Bound to the Fae King's Touch

The forest smelled of damp earth and desperation. Three days of searching, three nights of listening to Elara’s favorite lullaby on repeat in my head until it sounded like a dirge. I’d followed the whispers, the trails of unnaturally blue moss, the cold dread in my gut that said the stories were true: the fae took, and they did not give back.

The clearing appeared between one ragged breath and the next. In its center, my sister stood motionless, her eyes wide with silent terror, held in place by nothing but the shimmering air. And before her, lounging on a throne of gnarled, silver-barked wood, was him.

He was beautiful the way a lightning strike is beautiful—all terrifying power and imminent ruin. Dark hair threaded with living ivy, eyes the color of a gathering storm.

“Lily,” he said, and my name in his mouth felt like a claim. “You’ve come for what’s yours.”

“She’s not a thing to be owned,” I said, my voice steadier than my hands.

“Everything here is owned,” he replied, his gaze like a physical weight. “The question is by whom. You want her back. I want… service.”

“What kind of service?” I demanded, stepping forward. The air thickened, resisting me.

“A year. In my court. Bound to me.” He didn’t move, but his presence seemed to expand, filling the clearing. “Her life, for your time.”

Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through me. A year. Stories tumbled in my mind—tales of mortals who served the fae and returned aged decades, or not at all, or hollowed out. “No. Something else. Gold. A task. My skill as a scribe—”

“Your skills are of no interest to me,” he interrupted, his voice softening into something more dangerous. “I have scribes. I have gold. I desire something… rarer. Your mortal resilience. Your fire. The way you fight even when you know you’ll lose.” He finally rose, and the world tilted slightly. “That is my price. One year of service to me, personally. Your will, placed willingly in my hands. Refuse, and she stays here, caught between worlds until her mind unravels. You can hear it beginning, can’t you?”

A faint, high-pitched whine, like a teakettle about to scream, emanated from Elara. It was the sound her mind made against the foreign magic. It would break her.

The bargain was monstrous. But the alternative was unthinkable.

“Define ‘service’,” I whispered, the last bastion of a crumbling defense.

A slow, predatory smile touched his lips. “That, I think, is best discovered, not described. But I give you this vow: your body will not be taken by force. Your mind will not be broken by magic. The chains will be of your own forging. Do you agree?”

It wasn’t enough. It was everything. I looked at Elara, at the silent plea in her eyes. I thought of our parents’ graves, of my promise to keep her safe.

“I agree,” I said, and the words left my mouth like stones, dropping into a silent pool of fate. The air snapped taut. A shimmering thread, visible only at the edge of sight, wrapped around my wrist and his, pulling tight before fading.

“Then she is free.”

Elara stumbled forward as if released from invisible ropes. She fell into my arms, sobbing. “Lily, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to follow the music—”

“Shhh. Go home. Light the hearth. Don’t look back.” I pushed her toward the path, my voice cracking.

She fled. The moment she disappeared into the trees, the connection between us—the twin-tether that had always been there—stretched thin and snapped. I was alone.

“A year begins now,” the king said. He hadn’t moved, but he was suddenly just before me. “You may call me Cassian.”

He offered his hand. I stared at it. Taking it felt like signing a contract in blood. But the bargain was sealed. I placed my hand in his.

The world dissolved into a whirl of scent and sound—night-blooming jasmine, distant, dissonant music, the rustle of great, unseen wings. We stood in a chamber of living wood, curved like the inside of a vast tree. A bed of moss and silk floated in the center.

“This is where you’ll sleep,” he said. “When I allow it.”

I pulled my hand back, wrapping my arms around myself. “And my duties?”

He circled me, a slow, predator’s orbit. “You will attend me. You will learn the rules of my court. You will provide… companionship. Your mortal perspective amuses me. Your resistance…” He paused behind me, his breath a warm ghost on my neck. “…intrigues me. It is a flavor I have not tasted in an age.”

“I won’t be your whore.” The words were ash in my mouth.

He appeared before me again, his head tilted. “Whore is a transactional word. This is not a transaction. It is a claiming. Different rules apply.” He reached out, and I flinched, but he only caught a strand of my hair, rubbing it between his fingers. “You agreed to serve. Your service is to surrender that stubborn will of yours. To let me see what lies beneath the brave face you show the world.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Don’t I?” His stormy eyes held mine. “I saw you, these past three days. Not just your body fighting through the thorns, but your spirit. The relentless, hopeless hope of you. You carry a deep well of want, Lily. You just pour it all out for others, leaving none for yourself. I will teach you to drink from it.”

