Page 19 of The Elves and the Shoemaker (The GriMM Tales #4)

Fourteen

Johan

J

ohan was fairly certain he’d died and gone to heaven. And he was not perturbed by the thought, if this was what eternal life looked like.

A few years earlier in the summertime, Johan had been unable to sleep one night and had taken a walk through town.

When he’d heard strange noises drifting from a narrow alleyway, he’d peered around the corner and seen a man on his knees hungrily swallowing down the cock of a passing tradesman who’d been in his shoe shop the day prior.

He’d stood there for a few seconds in stunned silence before he’d practically sprinted home with a pounding heart.

For years, Johan had wondered what it might feel like to have someone’s mouth on him that way and his imagination hadn’t done it justice.

Regardless of whether anything happened between the three of them ever again, the feel of Henrik and Elias using their skilled mouths and tongues to pleasure him was a warm, wet ecstasy that would be burned into Johan’s mind until he died.

Johan was aware that people had sometimes found him attractive, he could feel the way their eyes raked over him, but nobody had ever remained interested after they’d discovered he couldn’t actually speak to them.

Having people you cared about who’d taken the time to know you even without your words was a revelation to Johan, and even as the sweat that covered his skin began to cool, Johan had never felt warmer.

Elias shuffled up from Henrik’s thigh until he was squished between his lovers, and he felt a little chilled now, so Johan reached for the blanket and covered them all.

“Was that okay?” Elias peered up at Johan from where his head was resting on Johan’s chest.

Johan snorted at that. He was fairly sure he’d never been more okay in his life. But he also felt like he should confess something to the two of them, and in the afterglow of release, he found his words weren’t quite as stuck in his throat as they often were.

“I’ve never… Before,” he confessed.

“With a man?” Elias asked.

“Anyone,” Johan admitted.

“Do you regret it?” Henrik sounded timid.

Johan shook his head. He would treasure this moment with the two of them forever, he knew that much.

“Why… me?”

The two elves sat up slightly at the question, four amber eyes stared at him incredulously like he was the most oblivious man in the world.

“We like you, Johan. You’re a kind and beautiful person. Inside and out. Why not you? And well… we tried to court you,” Elias explained. “But I don’t think you noticed.”

Elias threw the words out so easily, and yet they rooted in Johan’s heart and bloomed into the brightest flower. Tried to court him? He spent his entire days studying these two men, there’s no way he would have missed that. Unless…

“These?” Johan tugged at his nightshirt.

“Yes! Elves do not make clothes without payment unless they’re courting. Or in slavery, I guess,” he added.

Johan pointed at himself. “Not an elf.”

“No. Rik pointed that out when you didn’t seem to understand what we were doing. I thought this might be obvious enough, though, no?” Elias beamed, and Johan laughed until his shoulders shook. Only Elias would leap from making clothes to sucking Johan’s cock with nothing in between.

“This was his idea, not mine,” Henrik hastily added, which only made Johan laugh harder.

“I know.” He stroked the strands of hair that had come loose from Elias’ hair tie and smiled up at him fondly. How did a person go through what he had and remain such a ray of sunshine?

Johan’s gaze dropped to Elias’ lips all of a sudden, and it felt very important that after everything that had just happened, they couldn’t leave this bed without having kissed.

Johan tapped on Elias’ full bottom lip with his index finger, but the elf didn’t understand and tried to playfully bite it.

Luckily, Henrik seemed to always manage to read Johan’s mind. “You’d like to kiss Eli?”

Johan nodded but pointed to Henrik too, wanting it to be clear that he didn’t only desire Elias.

“Kiss Henrik first,” Elias said. “He’s been patient for you.”

The implication that Henrik had desired this for a while wasn’t lost on Johan, and he filed that information away to think on later.

He sat up and tugged Henrik closer, but he still had a worried look on his face like he wasn’t entirely sure if Johan really wanted to kiss him.

Johan couldn’t have that.

Grabbing him by the hips, Johan lifted Henrik and placed him on his lap so they were face-to-face, Henrik straddling him.

A blush creeped over Henrik’s cheeks because neither of them had anything on below their nightshirts and their soft cocks pressed together in a way that somehow felt more intimate than what they’d just done.

