XI.

He lied when he told me it would not be the type of 'dangerous' we had been used to since meeting months prior.

Lucius Malfoy was indeed a man who wore many masks. I tried to count them beginning with my earliest recollection of him in Flourish and Blotts before my Second Year, until the moment he was helping me sit at a table in a restaurant in Wizarding Paris later that day, dusk in Paris.

There was Lucius Malfoy, the snob who would scuffle with Arthur Weasley in Flourish and Blotts. There was Lucius Malfoy, Death Eater, and sycophant, who was, thankfully, metaphorically dead. There was Lucius Malfoy, the warrior, which were actually several different variations of the same mask. There was Lucius Malfoy, the defeated. There was Lucius Malfoy, the devoted husband and father. There was Lucius Malfoy, the penitent. There was Lucius Malfoy, the mad, invisible entity that paced when agitated. There was Lucius Malfoy, the aristocrat.

I began losing count after this point.

At the moment, sitting across from me, Lucius Malfoy's mask was a mixture of aristocracy and something else, a mask I was beginning to identify with a man whose machinations were not to be trusted.

I had seen him mischievous, I had seen him angry, and I had seen him almost kind…

Of course, no amount of kindness, true or not, would have me trusting Lucius Malfoy completely. He delighted in his schemes, games, and manipulations.

"Considering how miserable you looked earlier, I must say, my dear, you do 'clean up' nicely."

I rolled my eyes.

The bastard had gone through my closet and tossed a dress at me, growling that I should shower and do 'something with that hair.'

The last time I had worn the slim black dress had been to a Ministry New Year's gala three years before. It was a revealing dress, draped black sateen in the back that bared much of my skin to the middle of my back, and draped in the front that my breasts were just covered.

I have no idea why I had worn the dress to something as formal to the Ministry gala, but I did garner much attention. My ancient friend James had pointed out the dress to me during a visit to Venice, and considering how much I paid for it, I had to wear it somewhere other than my flat. Thus, the Ministry gala.

James had incredible taste for clothing, men and women's, and commented on how lovely I would look in it with my hair pinned up to reveal my throat. I remembered he gave me one of those smoldering, 'I would not mind having you in that dress so I can peel it off you later and suckle at your carotid artery' looks.

Indeed, I wore the dress, pinned up my now dry and coiffed hair, and put on as little makeup as possible. The dress fell to my ankles with a slit up the left side where I put on a Disillusioned holster just at the top of my stocking to keep my wand on me at all times.

Lucius ordered when the waiter came, enunciating in a perfect accent ala Lyon, and I faltered when ordering, the smoothness of Lucius' accent confusing my brain. I could speak French well enough, Parisian French, but my Italian was much better, with a Sud-Tyrol-Veneto accent. Lucius spoke his French so naturally that it must have made his Norman ancestors very proud.

Wine came, red to go with our meat dishes, and Lucius toasted me.

This restaurant was as lavish as one could get in Wizarding Paris, located in the old Latin Quarter, closeted away from the world, stuck in the Eighteenth Century where so much was gold and gilt, creams and lavenders, yet the old Latin Quarter style remained in most places, reminding you very clearly that the 'real' Paris was not the wider streets and boulevards, but the winding little alleys, dark alcoves, and music lit air from another time. Only New Orleans was comparable.

People recognized us.

Wizarding Paris was just as large as Wizarding London, and there were as many British Magical folk in Paris in the spring as there were in London. Though I could not place many names to the faces, in the restaurant alone, there were at least three Pureblood British families dining this night.

This sort of 'dangerous,' was the sort I hated the most. Recognition and gossip.

However, Lucius was smiling, obviously aware of the eyes upon us, but finding it only amusing.

We did not speak much while the first and second courses came and went. I drank entirely too much in my nervous state, hoping to dull my keen awareness of being watched by eyes that were not exactly kind. I could imagine what these people were whispering to each other, and what they would tell their friends when they returned to Britain. Hell, I would not have been surprised if Rita Skeeter were under a nearby table with quill poised to record everything Lucius and I were saying—as little as possible.