It was too close to the truth, a truth I’d never spoken. It felt like he’d peeled back my skin and read the secrets written on my bones. The violation should have made me hate him. Instead, a treacherous heat uncoiled in my belly.

He saw it. Of course he did. His smile was knowing. “Come. You should eat. Mortals need their strength.”

The following days were a lesson in subtle erosion. I was given a small, elegant room adjacent to his, its windows showing impossible vistas—one a star-dusted ocean, another a forest of crystal trees. I was provided with beautiful, restrictive gowns. I attended him in a throne room that was never the same twice, where fae nobles with eyes like gemstones and voices like trickling water watched me with cold curiosity.

“The mortal pet,” one sneered, a lord with bark-like skin. “What use is she, my king? She smells of fear and fleeting time.”

Cassian, lounging on his shifting throne of root and shadow, didn’t look at the lord. His gaze was on me, standing rigidly at his right side. “She smells of potential, Lord Thorn. Something your centuries have sadly eroded. Leave us.”

The dismissal was absolute. When we were alone, the silence pressed in.

“They despise me,” I said, my voice small in the vast room.

“They envy you,” he corrected, rising to approach me. “They are bound by millennia of protocol and power. You are bound only by your word to me. That is a freedom they cannot comprehend.” He stopped before me. “You are also bound by your hunger. Deny it all you wish. It calls to me.”

He never touched me beyond the occasional guiding hand on my back, or the brush of his fingers when passing a goblet of wine that tasted of forgotten memories. Yet each non-touch was a brand. I dreamed of his hands. I woke aching.

One evening, a week into my captivity, he summoned me to his private chambers. The walls were lined with books that whispered in languages I couldn’t understand. A fire crackled in a hearth of black stone.

“You study me like one of your books,” I said, standing awkwardly in the center of the room.

“You are more fascinating than any book,” he replied, looking up from a scroll. “Books reveal their secrets willingly. You hide yours behind barricades of duty and fear. I enjoy the excavation.”

“I’m not here for your enjoyment.” “Aren’t you?” He set the scroll aside. “The bargain was for service. Your sullen presence is service of a sort, but not the kind I find… satisfying.” He stood, and the room seemed to grow smaller. “You agreed to place your will in my hands. Yet you clutch it to your chest like a dagger.”

“You said you wouldn’t take my body by force.” “I won’t.” He was before me now, his presence a physical warmth. “But your body is not the prize, Lily. Your surrender is. The moment you stop fighting yourself.” His finger traced the neckline of my gown, not touching my skin, but the heat of him seeped through the fabric. I shuddered. “You are fighting so hard. Against me. Against this place. Against the part of you that is already wondering… what would it feel like to stop?”

My breath hitched. The part of me he spoke of was a live wire in my core, sparking with every near-miss of his touch.

“Tell me to leave,” he murmured, his lips close to my ear. “Command me, as your king, to go. Your will, in my hands. Use it.”

I opened my mouth. The word ‘go’ sat on my tongue. It would be so easy. A reassertion of the control I was drowning without. I swallowed it. I said nothing. A slow, triumphant smile touched his mouth. “There. The first true surrender. Silent, but I heard it.”

Then he did touch me. Just his thumb, stroking along my jawline. The contact was electric, a shock that melted the residual tension from my spine. A soft, broken sound escaped me.

“See?” he whispered. “Not force. Permission.”

That night, in my room, I touched myself for the first time since arriving, thinking of his hands, his voice, that look of knowing triumph. The climax was sharp and left me feeling more conquered than if he’d been in the bed with me.

The next morning, over fruits that tasted of sunlight, he said, “You slept restlessly.” I couldn’t meet his eyes. “The bed is strange.” “Liar.” The word was gentle. “You dreamed of surrender. It frightened you. It excited you.” He leaned forward. “Today, you will serve me by being honest. One truth. Any truth you wish.”

I picked at the fruit, my heart pounding. The most terrifying truth rose up. “Last night,” I whispered, “I imagined it was your hand, not mine.”

His stillness was profound. Then he reached across the table, his fingers brushing the back of my hand where it lay on the wood. A simple touch, yet it felt like a covenant. “Thank you,” he said, and the sincerity in his voice undid me more than any command could have.

The dynamic shifted. The resistance wasn’t gone, but it had fractured, and through the cracks, curiosity bloomed. When he guided me through the ever-changing palace, his hand on the small of my back felt less like a brand and more like an anchor. I began asking questions—about the court, the magic, the politics—and he answered, his lessons woven with subtle flirtations that kept me perpetually off-balance.

