Chapter 16 Rumple
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Rumple
Boy’s naked body was splayed out on the table.
All long, lean lines and supple flesh temptingly dusted with cinnamon freckles.
A feast, if ever Rumple saw one, but it was the shadow-infused golden thread that now collared Boy’s neck that held his focus.
It glistened in the flickering candlelight, and the sight sent a jolt of excitement through him.
He was one step closer to claiming his Heart.
Unable to resist, Rumple pushed his way between Boy’s parted legs until the edge of the table bit into his thighs.
Starting at Boy’s bare knee, he ever so gently trailed the tip of his gloved finger up the soft and pale skin, revelling in the way Boy melted under his touch.
The dark blond hairs on his leg raised when Rumple skimmed higher, tracing the sensitive line of his groin that led to his pronounced hip bone.
What was it about his Boy? No matter how many times he asked himself the same question, he never found a satisfactory answer. Boy was untouched by the brutality of this world, and Rumple wanted to sink into his innocence.
When the soft leather of his glove brushed over the curves of Boy’s ribs, he squirmed in place and his breath hitched. The golden collar pooled in the hollow of Boy’s throat, and something burst inside Rumple’s chest. A strange, hot emotion he couldn’t name.
Compelled, Rumple slipped the tip of his middle finger between his teeth and bit down. He pulled the garment off and spat it on the floor. Wide brown eyes tracked his every move as his newly exposed palm flattened against Boy’s chest, directly over his Heart.
Thump, thump, thump.
Its rhythm was fast, but steady and sure, and Rumple wanted.
He bit off his other glove and took a possessive hold on the back of Boy’s neck. His skin was heated, despite his nakedness in the large room, and Rumple pressed their foreheads together. There could be no space between them.
“What are you doing to me?” Their lips were so close that Boy’s whispered words were spoken straight into Rumple’s mouth.
He breathed them in.
“Anything I want,” were the words he meant to say. But as he slipped the hand over Boy’s Heart lower, what came out instead was, “Everything you want.”
A full-body shudder worked its way from Boy’s head to his toes.
Eyes the colour of chestnuts peeked through long lashes, and tentative fingers sought out the collar of Rumple’s starched shirt.
In return, Rumple teased across the band of pale skin just above Boy’s pubic hair, and the muscles of his abdomen tightened reflexively.
Rumple’s lips lifted into a small smile. How responsive his little human was.
Boldly, Boy slipped his hands inside the opened front of Rumple’s shirt, just underneath the embroidered skull that held his collar, and drew in a ragged breath.
With the exhilaration of their shared contact, Rumple’s form flickered between corporeal and not.
He’d never experienced such affection from a lover—and Boy’s was almost more than he could bear.
Copying his earlier gesture, Boy flattened his palm over Rumple’s chest, and with an immediacy that caught him off guard, the space where his Heart should have been burned hotter than coal inside him.
Rumple released the back of Boy’s neck and gripped his wrist. His shadows pulsed and smoked around them, but Boy seemed unaware, transfixed as his fingers sank deeper inside Rumple’s unsteady form.
But he couldn’t risk piquing his human’s interest so far that he might ask questions that would expose the truth of their connection—not yet.
Needing to regain control, he took an abrupt step back, caught Boy by his ankles, and pushed them up and over his head. Boy had no choice but to be rolled back, and he let out a squeal of surprise at the sudden change in position. Rumple held him in place, despite Boy’s struggles with his dignity.
Boy’s chest flushed and his nipples peaked, and that uninhibited response fuelled the lust coursing deep within Rumple. He commanded his shadows to pin Boy’s ankles in place and smoothed a palm over the rounded flesh of his glutes. Boy whimpered.
Rumple teased a finger up and down the crevice between his cheeks.
Boy’s efforts to be still and compliant heated Rumple. Such a good boy. He rubbed the pad of his thumb over Boy’s puckered hole. The contact was dry and Boy breathed out a quiet moan.
“I want to claim you.” It was as close to the truth as Rumple dared approach. “Tell me that you want me to claim you.”
In his peripheral vision, he saw Boy tilt his head when he nodded, and it was all the invitation Rumple needed.
