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The sight of him steals the breath right from your chest.
His fingertips curl and straighten where they’re bound above his head, held together and tethered to one of the bedposts with invisible restraints. One of his old ratty kerchiefs is secured over his eyes. He wants to break free, wants to touch and feel and caress but you won’t allow it, will you? Not yet.
He’s a sweet little bird with his wings clipped when he’s like this, and he’s all yours.
You grasp both of his wrists, rail thin but deceptively strong, in one of your hands and force them into the mattress, watching as the pale skin pulling taut under your grasp begins to go pink, then white. Then you let go, slowly and cautiously easing your hand away - because while you adore him in that richly colored tunic (almost royal, you sometimes dare to think), while you admire the way his eyes turn almost violet with the night sky, a bruise is the one shade of purple you cannot stand to see on him.
Your pointer and middle fingers trail from his wrists down his arm, across his dagger-sharp collarbones, up the smooth column of his neck and up and up. You briefly press harder here, on the gentle indent that runs down the middle of his bottom lip, holding your own breath as he automatically parts his own chapped lips in response to the touch and sighs, tilting his head back just a bit. Entranced, you follow the line of that lush mouth, tracing the shape with your fingers, noticing the curve of his top lip perfectly shaped like an archer’s bow. You haven’t noticed before - haven’t taken the time to, before now - but he has a beautiful mouth. Even if the things that come out of it are insults and highly inappropriate to his station, even if you’ve only felt it under your own in darkened alcoves and in tumbles in the forest - you notice it now, and it takes every last piece of your willpower not to lean down and claim that mouth with yours.
Instead you busy your hands, bringing them to his collarbones and beginning what’s sure to be for him a maddeningly slow descent. Your hands splay generously when they reach his nipples, your breath hitching in tune with his as you roll the tips between your fingers, softer pressure then firm pressure, then simply running your thumbs back and forth across them as they tighten and stiffen into little pink peaks. As your movements pick up speed, his chest surges upward, his belly tight, and immediately you cease what you’re doing, instead palming his breastbone and pressing him down.
“Shh, easy now Merlin,” you murmur, as if speaking to a spooked animal.
He lets out a little whimper but calms down considerably. It’s quite endearing that he chooses now of all times to be subservient, and you indulge a little by leaning in to hide a smile in the curve between his shoulder and neck. You breathe him in here. He smells odd - a lot like sweat, a little like polish, a lot like those potent herbs and oils that he’s always mixing up in the physician’s quarters. Mostly though, he just smells like Merlin, and that is more than enough for you.
Your hands drift to his sides again, counting each rib as you travel down and down, thumbing at the sharp edges of his hip bones. His breath stutters as you pluck at the laces of his breeches and tug them to his knees, his cock springing free and curving up toward his belly. It’s a bit thinner than yours but engorged with blood, a thick vein running up the underside. You lick your lips in anticipation, suddenly famished.
You begin slow, just to see for yourself how he responds. Small kisses, gentle kitten licks to his inner thighs, to the crease where his groin meets his leg. He squirms, shifting his hips toward you in a silent plea to get on with it, but you’ll have none of that.
This, all of this, will be on your terms.
Because some part of you enjoys this. The world’s most powerful sorcerer, using his own power to restrain himself, is in your bed at your complete mercy.
You could leave him here, naked and vulnerable and alone, if you wanted to.
You could hold him here and trap him here forever, if you wanted to.
But neither of those are feasible when you could be doing other things, better things. Things that make him jump right out of his skin and into your eager arms, like bending down and pressing the tip of your tongue into his slit.
His hips jerk with the movement, and you know that if you could see his eyes, they’d be rolling into the back of his head. A strangled word that sounds like your name emerges in a choked out-breath, and you wrap your hand around his thigh. “Hold still, love,” you command, voice firmer than before. “I’m not finished with you.”
