Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling is our queen, undisputedly. I'm just a petty thief who enjoys tinkering around in another's world.
Rating: M/NC-17. Graphic femslash all around really. Shhhh. Just go along with me and pretend it's permissible on this site. I'm hardly the only one.
Warnings: Sex. Violence. Quite possibly some of both together; I mean, we are talking about Bellatrix Lestrange, here.
Pairing(s): Hermione/Bellatrix, Hermione/Andromeda, Hermione/Narcissa.
Hermione's arm felt glued over her eyes. Her arm was lead. Her arm wasn't moving. Her eyes were not going to open. "Um…"
Bellatrix was laughing. How dare she be laughing. Hermione couldn't see it, couldn't hear it, but she could feel the vibrations against her stomach, and she was way too spent to elbow her for it.
By the time she had started breathing again, Bellatrix had shifted out of easy reach, just to one side, one hand still braced gently just below her navel, but otherwise distant, untouchable. Hermione had reached for her, then given up halfway, groaning at the bone-deep lethargy that had taken over and made it impossible to be huffy at the continued rejection of her touch.
Alright, she'd earned that smug little laugh. Hermione hadn't thought there were as many parts in her body as she had felt in that orgasm. She sure wasn't going to say it aloud, though. Bellatrix's head didn't need to get any bigger.
Still. Merlin. That happened without magic? It could be that damnably good without magic?
Without magic.
Ah. Right.
"Weren't you supposed to hand me my wand?"
The laughter died. Slowly, Hermione peeled her arm away from her face, letting it flop down beside her as she stared into Bellatrix's suddenly reserved eyes. "It's right behind you."
The words hit like a wash of ice water. Drawing her knees out from under Bellatrix's arm, Hermione tucked them up against her stomach as she pulled herself upright, feeling suddenly vulnerable, exposed. She'd just said… a lot of things. Out of the most immediate heat of passion, she wasn't ready to face any of them, but the distance in Bellatrix's voice still managed to needle at her like a shard of glass between her ribs. She shook herself: This was more important. It had to be. It was why they'd done this.
She turned to see her wand tucked quite conspicuously into a half-inch groove in the headboard's carvings. If not for feeling like she'd been wrapped in at least an ocean's worth of post-sex fog, she would have been stunned. Poking her finger into the space by its base, she levered it free, turning a glare on the one who hadn't even bothered to properly disguise it.
"Don't give me that look, pet. It's hardly my fault you're appalling at hide and seek."
Hermione opened her mouth to grouse, but the look on Bellatrix's face gave her pause. Her eyes flickered every-which-way, lips thin and pale. She looked anxious. She looked vulnerable.
Swallowing down a sudden wash of nerves, Hermione wrapped her hand more tightly around the thin length of vine. As a moment of truth, it felt foreign against her palm, flimsy and inconsequential compared to the promise she'd made, small and fragile compared to the half of a bargain she'd never agreed to that already slicked her skin with sweat and indebtedness.
Her hand was shaking.
Bellatrix licked her lips. "Well?"
"I—I don't know. Give me a minute?"
A minute passed, both of them still, the air between vibrating. Hermione reached for anything with nothing, reached for the flash of heat only just past, the half-crouched wildness at the foot of the bed, the memory of a violent-dormant field, snow flurries, sparks. Her wand threatened to bruise her palm with hope. This could be the end, it seemed to say, the moment, the cure. She saw herself cradling a protesting Crookshanks in her arms, suitcase beside her feet, chin up, staring defiantly into Headmistress McGonagall's eyes at the pig-flanked gates of Hogwarts, asking if her offer might still stand.
Then, the vision flickered, faltered, and she saw only Bellatrix, face remote, carefully masked, but eyes eager, and all Hermione could think was how this wouldn't be the end—not for her. What kind of beginning it would be—Bellatrix loose in the world with her magic, Hermione left naked in bed—she couldn't begin to guess, but she doubted it would look anything like her flight of fancy.
And then, it didn't matter. It wasn't going to look like anything at all.
Bellatrix spotted the tears before Hermione felt them on her cheeks. "No," she growled. "No!" And lunged forward.