Johan reached up and cupped Henrik’s face. He stroked his thumbs along his high, sharp cheekbones all the way to his pointed ears. Johan continued, running his finger to the tip of his ear. They were beautiful, just like Henrik.

Johan took a moment to really study Henrik’s face. His usual slightly stern expression had given way to something so vulnerable that Johan wanted to bundle him up with blankets and protect him forever. His chest ached with the need.

With one hand, Johan pulled Henrik’s face towards his, the other pressed over Henrik’s heart. For some reason, Johan needed to be able to feel the rhythmic beating of it under his palm.

Johan had never kissed anyone before, and the first press of Henrik’s soft pink lips against his sent what felt like a bolt of lightning through his chest.

Henrik sort of melted into him, suddenly relaxed in Johan’s arms with his hands sliding from his shoulders to his chest as they tasted one another.

Henrik’s tongue swiped at the seam of Johan’s lips, and he opened for him without hesitation. The moment their tongues touched, Johan began to harden again. It occurred to him that the unfamiliar taste on Henrik’s lips was his own release and the thought only served to arouse him more.

When Henrik started to pull away, Johan couldn’t help but chase his lips for more. Henrik was smiling, though, a smile so soft that Johan hardly recognised him with it.

Henrik reached for Elias then, and pressed their lips together briefly before guiding Elias’ face to Johan’s.

“Rik has magical lips, doesn’t he?” Elias whispered, nothing but space for breath between them. “When he kisses me, I feel like I could take on the world. Can I kiss you, too?”

Johan didn’t answer with words; he reached for Elias and pushed his hands up the back of his nightshirt to tug him closer before taking him in a fierce kiss. He was rougher with Elias in a way that felt right for them.

Elias moaned into Johan’s mouth, and he wanted to swallow every sound he made. The musky taste of Henrik’s cum still on Elias’ lips made the kiss even more intoxicating.

In true Elias style, he arranged himself so that he was sitting on Johan’s lap in front of Henrik, who peppered kisses along Elias’ neck. Elias quickly returned to pillaging Johan’s mouth with a ferocity that Johan could only expect from the fierce elf.

Once Elias' chin was reddened from the friction of Johan’s beard, and they were both panting for breath, Elias collapsed forward, pressing his pointed ear to Johan’s heart like he could hear how fast it was beating.

Like a mirror, Henrik rested his head on the other side, facing Elias.

He lifted Elias’ hand to his mouth and began leaving gentle kisses to each of his fingertips in the most adoring way.

As arousing as it had been to hear the two of them when they were intimate downstairs, seeing them so affectionate and loving to one another was something Johan couldn’t peel his eyes away from.

B

y lunchtime that day, Johan was fairly certain he’d never been touched so much in his entire life. They had taken it in turns for one of them to mind the front shop, which had a steady stream of customers all morning, while the other two would busy themselves making shoes in the workshop.

Johan wasn’t sure if this was an elf thing or an Elias and Henrik thing, but they kind of rubbed themselves against him a lot like cats.

When they passed Johan, they’d press into him and butt their heads against his arm.

While it bewildered Johan, he found their affection towards him adorable, and like a dehydrated plant, he lapped it up.

Stomach grumbling, Johan closed up the shop for lunch and headed back up the stairs to where his elves were putting some food out.

They both grinned at him when he stepped into the kitchen, as though his mere presence brightened their day, and Johan was becoming increasingly certain that he’d bashed his head and this was all a very vivid dream.

Taking a seat, Johan watched them as they navigated their way comfortably around his kitchen. Henrik sat next to him, but Elias took him by surprise when, instead of taking the third seat, he walked around, lifted up Johan’s arm from the table and settled himself on Johan’s knee.

Henrik smiled conspiratorially with Johan. “Eli is very needy. You have to tell him very bluntly when you require space.”

“It’s true, I am. I cannot fathom why anyone would want space from me, but alas, I have pushed Rik to his limits on more than one occasion.” Elias continued to eat his lunch, content to use Johan’s lap as a chair.

Johan couldn’t quite imagine ever being sick of having Elias in his space, but his words were gone.

