"You look like a majestic dove." Sydharth would have said smoothly, if not for his strong Arabic accent. (Though he did speak English quite fluently.) All she saw on his face, besides the newly grown beard, was greed and slight traces of lust. She wanted to gag.
"Doves are just glorified pigeons." She spat at him. "Why don't you just leave, huh? You'll see me soon enough when I walk down the aisle."
"You speak like a peasant."
"And you speak like a foreigner."
"As your husband, you will respect me."
"Once you earn it. By the way, you're doing a shitty job of it so far."
"The women of my family know that it is better to be seen and not heard." he stroked to hair on his chin. "You will learn."
"And if I refuse?"
"I have ways of teaching insolent women."
"You couldn't teach a dog to bark."
"We'll see what I can teach a dog." He grabbed her arms and forced her up, against the wall. The bench she was on tumbled with the sudden force. He was standing so close that she could almost feel the anger as it wafted over him. She felt her arms bruising beneath his hands, but refused to show it. "You will obey me." He seethed.
"I don't like being touch, not by you." She realized a moment too late that she had said the wrong thing. A devilish smirk crossed his face and she knew what he planned to do. She was scared..
"You will learn to revel in my touch." He chuckled. He took both of her wrists in one of his hands, holding them over her head. Her feet barely touched the ground. He was deceptively strong. "The first lesson will start now."
With his free hand he tore at her dress, not even noticing how much she struggled against him. Not that he would have cared. He drank up every inch of exposed skin with his eyes. Her hair had been destroyed, her makeup was surely mussed from the struggle.
She was at a loss for what to do. Her wand had been tucked in the bouquet, which had long since been tossed unceremoniously across the room. She tried kicking him, but he never felt it. She would have tried begging him to stop, but she somehow knew that it would have only fueled his desire. At least while she struggled she wasn't giving in to him.
--
Sirius walked along the corridors. He was smiling. Not smiling exactly, he never truly smiled, but he was smirking happily. He had found out something very useful. Of course Darius probably knew of the loophole, but Sirius doubted that the man would have taken the time to tell his niece. All he had to do was find Kitten and tell her that she could live abroad for a month or two, and then come home to jolly old England and things would go back to the way they were.
'Not exactly the way they were.' His mind saw fit to point out. 'Things will never be exactly as they were. She will surely be changed in a few weeks being married to that git, no doubt they will try to keep her from leaving him. Who knows what they'll do to her while she's away.'
He frowned. His mind was right, no matter how mad it made him seem to admit it. He picked up his pace as he searched for the room that the old man had told him to go to, although he had to run back into the old man before he thought to ask.
Sure enough, straight ahead, was a door with an armed guard standing on either side. They wouldn't have stopped him, the guards, but when he saw the man that she was supposed to marry walked through the door he couldn't move.
--
She was starting to panic. All right, so she had started panicking once he saw that look in his eyes. Katherine felt herself grow detached as he used a spell to hold her wrists in place on the wall while his hands started to roam across her stomach and chest. She still struggled, but it was for nothing, and they both knew it.
She scarcely felt his fingers as they touched, prodded and pinched every part of her. She barely heard him as he chuckled over his victory. She smelled his cologne, for some strange reason it had managed to penetrate the haziness of her mind. He smelled like the desert. Nothing like Sirius. Sirius smelled like fresh air mixed with earth, with a touch of leather, and a certain amount of that masculine smell that all men seemed to have.
Sirius. That was when the tears started to fall. She had used him. She knew it was more complicated then that, but when one pushed aside all of the excuses and pretty words that was all she was doing. It was bad enough that she knew it, it was even worse that he knew it, but what was worse still was the fact that she wouldn't ever get the chance to apologize to him.
"Please," she whimpered, "just stop it." She didn't even realize that she had said the words, she just wanted the ache in her chest to go away.
"What the hell's going on here!" A familiar voice raged.
Still dazed, Katherine couldn't quite make out whose voice it was, but her heart gave a sudden leap when she had heard it. She heard yelling, the sound of a fist on flesh, and she felt herself falling as the stones on the wall grated against her back.
By the time she had come back out of her stupor, Katherine was being held by a pair of strong arms as someone carefully pushed her hair out of her face.
"I couldn't do it Kitten." He said softly. "I couldn't let you go through with it, even if it was only a few weeks."
"Sirius?" She whispered. She couldn't take it anymore, she broke down. Huge sobs forced her body to tremble as she cried into his chest and smelled his comforting scent. He just held her, his knees cold from kneeling on the floor with her, but he couldn't force himself to let go. He had almost lost her.
They both knew why she cried. Although any on-lookers would have though it was from the experience that she had just faced both of them knew that it was for something much less tangible. She cried for her mother, the father she had never met, the friends she almost abandoned, but mostly for what she was about the throw away before it came bursting through that door and rescued her.