Hermione flinched and dropped her wand, tipping backwards onto an elbow, but Bellatrix was over her in the same breath. Hermione's eyes screwed tight, waiting for a grab, a strike, a knife, anything… anything but the press of a palm against her cheek, a thumb roughly chafing away the stinging salt.
Her eyes sprang wide. Bellatrix looked furious, feral, but her hands were gentle. "We'll try again," she muttered, voice like broken gravel. She pressed her nose into the crook of Hermione's neck, inhaling deeply. "It will work." Her words were desperate, raw. "This time…"
Fingers were already wandering, dragging up Hermione's side, clutching at her shoulder. It was all Hermione could do to stay still, staring into the drowned light, struggling to constrain her breathing. Lips mouthed at their favorite bite, scalding and near worshipful. Raising a shaking hand to the back of Bellatrix's head, Hermione grabbed almost as tight as she was already held, breathing in juniper and salt and skin like she'd already forgotten how to breathe without it.
Half-formed promises to no one continued to spill from Bellatrix's lips. "This time I'll have it," she breathed, and Hermione felt tears stinging at her eyes again. She clutched her wand so hard she feared it would snap clean in two, her other hand still lost and aimless in Bellatrix's curls.
"Why?" she whispered. "Bella? Why?"
Breath picking up audibly, Bellatrix licked a trail from bite to ear. "Because it will be different," she muttered. "Because I've changed you."
Swallowing thickly, Hermione shook her head, chin bumping against the side of Bellatrix's neck. "Nothing's changed!"
"No?" Bellatrix laughed, abrasive, a sound on the edge of anger. "Ah, but it has, pet." Nails found Hermione's side. "Silly girl. We're one step from everything."
The patronizing words set Hermione's teeth on edge, set her fear and sorrow against a rising anger of her own. Her nails tightened on the back of Bellatrix's neck. "It didn't change anything! Can't you see? I can't, I'll n-never—"
Bellatrix withdrew. She stared into Hermione's eyes with sudden, brutal sobriety. "Of course it did. I've dragged you off your pedestal." She trailed the back of one finger up between Hermione's breasts. "No more moral high ground," she sang softly. "Now you're…" She tapped her finger between words, the touch reverberating through Hermione's breastbone and deep into her heart, fighting its natural rhythm. "...right...down...here...with...me." A final tap, and she let her hand fall away.
Hermione sniffed, then frowned. "We had sex, Bella. Or, or one of us did, at least. I didn't torture anyone. I didn't commit a murder."
But Bellatrix's knowing stare didn't falter.
"I'm still the same me I was an hour ago!" Hermione spluttered, hating the look in Bellatrix's eyes, hating the way her nipples tingled and tightened in the air between them.
"You begged for my teeth in your throat, pet."
Hermione flushed. "I—I did, yes. Because it felt good. No one got hurt." She paused, rubbing restlessly at the side of her neck with the hand that held her wand. "No one got saved. Nothing changed."
Bellatrix shrugged, a smooth, dismissive motion that drew Hermione's eyes down to her chest and back up again, a guilty flicker. She wished she'd gotten her clothes back on the minute she'd finished spouting embarrassing declarations and screaming Bellatrix's name. It was hard to hold onto proper emotions while naked. Harder still to hold on to a train of thought.
"Positive intensity," she said. "Towards me."
Hermione's frown deepened. "I did say sex wasn't going to cut it."
Bellatrix shook her head, curls gliding back and forth across the back of Hermione's fingers. "For a bright little Mudblood, you're being awfully dense." Her voice was light with insincere patience. She brought her face closer, until there was scarcely room for air between the tips of their noses. "If you're going to fix me, you're going to have to like me," she breathed. "All of me. I will give up nothing else to get back what should have never been yours to steal." Her words gathered fire, eyes flashing green sparks. "I will not change for you. I will not be castrated by you. So you, pet…"
Her words fell, rumbling low, and she slid to the side, rubbing her cheek against Hermione's, who shivered. Her hand clenched beneath Bellatrix's curls as though that would be enough to remind her she had a woman at her throat, not the deadly nuzzling of a great jungle cat, an inch from a feast of flesh and blood.
"You had to learn to like the dark."
