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Link flexed both hands again and looked up along the curve of his arm, but he had to stop before he could see the ropes tying his wrists to the headboard. He looked down again, to where his Queen stood naked and gleaming in the barest hint of dawn from the window.
Was it really this close to dawn? He felt a small twinge of guilt; Ilia would be wondering where he was, but she couldn't know he'd found a way to change back, not this soon. He could explain... but that thought fled his mind as his Queen began to line up her things. He swallowed, his whole body throbbing with anticipation. He hadn’t come here for this; he hadn’t come here for much of anything. His wrapping on the cursed pendant had come undone and changed him, overnight, and he’d fled Ordon village without thinking: fled Ilia and Rusl and so many others for the only person who could help.
It still sent his head reeling it had resulted in this, and he whined as she set down the bottles: healing potions, bandages, two other jars and her knife.
He remembered that knife.
She turned at his noise with a smile. “Are you impatient already?”
Link cleared his throat. “It’s the same knife.”
“Does that bother you?”
He almost couldn’t answer. Perhaps it did bother him a little, but if so it paled in comparison to the aching need he felt thinking about it now with her in front of him. Her nipples were stiff, too, the darkened skin tight at the crest of her heavy breasts. She wasn't old by any stretch, but she wasn't as young as Ilia, only older than him by a few years as far as he knew. He opened his mouth and gave a swallow too loud to ignore.
It didn’t seem like she mistook him, though. His full body reaction to it would be hard to miss. She reached out with one hand to trace the still red scars on his throat from when Ganondorf had used her body to torture him.
“Be patient.”
He closed his eyes and nodded. Patient; he could be patient. This was, in some ways, a favour to her not just him. A queen with no desire for a husband, only interested in men one way...
And a hero trying too hard to make himself feel at home in a small village once again.
(Ilia, begging to stay with him; Ilia kissing him good morning and good night; Ilia, who he still desperately cared for, who was just as lost as him trying to return to something like a normal life in Ordon no matter how badly it fit...)
“You are thinking too hard,” Zelda said and tapped his thigh with the flat of the blade.
Link jumped, his breath rushing out in a little gasp. "Shit. I know."
She hummed and turned the knife, tracing a thin scratch of a line through his skin. "I know you know. Behave."
His whole stomach dropped into a pool of molten heat. "You sound like Midna now."
His Queen laughed and dug the tip of her knife into his skin. If she spoke, he didn't hear it over his blood pounding in his ears as he prayed he didn't embarrass himself in front of her. It hurt; of course it hurt. It just filled his veins with heat more than any kiss in the dark of his home ever had.
She pulled the knife away and left him with blood running down the inside of his leg, tickling softer and softer skin as it slid over his cool skin. He flexed that leg, then the other , eyes shut to savour the moment.
His Queen lay one delicate hand on his knee and pushed his legs back down a moment later. The bed dipped, and Link turned to catch her gaze as she crawled over him. He thought briefly to the short time he'd had with Midna looking like herself, and wondered if she was taller than her. There was no question they were both taller than him and he felt that dizzying contrast in every inch of his skin.
Without any of her decoration, she was still so regal. Her face was narrow and her eyes hid under short, dense lashes and a sharp nose. She’d straddled his thighs and dropped one hand to his cock, erect before her stomach. He worried, briefly, insanely if she cared about the size; was she disappointed? Immediately he tried to put the worry from his mind: if she didn’t even like men, did she care? Maybe she preferred less to more...
She ran her thumb along the tender skin at the edge of his crown and Link stopped worrying so much and gasped for another breath of air. He whined, somewhere between fear and the crushing heat that felt seconds from spilling over.
“I can’t...” He began.
Sometime in the last few seconds he’d shut his eyes; he heard the amusement in her breath still. “I want to make sure you last long enough to please me later,” she said, and her hand closed around his shaft. “Think you need anything more than this?”
He couldn’t answer her; he didn’t. The sheer anxiety of it all, the long night and longer talk, the promise of pain and pleasure had had him on edge for most of an hour and it came from his throat and his hips all at once.
When his breath finally returned, he squinted one eye open at her and watched as she wiped his cum from her stomach with a look of vague disgust. Only when she saw him watching did she reapply her smile and the breathless heat in his stomach was almost too much.
