Author's Notes:
Chapter revised 23 September, 2015
CHAPTER FOUR
Hermione knew there was no chance now to change her mind. Not that she would have, but as of the second Draco had touched the mating chemical to her skin, their Veela mating bond – which had begun that night in front of the Room of Requirement, but was never fully consummated - had become a more permanent binding. She was now irrevocably his.
Fire raced through her spine, igniting every inch of skin, causing her knees to unconsciously fall to the sides, her hands to grip Malfoy's arm tighter, and her eyelashes to flutter. She let loose a deep, sultry moan from her throat, signaling him for more taste, more tongue, and wetter ravaging of her mouth. Her would-be lover's bigger body enveloped her as he leaned into the demands, one of his hands twining around her curls, freeing them, fingering them as he continued his magical assault upon her senses. Between her lower lips, Hermione felt her slippery, wet response to his ministrations, even as the fingers of his free hand caressed her right nipple, wringing a hiss of unadulterated pleasure from between her teeth. He cupped the breast, his thumb rubbing the sensitive, rose-colored bud into excitement, pinching it and gently pulling until she was gasping and whimpering and mewling in desperate need.
Lapping at her lips, Draco pulled back, hovering over her, ghosting her mouth. "Look at me," he charmed her in a low, honeyed voice that was deeper, more resonant, as if there were two of him simultaneously speaking, the voices in perfect sync. His Veela and his human self had finally merged.
Peeking through her lashes in acquiescence, Hermione felt her heart slam into the back of her ribs. Malfoy was biting his lower lip, splitting it, preparing for the blood marking part of the ritual. A bead of glistening red welled to the surface on the thin, pink rim of skin, and trickled down his chin in a thin, slowly weaving line, heading straight for her lips. Terrified, Hermione unconsciously pursed her lips together.
"Open up."
He didn't seduce nor request her compliance now; he demanded it in a show of arrogant male dominance, fisting some of her hair and applying pressure to tilt her head back so they were perfectly aligned for her to receive his gift, while at the same time tweaking her nipple harder, causing her to gasp and her mouth to finally part.
A second passed, and the first drop of his life-giving fluid dripped into the crack of her aperture and slid across her tongue. The light tang of brine mixed up with a powerful, ambrosial sweet flavor. Combined with the succulent residual of the lingering mating substrate already resident on her tongue, it caused an instantaneous flushing of warmth throughout Hermione's body. From head to toe, her flesh became one charged current of hungry, sexual need.
She knew from her research that Veela blood was an aphrodisiac, laced with extremely potent pheromones as a result of a clever evolutionary design in the DNA so as to addict mates to each other. Combining such sanguineous fluid with the unique mating enzyme every male Veela gave off created an enthralling, heady chemical cocktail that had real biologic consequences for his female: from this moment on, the experience of any other man's fluids within her body would make Hermione extremely nauseated. The only man she could sexually crave for a kiss or for his seed would be Draco Malfoy, her mate.
A second droplet hit her tongue, skyrocketing her lustful craving, and without conscious thought, she was suddenly pulling his face down towards hers, and openly begging for more. By the third taste of his blood, the enticement she'd felt earlier between her legs mounted into full-out aching arousal. The entrance to her channel pulsated, the muscles inside her vagina contracted and rippled, her engorged clit was hyper-sensitive.
"More!" she begged, sliding her naked thighs up his still-clothed body, pressing her exposed core against the front of his trousers, dampening them with her slick release. "Want you. Need you now, Draco, please!"
When he finally lowered his mouth to hers to allow her to suckle his bloodied lower lip, she latched on and greedily lapped, eliciting a rumbling moan from his chest. The hand in her hair tightened, pulling her into him and he kissed back as if he were eating her mouth. He thrust his hips into hers at the same moment, rubbing a rock hard erection in between her lower lips. A thin sheen of perspiration beaded her brow and dampened under her arms and between her thighs as the blazing burn intensified.
"Yes," she led him on, kneading her fingernails into his shirt collar. "Don't stop."