"I'm so sorry." She whispered once the weeping had stopped.
"Why are you apologizing to me?" He had expected a 'thanks you' of some kind, perhaps even a quick 'you shouldn't have some here' (because she was so full of those bloody morals sometimes) but not an 'I'm sorry'.
"All of that time we spent together, Sirius I was using you. I didn't know it then, maybe it did, but I just wanted to forget and it was so easy to lose myself in you. I just-" he kissed her.
"I'm sorry." He said to her. She gave him a puzzled look. "What I mean is; I'm sorry I didn't try to stop you from doing this sooner. You deserve much better then him." He jerked his head to point at something behind him and she saw Sydharth's body sprawled out on the floor, blood was pouring out of his nose. She could tell that he was still alive because his chest still rose and fell rhythmically. She was almost disappointed.
"Then we're both sorry, so we're both forgiven." She smiled weakly at him and he winced. She always smiled big and bold, with her whole face. He adored those smiles.
"We should probably fix you up then." He took out his wand and pointed it at the rags that were once her dress.
"No." She pushed his wand away and stood up. "I'm not marrying that man today, and I'm not wearing this dress for another second." She started to strip away the fabric, as though she were trying to strip away all of the mistakes she had made over the past few months. When she stood before him, practically naked, Sirius took off his top-coat and draped it around her shoulders. She gave another weak smile, it was warmer than the last had been and that fact gave him hope.
"Do you trust me?" His question came suddenly to her, but he had been contemplating whether or not to do what he had planned since he had talked to the old man that was presiding over the ceremony.
"Yes, I trust you. Why?"
"Just come with me." He took her hand and lead her through the halls once again, what he was looking for, she didn't know.
--
"SHE DID WHAT!?" Darius' disembodied voice echoed through the mansion. Lily, James, Remus and Peter all turned in their seats, along with the other guests, to see what the commotion was all about in the hall just outside the room where the wedding was supposed to take place in a few minutes.
"There's no way you'll be catching her at this rate." An elderly man in purple dress robes chirped. "They'll be long gone by now."
"You do realize that because of this you won't be getting paid, don't you?"
"It's quite all right, sir, I've enough weddings and funerals booked to keep my pockets far from empty. no need for you to fret over me."
Darius stormed out of the hall and a few doors were heard slamming in the distance. The older wizard popped his head into the room.
"In case you haven't already guessed, there'll be no wedding between Ms. Keaton and Mister..." he trailed off as he tried to think of the man's name. "That foreign man."
Lily let out a sigh of relief. Remus smiled. Peter just about collapsed with contentment. James started to laugh. The others all looked at him, but he continued to chortle and grin, in fact their confused faces only made him laugh harder.
"James, honestly, what's this all about?" Lily demanded, her hands placed firmly on her hips.
"S-s-s..." He had to calm himself down and wipe a tear from his eye. "Never did see Sirius, did we?"
--
Author's Note
Seriously people, I'm kind of sad. I appreciate that you've added me to your favorite stories, or put me on your watched list, but every time I work for hours to get a chapter up, and every time I get reviews from the same three or four people. I appreciate those reviews, Snuffles-sweetie, anyavioletta, Sirius Baby, and fastfashiondispatch, but come on people, I'm feeling a bit used here. At the risk of sounding like a complete review whore...review dammit! (You're looking at about forty seconds, tops.)
I'm sorry if I've come across as a bit bitchy, but I feel like none of my effort is being appreciated. I NEED feedback in order to make this story as good as it can be. I know this story has flaws, and I would love for someone to point them out to me so that I can change them. I'm sure if any of you are writers you'll either understand, or you'll think that I'm being ridiculous, but this is very important to me.
So, I've thought up a new system for reviewing for this story! Once you read a chapter, you just review and give me a number from 1-10. 1 is bad, 10 is awesome. You could even tell me why you picked that number! I just want to see if this way works better or not. If not, I'll let you know and we'll go back to the old way. And just another hidden incentive...I ALWAYS respond to reviews, and I tend to give a few hints as to what might happen in the future of this story when I'm able (usually on the longer reviews, sorry to say, but then I write longer responses and I can fit it in.) Just to let you know.
And here's a little tid-bit to get you thinking about next time:
"Just tell me you didn't!" (Remus)
"Fine, I didn't." (Sirius)
"Why doesn't that make me feel any better?" (Remus)
I'm 'borrowing' that technique from anyavioletta...we'll see if it gets you wondering or not. I hope that I never write such a long author's note again, and I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that wish or the same. XD
PS: I actually have no problem with people from the middle-east, and I'm sorry if it comes off that way in my story with Sydharth. I just needed someone from another place that wasn't so laughably far away from Europe, plus, that's where the Hood family originated from...there's a story there, but we'll see if I can find the time to fit it into the actual plot line I have going here.