What the fuck was wrong with him, to enjoy this? He didn’t know. He couldn’t have explained if he had to. It wasn’t like sex wasn’t normally fun, normally a pleasure of giggling and soft touches...
It just wasn’t this.
'This' had turned into Zelda wiping off her hands on a damp towel at the edge of the bed and picking up the clean knife. 'This' was his eyes locking onto the blade and watching her roll her finger across tip and edge and then lay it down along his collarbone. He couldn’t stare at it there, not without craning his neck, so he watched her face again as the look of vague disgust was replaced by one of intense, deep focus of her own.
“So we have a few minutes,” she said, and the corner of her mouth rose. “Why don’t I get myself warmed up?”
He had no idea how close she was. The way she was straddled over him, her own neat blonde curls hid her body from view and his outer thighs pressed against the inside of hers. Whatever cut she’d made on his skin there had closed sometime in the last (endless, heady) minute and left him whimpering as he almost didn’t even feel the knife break his skin. There was just a tug, along the base of his collarbone, and then something wet and heavy rolled over the bone and ran down his neck towards the bed.
Link swallowed, uncontrolled, and looked down anyways. He could just make out the contact of knife and skin and watched her finish drawing that blooming red line. She pulled the knife clear and went to trace the second, and his mouth hung open as she went. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. His skin crawled, but it wasn’t horror. If it was horror, it was something more like awe, like watching a bear pace the edge of the paddock.
(Feeling Midna jerk on his ear to make him face her and she smiled, all vicious edges, on their first meeting, when he’d hated her as much as he’d been utterly fascinated by her.)
The next time she moved, she lifted the knife to his face, and Link lay his head back as she reached up to cup his jaw in one hand. The other slid the tip of the blade through his cheek and Link’s eye twitched at it coming so very close.
“Ah, ah,” Zelda scolded him. “Do not twitch. You wanted this.”
He did. He licked his lips and nodded, speechless with need. His legs shifted under her, his thighs closing around his heavy body, all of it as flushed with heat as his face. When it went from just feeling it to showing it, he didn’t know; he couldn’t look, couldn’t touch himself. His arms flexed uselessly against the bindings holding his hands to the headboard, and he desperately wished for any options at all: to touch her. To touch himself. To bite down on his own hand until he stopped throbbing with need and felt something more than a few lines of pain cut through his skin.
“You are so desperate,” Zelda said, and let the blade trail down his cheek. It came to rest, a thin vertical line against his throat and Link closed his eyes.
He felt faint. He felt... He remembered that pain, more than most. He’d choked on his own blood, desperately hoping to die to escape it (hoping to live, hoping to save her even as she cut him up.) Her knife had come within fragments of severing his spine that day, and now all he bore of it was a scar clean through his throat.
They hadn’t actually talked about this, he thought, wild with sudden fear. What if she copied it in full? Would a potion be enough if he couldn’t even swallow it? Had she brought any fairies or not? He hadn’t asked, and suddenly he was terrified.
Why was she hesitating? Link dared open his eyes again and looked up into her solemn face, but even now she was more alive than she had ever been that horrible day almost a year before. Her eyes gleamed and her mouth was just as open, her breaths coming just as hard as she studied his face in return.
The moment their eyes met, she smiled and the knife turned and plunged through his throat.
Link gagged. He almost (almost) coughed, and furiously suppressed it. He could feel it, like a tickle beneath his skin, like a cold something every time his muscles tightened. It was heavy against his throat, giving a darkness to each breath, like something wet against skin that should never, ever be that way... but it wasn’t the flood of blood in his mouth of before.
As his eyes closed, she leaned down and kissed him, leaning heavily on the knife until it had sunk through his skin; until he felt the hilt pressed against his throat. The far side of the crossguard butted up under his jaw.
The kiss made him feel like a youth all over again; he couldn’t think of what to do with his lips, or his tongue as she kissed him with rose on her skin. Her tongue touched his lips, then joined his and he gasped, shallow breathy things as he didn’t dare move with her knife in him.
It didn’t seem like she minded. Her other hand groped between his legs and she moved. She put her weight on the dagger and he couldn’t breathe for real for several seconds, his vision nearly blacking out before she let go to push herself up on the bed.
