nimue,” he says quietly, onyx eyes reflecting the light of a hundred lanterns. “Bled for you, died for you. Anything for you.”

  Shh shh shh, I shush, my hand moving to cup his handsome, angular face. “Never again, not in any lifetime. You belong to me now, and I won’t allow it.”

  His voice cracks. “It’s so hard to believe it’s real. That I finally have you now.” He presses his forehead down to mine, a single tear escaping and I lick it off his cheek as I pull him into my arms.

  “The bad is over now,” I soothe. “The good has just begun.”

  I love you, little moon, he says silently. Forever.

  And I love you, my wizard, for all the forevers, I say back, also silently.

  And out loud, I say shh shh shh, and kiss him until all our ancient pain is replaced by soothing-lake fog and the promise of cuffs and rings and riding crops and the small little life about to bloom in my belly tonight. A gift from an apologetic fate, a gift that even Merlin doesn’t know is coming.

  Shh shh shh.

  About Merlin and Nimue

  When I wrote Merlin in the New Camelot books, I only knew a few things about him:

  He’d have real magic. He’d be the only person in the New Camelot world to remember the “old” Camelot. And he had some kind of tragic backstory with Nimue, who in New Camelot is Vivienne’s sister and Morgan and Embry’s aunt (as well as Lyr’s adoptive mother).

  There’s a fairly wide range of stories about Merlin and Nimue’s relationship, but most of them go something like this: Merlin, an old man, mentors Nimue, a young maiden. Either he becomes obsessed with her, and she’s forced to stave off his unwanted advances by entombing him in a cave or a tree, or she seduces him in order to steal his sorcery but abandons him once she’s through learning what she wants to know. In some versions, he’s so besotted with her that even though he can foresee his own doom at her hands, he willfully accedes to her manipulations, and in other versions, Nimue is a put-upon young woman simply trying to avoid a lecherous old man’s attentions, and trapping or entombing him is the only way for her to escape. He dies or falls into a semi-eternal sleep or goes mad, and then Nimue assumes the role as Arthur’s advisor. She marries a knight named Sir Pelleas and at some point
becomes Lady of the Lake.

  Well. That’s a hell of a starting place.

  I promise I don’t automatically relate everything back to sex, but the entire legend is charged with sex for me. Age gaps, captivity, exchanging of knowledge and power—that just can’t not be sexy, provided there’s a few Sierra-approved additions, of course. Less lecherous old men, a liberal sprinkling of consent, and reinterpretation through the framework of kink, which is all about power exchange and occasionally about recreating captivity (albeit playfully and consensually), served to reconfigure Merlin’s death into something happier.

  When I picked the Moon as my card for the Cards of Love project, it seemed superficially fitting. The Moon is a card of illusion—perfect, yes, illusion is a synonym for magic, after all—and a card of remembered or subconscious fear—which is totally apt if you have past life memories of your own death. But when I actually started digging into the words themselves, I found deeper and richer themes to play with.

  The Moon is an invitation of sorts, to walk in the unknown or the barely known, to explore our intuition and our psychic selves. To fully immerse ourselves in our own conjurings and fears so that we can make sense of them by the time the sun rises. It’s permission to listen to dreams, to think magically, to be wild. This idea of long-submerged wildness and magic, of veils being lifted, helped inform how I wanted Merlin and Nimue to love and fuck and forgive.

  Anyway, what came out of that headspace was an esoteric, second-chance m/F romance and I hope you liked it! You may have also caught references to Mark, Tristan and Isolde—Mark is the owner of Lyonesse, the club where Ash learns kink in American King—and yes, that means I’m planning on writing their story! I was waiting until I knew what it was, and now I think I know, so at some point there’ll be another MMF saga of kinky angst coming from me. I’m not sure when yet, since I have something truly bananapants lined up for 2019, but rest assured, the tragic trio is currently agitating to have their story told.