Page 27 of Zel (The GriMM Tales #2)

More cornflowers from Zel’s tresses fell upon him, while his clothing was plucked away piece by piece.

He must have looked like a nymph by the end, surrounded by blossoms, with the full length of his hair spilling from the chaise, no longer wearing anything other than his hiked-up chemise like a sheer shroud.

That and Zel’s pendant were all that remained when Ulrich stopped. And the hairpin, lost in Zel’s locks until Ulrich saved it. He set it aside and then fingered the pendant just as gently.

“Rudy had the honor of touching you, did he not?”

“He never knew the truth,” Zel said. “Never touched me everywhere. No one has until you.”

“ Where did he touch you,” Ulrich pressed, “that I might replace his lips and hands with my own?”

“Here.” Zel touched his lips first, and Ulrich bent to claim another kiss. “Here.” He tapped the side of his neck, and Ulrich sucked hotly at his pulse point. He wrapped a hand around Zel’s throat as well, lightly where neck met shoulder, and licked his way up to Zel’s ear.

“Where else?” Ulrich breathed upon where he had wetted.

“H-here.” Zel touched his nipples, visible and pert where his chemise spilled open.

Ulrich latched onto one of them with a firm but not too pinching suckle.

“Oh!”

“Sensitive here, are you?” Ulrich circled the nipple with his nails.

“Y-yes.” Zel worried his lower lip.

“I might keep you like this when I finally take you, for you are more ravishing in this garment than all the beautiful bodies of the world laid bare.” He latched on to the other nipple, sucking ravenously.

“Tangled up.” He kissed back up to Zel’s neck.

“Debauched.” He tongued Zel’s ear again.

“Eager.” He lifted like he might descend for another kiss, but Zel gripped him by the back of his neck first.

“You have no idea how eager.” Then Zel yanked him down to steal that kiss first.

Ulrich sank against Zel, and Zel felt the press of Ulrich’s clothed cock. How hard he had become encouraged Zel to buck up, but Ulrich stilled him with additional weight. “Where else did Rudy touch you?” he asked.

“He wanted more… but never got lower than here.” Zel touched his nipples again.

“Did you want him to?” Ulrich shifted beneath the hike of Zel’s chemise to kiss and lick down his stomach. “Did you want him to touch you lower?” He kept going, past Zel’s navel and the start of fine hairs.

“I-I wanted someone to… but not Rudy. It feels so much more incredible that it’s you .”

Ulrich swallowed Zel down, tongue lapping up Zel’s underside and teeth grazing his veins.

Zel yelped, the sound cutting off with a violent gasp.

He had never felt so enveloped, so claimed, so seen again, as if he was his truest self in the moments of bliss between him and the one person who knew him as he was.

Ulrich teased Zel’s head on each upward bob with more grazes of teeth and flicks of his tongue. Zel’s hips thrust up instinctually to match that rhythm, body quaking as each swallow was accompanied by the teasing but persistent fondling of his nipples.

“ Ulrich …”

“Do you need me to stop?” Ulrich asked between licks across Zel’s slit. “Let you come? Or…” He licked lower to Zel’s entrance.

“Don't stop! But I… don’t want to finish yet. I want to last, so I can savor my… deflowering.” Zel snickered, given he was haloed by cornflowers.

“Like this, Zel, you are a fairy from the deepest wood, luring in gullible travelers whom none could resist. Nor could I.” Ulrich licked Zel’s hole with an ardent twirl.

“ Please .” Zel writhed against his laving. “Take me! Take all of me. Anything and everything you want from me.”

“Then I will.” Ulrich plunged in his tongue, and Zel was certain he would come right that moment, but before the heat expanding within him could fully combust, Ulrich withdrew and climbed back up Zel’s body. He hovered in want of a kiss, but waited for permission, given where that tongue had been.

Zel dragged him down like before.

As they kissed, Ulrich lifted Zel from the chaise, leaving clothing and flower petals behind.

Zel also felt a sudden weightlessness around his neck—his pendant miraculously having unclasped and fallen onto the chaise or floor with the rest. He couldn’t begrudge Ulrich for having caused that to happen, especially when his possessive streak was all too attractive.

Zel heard the click of the key as they neared the magical door, though he imagined it must have been floating since Ulrich had both arms around him.

When Zel pulled up from their kiss to look at their surroundings, they were crossing the threshold into a bedchamber like Zel’s, but larger, with an even more opulent bed.

Ulrich’s bedchamber at last, which once Zel had hoped to never see, and now longed to never leave.

Ulrich placed him on the bed. Just like in Zel’s chambers, the ceiling was a mirage of shelter, for it protected them but showed through to the clear night sky.