There was a bewildering few moments as he felt the blood rush back into his head like he’d been drunk, or bucked off a horse. Then he realized she’d taken his cock inside her while he was dazed and confused. He whined for real this time and winced: he could still feel the knife, still feel his skin crawling around its sharp, vicious presence between them.
“You’re beautiful like this,” she said and he could hear just how much she meant it. “How much do you think you’ll bleed when I pull it out?”
He didn’t know. He wondered it too, and he swallowed again, as though he’d forgotten the result last time, as though he wasn’t doing it just to feel it press into his skin once more... As though he didn’t feel the knife just as sharp and hot as her soft flesh felt, wrapped around his cock.
She reached up and stroked her fingers lovingly along his shivering throat before she took hold of the hilt and pulled it free.
His throat spasmed. He gasped, then coughed violently, his neck contracting in sudden pain and the sudden ability to breathe. With it came the convulsive need to stop the blood that had pooled from going down: he gagged and spat out what felt like so much blood until his throat was raw with the force.
And as he struggled, he felt her press her hand between his stomach and her legs and rock in place. His legs trembled, with pain and with need until he finally settled and he could breathe once more.
As he lay his head back against the bedding beneath him, Zelda’s free hand traced its way up his chest, over the nearly healed marks on his collarbones and the bloody mess that was his throat, and stopped with three fingers pressed into the knotted scar under his jaw.
“If I hadn’t mounted you already, how close to orgasm do you think you’d be?” she said. “You’re already so hard inside me, I don’t think it would matter if I was on you or not.”
Link licked his lips and simply nodded. He couldn’t imagine talking; he wasn’t sure he could refute her, either. He didn’t think he cared. With the fear of choking gone, even his raw throat couldn’t the euphoria about everything that had happened so far: the pain, the pressure, the dull bruise left over from her leaning on his throat... It all felt like he could go forever on this high, and he never wanted it to stop.
She wiped bloody fingers over his lips and he turned his head to follow their touch until she slipped those narrow digits between his lips, too. She let him, dark eyes amused, and as he sucked his blood from her skin she smiled.
“I should beat you for that,” she said, and Link winced. “Do you want me to?”
He shook his head, on reflex: he didn’t like that kind of pain, as much as he might put up with it. It wasn’t the same.
“I didn’t tell you to kiss my hand,” she continued, and her nails trailed down his neck. “Were you just trying to treat yourself? Impatient?”
He cleared his throat, unsure if he wanted to answer or not (did she even want him to?) and then he felt her nails push through the tight cut in his neck. Link gagged, startled and thrashing in place before she gripped his throat with that selfsame hand, his neck held inside and out by the same fingers.
He swore. “No!”
Zelda’s other hand came up and caught his chin. She frowned, dark eyebrows low and her grip on his throat lightened. “No?” she asked.
It took him several seconds to realize what she meant. Was she... Was she asking, seriously, or not? He wasn’t sure. He swallowed once, twice, then again and closed his eyes. Her hand was still there, on his throat, fingers still... still inside his skin but the grip had eased enough he felt no risk he couldn’t breathe. Her other hand...
She’d stopped touching herself. He could smell it on her fingers, smell that she’d just been there, however close to orgasm she was and she’d stopped for... for him.
Link swallowed hard and took one more, quiet breath and licked his lips. “I’m okay,” he breathed. “You... you just startled me.”
He felt her laugh; felt the little shiver down her chest and stomach, her shift against him as her thighs clenched around his hips. He pressed back into her body himself, a little thrust up inside her and slowly the high he’d felt before came rushing back, aided by her digging nails deeper into the closing wound on his throat – but not, this time, across his throat itself.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “I still heal like that?”
“You do,” she chuckled softly and pulled her hand free. Her fingers traced the line of his throat, from collarbone to jaw and she pushed his head back on the bed. “Open your mouth.”
His breath caught again, but he listened to her stupidly – unthinking.