The scent of her wet sex perfumed the air, intoxicating to her mate, who groaned and shifted to lift his body off of hers, while maintaining their lip lock.
Her mate was as lost to this seduction now as she. Frantically, he ripped his clothes off, desperate to be naked, too. When he'd succeeded in baring his body, he immediately moved back over her to fill the flash-cooled space he'd left behind, and pressed one hand between her legs without hesitation. Seeking out her swollen, hot nub of flesh, he began stroking her need again, all the while laving her breasts with long, even strokes of his tongue, gently biting her nipples.
"Go inside," she mewled, gripping his wrist and encouraging his fingers to find her sopping entrance.
Pushing through her folds, he pierced her entrance and shoved upwards with two fingers until his hand could go no further. "Like this?" he asked, slowly pumping in and out, nipping her tit with his sharp teeth, a knowing chuckle held in his tone.
Her hand moved with his, matching each thrust with a stroke across her clitoris. "Yes," she sighed in mounting pleasure, closing her eyes and tilting her head back, heaving deep breaths through her open mouth.
The aphrodisiac was working its way through her system, making her pant like an animal in heat, inciting flames through her tingling limbs, every nerve and vein in her body crackling with pleasurable sensations. The craving to couple with her mate, to lock their flesh together, to feel him deep within her was all consuming.
Within a short time, under Draco's expert tutelage, she had transformed into a creature of pure lust – and it felt so good, so right. She never wanted this torture to end.
"Taste me, too. Bring me that way."
Another rumble of anticipatory pleasure rolled from his throat as he lowered his mouth down her body, trailing liquid fire in his wake, circling her bellybutton with his tongue, and finally dipping between her legs. He stuck his nose against her sensitive flesh and inhaled, imprinting on her scent.
"Sweet mate," he sighed and proceeded to eat her out with deliciously tantalizing, slow strokes of his tongue and tender suckling on her clit and fleshy lips.
As soon as he rimmed her saturated entrance, and the mating chemical was thrust inside her channel with repeated pistoning action by his soft, pink tongue, Hermione felt a new kind of tingling that had her climaxing so hard she nearly blacked out.
Draco grabbed her hips and shoved his nose and mouth back in, greedily drinking up her release, gently biting and snarling as he pulled her in tight against his face, her scream of delight loud and lusty as he rode out the wave of her fulfillment with her.
Despite orgasming, Hermione still felt hollow and incomplete deep in her womb and in her heart; she needed to be Draco's in all ways, so much so that it physically hurt. "Please, please," she was begging, hardly coherent. Her fingers pulled on his hair, trying to yank him back up her body. "Mark me," she begged between clenched teeth, practically sobbing. "Make me yours."
With a final swipe, her lover worked his way back up towards her mouth again, allowing her to taste her juices combined with the marking chemical's sweetness as they clashed in a chaotic fusion of lips and tongues once more. Their cheeks and chins were moistened with her fluids as they shared and devoured one another's flavors, both driven mad with want.
Draco's hand separated her thighs further, insistently parting them as he pressed his solid, sizable erection into the pillows of her lower lips, dampening his silken length by shoving through her slit once. He lined them up, the tip of his erection straining against her, teasing by resting right at the entrance.
"My mate, my love," he possessively growled in her ear, and with a sharp arching of his back and a snap of his hips, he slammed forward into her with one powerful thrust, stretching her out, filling her up.
They both gasped at the exquisite feeling of finally, finally connecting.
When the tip of him touched the back of her, he was sheathed all the way inside to the hilt. They perfectly fit.
"Yours," she purred against his lips in acknowledgement of his claim and bit him, her fingers sliding through his silken, platinum hair. "And you are mine."
"Yes," he moaned in pleasure and a surge of his hips, leaving no second wasted, eagerly melding their lives together.
The chorus of their moaning, gasping encouragements was met with profound feeling as they watched the other's face and body, gliding as one in a synchronous rhythm. Hermione's natural instincts and Draco's sexual expertise harmoniously coordinated, crafting a smooth, erotic, breath-stealing dance that made her weep in its profound beauty.