Had the stars ever looked so brilliant amid the beautiful unknowable heavens and a diversity of colors, all of which lived in Ulrich’s eyes?

Zel glanced down the bed in search of that galactic gaze, finding Ulrich starting to disrobe. The heavens were not so unknowable for they existed right before him here in this bedchamber.

“Wait.” Zel sat up. “May I unveil you now?”

“Of course.”

When Ulrich had dismissed his disguise earlier, so too had he cast off his modern attire.

He wore his sorcerer robes again, ageless in a way, and rich and regal.

All he had removed so far were his boots and the sash around his waist. His silk-like robes in midnight blue hung parted, revealing the open line of his chest down to ankle-length pantaloons.

Zel moved to the end of the bed, causing his chemise to cover his bobbing length.

He ached from how hard it was. The chemise was a tangled mess, open up top and hanging off one shoulder.

As he knelt and began to undress Ulrich, the sorcerer lifted the fall of Zel’s skirt up over the spring of his cock.

Zel flushed from Ulrich’s desire to still see him, enjoying that anyone’s eyes could be on him. That anyone could see him, truly see him, and not think he was something he wasn’t.

Because he was…

He was…

Zel . And with Ulrich, he could finally be Zel.

Zel opened Ulrich’s pantaloons first but didn’t yet lower them. He reached up inside the robe and pushed it from Ulrich’s shoulders. The reveal would have been perfect if Zel’s hair that remained around Ulrich’s wrist didn’t catch in the sleeve.

Zel laughed and unwound the hair with a thought. But as it lost its contact with Ulrich’s skin, the curse returned, and Zel finally saw how far up Ulrich’s arm the shrunken blackness went. It reached past his shoulder, like fetid roots, clawing toward Ulrich’s chest.

Immediately, Zel wound a section of hair back around Ulrich’s wrist before the veins could pulse and cause him any pain. The cursed appearance did not disgust Zel, but he preferred when Ulrich’s brow was smooth with relief.

How otherwise broad and toned and perfect Ulrich looked beat any other view Zel had beheld. Since Ulrich’s face was smooth, Zel had expected little to no hair elsewhere, but a dark trail started beneath his navel.

Zel finished untying Ulrich’s pantaloons, so they dropped to his ankles. The dark trail led to a thicker thatch around Ulrich’s cock. Not dauntingly impressive but impeccable enough to inspire a moistening of Zel’s lips.

“May I pleasure you now, my lord, as you did me?”

“Only if you continue to use my name.”

“ Ulrich .” Zel laughed again and scooted closer, batting his eyes prettily. “May I please suck your cock, Ulrich?”

“Yes.” Ulrich’s eyes darkened to near black.

Zel descended, reveling in the instant wafting of Ulrich’s musk—moonflowers and sage again, like he always smelled.

As unpracticed as Zel was at being bedded, this he could do with flair, and set to prove it with the hollowing of his cheeks, expert use of his tongue, and the sheer depth he could swallow that had always driven Rudy mad.

With Ulrich, it was so much better because Zel knew at the end of it all, he would be touched in turn and finally filled.

He hummed around Ulrich’s thickening girth, batting his eyes up at Ulrich again as he did so and keeping his knees spread as he slowly began to stroke himself, just enough to keep his own thickness steady.

Ulrich watched it all with his darkened eyes, radiating possession and want more intensely than his sometimes-murderous aura. He wanted to devour, but it was not Zel’s soul he craved.

He snatched Zel’s wrist, removing Zel’s hand from himself, which impelled Zel to also pull off Ulrich’s prick. “I need to be in you. Now,” Ulrich growled. “May I, Zel? Please .”

That Ulrich would plead while asking was everything. “Yes!”

Ulrich seized Zel by the hips, upending him like he had on the chaise, and tossed him up the bed with hardly any effort.

He launched onto the bed after Zel and had his hips bent back in moments.

The slick heat of his tip pressed to Zel’s entrance, like he couldn’t restrain himself.

But restrain he did. He waited and lifted Zel’s hand, fingers glistening with prerelease.

Ulrich waved his own fingers with their pointed nails.

“I could will the sharpness away, but I have a better idea. Wet your fingers for me.”

Zel had done that before too, sucking his fingers or Rudy’s to tease out a promise that would never come. This promise would.

He brought his fingers to his mouth and started to wet them with obscene precision.

He knew to keep eye contact. To keep his mouth open just enough for Ulrich to see his tongue, and for the excess of spittle to pool at the corners of his mouth while a little dribbled free.

When Zel judged them wet enough, he stopped, and Ulrich brought the hand down, down, down to between Zel’s legs.

“Now… will you open yourself for me, little cabbage?”