Disclaimer: The only thing I own is the order in which these words are thrown together.
A/N: This is my first attempt at writing anything with a more mature theme. For those of you familiar with my other work, be warned: the following is sexual (although not really graphic) and a tad depressing. I sacrificed a bit of Hermione, so she may seem a little ooc, but I don't think she's outside the realm of possibility, so I'm hoping you let it slide. I'm not really sure where this story came from, possibly an obsessively repetitive playing of The Fray's version of the song Heartless, but once I thought of it, the idea wouldn't leave me alone until it was finished. Enjoy :)
I, Draco Malfoy, am sleeping with Hermione Granger.
No, that's not exactly right. If I'm going to give a confession, it should be the whole truth.
I'm having an affair. With Hermione Granger-Weasley.
The first time was an accident. Not the act itself, rather the situation leading up to it. It wasn't my intent to snog my way into her knickers one night in a seedy lodge at the edge of Knockturn Alley, but that's precisely what happened. I'm not sorry that it did.
/*/*\*\
She's more than angry when she enters the pub. She's hurricane angry. Wildfire angry. Then she sees me in the corner, drinking alone as is my usual Tuesday night, and her expression turns shrewd and sexy and, I'll admit, bloody terrifying. She forces her way into my company by snatching my glass of firewhisky, downing it in one swig. I know better than to ask what's wrong, and she doesn't feel the need to tell me, so I order myself a refill and a new glass for her and do my best to act as if Hell isn't freezing over.
She comes on strong like the lioness that she is. There's no time for subtlety, apparently. We don't even have our new glasses to our lips before her wandering fingers catch my inner thigh under the table. I know I should stop her, but the moral high ground isn't a place where I've ever been that comfortable. Besides, life after the war is lonely for a wizard who still has the remnants of a Dark Mark on his forearm. I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I very much want to know more about Granger's mouth, so I slither in where she allows me, like the snake that I am.
Once we're in private, she throws me down on our rented bed. She's pushy and forceful and so fucking hot I can't believe my luck. Her kiss is commanding, all pressure and teeth. Pleasure and pain together. It's all I can do to keep up with her. She tears off my trousers and straddles me with her skirt bunched up at her hips. We need no preamble. She slides onto me in one slick move. Fuck. I'm not sure which one of us says it, maybe both of us, because it's echoing around the room like a heartbeat. Fuck. I finally get over my shock and decide it's my turn to take control. I rip open her blouse; buttons ping against the headboard. She hisses at me in admonishment but I ignore her. If she can dish it, she can take it. And she can certainly take it. I angle my hips and thrust up then draw back. Again. Harder. I make sure she forgets her torn blouse. I make sure she forgets her own fucking name. She remembers mine, though. She moans it to the ceiling and I almost can't control myself.
Hell is definitely frozen over, but I don't care. I'm in heaven.
After, we are side-by-side and reclining against the headboard. The sheets are pooled in her lap. Her knees are tucked up against her chest, mostly covering her otherwise bare breasts. I don't know what to do with my hands so I stroke her fingers. She jerks them away like I've offended her. Like that is too intimate. As if I didn't have my fingers, my mouth, my cock, on parts of her body that never see the light of day mere minutes before.
Then I see why. She's fidgeting with her wedding band, something she must have been wearing the whole time while I'd been too lust-blinded to notice. I reach over and still her movements. She turns her face back to mine, watching me watch her. I don't bother pretending not to know she's married, but I do a decent job of pretending not to care, which seems to both relieve and disgust her. Never again, she promises, meaning our tryst. She pulls her hand away from me once more. I swallow the lump in my throat and nod. She begins searching for her popped blouse buttons and magically mends her shirt. Panic sets in as I wonder if this is all there is for us.
Wait, I say. Don't go.
I don't know why I say it.
I mean, I know why I think it, but I'm usually good at hiding that kind of vulnerability. Something has changed and we both know it. Because we changed it.
I have to go, she says. I read more into what she doesn't say, though, which isn't I want to go.
Sure, I hedge, you can go. Maybe just not yet.
She gives me a confused look, as if she's seriously considering it, but eventually decides against it. She doesn't say goodbye, not that I expect her to. When the door clicks behind her I feel more alone than before she stormed into the pub.
