Some hit Tahlen’s cheek before he took Zelli’s cock back into his mouth, lovely eyes shut.
Zelli had wrapped Tahlen’s braid around his hand and wrist and pulled on it to rouse Tahlen from his dream and bring him back to Zelli’s bed.
Tahlen climbed back over Zelli to resume mouthing Zelli’s nipples. His face was damp and sticky and burning hot. Zelli shifted up, slightly pained from his recent pleasure but unwilling to stop. Tahlen moved with him, his cock so hard he must have been in some pain as well. He slipped his hands over Zelli’s ribs, then down to his hips to bring them closer.
He stilled.
His hands, curving over Zelli’s ass, stopped, then slid up, toward the small bit of bone and fluff that could only be described as a tail.
Rather like a deer’s tail, Zelli knew, from twisting around to see it in his reflection.
“Tahlen?” Zelli asked after what felt like a very long silence.
Tahlen’s gaze was bright, his version of purple. “Turn over so I can see?”
Zelli wiggled and shifted to get Tahlen to move back a bit, then rolled over onto his stomach. A trace of anxiety made him cold for not even one moment, and then Tahlen exhaled and put his hands back on Zelli’s body. He traced more markings, the trailing dots and curving lines that led from Zelli’s shoulder blades down to the tail which, uncontrolled by Zelli, twitched at the touch. “Pink again,” Tahlen offered, his throat hoarse from taking Zelli’s cock. “Deep pink. Camellia petals. And golden yellow, like sunlight.”
“Tahlen,” Zelli complained, increasingly warm from Tahlen’s rapt attention. “Tup me like this, however you please, but first I must bite you.”
Tahlen leaned down to put his lips against Zelli’s ass, his breath stirring Zelli’s fur, his tail. “I want to fuck you hard, not like we did before.”
“The oil I like is back in the other room,” Zelli answered breathlessly, then pulled down a pillow to bite, since he suspected he was going to need it.
Twenty
Zelli sleepily decided his fae family members were right to trust Tahlen with Zelli’s fae side, and perhaps were also right in bringing all of Zelli’s problems out at once even if he would have preferred a more private setting.
Although, since he didn’t actually know they had done any of that, and perhaps it was all a coincidence, or Zelli’s fae body maturing, or several days spent around someone beautiful who gave Zellifeelings, he decided not to thank them with any offerings yet.
And also, he didn’t want to get out of bed to do it.
He stretched over warm, rumpled bedding, expecting the sore muscles and stinging places. He grinned into the remaining shreds of his pillow and twisted his back just to feel the pleasant pull all through his body.
The only thing that could have stolen his smile in that moment was the glimpse of pale light beginning to creep into the room and the empty space in the bed beside him. But the curtains around the bed were open and Zelli only had to move his head a little to see Tahlen.
Cleaned and dressed, Tahlen was tying off the bottom of his braid when he noticed Zelli watching him. “I don’t actually know if I’m supposed to be on duty,” he explained, as close to sheepish as he would ever be. “I forgot to check before I came here last night.” He must have heard Zelli’s languid sigh. “I would stay, but I ought to see what’s going on, and you should sleep more.”
“I did have a long night,” Zelli chirped back at him, splaying his limbs in a wide stretch, then snagging the pillow Tahlen had used and curling around it. He moved his leg to make sure part of his tail showed.
Tahlen took a long time to remember to blink. He exhaled, then seemed to focus. “You’re teasing me?”
Zelli considered this. “I suppose I am.” It wasn’t his fault that Tahlen’s cock felt so good or that Tahlen seemed fascinated with the tail in particular. Zelli wouldn’t have expected it of Tahlen, but even Tahlen hadn’t expected it of Tahlen.
“…Keep discovering things about myself,” Tahlen had grumbled to himself at some point in the night, one arm slung across his face to hide it, his cock stirring for every brush of Zelli’s teeth over his thigh.
The memory was like stoking a fire and being doused with cold water at the same time. Zelli touched his tongue to one of his teeth, then propped himself up on his elbow to consider the obvious faeness of his body, the colors and the fur, his cock, the horns that he had yet to see.
“Oh,” he said as he realized. “I make people uncomfortable as I normally am. What would they say to this? I’ll have to hide today, possibly tomorrow too.”
Tahlen paused in the act of picking up his cloak off the floor where Zelli had left it and draping it over the chair by the fireplace. “The Lyralinah guards saw your hair and didn’t mind.” They’d seen, or at least heard, a bit more than that, but Zelli kept his mouth shut when faced with Tahlen’s frown. “Everyone here already knows who you are and that you’re fae. That’s why many people originally settled here and stayed here, even if they won’t say so: for the fae and their protection. If it makes those people as uncomfortable as it makes you to know that I have used my weapons and will use them again, then so be it. They’ll be uncomfortable, but they’ll be protected.”
Zelli gave Tahlen a frown in return. “I’m not uncomfortable with it. But weapons and fighting are not all of you. I know they aren’t, and I won’t allow them to ever be.”
Tahlen raised his chin. “I will do what I swore to do, Zelli. You can’t stop that or wish it away.”
Zelli sat up so he could cross his arms. “I can’t help that I don’t like the thought of you hurt, or dying, or dead, and that I can’t hide it. Maybe I should try harder to be more of a Tialttyrin. Maybe I should strive to be more like you.”
“No.”
