“Yes?” Tahlen answered. He’d dropped his voice even more, apparently realizing how close Zelli was.
“Tahlen.” Zelli would say nothing else if he had his way, for tonight at least. But Tahlen would get concerned enough to break through the door if Zelli didn’t say more than just his name soon, so he wet his lips, tasting where he’d bitten down. “Tahlen, it is…. I am experiencing a complication. From my fae blood. I’ve experienced it before. You don’t need to be concerned. I can deal with it as I always do.” He realized his hand was sliding slowly up and down his prick.
He tore his hand away and pressed both to the door, pressedhardto help him focus. “I might… it might last longer than tonight. In the morning… in the morning….” If the fever didn’t fade by morning, Tahlen really might storm the door and then he would see everything.
“What about the other thing?” Tahlen wondered, unaware of Zelli shuddering only inches from him. “Do you still need me to touch you?”
“Ye-s,” Zelli moaned it, drawing out the short word and raising his voice in the middle. Tahlen shouldn’t speak of touching him. Zelli rubbed his face, but only his face, against the door. “I don’t think that’s a good idea at the moment,” he added, hoping foolishly that Tahlen had not heard the moan. “I’m sorry. I truly didn’t think this would happen. But apparently I can experience two fae problems at once, so why not the other one too—wait, no!” Zelli twisted to address anyone else who might be listening. “I did not mean that!” He held tight to his necklace to ensure his sincerity came through, then exhaled and put his forehead to the door.
The door was firm, if not nearly as warm as Tahlen.
As if he could hear Zelli panting and needed to make sure Zelli understood him, Tahlen grew stern. “Open the door, Zelli.”
Zelli slid one of his hands down his side to the crease of his hip. He stopped just short of touching his cock again. “Really,” he said, weak even to his own ears, “I often do this at home. I stay in my room until it passes. You must have heard Grandmother make my excuses. It’ll be fine.”
It seemed as if Tahlen was even closer. He might have ducked his head to be nearer Zelli’s height on the other side of the door. “What about tomorrow?”
Zelli bit his lip, which hurt, but in a way he didn’t mind. “I can… I can send the others on and stay here if it doesn’t get better. But it will. Itwill.” Zelli would exhaust himself to ensure it would. “And tomorrow will be like today, mortifying but bearable. That’s how it is for me. I should really get used to the embarrassment. If I travel to meet someone for… I don’t want to talk about that anymore. I….” Zelli pushed against the door, the only thing giving him any dignity. “Tahlen,” he whispered, “it’s my body, you see. Itwants. It wants so much that sometimes that I can’t really control it. It wants more than what others must want. There was an aunt, they tell me, with a somewhat similar problem. Although, with me, sometimes, there are alsochanges.” He stared at his hands, his normal, if small, fingers, some shining with oil. His shamed whisper stayed. “Those times, you can tell how fae I am. I… I don’t want you to fear me. Or to think I’m too strange. Or too demanding with what I want. I want you to stay. With me, I mean. In the future. And now this….”
He couldn’t tell if Tahlen was still there.
“I should have warned you before we left.” Zelli made it an apology. “But I didn’t think it would be an issue. It used to happen every few months, but not recently, so we’d hoped they were over. They weren’t.” He didn’t laugh.
“Zelli,” Tahlen started, stopping when Zelli made a throaty sound. “What is it?”
“It’s your voice.” Zelli confessed to that too. He didn’t think hecouldlie right now. “I’m sorry.”
“My voice?”
Zelli stroked a hand down the door because he couldn’t bite Tahlen for failing to understand how incredible his voice was. “It’s always you, Tahlen. I’m truly…” He was not exactly sorry. Not for that. Only for everything else. “I never meant to embarrass you like this.”
“Embarrass me?” Tahlen must have been truly shocked to sound so confused. But he shifted to action quickly, as he always did. “Zelli.” He made each word clear and distinct. “Open. The. Door.”
Zelli undid the lock before he remembered he was naked. Then, because he had nothing to throw on, opened the door only a crack, leaning so Tahlen could just see his head and part of his shoulder.
The air from the hall was cooler. Zelli was distantly aware of goosebumps on his overheated skin. Tahlen stared down at him, gaze traveling over Zelli’s bare shoulder to the rowan tree nestled at his throat, the careless spill of his hair. He probably saw Zelli’s dark flush and bitten lip too.
“This is making it worse,” Zelli told him, shivering when he glanced up to find himself still under study.
“Worse?” Tahlen asked in a whisper. He was without his mail or braces or even the doublet. Just a shirt and belt with his pants and boots.
Zelli dragged his eyes up. “Stronger,” he explained after a great, heavy pause, mesmerized by the curve of Tahlen’s lips. “The desire.”
He was not at all sure he’d gotten his point across. He wasn’t sure of anything except that Tahlen was inches from him and had yet to look away.
Then Tahlen took a step, filling the doorway and making Zelli’s heart pound. Tahlen bent his head, speaking for Zelli’s ears only. “I can help you with that too. If you want me to. If you’d ask.”
Zelli leaned harder on the door to stay upright. He thought Tahlen could see him shaking. He should definitely hear it in Zelli’s tremulous, “You’re not sworn to do that.”
“You really think this has anything to do with my oath?” Tahlen held his hand between them, giving Zelli time to see it and move away. When he didn’t, Tahlen put it to Zelli’s shoulder. So light, it was barely more than his fingertips on Zelli’s skin. He sucked in a breath.
When Zelli looked, ripples of purple traveled outward from Tahlen’s touch, then vanished.
Zelli met Tahlen’s stunned stare. “I never imagined that.”
“You imagined this?” Tahlen asked. For a beat, Zelli’s thoughts were clear enough to let him find that funny.
“I just told you I did.” He blinked several times. “Do that again, please.”