“The magic here is fed by emotion,” he explained one afternoon in a library with a ceiling of swirling mist. “Strong feeling—desire, rage, joy—it makes reality more… malleable.”

“Is that why…” I gestured at the shifting corridors. “Partially. It’s also why,” he said, closing the distance between us, “your fear when you arrived made the shadows deepen. And why your… current state of confusion… makes the air taste of lightning.” He breathed in deeply. “It’s intoxicating.”

I was backed against a bookshelf. “What do you want from me, Cassian? Truly? You could have any being in this realm. Why this game with a mortal?”

“Because games with immortals have predictable endings,” he said, his hands coming to rest on the shelf on either side of my head, caging me in. “You are a creature of glorious, fragile contradiction. You burn with a fire that will be extinguished in a heartbeat of my long life. That makes every moment of your surrender a treasure. A victory snatched from time itself.”

He didn’t kiss me. He just looked, his gaze dropping to my mouth, then back to my eyes, and the wanting in that look was a mirror to my own. The last of my defiance crumbled, not into defeat, but into a vast, yawning need.

“I’m tired of fighting,” I breathed, the admission a liberation.

“I know,” he said, and finally, finally, his mouth found mine.

The kiss was not gentle. It was a claiming, yes, but also a confession. It was the release of days of tension, the answer to a question my body had been asking since I first saw him. I kissed him back with a desperation that shocked me, my hands fisting in his tunic, pulling him closer. He groaned into my mouth, and the sound was pure victory.

When we broke apart, we were both breathless. His forehead rested against mine. “Your room. Or mine?”

The choice, however small, undid me. “Yours.”

He led me not to the bedchamber I knew, but to another, dominated by a huge bed draped in grey silks the color of his eyes. The air hummed with latent power.

“The magic here responds to us,” he said, his voice rough. “To our intent. Our desire.” He turned me to face him, his hands coming up to frame my face. “I will not use glamour or compulsion on you. Every sigh, every shiver, will be yours. Given. Do you understand?”

I nodded, beyond words.

He kissed me again, softer this time, a slow exploration that set every nerve alight. His hands moved from my face, down my neck, over my shoulders, pushing the gown away. The fabric didn’t tear or snag; it simply dissolved under his touch, as if retreating from his right to remove it. I stood bare before him, and instead of shame, I felt a surge of power. He looked at me as if I were a revelation.

“Exquisite,” he breathed, his hands following his gaze, mapping my skin. “All this fierce spirit, housed in such softness.”

His touch was worship. He learned my body with a patient, devastating focus, finding places that made me gasp, spots that made me arch, secrets that made me cry out. When his mouth closed over my breast, his tongue circling my nipple, I tangled my hands in his hair, holding him to me. The pull seemed to connect directly to the throbbing ache between my legs.

“Please,” I heard myself whimper, a sound I didn’t recognize.

“Please what?” he murmured against my skin, his hand sliding down my stomach.

“I don’t know. Just… please.”

He chuckled, the vibration traveling through me. “We will learn specificity.” His fingers dipped lower, through my curls, finding the slick heat waiting for him. I jerked at the contact, a bolt of pure sensation shooting up my spine. “But for now… this is enough.”

He touched me with an artist’s precision, building a rhythm that had me fracturing against him. When I came, it was with a sob, my body bowing as waves of pleasure crashed through me. He held me through it, his arms strong around me, whispering praise into my hair.

As I floated back to myself, he laid me on the silks and undressed with a swift, elegant grace. His body was a landscape of lean muscle and pale skin, faintly luminous. He was fully erect, and the sight sent a fresh jolt of desire through my spent body.

He joined me on the bed, kissing me deeply, letting me taste myself on his lips. “My turn,” he said, his voice thick. He guided my hand to him. The feel of him, smooth and hard and hot in my hand, was intoxicating. I explored him, emboldened by his ragged breathing, by the way his eyes drifted shut.

“Enough,” he finally gritted out, gently moving my hand away. He positioned himself over me, the head of his cock pressing against my entrance. “Look at me.”

I did. His stormy eyes were dark with need, but also with a question.

I answered it by wrapping my legs around his hips and pulling him down.

He filled me in one slow, relentless stroke. The feeling was so complete, so right, that I cried out again, this time in pure, overwhelmed satisfaction. We stayed like that for a moment, joined, breathing each other’s air.

Then he began to move.

