But once you knew a girl and you named her Lover...
A Perfect Sonnet, by Bright Eyes.
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Hermione was laughing, at something Severus said, sitting at his dinner table, twirling a wine glass in her hand as he cleared the dishes. She had kicked off her heeled shoes the moment she stepped in the door, barely allotting him the sight of her in them. But he rather liked her better barefoot, he thought to himself. She wore a grey ruffled dress with thin straps and heavy silver embroidery along the bottom, weighing down the thin layers. Her hair was falling down her back again, the curls bigger than they had been last week due to the heavy late-summer humidity that hung in the air.
She caught him looking at her, and her laughter died away. She finished the last sip of wine from the glass, and set it down, standing. She walked slowly over to the kitchen where he stood, and pulled herself up onto the kitchen counter, pushing aside his piles of carefully sorted mail. He definitely did not care.
"Severus," she began, but as much as he wanted to hear what she was going to say he simultaneously didn't give a flying fuck. He closed the distance between them, grasping her hip with one hand and the other finding its way to the back of her neck, as his lips found hers. She stiffened for a moment, and he suddenly released her and stepped back. Gods, he wanted her so much, had he been misreading her signs? She didn't want him, he was wrong, he'd been deluding himself into thinking that-
"Severus-" she began again, but differently this time, grabbing his elbow and pulling him back to her. He stood very still, wanting her to keep touching him but wanting to run very, very far away at the same time.
"Wait, I was just surprised, I had my whole speech planned out-" she said to him, a smile playing her face, her hand coming up behind his neck and pulling him down to her.
"Come back" she whispered, and his lips found hers again, and her fingers were tangled in his hair and around his neck. He couldn't get enough of kissing her, it felt like drowning, it tasted like wine and brightness and if he ever had to stop he was relatively sure he would die.
He was undoing the zipper on her dress before he even noticed himself, and he realized that maybe he should have asked permission, but she was already pulling his sweater over his head and unbuttoning his shirt, and it began to sink in that maybe she wanted this too.
Severus pushed the straps down her shoulders, shoving the dress to her waist. Hermione extracted her arms from it before bringing them back to his chest, his back, his ribs, running her hands carefully over every scar and ridge that graced his lanky frame. He dropped his mouth to her collarbone, then brought his lips back to hers, unsure if kissing her body was better than kissing her. If anything could be better than kissing her.
He picked her up, leaving his discarded clothing on the floor, and carried her, her dress hanging low on her hips, to his bed.