It seemed that there was something he was supposed to remember, but it flitted at the edges of his memory, chased into shadow by the slow crest of pleasure echoing up through his nerve-endings. It seemed his gaze was drawn time and again to the hourglass on the mantle. It had run half its course, and he dimly recalled turning it twice already, half-heartedly, distracted by what he was doing.
'What was I supposed to do when it runs through?' he asked himself, and bit his tongue when her body twisted beneath him, blood filling his mouth. The question faded and he gave a tug to the chain on her collar that momentarily stilled her. Her skin glowed beneath him, glowed through the dark splatters of her blood, and her eyes—when he caught flashes of them in the mirror that sat before her—sparkled with a fierce sapphire light. The bit was clenched between her white teeth, pressing cruelly into the corners of her mouth, the buckle rubbing a raw patch against her cheek. But there was ecstasy there on her visage, in the rhythmic pulse of her body, squeezing him with every lash of the crop in his hand. Blood traced delicate patterns down her slender arms, pooling against the heavy cuffs that kept her fastened to the headboard.
She bucked back against him, searing his flesh with pleasure that made him nearly double over. He dropped over her, the chain and crop clenched tightly in his hands, her slick back pressed to his belly. She bore up under his weight and her lithe legs folded back around his driving hips, a position defying the laws of the physical. And still he could not get close enough, shoving into her with such force that he threatened to move right through her—but nothing quenched that desire, and the pleasure was overwhelming, sweat coursing freely down his high cheekbones. He released her chain, released the crop, and gripped her slick hips, feeling her clench tight again around him, her breath coming out in a muffled scream. He lost himself in it, sinking his teeth deeply into her creamy white shoulder as he came.
He'd lost count of how many times. She had that power, it kept growing the longer he touched, kissed her, ran his hands and tongue along her flesh—she dripped with power, was saturated in it, and every time he spent himself inside her, she turned, cupped him in her warm little palm, and he wanted her all over again.
He fell back from her, exhausted but euphoric. He lay panting at the foot of the bed, and faintly waved his fingers to release her bonds, missing the touch of her skin. She was on him in an instant, slipping up to straddle his waist and nuzzle her perfect mouth into his throat. He felt her sharp teeth on his skin and chuckled, sliding his hands along the smooth planes of her back, up over her shoulders and nape to tangle in the silky skein of her hair. She lifted her face and kissed him, tasting his blood, her tongue finding the raw place where he'd bitten himself. He held her hard to him, feeling her fragile bones complain beneath the crush of his arms, and that, too, was heady. He never wanted that pleasure to stop, that breathless, intoxicating reaction of flesh.
"Again," she panted, kissing him roughly, her small hands clasping his face. "Oh, my dearest, again!"
He could not imagine ever denying her anything, and her words quickened him so that he had her there, riding astride in his lap, wild as a siren and twice as delectable. She sank her nails into his flesh, sobbing, sharing the pleasure she felt so that he felt it twofold, bordering on agony—but it was sweet, sweet agony that he would do anything to feel.
It was only just spent between them when something in his mind clicked like a switch, falling upon him as the last grain of sand fell through the hourglass. The strangling euphoria of his wife's touch faded, warded by his caution and usual immunity, which came back in the wake of his spell. He remembered casting it before he gave his wife her due, a spell that would render him vulnerable to her wiles, completely within her power for the three hours he'd promised her.
She felt it, and sat back, still astride him, her eyes solemn. She glowed with power, dripped it from her skin—power stolen from the powerful feelings generated through their shared sexual exploits. It was her ability as a succubus, drawing it thusly.
And it was his right as her husband and master to take it back.
"Narcissa," he murmured, and loosely opened his arms in a gesture of welcome she did not often receive.
She fell against his chest and willingly gave up that hoarded power, letting him drink it from her lips so that it crackled like static electricity between them, filling him so that he felt he might explode with it. He took it, every drop, every tingling portion of it, and when she had no more to give, he pushed her off of him and got up, sweeping his robe around himself.
He felt wrung out but still thrilling with power and the satisfaction that violent sex always gave him. There was no depravity he could not or would not demand of her that she would deny, and it made her his ideal bed-mate.
That, however, was the glaring problem he had with allowing her such reign every night—becoming too used to it, wanting what she offered. He was Lucius Malfoy, who wanted and needed no one, and he had no intentions of letting that change.
Narcissa came to him, naked as the day she was born, so luminous with beauty that it still had the ability to pause him, even after twenty-some years of marriage. He'd always been very good at covering his reactions, however, and managed to give her a look of cool disdain.
She gripped his hand and lifted it to her cheek, still cloaked in sweat and the pink rivulets of blood it had watered. She sighed over his knuckles and kissed his rings, sinking to her knees. It was not often one saw Narcissa Malfoy humbled, turned for a moment from her own vanity and self-absorption. He stared down at her, astonished, fleetingly glad that her downcast face could not register the shock he could not cover.
"I will serve you such all the days of your life," she sighed, and it was a truer confession of love from one such as she than saying the words which were lies. "And give you gladly what power I garner from it—after all of these years, Lucius, have you truly never understood what you stood to gain of me?"
He pulled her to her feet, clasping her miniscule waist to steady her. She'd shed blood and more this night, and was weak from it, giddy with pleasure and exhausted in more ways than he could imagine.
She lifted her sapphire eyes to his, shadowed by violet bruises, her lovely mouth bloodied at the corners from the cruel bite of the bit. Her hair fell over her shoulders in rippling white-blond waves, from beneath which her perfectly full breasts peeked, nipples brick red from chafing and his cruel, demanding teeth. The lines of the blood vine spilled over her delicate ribcage, tiny leaves etched delicately into her white flesh. But it had grown no more since she'd claimed her kiss from their son. She looked fragile and utterly undone, breakable in so many ways—and he realized how easy it was to dismiss her, to think that since she thought only of herself, he need not think of her himself at all. Looking at her shadowed face and the naked need written there, he realized he'd been remiss to discount that she was human, and needed something to cling to. It did not surprise him, now, that she had fixated so whole-heartedly on their son. He'd left her no recourse, in the end.
"Come, 'Cissa," he softly said, surprising them both with the nickname he'd called her as a child and had never called her since. He drew her gently against him and pulled her into the washroom alongside him. "A bath and then bed."
"Yes," she said, her voice breathy with nervous pleasure, afraid he would turn away from her as he had always done in the past. He alone could do that to her, make her wonder about herself and her effect on him. "A bath and bed would be wonderful, my darling."
He did not smile at her, but that did not make his attention less for it, and he understood that more had changed that night than he'd negotiated for. But whatever the cost, whatever became of him—even if it was the slow loss of his sanity to the pleasures of his wife's body—so long as the boy grew up safe and sure, Lucius Malfoy was pleased.