Bellatrix pulled up to face her, to kiss her again. Hermione's fingers tightened further, almost keeping them apart, but Bellatrix paid no mind to the fist in her hair, the tugging at her scalp. She kissed her like she wanted to drown her. Hermione realized her other hand had found the skin at the back of Bellatrix's neck, clawing at her like she could scramble free of the water with her nails and her regret alone. Her wand raked accusation against her palm, driving Bellatrix's words into her skin. You begged for my teeth in your throat, pet. You had to learn to like the dark.
And, Merlin help her, it rang a little true. If that was Bellatrix's darkness, she had welcomed it with open arms and a very, very nice orgasm. But it wasn't. Bellatrix had far deeper darkness than a little rough sex, a few nasty, possessive words that a more self-respecting Hermione might have offered some objection to instead of begging for more. Was she right? Did she have to accept and embrace the worst she knew of Bellatrix's past in order to give back her future? Why couldn't one rush of purely good feeling be enough? And why, why should a second attempt be any different?
Bellatrix was wrong. She had to be. Hermione wasn't any more corrupted now than she had been when they started. It was a few bites, not an unconditional pardon for a lifetime of torture. It. Hadn't. Worked. Bellatrix's great plan, her great (incredible, mind-blowing, miserable) sexual escapade… It had all been pointless, useless. They were back at square one, throwing about angry words and conflicting ideas that never landed them closer to an answer. And Hermione knew the answer, knew it with as much force as it took to avoid thinking it: She couldn't fix anything. She had broken too much already. That was her only real talent, after all. Snap, crack, devastate! She was nothing but an angry, sullen child bumbling around in a world full of delicate, beautiful magic waiting to be smashed to bits. What she didn't break, Bellatrix surely would. Between them, they could probably destroy the entire planet.
The thoughts racing through her head just made Hermione want to scream, but even though she wasn't kissing her back, Bellatrix's lips were in the way. She wanted to fling something at a wall, but she'd already dropped her wand again, and she had nothing else. She wanted to break things.
Corset strings teased the tips of her fingers like the stem of Eve's apple. Slowly, she stilled. Bellatrix's kisses deepened as the fight went out of her. The jolt of heat which raced through her as her muscles relaxed shocked her. She didn't think she had it in her, that anything resembling that crystalline instant of pleasure from just minutes ago could begin demanding a second round after so many infuriating words and dizzying revelations, but…
Merlin, Bellatrix knew how to use her tongue.
It didn't change the first instinct. Even as her blood rose to the surface of her skin, her fingers slid slowly down through Bella's hair, trailing instant shivers along the back of her neck. The kisses fumbled, breath hitching. For a moment, she allowed the distraction, the still-delicious taste of Bellatrix at her lips, the strange, tingling sweetness of tasting herself there. Hermione kept her touch feather-light, teasing the crest of her shoulders, the raised, invisible dusting of tiny hairs between shoulder-blades….
She went for the ties.
Before she could even get the trailing loops of the laces between two fingers, Bellatrix flinched like a skittish cat. She jerked back, freeing herself from Hermione's straying hands. "Stop it."
Hermione froze at the steel in those two words. "I didn't—"
"I didn't— I wasn't— I would never—"
Hermione flinched at the sudden mockery. Bellatrix's voice had gone high and sharp, a piercing, strident twist on the baby-voice she typically saved for taunting imitations.
"Where've I heard that before, hmm?" Her eyes were wild. "I didn't mean to!"
Quick as a whip, fingers locked around Hermione's right wrist, shoving it to the mattress. Her left fluttered in mid-air, suddenly looking lonely and foolish, to have approached the forbidden ties after everything else she'd failed to achieve this morning. Lowering it slowly, she pulled it down between her breasts.
Bellatrix tracked the movement through narrowed eyes, hooded and hawk-like. Hunting. "Fuck, pet… If I had one drop of my magic I'd..."
These words were raw, low, possibly the least-affected Hermione had ever heard slip past those many-faced, guarded lips. She flinched again as Bellatrix's other hand lowered towards her, but it grabbed something beside her head. A tangled bedsheet of impossible-to-determine color rose between them, catching the night-sea glow and a current of air like a billowing sail. Bringing the corner to her lips, Bellatrix bit down on the fabric. It tore with a quick jerk of head and arm, and in two more harsh movements, she had a long strip of cloth dangling from her fingertips.