Her fingers memorized the contracting muscles of his back with each rolling heave forward and with each reluctant withdrawal, smoothing over the sway of his sweat-damped spine, skimming over his surging hips and the sides of his tense, powerful thighs, gripping his flexing backside.
He was glorious to behold in his mating of her, and the feelings… Her heart opened, her aura resonated, her soul embraced. She was finally making love to the man of her dreams!
As Draco bent to retrieve her lips once more, her lover's driving pitch kicked-up in pace, his whole body straining towards completion. The bed violently moved beneath them, and his gasping breath became more pronounced. With an easy push-up, he leaned over her once more and bit his lip again, this time in preparation for the final marking, and Hermione's heart nearly burst in exhilaration.
He bent his lips to her ear before moving towards his final destination. "You're mine," he hissed in that oddly amalgamated voice that was both animal and man, trailing his bloodied lip over her sensitive throat. He briefly stopped to bite on the pulse point before heading further down, preparing to give her the second mark.
His hips fiercely plunged into her, rocking the entire bed frame, and the pain bordered on pleasure as they crashed together again and again. Poised over her left breast, Hermione glanced down to watch in awe as sharp, curved fangs punched through his gums over his top canines, adding to the blood streaming down his chin. His gaze moved to hers and they locked eyes.
"Say it," he snarled, gripping her hips tight enough to leave bruises. "Say you're mine forever!"
Hermione trembled from head to toe, and her voice shook with pent-up emotion as she made her vow. "With my last breath, I am yours, Draco."
He lapped at a spot just to the left of her sternum, above her breast, humming in pleasure at her words, and then struck so fast that she didn't see the movement, only felt it when his needle-like fangs pierced through her layers of skin with precision, sinking directly into her aorta, pumping the Veela mating hormone-pheromone cocktail into the largest artery in her body. At the same time, his thrusting became manic, slamming into her in a desperate urgency.
There was a dizzying shift in Hermione's vision, and then her body peaked and she was tumbled into a another orgasm. This time, with a muffled cry of triumph and pleasure, Draco came with her, releasing great, wracking spurts of his seed into her.
It was an emotionally shattering moment, and Hermione willingly accepted the consequences…
The Veela chemistry, she knew from her previous research, had altered her body the moment the mating hormone had touched her tongue, sending the signal to immediately release an egg. The injection of the chemicals into her blood stream through the aortal piercing would ensure that her womb's lining would be optimally prepared for fertilization by increasing the blood flow to that area, tricking her body into believing it was in prime ovulation. Within a few hours, she knew she'd be pregnant from what they'd just done. And since Veela mates––especially those who had successfully copulated and conceived a baby––were permanently changed to attune to each other's scents, tastes and drives, it would be impossible for either of them to take another lover ever again.
The ultimate result was that the curse that had plagued Draco for ten years had been nullified by the magic of this, their successful Veela mating. He would never again be forced to take another woman, because he now had his proper mate. The power of the Spirit of Kāmah was broken.
Hermione started crying, simply overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the span of less than an hour and a half.
Relaxing his jaw, Draco carefully released his mouth's lock on her. His fangs receded as he licked the two, small puncture wounds on her chest, using his Veela saliva to clot and magically heal them and quick-repair her artery deep down inside, where the spit would travel. She felt the skin pucker and close in seconds.
Her lover, still under the influence of the animal part of his nature, however, grew almost immediately hard again. "More," he growled, that odd confluence of his voice and his Veela's merging once more to make him sound deeper, rougher. He grabbed her wrists from about his neck and pinned them to the bed. "Want all of you again."
He nuzzled her throat and then lightly bit down with blunted teeth over her pulse, giving her a sweet Veela love bite. Just like that, Hermione's body–deliciously sore and swollen as it was – instantly slickened, heated, flushed.
"Oh, God, yes," she murmured.
Grunting and gasping, Draco's hips resumed their pistoning action, and his iron-hard cock slammed in and out of her tight, sopping body once more. He ferociously kissed her, his sexual hunger leaving him feverish, casting a glazed look to his eyes. "Need you," he muttered, as enraptured by her as she was of him. "Never let you go now. Never."