He divested himself of his shirt and dropped it to the floor like it wasn’t made from the finest silk.
His cock strained painfully against the tight damask of his breeches, but when Boy closed his eyes, Rumple delayed its release in favour of delivering a swift smack to Boy’s left buttock.
Those rich brown eyes flew open, and Rumple rewarded him with a possessive growl. He didn’t soothe the sting he knew he had caused. Instead, he cupped Boy’s sac and rolled the balls gently in his palm. With his other hand, he finally loosened his breeches and stroked himself in sync.
Boy’s back arched off the table and he pushed into Rumple’s hold, but never once did his gaze leave the point where they were connected.
Not even when Rumple bent lower and sucked one of the tightened orbs into his mouth.
The faint taste of calendula oil swirled over his tongue, triggering the memory of when he had added it to the water to bathe Boy last night, and the heightened intimacy made Rumple’s cock twitch.
Had a sexual encounter ever felt so all-consuming? Rumple knew that it hadn’t.
With a wet pop, Rumple released Boy’s sac in favour of gripping both cheeks to expose his hole. He couldn’t claim his Heart—but he could claim his Boy.
When Rumple’s lips dragged over Boy’s most delicate skin, when his tongue skated over his untried hole, Boy cried out and Rumple’s grip on his flesh tightened.
Rumple gauged his reaction closely, but with each flick of his tongue Boy only leaked more and more precum, until it smeared across the taut and pale skin of his belly.
Spurred on, Rumple lapped and laved at the tight ring of muscle until it softened.
Boy keened with need. Rumple held him open. He was more than ready—they both were.
He straightened and leaned over Boy. His breaths were shallow, but the flush of his cheeks and soft glassy look in his eyes spoke volumes. Boy trusted him. Rumple averted his gaze as he searched out what he needed; the dark secret he was keeping weighed heavily.
He stretched to bring a nearby jar of goose fat closer, the shared heat of their intimacy having turned it almost translucent.
His breaths ghosted over the skin of Boy’s neck, and he placed a short kiss on the tip of Boy’s nose before he straightened.
Boy’s hazy gaze turned quizzical as Rumple unscrewed the lid.
Balancing the jar on Boy’s chest, he dipped a finger in the oily contents, and without a word, Rumple gently pressed his generously coated finger against Boy’s entrance.
The tight ring of muscle protested the intrusion, but at Boy’s nod and exhale—and under Rumple’s insistence—it yielded.
He worked his finger deeper, and Boy let out a series of soft moans that sparked a heat low in Rumple’s gut.
Boy’s hands released their deathlike grip on the edge of the table in favour of seeking Rumple to hold on to, and before he realised his actions, Rumple had threaded the fingers of his available hand through one of Boy’s.
One hand slowly worked Boy’s hole open as his other brought their joined hand to his lips.
He kissed Boy’s knuckles, and almost instantly his human relaxed.
Impatient, he added a second finger, and Boy arched into his touch once again.
His moans took on a whimpering and needy edge that made Rumple’s cock ache with anticipation.
Such sumptuous noises deserved a delicious reward.
Rumple selected a Royal Garden strawberry from the generously piled platter, and Boy’s eyes sparkled in delight.
“Open,” Rumple whispered as he pushed the strawberry between Boy’s lips.
The distraction was all Rumple needed to add another finger.
Speared on three of Rumple’s fingers, Boy naturally fought the intrusion and tried to close his legs, but Rumple’s shadows kept them pinned in place while he tugged on his rim.
He needed the stretching if Rumple was to stand a chance of claiming him without it hurting.
He conjured a small looking glass and handed it to Boy. “Watch,” he commanded.
Despite the crimson heat in his cheeks, Boy obeyed. He reclaimed his hand from Rumple’s larger one, took the jar of goose fat from his torso and set it on the table beside him, then raised up on his elbows and watched as Rumple’s three fingers rhythmically worked him open.
“What do you see?”
“Three fingers i-inside me.”
“Whose fingers?” Rumple demanded on a growl.
“Yours.” Boy flopped back on the table, panting and coated in a sheen of sweat. “Y-your fingers are inside me.”