When dessert came, a small serving of the richest pot de crème I had ever had, the real conversation began.

"You mentioned the Mona Lisa once…" he began, dropping his napkin on the table. "You mentioned all the tourists being in the way of truly viewing the masterpiece…"

"It has its allure, but I would not consider it—"

"Yet, you have never stood alone before it?"

I had interrupted him, and he had frowned, but paid my discourtesy in kind.

I blinked at him. "No."

He only gazed at me before lifting his wine and sipping the last few drops from the fluted crystal. "Neither have I."

With a graceful movement, he set his glass down, composing his face so that his eyes regarded me down the length of his nose. There was something alive in his eyes, a curiosity that made me squirm slightly in my chair, wishing I had refused to wear a dress so revealing or controlled my intake of wine. I felt naked as well as feeling as if, in his eyes, I were all that there was in his world. Either way, I was uncomfortable.

"I have arranged for a private tour of Salle de la Jaconde, Salle Mollien, Salle Daru of L'aile Denon."

My mind seemed to short out for a split second for when I realized he was speaking of the Musee du Louvre, he was already helping me from my chair.

And he took my hand into the fold of his arm, pressing the back of my palm into his side, into the velvet of his coat, and together, we walked from the restaurant in the Latin Quarter, whispers trailing behind us. I realized that I did not care as much as I thought about what people would say about Hermione Granger, war hero, being in the company of perhaps the most visible proponent of the Death Eater contingency in the War. The past was the past, and I, of all people, needed to remember this if I were to keep up my brand of moral outlook. I nearly snickered aloud as we passed through the entrance of the restaurant and into the dark of the labyrinthine streets of Wizarding Paris.

"Amusing, was it?" he asked, moving his right hand to press my hand gently into his left side and the crook of his elbow—a gentlemanly gesture, one I knew was rehearsed.

"Quite," I breathed, remembering that the night was not over and the chance for 'adventure' was looming before me.

I was not truly amused at all.

I had been to the Louvre before on vacations with my parents, but always in the day, always in the midst of the hustle and bustle of tourists with their cameras hanging from the necks and the press of their heat against me as I tried to behold the masterpieces without interference. The Louvre made me hate people.

However, the floating, dripless candles that lit the Salle of L'aile Denon, made the old hall seem so large around us, not a whisper of foreign voices recalling the history of each painting on the walls. There was no crush of bodies upon bodies and the gallery was cool and silent. Our footfalls echoed on the parquet floor of Salle de la Jaconde as we approached perhaps the most recognizable painting in the entire Muggle world—the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. As to why Lucius Malfoy wanted to bring to this place to view this particular painting was slow in coming to my mind. I admit I was amazed at the emptiness of the Salle, and the quality of the casting of light upon the paintings by the hovering candles. I was in amazement that Lucius had somehow arranged for us to be in the Louvre alone, unnoticed, and unafraid of being accosted by Muggle security. I supposed he had somehow arranged it through a French contact, spending an exorbitant amount of money to give me this chance... I wondered how he knew how much I enjoyed viewing art by candlelight. Had he spoken to James? And how had he remembered what I had said at the Grinnell Glacier?

A wall of bulletproof glass surrounded the Mona Lisa, but the hovering candles did not glare off the barrier. Instead, the painting seemed to glow on its own, outward, toward us as we stood side by side, gazing upon the small rectangular image. I appreciated the work a bit more, not having to jostle with other people to see the painting, but still—I was not entirely impressed. The elation of expectation was missing, and I, like a spoiled child, was horribly let down.

This fact must have been evident on my face for Lucius' hand moved before my eyes and I fell back against his chest, enveloped. The warmth of his hand suffused my skin, sending tingles up and down my spine, to my toes, to the very centre of my body. Slowly, he danced me into his arms and away from the Mona Lisa, the tap of my heels sounding rhythmically on the floor as if we were waltzing.