Hermione had a riot of nervous electricity behind her ribcage, but she didn't even consider resisting as Bellatrix dragged her right hand up over her head.
"The other hand, pet."
The words freed her, reminded her why she'd just lost the right to have hands. "Please, you really won't let me touch you?" Even as she spoke, she obeyed the command, drawing her own wrists together above her head. "I won't try to take it off again, I swear I won't."
She winced even as she said the words. She knew just how highly Bellatrix valued her promises these days. She closed her eyes, bracing for more mockery, but to her surprise, Bellatrix didn't rise to the bait. Instead, she seemed fully fixated on wrapping the length of sheet around and between Hermione's wrists.
"Mmm, no, you shan't." Her fingers caressed her handiwork, tracing the curve of cloth and skin with care.
Hermione gave a halfhearted tug, unsurprised to find herself thoroughly affixed to the headboard. Snugly enough she couldn't pull away, but with enough give that she could very easily forget, could torture herself twice over trying. She'd never given any particular thought to it, being tied or restrained in bed, but she knew such things were done, and wasn't all that surprised to discover Bellatrix one to do it.
Far more surprising was the feeling of smooth wood sliding between her palms. Bellatrix made sure her wand was as snug in her grasp as her hands were in their bonds. "Careful, pet. If you shoot off sparks, you might bring the roof down." The words were mockingly light, the harsh grin that accompanied them almost a challenge.
Hermione bit back a retort. She didn't appreciate the insinuation about her self-control, not until she realized the thought was almost a comfort. There were few spells that could be done properly without much movement of a wrist, but red sparks were, in fact, one of them. Should she come to regret the trust she'd placed in Bellatrix's goodwill when she offered up her wrists for the taking, she could revoke it in a shower of dust and light. There were no roots here; nothing to actually send the ceiling caving in after a misplaced firework, but she had been handed an instant lever for ruining the mood. Her wand was back in her grasp; safety nestled against her palms.
While danger crouched over her.
Bellatrix rocked back on her heels, studying her. "Mmm." She lightly fingered the bite mark on Hermione's thigh, making her twitch and shiver. "I like you like this." She licked her lips. "The best kind of dirty. Mine." The word was flippantly light, but the easy return to the possessive darkness from mere moments before made Hermione shudder, then jerk as two fingers ran up the length of her slit without warning.
"I'm n-not a thing," Hermione retorted, trying, until it proved impossible with Bellatrix sitting between them, to pull her knees together. She was nowhere near the previous state of need that had her not minding the sentiment behind that word. Strung up for the taking, it felt both more dangerous, and more apt.
Bellatrix smirked, wiping her fingertips off beside the bite. "Oh but you are. A pretty thing." She rubbed her thumb against Hermione's bottom lip, easily holding her chin steady even as she tried to turn away. "A clever thing." Spider-light, the fingertips wandered back down the path of bites. "And most definitely mine."
Hermione let out a sigh equal parts enjoyment and exasperation. "Why are you always talking like that? I've already agreed to what you wanted. You don't want me to be yours." In trying to mock her own prior neediness, she wound up just sounding needy all over again. She flushed and barreled ahead. "It's the magic that's yours."
A cloud of anger began to gather over Bellatrix's face, her distaste for any flippant remarks about what Hermione had done as clear as ever.
"N-not that I mind," Hermione hastened to add. "But wouldn't it be better to just… let me try again?" It was a halfhearted request. They both could hear it.
"Have something more pressing to get to, hmm?" Bellatrix ran her hand down the length of Hermione's left arm, skimming two finger-widths of skin from the pulse at her wrist to the side of her breast, pulled higher on her chest by the strain of her shoulders. "You'll try as many times as it takes." She flicked a nipple with the back of her nail. "And you'll be even more mine once I have it."
Though the words were harsh, Hermione sensed something more in them than the frantic quest for her magic. Bellatrix's desire slicked her skin, deepened her voice, clouded the air so thick she could taste it on the back of her tongue. Every hair on Hermione's body stood on end to answer its call. It was comforting, in an odd way, to see that in this, at least, Bellatrix hadn't lied to her. Comforting, but confusing, and not a little frightening. For all it seemed that the dominant part of a magicless Bellatrix focused still on what she needed to regain, some part of her was very much invested in fucking Hermione raw, and some part of her seemed to think once it was over, it wouldn't be over at all.
