Chapter 25

Hot

"Excuse me?" his voice cut through the dark just as my shoulder sank in to the mattress happily.

Ignore him Jodie, I told myself; he is dumb. But he didn't want to be ignored and went on;

"Are you seriously trying to tell me you didn't know we were engaged until this moment and you don't even care to discuss it more than you care to nap?" Jail really wasn't the sort of place one goes to learn manners or anything to that effect I decided.

Why? I asked myself for the thousandth time, why didn't I leave him locked in the bathroom? I prodded myself disparagingly, it just wasn't nice to have to deal with anyone with a voice. It was like Pembride, questions questions questions. Why Jodie? Why Jodie? Damnable questions.

I sat up, to poke some holes in the mans distracting distress;

"We're not engaged. Believe me, if I was engaged to you I would know." I thought of Tonks the day before and forced myself not to imagine myself running to her in a similar state of jubilance.

"Jude this isn't about what has or hasn't happened between us, this is magic we're talking about. Our parents did this." I turned over then, holding the blankets to my chin as I willed the candle back into life. His face reappeared looking down on me.

"A magical arranged marriage?" I queried, and I was embarrassed to admit that those words had been in the back of my mind since he showed me the symbol inked on to his ring finger. He sort of nodded but I scoffed, sitting up to reveal my partial nudity which Sirius dutifully ignored. "What difference does it make if you have a little skin stain and I have a ring? It doesn't mean anything. Does it?" I asked, trying to ascertain if he had some sort of hold on me I wasn't aware of, or if I had a hold on him. "We aren't getting married. You don't want to be engaged? Fine! engagement broken. Simple, see?" I pulled the edge of the duvet cover over my head and tried to pretend I wasn't thinking about Blacks mouth. I liked it, so sue me. I was starting to understand the want Tonks always talked about, was this just magic? because we were bonded?

"You can't just become unengaged once your traditionally engaged Malfoy." His voice was in some way irritating at this point, like genuinely, not just saying so, his tone was seriously off putting. I sighed;

"Fine. We will just stay engaged then will we?" I hissed, there was no winning with this man.

"Argh." He growled and I rolled onto my back in the dimly lit canopy. He began to have a little session of what missy Sarah used to call a "mouthing off"

"Do we have to sit here in the damned dark eating doughnuts or can we act like normal people? Has anything between us been real or are you just trying to get your pureblood husband back? Do you have accomplices? You know it was one thing when all I could hear was your voice and you told me you were new to the magical world but after the magic I've seen you do..?" The man spat out various wild offensive allegations to this effect and I decided to see how long I could ignore him before he realised. Maybe I could get in a few hours sleep before he would be done, oh, I should be so lucky. The convict really needed to take a moment to appreciate the benefits of bed sleep as opposed to drug induced curled up on the floor sleep in a heap covered in your own blood type sleep.

"Alright, alright." I yelled over him and sighed. I sat back in my original place at the top of the bed, my wand opened the beds canopy and allowed the daylight leaking through the light beige curtains into the bed, I sat back up to the edge of the bed and sighed.

"Get yourself in order, are you …ok?" I didn't want to think about where I had taken him from. He was weakened, tortured. I should have done something nice but since my best shot at nurturing had been the small day making efforts of distant and untraceable favours done unto kids with poorly maintained toys, maybe I ought to pat his knee or something. I opted instead to try and come off as someone more adept to dealing with the distresses of fellow men. He didn't need to know about my insipid short comings. Trying to think up fake milestones of intimacy for myself I crawled from under the bed and wrapped myself around Blacks torso.

"What are you…?" He began but I shushed him;

"You've been through an ordeal." Black began to push me away but as I pulled him tighter the hands he had pressed to my sides to push me away instead lugged me closer to him. Oh god he was so very warm;

"You aren't wearing a top." He hissed as my hand began to move up and down his back. The gesture made sense.

"I noticed." came my response and I felt the mans gentle hands run a light line over my spine, I shivered as goose bumps followed the burning trail curiously. Maybe I shouldn't have moved so close to him, surely someone as warm as I was feeling while covered in this much tingling could be contagious, I didn't want to make him ill.

