Draco accepted the belt with a condescending tilt of his head, long fingers closing over the buckle. Hermione's hand lingered on the leather as if unwilling to relinquish ownership of it or was, perhaps, too fond of its touch to let it go.
"I once told my father that I could never harm you," he suddenly said, thinking of that strange conversation and the assessing, predatory look in his father's too-knowing eyes. "He told me it was a pity."
Hermione flinched when he laughed, letting her fingers drop, taking another deep breath of the magic that flowed off of him in thick waves.
"Wh…" she shook her head, trying to clear it of his siren call, trying to find some vestige of rational thought somewhere inside herself. "Why would he suggest it?"
"Maybe he knew you better than I did then," Draco wryly said, pulling the belt through his fist and doubling it over, the warm leather supple in his grip. "Father doesn't mind treating people according to their due."
"And how should I be treated?" Hermione asked, brows drawn, heart thundering because this was just what she'd dreamed, just what she'd always hidden from herself—to take the constant loathing and make of it something true. To give in, finally, to her own inner feelings and bow in acquiescence before those who would fancy themselves her betters. It was something that every bone in her body rebelled against but her secret, dark heart demanded. And once it was finished between them, it would be a memory to be revisited only in restless midnight hours where picking at the scabs was the only way to heal the wound. Not everyone had the chance to live out their most fearful and fevered dreams, Hermione would not forget that Draco managed such a thing for her.
Draco sneered at her, his look one of mingled disgust and hunger.
"Like a dog," he shortly said, and slung her around by her hair, flinging her up against the stone wall where she clutched it madly, panting and afraid and utterly alive. He pinned her briefly, only long enough to lowly say into her ear, "Hold still, Granger. I'll use no bonds to tie you, understand? You stand here against this wall and hold yourself still. And if you fall down, if you move, you pick yourself back up and we start again…"
She dug her fingers into the stone, trembling but standing tall. The first bite of the belt across her shoulders was too much, at first, to feel—but the odd numbness gave way to a burning, piercing pain and she yelped with each successive blow. Draco was no novice, apparently—he crossed and re-crossed her shoulders, back, and bottom, hitting her with force enough to make her sway, struggling to keep still.
The magic swelled between them, voraciously feeding on Hermione's shamed, horrified pleasure, flowing into Draco so that he only whipped her harder, encouraged. Even though the room was cold as a mausoleum both of them were sweating, caught in a battle of wills now—he would not stop until she folded, she would not fold until he stopped.
Finally, when the blood began to flow from the juncture of the lashes meeting, Hermione slumped against the wall, sobbing hoarsely and shivering with a tremulous, delicate sort of pleasure uncoiling inside her taut body. It was not just the tremendous pain of being whipped, but the meaning behind it, the strain and fury inside Draco translating itself to her flesh. She had always been the recipient of his mindless hatred, but now she was the canvas for his cruel passions, and the knowledge made her heart quicken, made her skin tingle—he needed her, and no one had ever needed Hermione Granger before.
Her sweat stung the lashes, but his tongue stung them more. He knelt there behind her in the darkness with his hands holding the curve of her hips, that belt dangling against her flesh, and lapped the pain from her skin like candy.
"Don't, don't," she whispered, pressed against the cold wall, her skin numbing to it while her whole backside was afire with pain. She pressed her forehead to the wall, weakening, her back arching beneath his tongue. He found every bloodied spot, every place where her skin had torn, and probed it, making her wince and tighten.
He lapped the last of the blood weeping from her back and stood, nudging her feet apart with the toe of his boot and pulling her hips away from the wall.
"What are you doing?" she asked, enveloped in a groggy haze of need and wanting nothing more than for Draco to shed the rest of his clothes and have her there against the wall. She'd never denied that he was delectable—though his personality spoiled it—and now he was even more beautiful and she wanted him badly, as badly as she despised him.
"Sorry, did you think I was done?" he asked, cruel laughter in his voice. "I've only just started, Granger. There's still quite a bit of your hide we have to cover."
He stepped back from her and she yelped when the belt bit expertly across the back of her thighs and began raining fury down on her trembling legs. But it was nothing compared to when he warned her to hold extremely still and snapped the belt up across her inner thigh, perilously close to much more sensitive areas.
She screamed in terror but did not move, prompting Draco to say, "You can always run, Granger. I know you want to—I can taste your panic."
Her breath came in heaving gasps, her entire body coiled in dreadful, delightful anticipation. She screamed again, more from fear than from real pain, though it hurt.
Draco laughed behind her and lowly said, "That's it, Granger, be afraid, because I will whip you there—I'll pull you apart at the seams if I have to, mudblood, to teach you the depths of your mistake."
So saying, he laid the lashes up higher and higher and, eventually, snapped the belt up solidly between her legs.
She was silent for a breathless, shocked moment until the belt bit into her tender flesh for the second time—unerringly striking in the exact same spot. Her head dropped back and spots danced before her eyes and she was screaming without even being aware of it, great howls that echoed in the room while her body exploded into a thousand pieces of a mindless orgasm while he lashed her again and again. She was nothing but sensation feeding up from the aching, stinging contact of his belt, and was hardly aware when he was forcing her onto her knees, made ravenous by her pleasure and her abandonment to his hands. Her screams died down to whimpers, to her lowly moaning over and over, "Oh my god, oh my god…"
"If you say so, Granger," Draco hissed into her ear, turning her to face him, forcing her face up for a kiss that scorched her and left him panting raggedly. "I've seen your secret self, I've seen your dark dreams—you cowed and bleeding and pleading, no part of your person held sacred, every bit of you defiled and you delighting in it. To be used, to be hurt, to be punished, to be needed. To prove your worthiness through abasement—I've seen it all…But the problem with unleashing those dreams, Granger, is that they often don't wish to be kept hidden afterwards."
He bit her lip, sucking on it, hands holding her head so tightly the bones complained and she arching up to meet it, hungry for it, hungry for him.
"So I may be giving you what you want now, Granger," he softly said, his lips whispering softly against hers. "But don't consider it a gift when you sleep next to some fat, balding, boring oaf and spend yourself in tears yearning to have this again. That is how I repay you, you perfidious bitch. I take the cost in blood and pleasure, and leave you to reap the consequences, leave you knowing that what you suffered so willingly at my hands is what you'll never have again."
Given a thousand years to consider it, he could have invented no greater punishment to inflict on her than this—the offering of her darkest desires fulfilled, but only once, only now.And even as she wept, knowing he was right, she still put her arms around him, wanting his cruel retribution.