“Only because it’s you.” Tahlen hadn’t opened his eyes. Zelli had stopped to pet his peaceful, lovely face.
“You are in water, but you are not drowning,” Zelli had tried to reason it out. “I don’t understand, but neither do you, so we’re even.”
For that, Tahlen had lost some of his peace and frowned. “I wouldn’t have said I wanted it before.”
“Well, maybe itisfae then,” Zelli had mused. “And you made a wish a long time ago you don’t remember making, that might have had nothing to do with this—or so you thought. And they’ve finally granted it. Thank you,” Zelli had added to the air, just in case.
He said it again now because Tahlen had a nice laugh, slow and rusty, but happy.
Tahlen tugged Zelli onto his lap and kissed the side of his neck above the cord to Zelli’s necklace, which Zelli had forgotten to remove before his first bath and hadn’t had a chance to remove before the second. Zelli’s hair, left to dry as it was, without even oil because Zelli had been preoccupied with Tahlen’s, did not get in Tahlen’s way.
Zelli decorated Tahlen’s other shoulder for that, and, tired or not, was pleased to deal with Tahlen’s resulting arousal. He had decided to try his tongue, though not his whole mouth, and his hand again. He worried, like with the kissing, that Tahlen might find it boring or lacking, but he didn’t seem to. He kept his hands away from Zelli, but made tiny, pleading sounds that Zelli would have enjoyed for longer if he hadn’t already been struggling to keep his eyes open.
“A beautifulchew-toy,” Zelli said seriously sometime afterward, drowsing in Tahlen’s arms, playing with Tahlen’s lazily done nighttime braid. “Beautiful is the wrong word but I don’t know the right one.”
“I’m a body to most and a name to the rest.” Tahlen spoke into Zelli’s hair. “Family only to Esrin.”
“Exquisite,” Zelli argued without opening his eyes. “Lovely. Wonderful. Remarkable.” He cracked one eye, then the other, before pulling back to study Tahlen’s exhausted, contented face. “Will you sleep here with me?”
Tahlen didn’t bother to even nod. He got to his feet, hauling Zelli up with him, and swept them both to the bed. Zelli was the one to laugh then, close to giggling by the time he was on his back on the bedding, with Tahlen curled around him.
He took Tahlen’s face in his hands to kiss him, less for the fever and more because he could. It made Tahlen smile against him, so Zelli did it again, although slower. Tahlen’s eyes closed, and after a while, his arms loosened. Zelli lay next to him, adjusting to being held in sleep. He could probably move now and it wouldn’t wake Tahlen, but he stayed where he was.
As he drifted, eyes half-open to watch Tahlen’s face grow young again, he thought that there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to make that mouth smile more. Then, that he had no desire to be discreet about it.
A problem to consider later, he decided, much like the floating-in-warmth feeling he apparently created in Tahlen when he cared for him or bit him, or Zelli’s eventual hand-fasting to another. But at that thought, he shifted over to put himself firmly in Tahlen’s arms before finally letting his eyes close.
Nineteen
Zelli rolled onto his back, uncertain why he was awake. He wasn’t overly hot except wherever his body and Tahlen’s had been pressed together beneath the blanket Tahlen must have pulled over them at some point. Zelli had woken up a few hours ago stinging with fever and had touched himself while letting Tahlen rest—though Tahlen had stirred as Zelli had finished and scowled when Zelli had shushed him back to sleep.
That must have been the last of Zelli’s lust-fever because Zelli could feel the chillier air on his bare skin now.
Tahlen was sitting up and looking down at Zelli with his face blank, something that sent a bolt of alarm through Zelli. Before Zelli could move, Tahlen reached out to drag his fingertips along the curve of Zelli’s ear, all the way up to the point at the top.
Zelli pulled in a breath. “Tahlen….”
Tahlen met Zelli’s worried stare but continued his delicate exploration, two fingers tracing the swirls and dots of fur that overlayed the freckles down the side of Zelli’s neck to his shoulder and outer arm where Zelli’s skin turned pink under the touch. The fur, more short fuzz than anything that might be called a pelt, was a paler version of the darker sunset of Zelli’s hair. The markings carried on down Zelli’s back to the curve of his ass and the backs of his legs, and then on the top of his feet in the same way it decorated the tops of his hands. He had some on his lower stomach as well, trailing down to his…
Zelli gave a start before throwing off the blanket to consider his cock, which was still there, if changed.
Tahlen made a small sound, as surprised as he was going to let show.
“Sometimes, it’s not a prick. Sometimes, it’s a prick but… larger than mine is normally,” Zelli explained, inexplicably embarrassed by the rather sizable and partially tumescent cock on display. He considered covering it up again, but though Tahlen took another moment to stare at it, he brought his gaze back to Zelli’s face.
“What is it when it’s not a prick?” Tahlen wondered, voice slightly rough.
Zelli waited for his heart to slow. It had started racing the moment he’d realized his body had changed in the night and Tahlen had seen it.
“Occasionally, although not often, I get a,” Zelli paused, “cunt. You know, I’ve heard others say that word and talk about theirs, but I’ve never said it to anyone. I wasn’t intentionally eavesdropping. Sometimes when I’m at a table bent over my work for hours people forget I’m there.”
Tahlen’s lips curled at one corner as if Zelli had surprised him into nearly smiling.
“When that happens,” Zelli went on, encouraged by that hint of amusement, “I also get a bit swollen here.” He swept his hands over his nipples. “Too small to really be breasts, but the whole area gets sensitive. It also usually only lasts for a day or two.”
Zelli realized he was absently thumbing his nipples and stopped.
Tahlen took a deep breath. “I know some of the bards and a few others with fae ancestry are not like those without it. But that isn’t something that appears randomly. They choose it.”