How much of this was show? How much of the fire in Bellatrix's eyes as she looked at her would vanish the minute she'd gotten what she wanted? How quickly would she turn to rage if it became any more apparent that they were doomed to fail?
Hermione was a little sore, a little bruised—her pride as much as her skin—and more than a little vulnerable, in every sense of the word, but she decided the time had passed for complaints and questions. She'd said her two cents. It had gone over as well as always. And thinking about any future beyond the next several minutes at Bellatrix's mercy was only going to make her head ache. And your heart, too.
Letting her sex do the thinking instead seemed like a grand idea. She squirmed in the ties, arching until she was as close to Bellatrix's lips as she could get, then said, "Then what are you waiting for?"
Bellatrix growled out a laugh. The hand between them grasped her nipple, sending a burst of rekindled desire directly between her thighs.
Hermione's eyes all but closed at the sweet torture. The heat under her skin decimated all last thoughts of caution. "That's better," she said hoarsely, knowing she played with fire, knowing Bellatrix wouldn't take kindly to being teased… not wanting to be taken kindly at all.
The hand at her breast jerked higher, pressing under her chin until Hermione's neck was straining backwards, fully exposed.
Her heart took up its panic-flutter again. Unfortunately—no, fortunately, definitely fortunately—it seemed her body was coming to associate that feeling with acute desire. Her hips rocked back—forth—back, shifting restlessly.
One hand still holding her head hostage, Bellatrix sketched the vulnerable lines of Hermione's throat with the other, lingering over the breath ghosting quick and shallow through her windpipe, the blood beating hard and fast to either side, the outline of tight, taut muscle between. She leaned in, dragging her tongue up, over her own fingers, over Hermione's skin, until she reached her ear. "You think because I haven't tied up your tongue you have permission to use it?"
Hermione's breath hitched at the words. She felt the motion cupped in Bellatrix's hand. She bit her lip—hard—to stifle a retort, or maybe a cry. She had never felt so fragile as she did with Bellatrix's hand at her throat. This was not the first time—but this was different.
"Mm-mm, pet." The fingers against her windpipe kept her still as Bellatrix released her chin to drag the full length of her finger down the center of her lips, tugging the bottom far enough it snapped back with a lewd, wet pop. "None of that." The finger continued down, dragging across her pinioned throat, down between their bodies, between her breasts. "I want you quiet," she hissed, circling her navel. "Compliant," she added, sliding straight down into her curls. "And wet."
When that taunting finger slid inside without hesitation, she was.
When it withdrew after only two teasing, curling strokes, Hermione groaned. Hands grabbed her hips, iron-tight.
"I said—"
In a hard, fast motion, Bellatrix shoved Hermione further up the bed, untangling their legs so she could turn her, flip her, manhandle her onto her knees.
"Quiet."
Her wrist ties crossed, much tighter than before, all the give taken by the unexpected twist. Her head slumped against her upper arms, breathing hard against her own skin, tasting sweat as she panted. Hands ran down the curve of her ass, tracing the cords of slim, firm muscle in her hips and thighs. Every one was quivering.
Bellatrix drove inside. Hermione had to bite her arm to choke back a moan. Her eyes slammed shut and her jaw clenched. She knew, now, that Bellatrix wanted her to fail, wanted an excuse to jerk her around again, to hiss another demand, to take away her touch, all in cruel, exquisite punishment for trying to take off that damned corset. Why else would she have chosen this delicious, maddening angle?
But Bellatrix was, as ever, impossible to deny. When she wanted failure, she pursued it like any other prey. Two—yes…oh!—three fingers beat a torturous rhythm inside of her, each thrust driving down and in to that spot she'd found only with curled fingertips before. She bore down with the force of her body; Hermione could feel hips against her ass with every push, cloth dragging against her skin, her sanity coiled up in her belly, tight and hot and screaming but she wouldn't— wouldn't— She would keep quiet till she— till she (please) let… her… (please) let me—
Bellatrix's chest cleaved to her back, corset ribs digging into her spine, soft breasts hot and full under her shoulder blades, curls teasing across her skin like a thousand live-wire kisses, and Bellatrix's teeth sank into her shoulder.