Leaving one hand inside, his eyes unable to drift from the emerging gape, Rumple once more dipped the fingers of his other hand in the jar of goose fat and massaged the slick substance onto his erect cock. “Do you want me to claim you?”
“Yes.”
“Then watch.”
With shaking fingers, Boy repositioned the looking glass, and Rumple removed his fingers and lined himself up. When the widest part of his crown slipped inside, his human tensed. Rumple’s shadows swept the sweat-soaked hair from Boy’s forehead and cooled his heated skin.
The moment Boy relaxed into their touch, Rumple slowly embedded himself until his pelvis tightly cradled Boy’s own. They both released a loud groan that echoed from the walls of their shadowed cocoon.
With a tempo that strained his already agonised desires, Rumple withdrew and then pushed back into the tight heat of Boy’s body. This was like nothing that had ever come before. He wanted to savour every moment and deliberately took his time.
Each slow thrust drove him deeper, and Boy rocked back against him, keening in a frequency that made his shadows sing. Until, on a sudden, sharp cry, Boy’s body bowed and tensed, and then he came, ropes of milky liquid coating his chest and nipples.
The thought that his Boy had achieved his climax without Rumple having so much as breathed on his cock drove him harder. He felt his control slip away, and it became as if he had left his corporeal form and was watching from somewhere above.
He stood tall, towered over Boy’s sprawled body, as he delivered the last few thrusts.
Finally, and on a deep, heartfelt groan, he came.
Rumple’s body quaked from the force of his orgasm, and his head rang with overwhelming pleasure—he’d never come so hard in his life.
It flooded him and drowned out every thought and feeling.
In his loss of control, his shadows too had slipped free, and now cloaked them both in their magick.
Rumple pulled out of Boy’s body with slow deliberations, releasing his legs and allowing them to dangle from the edge of the table. Boy lay boneless and spent—each hard breath caused his still-open hole to glisten in the candlelight. The shadows caressed Boy as if they too had claimed him.
Boy’s blinks were slow and long, and he smiled in contentment when Rumple flattened his palm over his Heart. Over their Heart.
Their ragged breaths panted out as one, and Boy placed his hand over the top of Rumple’s. With a thoroughly sated expression etched onto his face, Boy asked him, “Stay?”
Rumple smiled indulgently and stroked the side of Boy’s face. He opened his mouth to respond, to tell him that he’d always stay because Boy owned his Heart, when the first of the sudden lancing pains in his chest struck.
Rumple gritted his teeth and reflexively threw a dense layer of shadows over both the gilt framed looking glass above the fireplace of the throne room, and the smaller one abandoned on the table. She couldn’t find him here—not with his Boy.
He staggered a few steps back as the next searing barb tugged at the space where his Heart should have been.
“Mirror, mirror. Show me my Shadow.” Queen Schon’s disembodied voice echoed under the high-arched ceiling.
Boy sobered from his pleasure-drunk state in an instant, eyes wide as he pushed up to a seated position.
He winced as he slipped from the edge of the table, and Rumple held up his hand to stop him from coming closer.
The look of hurt on his face at the rejection burned hotter than the Queen’s summons, and Rumple hated her anew for putting it there.
Another stronger, more savage spear of unwanted black magick drilled so deep through Rumple’s body that he could no longer remain upright. Whatever had her calling was urgent—but so was his predicament. He bit back his roar of frustration and pain as he was forced to his knees.
Ignoring his previous warning, Boy knelt beside him, those beautiful brown eyes awash with tears as he took advantage of Rumple’s distracted state. His shadow-infused necklace clung to his sweaty skin, and Rumple fought through his pain to place his hand possessively over it.
“I can’t stop her from summoning me,” he panted through a wave of roiling nausea. “But my shadows will always protect you.”
Rumple’s form wavered in and out of existence under the onslaught of her magick, but he saw the confusion on Boy’s face as plain as day. He didn’t understand, and Rumple didn’t have time to explain. He needed to leave.
“What do you n-need?” Boy’s voice broke on a sob, but the hand that gently squeezed over his where he white-knuckled the floor was sure and confident.
“I need,” Rumple inhaled a heavy breath as another all-consuming wave of pain stole his vision. “My Heart.”
And with that, he dematerialised and stole away, safe behind his impenetrable wall of shadow.