His hand ran over my gored ribs on its odyssey over my hypersensitive bruised skin;

"Don't." I hissed feeling like I was something frightening and not just an orphaned liar, but which was worse? "Sorry;" I coughed as I felt a little drip run down my back. He had been crying. Even if only a little. What was I playing at? Black kept one hand on the undamaged edge of my waist and the other up at the level of his eye as I moved my head from his shoulder where it had fit so well. His great heated eyes, his eyelashes damp and a stare sharp as knives I felt silly;

"I um" the man began but where did he intend to go with it? I may have gotten sick of being any other sort of warmth but the more I sat with him I found I felt as if I couldn't sit near enough.

"It's fine, you're not alone, it'll be ok. We won't get caught." I smiled a little sadly, "I'll keep you safe." I whispered and I wiped at his tears.

"Have I gone mad?" he whispered back, "Are you real?" I smiled slyly,

"I saved you" I told him.

"I remember so well the day you asked me if I liked you." I began to turn pink like I did that day. Just like then the conversation felt less friendly and more like something else. "I guess we're finding out pretty quickly what it's like when we meet face to face." He lowered the offending mutilated rib cage violating hand to his side and our eyes met again. Don't quit Juniper, damn it don't look away. But then I did. The spell broke.

"I'm sorry I just forced you to tell me all that stuff, I should have given you more time to adjust. I'm just no good at this sort of thing." I gestured between us and cast around for anywhere to look but at him. "I just wanted answers and I thought maybe you'd know. That you'd know why I was left in the orphanage with nothing but your name, why I could get into your vault, why I'm so..." I trailed off. I looked at him again, his eyelashes were still damp.

"So what?" he whispered and there was an urgency in his deep, husky voice which my heart seemed to respond to as it decided it wasn't close enough to the man in front of me.

"I don't know, everything points to you!" I frowned and the heavy hand on my hip began to shift lightly over my skin as if it was regular. My breathing didn't seem to think so and it became significantly lent toward irregular as it took a pause before it escaped along with the stutter of my heart, was this a spell? After effects of all those potions?

"Why did you come back for so long? For so often?" The man hissed and I felt the warmth of his eyes along my front. Was my body, all recent deformities aside, abnormal some how? A topic of interest in one way or another. I looked down between us and found myself quite caught in what I felt.

His large warm hand on my side, pale and just,

"Oh," I muttered down at my flushing torso; and I decided perhaps it would be best to meet the mans eye again. Some how it was as hard to look away from the balmy, palpable sight of his touch then it was to hold the intense overbearing gaze of his shattered glass eyes. He was a man of reactionary everything, no wonder he was famous. "I was trying to comfort you, I can't be so near you, I'm sorry." I rolled off of him and grabbed the shirt from the end of the bed. Pulling it back on since we evidently weren't going to sleep. Did he feel drawn to me as I did to him?

"It did help," he mumbled, "helped me to realise that this is real, that I'm really out. That I really might get caught. That you're really here."

"I'm glad." He stared at me, we faced eachother, our heads rested back against the headboard. "Last night I had the first real dream I've had in ten years." we smiled at eachother then, genuinely. Then his face fell. "I dreamt about my friends," He looked wistful; "and you."

"Me?" I fiddled with the sleeve of my shirt. "What happened?"

"I heard a sound like the vault door opening, the sound I always heard when you would come to talk to me, except when you walked in we were both there and you.."

"I what?" I pressed and he looked away. He was almost bashful which was endearing and it made him look so much younger. I tried not to think about his age. It wasn't that big of a gap. Like Tonks always said, we're both adults. Sirius didn't answer but his hand moved to his mouth. I thought of what it must of been like, not touching another person for ten years. I mean I had done nearly a whole life time without much intimacy but my friendship with Tonks meant I was hugged and held every other day. Now that I'm so used to it I can't imagine going with out the small comforts. I decided to kiss Sirius on the cheek.

I lent forward just as his head turned and pressed my lips to his top lip for a moment. It was soft, forgetting it was an accident I brought my hands up to bring him closer, kissing was almost like confiding something in someone. Soft and mysterious and just a little devious. Like I was going to get in trouble for it. His hand was rough where it landed on my shoulder. His skin was soft where I reached out to touch him with my half mangled appendages, the light cotton of the borrowed shirt was barely enough of a shield against the intense temperature of the wizards body. It may seem like I say it a lot but he was just sooo… I pulled my mouth off of his;

"Hot." the word found its way out from in between my mischievous lips into the space between me and the convict. My eyes seemed to wanted to remain half closed and my toes and fingers had scrunched up like claws. Was it a spell? A trick? I was practically hyperventilating and my heart seemed to run a marathon of its own.

A/N: Thank you for reading and PLEASE review