A strangled cry tore free at last, yanked from her throat, and Bellatrix pushed her through it, driving her knees into the mattress, driving her sanity tighter and lower and—a thumb at her clit, nails against a straining, neglected nipple—out of her body completely. Red sparks blazed behind her eyes, red waves dripped down her spine, and time itself dangled out of reach, suspended in bliss.
Bellatrix's hands smoothing gentle circles on her hips and lower back brought her slowly back in sync with the universe. Hermione couldn't breathe. Expecting denial, the pleasure had snuck up out of nowhere and bowled her over like a crosscurrent. Air kept leaving her in little gasps and whimpers she couldn't understand how she still had the air to be making. Merlin, she must be breathing through her cunt, all the fluttering it was doing.
A strangled, broken laugh emerged at the vulgar, uncharacteristic thought. Bellatrix must be rubbing off after all.
As though drawn by her unspoken name, Bellatrix's hand snuck up to gently hold a dangling breast, impersonally, like one might weigh a ripe fruit, thumb gliding as though to check the sheen. "Care to share the funny, pet?"
"Nope!" Hermione gasped as Bellatrix rolled her tender, tired nipple. "And no more, please. I c-can't catch my breath." When Bellatrix didn't seem inclined to stop, Hermione groaned, "We haven't even eaten breakfast!"
Bellatrix grinned, still lazily toying with the tight little ball of flesh and nerves between her fingers. "A perfect, hedonistic day, isn't it?"
Perfect? Hermione wondered. Was that really the right word for this? That Bellatrix would choose it of her infinite options startled her out of an immediate protest. So far, this was a day where Bellatrix had gotten no closer to what she wanted after two rather... strenuous... attempts at the only idea she'd had. The fully forgotten wand between Hermione's palms and a half-hearted outward thrust of nonexistent magic reinforced the failure. The sex was good, but it wasn't working. But Bellatrix had said perfect, and Hermione couldn't bring herself to disagree.
"Until I faint from hunger," she muttered at last. Her voice sounded as limp as she felt.
Bellatrix tugged her head up by grabbing a handful of her curls with the hand not still teasing her nipple. "You think you've earned breakfast?" She plied Hermione with a slow, thorough kiss that made her toes curl, but Hermione got an elbow between them, pushing her away.
"Probably not!" she gasped. "And you… You're… wonderful—" she managed, fighting a dizzy, intoxicated laugh. "—but I'm starving!"
With a long-suffering sigh, Bellatrix released her toy with a final flick—to Hermione's relief and disappointment, both—and vanished from the room with only a single squeak of bedsprings. Hermione found herself utterly alone, stunned by the icy vulnerability that swept over her as she knelt, still firmly affixed to the headboard, tied too high to properly curl her knees in against her stomach and resort to fetal defense. She thought she could untwist herself if she tried but couldn't convince her body to move enough to do so. The stillness rose around her like a tide, waves of otherworldly static, loud and consuming.
The sound of slamming cabinetry echoed into the silence, cutting clean through her rapidly escalating breaths.
"There's no food," Bellatrix announced a moment later from the doorway, matter-of-fact. Before Hermione could complain or offer a quick, clothed trip into town, a faint wrinkling sound filled the room. "Feel blessed, pet," she muttered, stepping into view. As she held a bite of something hard and brown up to Hermione's lips, reflex had her open without question.
Sweetly flavored oats, sugar, honey burst into life on her tongue. Hermione was suddenly ravenous, her stomach growling audibly. "Cereal bar?" she muttered as she chewed, uncaring one lick for manners. Her position was too undignified to give it a moment's thought. "Really?"
Bellatrix smiled, breaking off another piece. She teased it against Hermione's closed lips as she struggled to finish the last bite, finding it ungainly to eat with her arms above her head. She glared.
"Feeding one's lover can be such a sensual experience, wouldn't you agree?" she drawled as Hermione lipped the next bit into her mouth, too hungry to turn her glare into fighting words. As her thumb brushed against Hermione's bottom lip, she felt the scrape of sugar. Bellatrix sucked the thumb into her own mouth, smiling, and Hermione shivered.