In fact, he’d been struggling a lot with them that day.

Instead, he wrapped his arm around Elias’ waist and kissed his shoulder.

It wasn’t lost on Johan that how they were acting with him and the words they used implied a continuation from what had begun that morning.

Something Johan yearned for more than sex.

Companionship and intimacy. To be seen and understood and maybe even one day, loved.

While the two elves chatted happily about this and that—shoes they wanted to design, areas of the shop they could apply magic to for improvements—Johan just basked in the warmth of it all as he ate.

A

short while before they usually shut up the shop for the day, Elias and Henrik had excused themselves and headed upstairs to Johan’s home. Their home now, Johan supposed. They hadn’t talked about it, but Johan had spotted them throughout the day taking their belongings upstairs.

It made him smile. He wasn’t sure if they thought he wouldn’t notice or that they just knew him well enough to be reassured that he wouldn’t mind.

Either way, the thought of his home being their home, a wardrobe filled with their clothes and signs of life beyond his own, soothed the ache of loneliness Johan had felt in his heart for so long.

When the shop was closed and he’d swept up and tidied everything away, Johan was not disappointed with what he found upon opening the door to his home.

Elias and Henrik were both naked, standing by the fire as they washed each other from a pot of warm water. Johan held his breath as he watched them in the soft glow of the oil lamp.

They were both stunning in their own way. Henrik was taller and sharper looking with lean muscles that covered his body. It was as though he considered every single movement he made, and it was purposeful, graceful.

Elias, on the other hand, was less inhibited. Johan could see how comfortable he was in his own skin and how he moved without any self-consciousness. While still slim, he’d gained weight since they’d met, and it had softened him.

Johan sucked in a breath when Henrik pressed the damp wash cloth between Elias’ cheeks causing him to moan softly. Henrik had a knowing smile, and Johan felt a pang of envy at how well Henrik knew Elias’ body, and he didn’t.

A bone-deep thirst made Johan desperate to know every single thing that made them feel good. He wanted to know where and how they liked to be touched. What made them whimper, what made them moan. He wanted to taste their skin and feast on them both.

Elias opened his eyes and smiled at Johan. “Come join us,” he said.

When Johan was within reaching distance, Elias began unbuttoning his waistcoat and lifted his undershirt while Henrik undid his trousers and pulled them down.

They efficiently had him naked in under a minute.

He didn’t feel exposed or vulnerable, though.

The way their eyes devoured him made him feel like a prized painting.

The roaring fire had the room at an ambient temperature, and Johan was pretty thrilled to be standing there naked with two beautiful elves.

They both took a cloth from the basin, and Johan blinked back tears when Henrik rubbed the cloth against the skin of his chest, just as Elias did the same on his back.

He kept expecting to feel self-conscious.

Johan looked nothing like the elves; where they were small and slight; he was big and bulky.

They had smooth, nearly hairless skin, whereas Johan’s chest and stomach were covered in soft brown hairs.

But Johan was used to communicating without words, and the hunger and desire he saw in both of their eyes was louder than if they’d shouted it to him.

They took their time washing him. Gentle roaming hands caressed him from head to toe until he feared his skin might actually set alight from the blaze of arousal in his stomach.

After, when they were all clean and dry, Elias took Johan and Henrik by the hand and guided them to the bed.

Elias lay down on his side and Henrik tucked himself in behind him. Johan wasn’t sure where he was supposed to be but Elias patted the bed to his front, so Johan lay and faced them.

It was nothing shy of surreal to have two stunning, naked elves in his bed, staring at him with bright, eager eyes.

Henrik reached over Elias and brushed his fingertips over Johan’s cheek. “We need to find a way for you to tell us if you feel uncomfortable when you cannot find the words.”

Johan’s immediate reaction was that they would never make him uncomfortable, but then he thought maybe they needed the reassurance that he could let them know if that was the case.

Johan clicked his fingers twice and nodded at them.

“If we need to stop or pause, you will click your fingers twice?” Henrik confirmed.

Johan gulped nervously but nodded again.

“Do you know how men sometimes lie together?” Elias asked, trailing a finger down Johan’s chest.