/*/*\*\
The second time is a surprise. Not surprising in the way that there is anything new to discover; I already have every inch of her body, the taste of her, the feel, the scent of her, committed to memory. It's surprising because it isn't supposed to be happening. Never again, she repeats from our first rendezvous. This time I'm angry because I know she's a liar in more ways than one. I join in on the lie and parrot back, Never again. Yet where her voice is stern, mine is harsh. I want her to think she can't hurt me. I want to believe that my rejection might actually hurt her. I want to make a point. I extract myself from her arms and fish my pants out of the pile of discarded clothes on the floor. I don't take Weasley hand-me-downs anyway, I grumble.
Suddenly she reaches for me. Don't go. Not yet, she says.
I think she's mocking me. Toying with me. She waits. I find that I'm just as curious about what I'll do as she seems to be. Ultimately, I do as I'm told because the truth is I'm grateful that she would want to keep me. I'm grateful that she would want to have me in the first place, even if she is using me. I'll take what I can get. We both stay. We don't talk, we don't touch, simply stay.
/*/*\*\
The third time is starting to feel dangerously like habit, except that she allows me to take her from behind this time. And I allow myself to make it more personal, more sensual. I am a musician and she is my instrument. I'm on my knees, playing her gently. I tease her. I run one barely there finger starting at her ankle, along her calf, up her thigh, until I reach the place where she really wants to be touched. She shivers but I pass right by, continue up around her hips, dig my nails in there. She groans and demands to have me; I realize that I can't deny her. I'm done pretending that I don't want her, I've done it for far too long. Years, if I'm honest. I bury myself in her warmth. Her sighs are melody; I become her harmony. We crescendo together.
This time, I cut her off before she can finish telling me never again. I toss her bra further away and gather her flush against me. Not yet, I tell her. It's not a question. Merlin knows why, and Salazar help me, but she decides to allow this, too, and relaxes into me.
We talk, of all things, about crisps. She tells me she tried strange ones recently that were dipped in chocolate. An odd combination, but delicious, she admits. She has a thing for salty and sweet together. I'm lucky for that, I suppose.
/*/*\*\
The fourth time I make the mistake of tenderness.
After we've devoured each other, she's sitting encircled in my legs with her back pressed to my chest, enjoying a shoulder rub. I stop massaging to sweep her hair off her neck, lean in real close. I let my words dance across her skin.
I have something for you.
I feel her stop breathing. Silence may be as good of an answer as I'm going to get so I levitate a package from my satchel into her hands. I can't see her face, but by the stiffness in her muscles, I imagine she's not blinking as well.
Chocolate covered crisps?
Suddenly I feel like this is the most daft idea I've ever had. It's not much, I mumble in return. She deserves a real gift. She deserves real everything. And what am I offering? The shadow of a relationship and a snack?
She turns to face me and quiets my thoughts with a soft inhale. You listened. She's searching my face as if it is the first time she's ever actually looked at me. I'm not used to... She leaves me to invent the end of that sentence. She's not used to kindness from me? Or perhaps she's not used to being listened to, period? Both are probably true but she doesn't intend to clarify. Instead she asks, Where did you get them?
I do nothing but look back into her eyes. She knows where I got them. I can tell she's already deduced that Draco Malfoy braved muggle society for the sole purpose of bringing her a stupid sentimental thing so insignificant that it can barely be called a gift.
Her mood shifts dramatically. She tells me Never again. This time she sounds frightened. She gathers her clothing and darts for the door like a spooked unicorn in the wild. She's gone all too soon. I say Not yet to an empty room.
/*/*\*\
She stays away for weeks after that. I worry, then I try to get back to normal life. But my life is anything but normal, so I worry some more.
One random day she shows up at my flat. I hear the whoosh of the floo and don't know what to expect. I so rarely get visitors, I had forgotten that I had it hooked into the network.
She picks up right where we left off, as if no time has passed. She throws my book to the side and joins me in my wingback chair. It doesn't occur to me to refuse her. I take what I can get, after all.
The chair isn't big enough for two so I stand with her wrapped around me and deposit her on the carpet. I bite down hard on her shoulder, partly to leave a signature on her body, and partly in the hopes to elicit the same from her. She responds by sinking her claws into my biceps. She controls our speed by the amount of pressure she applies. By the time we're finished, I have ten bright red and glistening half moon marks encircling my arms.