It was not the frantic pace of my limited experience. It was deep, rolling thrusts that hit a place inside me I didn’t know existed. Each stroke built on the last, a crescendo of sensation that had me clawing at his back, meeting him thrust for thrust. He watched my face, adjusting his angle, his speed, based on my reactions.

“That’s it,” he rasped. “Give it to me. All of it.” I shattered again, my inner muscles clamping around him, and this time, my climax triggered his. He drove into me one last, deep time, his body shuddering, a guttural sound tearing from his throat as he spilled inside me.

We collapsed in a tangle of limbs, slick with sweat. His heart hammered against my ear. The room, which had been humming, now seemed to pulse with a soft, satisfied light.

“That,” he said after a long while, his fingers tracing idle patterns on my shoulder, “was your first lesson in true service. The gift of your pleasure is a gift to me. Your surrender, my victory. They are the same thing.”

I slept, deeply and dreamlessly, in his arms. I woke at dawn to find him propped on an elbow, watching me.

“The court will be expecting you today,” he said. “They will see the change in you. The mark of my… attention.”

“Is that a problem?” “It is a statement.” He brushed my hair from my face. “You are under my protection. My favor has its perks. And its dangers.”

The day passed in a blur. The cold stares of the fae nobles were now tinged with a new respect, and a sharper envy. I attended Cassian, my body humming with the memory of the night, my posture subtly changed. I caught him watching me with a possessive warmth that made my knees weak.

That evening, he led me to a secluded garden where a fountain spilled water that glowed with a soft, blue light. “Your second lesson,” he said, his voice low. “Trust, and the expansion of sensation.”

He produced silken cords from the air itself. “I wish to bind you. Not to hurt you. To heighten you. To remove one layer of control so you can focus on feeling. Do you consent?”

The question was real. I could say no. But the memory of the night before, of the freedom I’d found in letting go, was too fresh. “Yes.”

He guided me to a low, stone bench warmed by some inner magic. He had me kneel on it, leaning forward to grip the other side. With careful, deliberate motions, he bound my wrists to the stone. The position left me exposed, open, vulnerable in a way that made my heart race not with fear, but with a sharp, dizzying anticipation.

“Color?” he asked softly, his hand resting on my lower back. The word was unfamiliar. “What?” “A safeguard. If at any point you need to slow down, say ‘amber’. If you need to stop completely, say ‘crimson’. Do you understand?”

The care in the system, the offered control within the surrender, undid me more thoroughly than the cords. “Yes. I understand.”

He began with touch so light it was almost imagination—a feather trailing down my spine, the brush of a petal across my shoulder blades. Then his hands, warm and sure, kneading the tension from my muscles. He used his mouth, his tongue, tracing the line of my spine, the curve of my ass. Each sensation was isolated, magnified by my bound state and my inability to see what came next.

When his tongue found my core from behind, I cried out, the angle shockingly intimate. He worked me with a slow, relentless focus, bringing me to the edge before backing away, again and again, until I was trembling, begging in broken syllables.

“Please, Cassian, I need… I need more.” “What do you need?” His voice was calm, even as his breath warmed my sensitized skin.

“I need to feel full. I need you.” He kissed the small of my back. “Not yet.”

Something cool and smooth pressed against my entrance. Not him. Something else, shaped and deliberate. A toy, carved of what felt like polished stone. He worked it into me slowly, letting my body adjust to the unfamiliar fullness. The feeling was intense, a constant, stretching presence that amplified every other touch.

He resumed his ministrations with his mouth, and with the toy inside me, the climb back toward climax was swift and steep. When I came, it was with a force that made me see stars, my cries swallowed by the night-blooming flowers around us.

He didn’t unlace me. He simply held me through the aftershocks, his body pressed along mine, his lips against my shoulder. “Beautiful,” he murmured. “You are so beautifully responsive.”

After a time, he released my bonds, rubbing feeling back into my wrists. He turned me to face him, his eyes searching mine. “Still with me?”

I nodded, unable to form words. He lifted me, carrying me to a bed of soft moss, laying me down with a tenderness that belied the intensity of what we’d just done.

“The service you provide,” he said, lying beside me and drawing me against his chest, “is not submission of the spirit, but liberation of the self. You are serving me by becoming more fully yourself than you ever dared. That is the bargain I sought. That is the treasure I collect.”

I understood then. The year was not a sentence. It was an unraveling. A reconstruction. He was not just a king, but an archaeologist of desire, and I was a site of buried wonders.

As I drifted to sleep, safe in the circle of his arms, a treacherous thought took root: when the year was done, and my sister was safe, and I was free to go… I wasn’t sure I would want to.