No; he was only thinking of the high he'd gotten from her knife through his throat and he wanted, almost more than anything else, to feel it again. He closed his eyes and though, what should he do with his tongue? He honestly couldn't remember if it'd been cut before or not. It hadn't been important. He--
His Queen clucked her tongue, like scolding a horse, and his eyes snapped open to meet her gaze. She smiled, and he felt the knife hit his jaw like a punch. He felt it hit a tooth with a reverberation of pain that vanished into an intense pleasure he had never expected. His whole body jerked under her and Zelda pressed her weight down on his chest, pinning him in place even as he couldn't tell for several seconds if this was pain or pleasure or more.
The blood pooled in his mouth, and he had to breathe through his nose; it almost wasn't enough. It would never be enough. He wanted to gag, to cough, to struggle and he couldn't. He convulsed under her again, and squinted his eyes open to meet her gaze.
She was staring at his face with an intensity that was almost painful. He inhaled sharply and shuddered; he closed his eyes, feeling the pool of heat overflow until he couldn't think of anything else. He wanted her; he wanted this, he wanted so badly to close his mouth, but the visceral feeling of the knife on his teeth (the memory of it) rode him into the ground.
"Are you done?" she asked, her voice dark with her own arousal. "Hold still."
He half-swallowed and fluttered his eyelashes, the desire to whimper stillborn in his throat. It only got worse as he felt her hand work its way between them and her tight heat shudder around him. He struggled; he wanted to moan at the pleasure of her against his skin. He was writhing, his heels dug into the bed beneath him as his blood nearly choked him. He turned his head to the side to let it run out the corner of his mouth and she let him, took her hand off the blade and braced herself as she ground her hand between their bodies, her knuckles bruising on his stomach.
He couldn't’ tell if he came again or not; she did, with a gasp of pleasure, and just as suddenly reached up and jerked the knife from his mouth. He coughed up blood before it could choke him more, gagging for air, for his sanity against the pain ricocheting up his jaw.
It was several long seconds before she touched his face, before the soft noises she made cut through the fog in his mind. She was shushing him like a scared horse, and a few seconds later his hands were free. Link immediately tried to turn under her, and Zelda rose onto her knees to let him.
After so long with his mouth full of blood, it felt good to cough. He gagged again, then wheezed out another breath before he felt some kind of cold glass press against his cheek. He leaned into it, first, before he even thought to look or ask what it was.
“Drink,” Zelda said, her rough voice uncharacteristically soft.
Link swallowed again and nodded, fumbling for the cork. His hands, still recovering some from being tied up for... how long? Maybe too long, or maybe he was just shaking because the pain had been too much. He couldn’t tell; it was getting harder to think, and harder to ignore how much his whole body ached, like he’d been breaking a horse to saddle all day.
Eventually, she did it: she opened the cork and held the bottle to his lips until he drank the healing potion and collapsed against her side once more. Or at least he tried to: she came back with another bottle moments later.
“This too.”
He had no will to argue: this time, it was just water. It did a much better job washing the taste of blood from his mouth, and, this time, even only seconds after the healing potion, it didn’t drip from the gap cut into his chin: the cut had already closed.
It was almost disappointing.
He sank down again onto his back in the bed and Zelda lay next to him, still propped up on her side. Gone was the intense stare, the near cruelty in her eyes. In its place, she was looking down at him with nothing but worry and concern. It felt wrong. She’d looked like that at Midna, before, not him.
Never him.
“What is it?” he asked. His throat hurt even to ask.
“Just worried. You need to rest. I can help you clean up, but I don’t want you to stand until you recover from the blood loss.”
Link blinked at her, slowly. They had talked about this, he remembered, although he’d ignored it at the time. It hadn’t felt all that important. He leaned into her hand on his cheek and simply closed his eyes. It still didn’t feel that important. He was tired, yes, and the blood was growing sticky on his neck and face, but that was fine. He expected that. It wasn’t worse than a bad day in the mud, and here...
Here, he felt worn out in the best way. He was shaking with fatigue and adrenaline, his skin was tender, and he wanted nothing more than to revel in it and simply feel. Feel the pain, feel the fear and anxiety. If he got up, he had to think about after: he had to get home, had to explain his absence to Rusl, and talk to Ilia. (Fuck, he had to explain this to Ilia...)
But for now, he could crack his eyes open again and look at his Queen and see her seeing him for what felt like the first time and he wanted to treasure it a little while longer.