Page 28 of Zel (The GriMM Tales #2)

Zel imagined Ulrich’s tongue there again as he pushed his fingertips in first, then up past his knuckles, two fingers at once. His hands were small enough that he could easily take three. Four. His whole fist when he wanted to.

“You have done this before.” Ulrich grinned.

Zel coyly bit his lip.

“Don’t stop. But now… wet mine.” Ulrich brought his own hand up toward Zel’s mouth and offered his fingers to be sucked.

It was his right hand, which usually would have been black.

Even without claws, Ulrich’s nails were sharp, and Zel had to take them into his mouth more carefully.

With special attention around the points, he otherwise sucked and wetted them as obscenely as he had his own, while slowly twisting his fingers inside himself, with hips rolled back to reach.

The fullness of fingers did not match what Zel wanted, but that satisfying pressure still made his mouth salivate. Ulrich’s fingers were sopping when Zel finally deemed them ready.

“You should be open enough now to avoid unnecessary pricks.” Ulrich brought his hand down and waited for Zel to remove his.

Zel’s vision went fuzzy at the first slide of Ulrich’s larger fingers inside him, and he arched his neck back with a moan.

He was open enough to handle Ulrich’s slow scissoring.

No actual scissors-like points pricked him, and he could have laid like that, folded and fingered, until his vision failed him completely.

But Zel’s need to be taken matched Ulrich’s need to be in him.

“P-please… Ulrich…”

“Will you permit me, Zel?”

“Yes!”

Ulrich’s fingers were replaced by the warm press of his cockhead, and as he pushed in, widening Zel to the point of bursting, he thrust up and surged down in one motion to distract Zel with a kiss. The pressure within was great, but Ulrich’s claim on Zel was greater.

They rocked, and even while their lips were sealed, mewling whimpers left Zel’s throat like a love song’s refrain.

He had never felt so heated. So full. So unable to control the noises emanating from him with each new thrust. The noises spilled from him as if Ulrich drew them out the way a bard drew music from the plucking of their lute strings.

Ulrich slid his arms beneath Zel to heft him closer, lifting him partway off the bed, which drove his thrusts deeper.

His hair always seemed to float, swaying ethereally around him.

But Zel’s, unbound from his braids, started to float with it, like sunlight streaking across storm clouds.

Zel’s magic could manifest in the strands even when he didn’t will it, as if each lock was an entity all its own.

He would swear their bodies started to float eventually too, like gods ascending. With the star-speckled sky above, they might as well have been, communing with the heavens in the safety of Ulrich’s bedchamber.

“You are marvelous ,” Ulrich rumbled.

For the first time in Zel’s orchestrated life, he believed that.

Heat flooded him, and again Zel was surrounded by moonflowers and sage, leaving him to wonder what he smelled like to Ulrich.

ULRICH

S unshine .

That was Zel’s scent. Sunshine piercing through the dark, like lemon, vanilla, and a field of flowers that could only bloom when closest to the sun’s rays.

Zel’s walls—uninitiated until tonight—clenched around Ulrich as he finished, wringing out more of his seed to fill Zel, like he hadn’t inside another in literal ages.

To have filled such a radiant and worthy receptacle was to touch the heavens more than the feeling of any magic or soul devoured.

More than looking up and seeing the sky above them through the enchanted ceiling.

More than Ulrich had ever known of real peace.

“I could almost believe in the gods while inside you,” Ulrich whispered.

“With you… I no longer need any,” Zel whispered back.

Ulrich tilted his head down to meet Zel’s stare.

Adoring. Affectionate.

More .

“Your Rudy never did that?”

Zel laughed. “No. And I am glad, so glad that my first time was with you.”

Ulrich laid Zel down from how he had lifted him by the hips. As Zel rested there, still with Ulrich sheathed inside him, he reached to stroke himself. He was still hard. Still unfinished. Ulrich couldn’t have that, pleasant as it was to watch Zel’s fingers slide along his shaft.

Ulrich pushed Zel’s hand aside.

“Come for me, little cabbage,” he said, but rather than stroke Zel, Ulrich slid out of him finally and shifted lower to swallow him like before. He sucked harder than earlier. Firmer. Fervent. He knew Zel was on the brink and wanted to swallow everything Zel had to give.

“U-Ulrich!” Zel cried when he spilled, and that cry may have been the sweetest sound from him yet.

Ulrich drank every drop and licked lower, beneath Zel’s sac to clean up some of his own spillage.

“ Oh … how I’ve fantasized about that,” Zel murmured.

“These past few weeks, so have I.”

“I think I could drift off to sleep like this.”

“Then do so. I will take care of the mess.”

“I may have to take you up on that.”

Ulrich had never seen such peace on Zel’s face before, like the peace he felt in himself. He was still bound to Zel by some of that golden hair wrapped around his wrist, but as Zel began to drift off, the hair unwound itself and became limp.

He would never let Zel see just how much the loss of the hair’s touch pained him, somehow greater than it used to feel, having known reprieve. But he couldn’t remain tethered to Zel every moment. Ulrich’s curse was his to bear until it rightfully ended.

Soon.

He had decided. He was not going to offer Zel up to the terrible fate that would have awaited him if he hadn’t passed Ulrich’s tests. Yes, Zel was a killer. A thief. He had faults like anyone. But he was not vile, nor cruel, nor deserving of the condemnation Ulrich had been ready to dispense.

So no, he was not going to enact that part of his plan. What he’d expected of a child raised by thieves and murderers was not what he had received. But he was going to complete the main part of his plan and allow his assassin, his darling little cabbage…

To kill him.