Page 34 of Zel (The GriMM Tales #2)

Whenever they were apart during the final days, Ulrich worked to change his spells to accept Zel as their master. All would answer to him, including the shelf with Ulrich’s dearest trinkets. It was the end Zel and his parents had hoped for. To win the tower, defy Lothar, and live happily ever—

“Zel?” Ulrich had entered the main room in search of him. It was nearing their evening meal, but instead of finding Zel bent over more letters or practicing his skills, there was no Zel, and upon the writing desk was a flickering candle.

The flame illuminated a piece of parchment. Next to the parchment rested the magical key, and written in Zel’s neat scrawl were the simple words:

My bedchamber.

Ulrich wasted no time in giving the key a three-quarter turn in the lock.

Sunshine assaulted his senses even when the true sun was already setting.

Zel turned at Ulrich’s entrance with an excited radiance in his expression like he had been waiting with bated breath.

He looked stunning. He was ornamented like a king’s courtesan, something Ulrich had once known well, and yet he couldn’t imagine his heart had ever beaten faster when he looked upon one of them than the way it hammered in his chest now.

Hair even more immaculately woven than usual, Zel wore Ulrich’s mother’s hairpin but had also adorned himself with various bejeweled combs, rings, bangles, and necklaces—though not Rudy’s, which he had not worn since slaying his fellow guild members and sending Rudy away.

If Zel wore anything beneath his loosely tied robe, it was well hidden.

Magenta, violet, and gold made up the elegant silk garment, another item Zel must have created with the loom.

It fell open, the sides nearly revealing the edges of pink nipples, and was cinched lower than his navel at his hips.

A bejeweled belt glittered there as well, mostly hidden beneath the fabric.

Zel crossed the room to an end table beside the bed. He had a bottle of wine waiting, already poured into two goblets. “This is from the treasure room.” He retrieved both goblets and offered one to Ulrich. “May I assume it is simply a good vintage and not poison or some strange elixir?”

Ulrich chuckled. He felt oddly under—over?—dressed in one of his usual sets of sorcerer robes. He accepted the goblet and clinked it against Zel’s cup. “You may. Although such other options do exist in the treasure room, well labeled, I assure you.”

Zel chuckled too, and they each took a sip.

It was one of Ulrich’s most prized vintages.

“I could never find the right occasion to open it,” he said, “especially since I had no one to share it with.”

“You do now. Is this occasion worthy enough?”

Ulrich had been trying to not think on it much, but tonight was their final night, the last before their raid on the guild and the subsequent end of everything. The night before they said goodbye, although Zel did not yet know it. “I think it is.”

They drank from their goblets again.

Ulrich had avoided Zel’s bedchamber for privacy’s sake, other than when he combed out Zel’s hair. He enjoyed getting to see it in the evening like this, even if little had changed from how he had prepared it for Zel’s stay.

Zel led him to the bed to sit upon it. “I thought tonight called for something special, but not only the wine.”

“Oh?” Ulrich eyed him coyly over the top of his cup.

“I plan on testing more of my magic tonight. I have been practicing something new. I…”

“Yes?” Ulrich prompted.

“You knew when I lied to you, when I tried to beguile and seduce you. The latter bits were eventually not a lie at all, and yet, knowing I came here to betray you, you still gave me everything and encouraged me to embrace who I am. You gave me the freedom to succumb to you, safely, gladly, when I had never before been able to give myself to another. I wondered if tonight, you might give yourself to me. I still want you to fill me!” Zel swiftly clarified, harried enough that Ulrich chuckled again.

“I very much want that, but I thought, this time, I might… lead.”

“If to lead is what you wish, Zel, do so, and I will follow.”

Zel finished another gulp of his wine, and Ulrich did as well.

Then he took Ulrich’s goblet and set both aside.

He started by undressing Ulrich like he had on their first night together, peeling away his robes and underlayers article by article.

Like each successive night since, Zel summoned a portion of his hair out of his braids to wind around Ulrich’s blackened wrist, easing his pain and making him feel practically mortal again.

When Zel began to undo Ulrich’s pantaloons, he kissed from Ulrich’s lips down his chest and stomach, but once he had Ulrich bare, he did not yet continue the trail.

He batted his eyes up at Ulrich from low near his lap and said, “Would you please, Ulrich, lay upon the bed? I want you to know what it is like to surrender to another and trust them to do right by you, as you have given that gift to me.”