Then I was placed gently upon a velvet upholstered chaise, a kiss pressed into my cheek. I opened my eyes, the candlelight so warm that it gave me a thrill of pleasure. Lucius had moved us into another hall. The Salle Mollien was mostly dark, only a few candles having followed in from the other gallery, and as I rubbed my cheek against Lucius' chin, I slanted my eyes to view Delacroix's 'Death of Sardanapalus' in all its sumptuous glory. I turned my head to look behind me; I found the glowing body of Francesca pressed into Paolo. Both paintings were erotic, and slowly they began to writhe.

I hummed as I pressed my cheek into Lucius' chest feeling that the movement had come from a spell which flowed from his body and into the room.

Maybe it had been the wine, maybe it was the light, or maybe it was his warmth and masculine scent, but I felt a boneless comfort in his arms. More than that, growing warmth that started low in my belly and seeped outward.

The way that Francesca wound and writhed against Paolo, the concubine being slowly sacrificed before Sardanapalus, it was a pale mirror to the arousal I felt as Lucius' fingers skimmed down the back of my neck to my spine. It was almost too much—the sensuous, romance level was beyond comprehension. Despite my usual skepticism of all things remotely romantic, I was turned on.

I angled my face upward as his fingers fastened on the tab of the hidden zipper of my dress, and inhaled the musky, woodsy scent at his throat. My own hands twitched and moved into his robes, savoring the warmth along his ribs.

When our lips met, a softness of magic poured over my skin from the kiss to my toes. I allowed him to taste my mouth, his tongue teasing and retreating. I let the bodice of my dress slip to my waist and his lithe fingers touch and tickle and titillate every exposed pore. The gallery was gone and all there that mattered was him and getting my fingertips to touch his bare flesh.

He laid me down on the chaise and for a fleeting moment I felt the coolness of the air around us. Lucius shrugged out of his robes, and in doing so, let the length of his silvery hair fall over one shoulder. I watched him in the candlelight, riveted by the hiss of finery over skin.

We had not spoken in what seemed an age, and as he pulled the tail of his shirt from his trousers, allowing the fabric to fall open, I could wait no longer. I rose up like a striking serpent and took him in my arms, my mouth fitting against his in the most wanton action I felt I had made in all my life.

I wanted him, and it had nothing to do with love, per se. It had been a slow burn, a slow built up, but one thing had always been true: I found Lucius Malfoy physically attractive, and that was a start. At that moment, with the texture of his skin and hair, the scent of his body and the weight—he was sexually attractive.

I wanted him inside. I wanted to feel him pulse inside. I wanted to feel how full he could make me…

My skirts were pushed up, my shoes were falling off my toes, but it did not matter, all that mattered was that his weight settled in the cradle between my thighs.

Lucius held my face in his hands, and thrusting his hips into my pelvis, let his lips twitch into a wry smile. It was as his left hand moved to slip between us and to begin removing the fabric barriers that a klaxon sounded from a distance. I paid it no mind at first, my brain befuddled with arousal and quite a bit of wine. All I cared about was the hard length pressed into my core pressing harder, deeper, and without barriers.

I think I groaned when Lucius's fingers slipped inside my receptive body, only to recoil as the klaxon grew louder.

Reality set in as I was suddenly pulled to my feet, the sensation that my head was still on the chaise making me dizzy.

"Make haste, my dear…" he whispered, finding his wand in his discarded robes, Vanishing the candles and plunging the gallery into darkness.

I blinked in the dark as the sound of footsteps sounded upon the parquet floors far down the wing.

I am not sure if it was my magical ability that willed my dress back in place, or a silently cast Charm from Lucius, but I did know for certain that my arousal mutated into fear and anger. The glint of flashlight beams caught my eye and as I opened my mouth to curse, Lucius had gathered me up in his arms and the press of Side-Along Apparation crushed my face into his left shoulder.

The unfolding of space-time had me flailing to be free.

I should have known—the only somewhat calm thought in my mind at that very moment.