Merlin whines, the sound emerging deep from the back of his throat. You take pity on him and nose into the crease of his leg before trailing your lips over, and taking him fully into your mouth. Again his hips surge forward, and you grin around him, hollowing your cheeks and sucking him down. What an image you make - a king pleasuring his manservant. Even if someone were to walk in right at this moment - not likely, the spell Merlin cast at the beginning of the evening ensured that would not happen - there is something deeply dirty and satisfying about using your mouth, using your tongue to make your servant fall apart, and you can feel the blood rushing south as your cock begins to throb.
You circle the head once or twice before you take in a breath and push your tongue to the floor of your mouth and ease forward onto his cock, taking him until the head brushes the back of your throat and your nose is buried in the dark thatch of hair at his groin. You stay there for a short while, taking in everything here - the smell of him, ripe and musk, and the taste of him, sweat and tang, and the feeling that he is yours, yours for the taking. You push your tongue up against that deliciously pulsing vein as you draw back, just a little.
He moans, the sound sending another jolt straight to your prick, and you close your eyes briefly and use your free hand to reach under your breeches and squeeze at your base to stave off your release. When you open your eyes again, he begins to roll his hips, his chest rising and falling rapidly, shallowly fucking your mouth and looking so perfectly debauched that you cannot find it in yourself to scold him for trying to take control, however unconsciously.
In response, you bob your head, suck him down with a bit more vigor, humming around him, and he nearly sobs, “Arthur, please - ”
You pull off from his cock with a loud pop, smiling up at him even though he cannot see it. “Please what?”
“Please,” he utters, voice low and strained. “Let me go?”
You stop shock-still, the dual meaning of the words sending you reeling. Then you realise he is only asking you to permit him to release the restraints, nothing more at this time. You sigh, half from relief, half from desire, breath tickling at his inner thigh. “Not yet, sweetling.”
He makes another frustrated noise and cants his hips upward, tip of his cock poking into your chin, and the corner of your mouth twitches up. Impatient little thing, isn’t he?
It would be so easy to keep him here like this, playing with his body and wrenching out gasps and moans from him until his voice goes hoarse, but the want for your own release will not permit you to do so. You bend down and suckle at him once more, applying more friction with your mouth even as you pull away, licking your lips and relishing in the taste of him on your tongue.
Reaching over him, you search out the small vial of oil that you’ve hidden under one of your pillows. His body tenses when he hears you pop the cork, and you put a hand to his side, gently petting him there while rolling the oil around in the fingers of your free hand.
You bend his knees, draping one of his thighs over your forearm. When you’re satisfied that your fingers are slick enough, you eye his furled hole, tiny and pink and inviting - almost begging to be violated. Achingly slow, you begin with one, pressing your pointer into his opening.
“Oh ,” he gasps, chest arching up off the mattress, sounding like the breath’s been punched out of him. For all intents and purposes, it probably has. You’ve rutted together both with clothes and without, and you’ve had hands and mouths on each other’s cocks, but you’ve never done this before.
This is entirely new, and you want to share it with him - only with him.
“How does it feel?” You ask quietly, mesmerised as his hole tightens against the intrusion at first, then relaxes slowly, allowing you to sink in knuckle by knuckle.
“Strange. Almost wrong, but it feels - good,” he stutters as you begin steadily pumping your finger in and out, the slick easing the friction. His head falls back, biting his lip, and you know that with his eyes covered like this, his other senses are heightened - especially touch.
That, more than anything else, encourages you. He may be at your mercy, but you want this to be good for him. You add another finger, breaching his insides hot and tight, and he moans at that like some wanton thing.
“You’re perfect like this,” you whisper to him. “So good for me.”
He gasps again as your fingers begin pumping into him anew, speeding and slowing down in patterns he cannot predict. When the muscles of his belly go taut with anticipation, you pull back on your pace. And just as his body begins to sink into the mattress in relaxation, you begin again, thrusting into him with your fingers as deep as he can take you. He’s so responsive, so open for you, and the throbbing between your legs intensifies where it’s almost painful. As much as you would love to do this forever, you know you can’t last much longer.