I thought you'd have more respect for the written word than that, I say in the best playful voice I can muster, hoarse and breathless. I indicate my book which lay thrown, spine up with the pages bent at odd angles beneath it.
Her fingers trace the image of the crystal ball on the cover.If you were reading a more respectable subject, I might, she says with a sharp exhale of breath. It's almost a laugh. The curve of her lips is almost a smile. It's nowhere near an apology.
I say the only thing that comes to mind.You're beautiful. Once I've said it out loud, I can't believe I've never told her. Despite the fact that she's still naked and her scent is all over me, she blushes, rosy and sweet. It only makes her more beautiful and I tell her so.
For the first time, we go again and, another first, we take it slow. We lock eyes. You're so beautiful.
When she's gone, I run my fingers along the indents from her nails.
/*/*\*\
The sixth time marks the first time that we talk first, shag later. She struts into my kitchen like she owns it and pours herself a glass of wine to match mine. She sits with her feet tucked up under her bum and takes only one dainty sip.
Ron is... she pauses and watches the tension in my jaw. She's testing me. Or possibly she's still deciding what exactly her husband is.
There's a reason I've never asked: I don't want to hear it. I want to keep up my game of make believe.
When she's done deciding, she continues. I don't stop her because, no matter how bad I don't want to hear it, I desperately want to know it.
He's dispassionate and uninterested, unresponsive to her wants and needs. Plus, she adds around a sip of merlot, I think he's shagging someone else, too, though she admits her suspicions could be wishful thinking. An inventive imagination to assuage her guilty conscience.
I learn it wasn't chance that she found me that first night. I chose you, she says. Draco Malfoy, the one man that would hurt her husband the most. Aside from Potter, of course, she concedes, but he's her best friend and that's inconceivable and anyway, he's taken and a gentleman.
I'm a gentleman, I protest.
No you're not. She puts her wine glass down and smiles at me. And I don't want you to be.
Then we are bare and she proves her point; I am no gentleman. She gets what she wants. And again, I take what I can get.
/*/*\*\
The seventh time, when I am sweaty and panting and spent, I am bold enough to admonish her. Don't you ever fake it for me again.
She shifts away from me. She doesn't deny it, but she does fall back to her same old lie.That won't be a problem, because this won't be happening ever again.
I scoff so she knows exactly how much I believe her. Don't. It's an insult. I'm talking about both lies and I can tell she understands.
An orgasm isn't all physical, she tells me in her know-it-all tone. It's partly mental. I wasn't in the mood to concentrate. It wasn't a commentary on your ability, she says, as if that makes it any better.
I am exhausted. Physically and mentally, I think, since she's made the distinction. So I can't stop myself from asking, If you didn't want an orgasm, why are you here?
She's quiet for a long time and I get the feeling that I've crossed a line. I don't know, she answers. It's not much of an answer but I believe her. She wants something other than sex, but she doesn't know what it is. And she's looking for it with me.
I don't have to say not yet this time. She stays anyway.
/*/*\*\
I, Draco Malfoy, think I'm in love with Hermione Granger.
No, that's not exactly right. I need to give the whole truth.
I know I am.
I love you, I confess against her neck after we've come, so quiet she might not hear it, but I think she does. I can feel her body tense around me, more than her usual euphoric tremors. She stares me down. This is usually the part when she reminds me never again, but now she is silent. I feel like I've won something, until I think that by not saying it, that might mean this truly is the last time.
Never again. I say it for her; it's the self-preservationist in me coming through. She doesn't argue. The words feel final. I recognize that this is how it must end, how it always had to end. I don't deserve her and never have. Never could.
I break a little. I don't want her to see so I roll off of her and show her my back. The mattress is moving again and I know she's searching for her clothes. As soon as she's out the door it will really be over, maybe even as soon as she leaves the bed. I can't bear it. I lunge back and catch her wrist before her feet find the carpet. I don't have to say it out loud; she knows. She obliges and curls into the crook of my arm.
Maybe this ending is for the best. She has fixed me. She's taught me how to feel more than just bitter. Not instead of bitter, mind, the bitterness is still there. But now it's not alone, and that has to count for something. When we part, she'll go back to her life and I will start anew. I'll find a woman and be good to her. Maybe. Hopefully. But here and now, I play make believe. I pretend that sex means love and that love is forever. I imagine that I don't have to let her go- not yet.