I had no idea where we were, but I did not care as my hand flew to slap Lucius Malfoy across the face. The stunned gasps that came from around us had me stumbling back into a table laden with a couple's dinner.

Lucius had brought us back to the restaurant we had been dining at maybe an hour before. It must have been the clearest in his mind in his haste to flee what apparently had not been a legal viewing at the Musee du Louvre.

After several hissed French phrases, I somehow managed not to sit down in a lady's meal and find my own wand in the Disillusioned holster at the top of my stocking. I quickly reset the table I had nearly upset, Vanished the spilt wine that had caused the wizard at the table to curse at me, and with another flick of the wrist, my hair was reset before Lucius had mussed it. I muttered a quick apology to the couple and with sniff in Lucius Malfoy's direction, took it upon myself to Apparate home.

I hated myself as I kicked out of my heels and ripped the stockings from my legs. I should have known there would be an element of illegality and/or danger where Lucius Malfoy was concerned. But as I flopped down to sit on the edge of my bed in the darkness of my flat; my eyes were still dazzled with the candlelight in the Salle Mollien and my body ached from the absent sensation of digits slipping inside my most tender of flesh.

I hated allowing myself to be put in another potentially risky situation. I simply did not need to be arrested by Muggle authorities, detained, and possibly jailed just as I was set to begin work again. My heart was still pounding from intoxication, arousal, anger, and danger. I think I hated myself for loving the sensation. I sighed heavily as my eyes adjusted to the light coming from the high windows, the ambient city light casting everything in an orange hue of street lights. It was still early evening in London, and as I managed to unzip my dress, I stood to let it slither down over my hips into a puddle at my feet. The slide of fabric caused me to shudder. I could still feel the lines his fingers had traced on my throat and down my spine.

Closing my eyes, I sniffed, still smelling his mix of unique odors on my skin. And then the hair on my arms and back of my neck prickled.

"Was that the last straw?" he said in the darkness.

It had not been just his scent on my skin.

I opened my eyes and turned to find him just standing at the foot of the bed, just within arm's reach. He has only his shirt sleeves, the front redone. His wand was twirling casually between deft fingers, and the expression on his face was oddly penitent.

I did not like the 'penitent' Lucius, truth be told.

His eyes moved over my bared breasts to my bared legs. I was standing in my knickers.

How foolish to think I had privacy in the safety of my flat. After so long, it was clear that Lucius could move between and through my wards, and I had been too consumed with other thoughts to think to reset them.

When I did not answer him, he turned and slipped his wand into the side pocket of his trousers. He moved as silently as he came, toward the door.

"You could have told me the truth…" I said softly, trying not to betray my fear of him actually leaving.

Lucius paused before passing the lavatory. He turned back toward me; his silvery eyes caught the light, making them glow eerily in the dark of the hall.

"It was supposed to be thrilling."

I could not repress a scoff. "Is that what turns you on?"

The smile that curved his lips was predatory.

"Not always, but with us, my dear, it seems to be the norm."

I licked my lips and stepped out of the puddle of my expensive dress, not caring that his eyes automatically went to my chest. I dropped my wand, that accursed yew and thestral wand onto the pile of dress, stockings, and shoes.

"But is it necessary to…um…get it…" I purposely faltered, my own eyes going to the front placard of his fitted trousers.

"Up?" he whispered, taking a step toward me and out of the deeper dark.

I nodded, moving to pull the pins from my hair, letting the coiffure fall in a tangle about my shoulders.

He licked his lips in turn, nostrils flaring, hands flexing at his sides.

"With you…not at all…"

I smirked as my hands reached out to touch him just as the outline of the stiffness in his appeared in high contrast in the low light. One hand went to my hair, the other to grasp my hip, pulling my body against his in a rough motion.

His breath was hot against my face as I traced the line of his cock through his trousers.

"Promise me one thing, Lucius Malfoy," I breathed as my thumb flicked at the button at the top of his trousers.