To trust and to be trusted was not something Ulrich had known for a very long time. “I trust you, Zel.” He gently took Zel’s chin and coaxed him upright until their lips met. “I am yours to do with as you wish.”

While Ulrich laid out as asked, Zel moved to the foot of the bed and untied his robe. The fabric fluttered from his body, proving he had adorned himself in even more jewels and precious metals, and that was indeed all he wore.

The hair unbound from his braids and lashed out like instantaneous whips, three added tendrils from the one already twisted around Ulrich’s wrist now binding his other wrist and both ankles and stretching him like an X.

Ulrich heaved an eager breath as Zel climbed onto the bed between his spread legs, prowling with the same hunger and magnetism described of the fairy prince in Ulrich’s favorite love story. It always had been his favorite, but this…

No. Ulrich could not entertain that. He could not have that. Tonight, let him focus on pleasure and not the pain to come with the month’s end.

Once Zel sat on Ulrich’s chest, the spring of Ulrich’s cock bounced near enough to brush between Zel’s cheeks. Zel’s cock sprung likewise in response, as he rocked forward to drag his length between the swell of Ulrich’s ribs.

Ulrich marveled at how the jewels enhanced Zel’s natural beauty, glittering the way his hair seemed to glitter now, almost as ethereally as Ulrich’s own.

The clouds through the translucent ceiling, rolling in to cover the night sky’s stars, did not spoil the view, for the best view was in the room with him.

Zel rubbed the carved, bisected circle on Ulrich’s right palm, though the lines were barely there with his curse at bay from the contact of Zel’s hair.

Zel kissed him as he rubbed the faded lines like a reverent prayer.

Then he began to descend like before, down Ulrich’s chest, teasing purple-hued nipples, and lower down his stomach to the start of dark curls.

Finally, when Zel was low enough, he licked from base to tip and twirled his tongue around Ulrich’s cockhead.

He swallowed him once, twice, slow and deep, but mostly just to wet him, for he shifted up again until their cocks aligned. Zel took them in hand, a wide stretch of his fingers to encase them both, and rocked in time to his thumb digging into Ulrich’s shaft.

The sight of Zel’s flush cheeks and pink lips with the darkening clouds behind him made Ulrich sorely sorry he was not able to touch.

As if sensing that desire, Zel used his binding hair to bring Ulrich’s cursed hand forward and pressed it to his cheek.

He turned his head to kiss the palm and then sucked Ulrich’s thumb into his mouth.

Even already soothed from the bracelet of hair, the touch of Zel’s saliva somehow eased it even further.

Releasing their cocks, Zel moved higher up Ulrich’s chest again, still rocking so his shaft dragged up the skin.

The movements of an assassin were often like those of a dancer, and Zel proved it with every undulating roll of his back and arch of his neck, graceful and precise.

He shifted higher, while teasing his own nipple, and brought Ulrich’s hand to the other to circle the nub with the thumb he had wetted.

Zel shifted higher , bringing his leaking tip ever closer to Ulrich’s lips.

Ulrich wanted that and nodded the closer it neared him, until he was granted permission to taste.

Zel bobbed between his lips, and Ulrich widened his mouth to take it.

He wanted to run both hands under the dangling jewels and caress every inch of adorned skin.

This was Zel’s night to lead, but Ulrich cupped the breast in his grasp more possessively than he had been guided to, hoping his wishes might be known.

Zel seemed to sense that too and slowed the roll of his hips feeding Ulrich his cock. The hair brought Ulrich’s other hand to Zel’s body, and with magic and momentum, conducted the whole of Ulrich’s palms and fingers to stroke up Zel’s skin from hip bones to neckline and down again.

Zel whined, pulling his tip from Ulrich’s lips with a shiver. He slid down, down , and licked up the wet trail left in his cock’s wake, all the way back to Ulrich’s lips. He tasted himself with a plunge of his tongue. Then his hair pulled Ulrich’s arms taut back into the X.

Ulrich mourned the loss of Zel beneath his hands, but as Zel slid down, down, down again, Ulrich’s head teased once more between his cheeks. Zel rocked himself there slowly, sliding Ulrich’s tip up along his pucker and past it, but not yet in. He kissed Ulrich as slowly as his subtle thrusting.

When he finally lifted, he seemed to take in the whole of Ulrich’s curls spread out around him like a mane. “You are so… beautiful,” Zel said, as he pushed down on Ulrich’s tip at last, and the head slid in smoothly, swallowed by Zel’s rocking.

“As are you… and quite open, I feel.”