"No, never let me go again, Draco," Hermione murmured in his ear, tears spilling down her cheeks. If only they'd done this all those years ago, neither of them would have spent the last decade suffering! "I need you, too."
Sliding his grip up her wrists to entwine their fingers, he slowed down, the man within beginning to take over. He suckled on the skin above her shoulder, bruising her one moment with hard pressure, and then laving over it with a soft tongue. His lips roamed—up her throat, across her jaw, over her cheek, and finally settled on her mouth again.
"My sweet, forbidden desire," he whispered. "You're finally mine."
~.~.~.~.~
Hermione lay limply in Draco's arms in the afterglow as he expertly rolled them to their sides, remaining locked deep within her body. He pulled her close and ran soothing hands over her shoulders and back, kissing the top of her head, rubbing his cheek against her hair. They were quiet, lost in each other and the moment.
As the sweat cooled from their bodies, she sensed Draco's Veela side retreat back into his mind, where it would stay until the next time they made love. His body began to finally relax, although he continued to nuzzle her, languidly running his fingers against the back of her neck and through her tangled curls.
Somewhere around the six o'clock hour, Draco suddenly gasped and tensed up, and at that exact moment, Hermione felt an odd tingle in her womb. She knew then that she'd conceived. The knowledge was instinctual and magically induced, and it explained why he'd reacted.
"What was that?" he murmured in shock, his breath hot against her temple. "I feel... different. Calmer."
Hermione nodded, tears prickling her eyes again. "I know."
He took a deep breath, inhaling at the same time, then paused and did it a second time, sniffing her hairline. Leaning up on one arm, he pressed his nose into the bend of her neck.
"You're different, too."
She smiled up at him. "I know."
He searched her face for explanation, even as comprehension dawned, the satiation of the lust-craze he'd experienced finally removing the veil from his memory. "I mated you. I'm a Veela."
"You're a male Veela, one of the rarest creatures in the world."
He blinked. "And the Kāmah?"
She shook her head. "As you said, it was a product of the curse, to prevent you from ever falling in love with one woman. By accepting your Veela heritage and taking a mate, though, you've nullified the Kāmah's wanderlust influence, because Veela can't want anyone sexually but their one, true mate. Magic always serves the Greater Good – in this case, the biologic and magical compulsion of the Veela to carry on the species."
He'd gone still again, not even breathing. "Wait, you're telling me that I'm free? Really, truly free?"
When she confirmed it all with another silent nod, his jaw dropped.
"Holy. Shite."
A nervous, excited laugh escaped his lips, and a smile tugged at those full lips of his, and then Draco let out a loud, joyful whoop in sheer happiness. Wrapping his arms about her and rolling onto his back, he continued to laugh.
"I'm free! Bloody hell, I'M FREE, Granger! I don't… I don't have to fuck ever again!"
Hermione pushed back on the corded muscle of his chest and gave him an arch look at that last, losing her enthusiasm for his elation. "I certainly hope you don't mean that," she chided.
He shook his head. "No, I mean I don't have to fuck anyone else but you. No more meaningless sex. No more being used or manipulated. No more emptiness inside. I can have children, carry on the family name. Do you have any idea how long I've wanted this? How long I've wanted you?" He pulled her face down to his and passionately kissed her, shoving a hand through her hair again, twining his legs through hers. "I thought… Slytherin's soul, Hermione, I thought I'd never be able to have you like this. I thought I'd die alone. I thought I'd never know love." Tears shimmered in his eyes. "I don't have to walk away from you, or turn you away ever again."
"So, you really did feel something for me back then?" she hesitantly asked, biting her lip. "What you said earlier… it wasn't just heat of the moment talk?"
He cupped her cheek and stroked her face and throat with his cradled palm, working his fingers into her tangled curls again. "I spent years watching you when we were kids, Granger, trying to decide who you really were, why the sight of you riled me up, why I couldn't make up my mind as to whether I wanted to kill you or kiss you. Everything about you affected me, even my dreams at night."