When your third finger joins the others, fucking into him with reckless fervor, Merlin hisses through his teeth. His muscles are rigid from head to toe, and with the way his hole is clenching around your knuckles, you know he is close as well. “Arthur, I can’t - ”
“Shut up, Merlin,” you say fondly, if somewhat breathless, and Merlin thumps his head back against the pillows with a groan of frustration. You sit up and still your fingers for a beat, closing your eyes briefly. Then, you open them again with renewed focus and take both his prick and yours in your other hand, fingers closing over them like a vise, and you rock against him. It’s an awkward angle, but as soon as he begins rutting against you in turn, together you find your rhythm, and although he cannot see you, he is perfectly in tune with you, like his body was made for you. And you cannot help but accept it as truth when you look down and watch fascinated as your cocks slide and slip within your fist. They look good together.
Still, you are both too close to the edge and have yet to let go. You flick your wrist, twisting the fingers still buried in his hole, poking and prodding and teasing until your fingers discover a spot that has Merlin’s back arching up off the bed, and he shudders, finding his release as thick ropes of white spurt up onto his front. Gently you ease the fingers out of him, and the sight of him there, lying on your bed, messy and held down and so thoroughly fucked makes you want to sear this into your memory forever. You close your fist tighter over your cock, watching him, watching the come on his belly rise and fall with each slowing breath, and with a few hard and fast strokes, you join him in his release, shooting onto his stomach, and a deep guttural sound wrenches from your throat and you fall forward, bracing your weight on your hands as they fall to the side of his ribs.
Your eyelids flutter shut, and when the blood no longer feels like it’s rushing in your ears, you open them and feel your breath leave you once again. He’s beautiful - flushed and boneless, pliant and open, your mixed spend splashed across his front. You swipe your fingers through the mess on his stomach and feed it to him, heat curling low inside you as you watch him eagerly lick your fingers clean, his tongue lapping at the roof of his mouth as if trying to chase every last drop, savor every last bit.
Body tingling with the sight and wonderfully sated, you inch your way up, your body weight warm and heavy on top of him. Your fingers lace together over the mop of his black hair, forearms framing his face. He rather looks encased in a gilded cage like this, you note with pleasure. Then you pull the kerchief from his eyes, ducking down to brush your lips against his still-closed eyelids. “All right my little bird,” you murmur. “You’re free.”
Merlin’s eyes flash gold and not a moment passes before his hands are traveling up your back, scratching with his nails and smoothing with the flats of his palms in equal turns. He cranes his neck up to kiss you and you oblige, pouring all of your affection and love into your kiss. You notice the salt of both him and you on his tongue, and your mind is dizzy and happy with the taste.
“You - are - absolutely - maddening,” he mumbles between kisses, and you chuckle against his mouth, because only Merlin - the insolent little idiot - can get away with speaking like that to the king.
“You’re mine anyway,” you say - as sort of a reminder to the both of you - when the kisses have slowed to soft presses and brushes of lips. And when it becomes too much of a chore to hold yourself up on your arms, you roll off of him to the side and put your forehead to his, wanting to keep close.
Merlin gives a soft smile at that. “Always, my king. Always.”
And as Merlin’s eyes slide shut and his breaths slowly even and slow down for sleep, that gentle curve still hugging his mouth, you find a similar smile on your face. For a bit more, you lie there in silence and watch him.
You have only a few minutes of respite before these idealistic thoughts of forever and Merlin begin to slip away.
He is yours entirely - body, magic, mind, soul - but only for now. Because one day soon, you will have to truly set him free. You’ll need a Queen and heirs - Merlin can give you neither. You swallow the lump in your throat.
Of course you could marry, you could have your children, and tell him to come to your bed in spite of all of that - and he would obey. But his heart would break, and you do not have enough cruelty in you to risk that.
And with the new laws about magic being written into the records as you lie here, it is more than likely that in the near future, Merlin will need to be called away to serve as mediator or ambassador, and you will no longer be the center of his world - Camelot as a whole will become his first priority. And as selfish as it sounds, you hate that.
You know you will have to let him go eventually - but today is not that day.
So for now, you pretend.
You reach out, hook your little finger across his pointer finger, imagining it a silver ring. You arrange the bedclothes over his shoulder, imagining them a rich purple cloak. You lean up and kiss his brow, watching the flicker of yellow candle light across his hair.
You imagine it a coronet.