He grunted as I insinuated my hand into the fine fabric. "Anything…"

I could feel his beating heart in his cock.

"Don't…" I tugged on the thick member and drew him closer. "…ever…" His mouth fell open with a wanton gasp as my thumb ran over the sticky tip. "…by omission…" I wrapped my fingers around the base. "…or purposely…" One hard stroke had his knees beginning to weaken. "…lie to me."

The hiss that passed through his teeth was like hot dragon's breath on my chest as he went to his knees before me, his cock sliding out of my palm. He knelt before me, his hands moving to remove his shirt, his boots, his trousers all at once. Lucius had forgotten in that moment that he was a wizard.

Personally, I relished the fact that he was kneeling before me, his cock pointing upward from his trousers, his skin like polished silver in the low light. I could not get over how truly beautiful this man was in his vulnerability. And when I felt a rush of dampness in my knickers, I shuddered as his patrician nose flared as if to say 'I can smell you.'

When he stood, finally mastering himself and his ability to remove his clothing, I had to take a step back. Of course, he was taller, but in his arousal, he loomed.

I found myself twirling into his arms, the soiled knickers seeming to disappear, and his fingers delving into my nether curls as we danced toward the vicinity of my bed. When momentum stopped, I was straddling his hips, the tip of his cock brushing against my lower belly, his fingers rubbing slow circles against my clit.

His mouth found my breasts again, and as I stroked his hair, pressing his mouth to my chest, his left hand held my hip; his right hand was edging toward my center away from that bundle of nerves. I could not control my breathing or my voice. I think I said his name, or maybe cursed, either way, I was coming undone.

The persistent prodding of his cock into my lower belly, however, reminded me of the one thing I truly wanted. I pulled my chest away and angled his chin upward to kiss him. He hummed into my mouth as I began to convulse. With a smooth motion, he lifted me, our bodies twisting, and then he was inside.

My body protested the sudden invasion by clamping down hard. It had been quite a while since that particular part of my anatomy had attention or visitors.

What followed from that point on was a blur of thrusts, moans, sweat, saliva, curses, and ejaculate. What was more profound than the bliss I felt coursing through my body like a Pepper-Up potion, was a suddenly release of something that had had a hold on the intangible part of my psyche. Maybe it was the ending of curses, or maybe it was the realization that I had just had very good sex with Lucius Malfoy.

Good sex? Correction, great sex…and it had been fast.

I smirked into his chest as we lay spent on my bed, his eyes shut, and his cock softening against his belly.

"What's so funny?" he drawled softly, and most typically Malfoy. He did not open his eyes, but his hand on my shoulder squeezed gently.

I let the smirk widen into a smile and I rubbed my nose and cheek against his chest. "Months and months of foreplay…" I muttered.

I did not need to say more as what I said sank in, and I felt him shudder. Maybe it was this thought that made him hard again.

I left him sleeping in my bed, Crooks keeping sentinel over his feet sticking out from the bottom of the blankets. He hugged a pillow, his mouth slightly open, his hair a tangle of silver on the dark red bedding. The sun had risen, and I had been up for some time. Washing, healed (I was sore), hair combed, some food eaten, I was dressed to go to work.

It was Monday and my brain was a million miles away from the D of M.

I sat on the edge of the bed, slipping my wand into my belt holster under my work cloak, my eyes memorizing his unguarded face. I wanted him still, no matter how sore I was, or how chaffed my thighs were…

With a sigh, I rose and slipped my feet into my shoes. I tapped old Crooks on the head and moved to the door.

Going to work seemed so dull when the possibility of adventure and danger lay sleeping like a babe in my bed.

Love is three quarters curiosity, my friend James famously said once, long ago. I had to agree. If it had not been for my insatiable curiosity, I would not have found myself ever falling in love with someone like Lucius Malfoy. However, if I had to admit the truth, the last quarter is sheer masochism cum stupidity.

The months and years would pass while Lucius Malfoy and I continued in our adventure called love was fraught with much danger and pain and in the end; I knew I could never have it any other way.