The Queen of Thorns – Part 2: Gate

The night in the garden was slow and warm and heavy with scent. She made him kneel on the white gravel at her feet while the dusk deepened and the first lanterns came on in the arbours. She gave him tasks, and watched them done. To play one song at a time, on her command, no more and no less. To stand motionless beside the fountain while she walked the avenue. To pick a single white rose, without being pricked, and carry it to her in both hands. She corrected him as she had promised, with a touch of gloved fingers under his chin, a murmured no, a long, quiet look that went through him like warm water.

She was severe and exact, and wholly without cruelty. When he fumbled a chord, she waited, without a flicker, until he had found it. When he trembled, she rested a hand on his shoulder until he stilled.

"Does the minstrel wish to continue?" she asked, as each hour struck on a far clock.

"I do, Majesty."

"Say it plainly."

"I do. Thank you."

"The Queen of Thorns does not require thanks." But the lanterns flickered, and her mouth curved.

Late, when the stars were thick above the wall, she made him lie on a bed of cut grass under an arbour of roses, with a wool cloak over him, and told him to sleep. He did not sleep. He lay awake and listened to her breathe on the bench beside him, and understood that, for the first time in ten years, nobody in the world wanted anything from him but that.

When the first grey light touched the top of the wall, she set down her book.

"Gate," said Rosalind, softly.

It was the word, and she spoke it for them both. The thorn circlet came off her brow and lay on the bench. The velvet gloves came off. She came down to the grass beside him, in her green gown, unpinned her hair and drew her cloak over both of them.

"How are you?"

"Rested," said Tristan, wondering. "As though I'd slept a year."

"You were a lovely servant." She kissed his forehead. "The first I have ever wished to keep."

"May I stay?"

"The gate is open. It always has been." She smiled at the dawn. "And the garden has a great many roses that wish to be played to."

He laughed, and reached for the lute, and began, very softly, to play.

More consensual femdom stories: Velvet Contract · Silk and Steel · Gentle Hands, Gentle Femdom