He paused, running his thumb over her bottom lip.
"By the end of sixth year, I'd wished so much that things had been different between us from the start. I'd wished I'd never gotten tangled up with Voldemort, and that I didn't have the parents I was born to, and that we could just be alone to figure things out about each other."
He shook his head in amazement. "It seemed almost like fate that you met me on that particular day in front of the Room of Requirement, though. I was going to kill myself."
Hermione gasped and tentatively stroked her fingertips over his cheek. "I knew you were sad that year. I watched you, too, remember? But, I didn't know you were hurting that much."
His lashes flickered and then he gazed up at her through half-lids and sighed. "I was taught to hide behind a mask my whole life. By that spring, I thought I didn't have anything left to lose. I didn't have any real friends – no one that I truly trusted, anyway. And I figured out that the Dark Lord had put a price on my head if I didn't do what he'd tasked me to do by graduation. I thought that if I died, it wouldn't reflect too badly on my parents, especially if it was an accident. I'd planned to burn the Room of Hidden Things to ashes, to destroy any chance of anyone ever using that godforsaken Vanishing Cabinet as a way into the school. I'd planned to die in the fire." He stroked her cheek again. "But then I turned around and you were there, blocking the way."
She blinked back tears. "I was spying on you again."
He gave her a knowing smirk. "You stopped reporting my activities to Potter that March." He shook his head. "No, you kept looking for me because you knew I was in trouble, and like the do-gooder Gryffindor you were, you were trying to save me."
Her chest convulsed as the tears streamed down her cheeks. It was true; she'd betrayed Harry's trust by lying to him and telling him that Malfoy had not been doing anything devious, even when she'd known in her heart he had been. She'd hoped to stop him, but she'd hadn't figured out his plans in time. Her failure and deceit had cost Dumbledore his life. It was a regret she'd had to live with for the last ten years.
"You saved me that day," he said, pressing his forehead to hers. "You made me realize that what I'd felt for you for so long... those feelings that had knotted me up and had me acting like a complete git for years... it was because I'd fallen for you, and couldn't reconcile that with what I'd been taught to think about you."
He shut his eyes and shook his head. "I fucked it up between us, though. So much could have been different if we'd just… I wanted to make love to you so badly that day, Hermione. I wanted it more than I'd ever wanted anything in my whole miserable life. But I was too afraid. There were too many things between us that couldn't have been resolved then."
He glimpsed at her through a half-lidded gaze and brushed some fallen strands of hair off her brow.
"Like you said, the world needed to finally move on, past the war, past all the blood purity nonsense, and we both had growing up to do. It's just a bloody shame that it took ten years and too many bad experiences—" He looked down and blushed in embarrassment, obviously referring to his history with women. "—for us to be ready for each other."
Hermione reached up and tremulously smoothed her fingertips over his lips. "You're mine now, finally, and I'm yours. So, let's not mourn that loss of time too much, Draco. I don't want to spoil what time we have left in the world with regrets." Pressing forward, she gently laid a kiss on his mouth. "Let's just try really hard to be happy every day."
He stared at her with a mixture of warmth, affection and wonder in his glistening, grey eyes. "I could do that with you." A slow, mischievous smirk wound up his handsome face, and in the next moment, Hermione felt her lover's solid length, engorged with blood and rearing to go once more, rubbing through her slippery, lower depths. "Starting right now, in fact... if you don't have anything else on your schedule for the weekend?"
Her eyes rounded with amazement and she grinned. "You didn't lose the lust portion of the Kāmaḥ's power, did you?"
Waggling golden eyebrows at her, Draco aligned her hips so that he was pressing into her opening at the same time as lifting his shoulders off the mattress in an effortless demonstration of his incredible abdominal strength. He pressed his nose against hers.
"Apparently, my curse and my Veela have come to an understanding where you're concerned, mate."
He slid into her, burying himself to the hilt once more inside her snug body.
"You're not forbidden to me any more."
TO BE CONCLUDED…
Author's Notes:
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