She took the next bite more slowly, without protest, unable to withdraw her stare from Bellatrix's dark eyes. Fingers lingered on her chin, a casual reminder of their place at her throat. The last bite came too quickly, and then it was gone. Hermione sighed.
"Better?" Bellatrix asked.
"Yes," Hermione answered honestly. There were a few holes inside of her right now, but at least the one with the hard-edged, teething ring of hunger had been filled. "Thank you."
Bellatrix settled back against the pillow with a grunt. Wrinkling came again. Hermione huffed at being left dangling while Bellatrix went about her own sorry excuse of a meal, but nearly choked on the sound as Bellatrix's unoccupied hand snuck into her hair, toying with her curls, nails teasing the base of her neck. The casual intimacy stuck her with a sudden pain far sharper than a bite. She looked over, staring, wide-eyed, at the half-reclined demon, breasts all but popping out of that godforsaken corset, curls a mess, teeth ripping off an inch of oats and honey, her absurd rendition of a breakfast in bed. She was sexuality itself, overflowing, uncontainable, and she was eating a bloody cereal bar.
By Merlin, she wanted her.
"Let me touch you," she whispered.
Bellatrix finished her last bite, dropping the wrapper casually beside the bed. "No."
Hermione groaned. "Oh, come on. Please? Please, just—just let me—"
"No."
"Why can't I just—"
"No!" Bellatrix snarled. The moment shattered. They sat in silence.
It took Hermione a few minutes to realized she was brooding. A few minutes levity over a cereal bar had only served to reinforce the distance she felt between them now, a distance she'd felt even with Bellatrix's fingers inside of her. It felt off, brought back that suffocating feeling of wrongness she had every time she tried and failed to fix what she'd done. Struggling to gather the feeling into a proper thought instead of the half-formed begging she'd come up with earlier, Hermione didn't fight the stinging gulps of air she needed to take between words.
"I—I don't—" she began, ignoring the anger in Bellatrix's eyes. "I don't feel connected." The word left in a rush more exhale than sound. "I don't feel connected to you," she repeated, more firmly. "I don't feel you. There's— It's like… white noise. A… a wall of it." Or an ocean, the whole ocean, an ocean I've never even seen except that it's here, it's all around us, and I'm drowning in it. "Please, I—I know you…" She swallowed back a pained laugh. "You've made me come half out of my skin twice already but if I can't touch you I feel like… I just feel like…" She struggled against the breath now threatening to choke her. It's a warm ocean, warm and crimson at the surface, blue beneath…. "Do I disgust you?" she whispered. "Is that it? Is it really that, after all this? Is this about— Am I still just—" A pound of flesh and impure blood? "Is that how you want me to feel, Bella? Because I do. So help me I do. I can't. I can't get past that. And that's an awful feeling." She clenched her hands tight around her wand, feeling her blood pulse against the restraint, looking anywhere but at the woman beside her. "Do I?"
After a long silence, Bellatrix reached out and dragged her chin towards her. "What?" The flash of anger had faded. She looked exasperated, confused, and a little put out by the long string of half-coherent words, but not upset.
Hermione licked a bit of sticky honey from the corner of her lips and carefully crafted a single question. "Do I disgust you? Maybe not my blood, maybe not even what I stand for, but…"
"No." With the word, Bellatrix's expression blanked.
Hermione waited for something else to form, searching for a sign. When none came, she tugged gently at her hands. "No?"
Dark eyes zeroed in on the small movement, the vibrations of a fly in a web. Death-pale fingers crept slowly back up the curve of Hermione's forearms, stroking lightly at the red-rubbed ring where skin met cloth. Reluctantly, she pinched the tie between thumb and pointer finger, tugging it free. "No."
Loosed, Hermione reached out to stroke the curve of Bellatrix's face, wanting to map the strange emptiness in her stare with her fingertips. Bellatrix flinched away.
Hermione let her hand fall. "You do," she whispered. Now that she'd said it, put words to it, it had gotten worse. Before, at least she'd been allowed that much: the safe skin on her lips and cheekbones, the back of her neck, places to grasp and cling and claw. Now, she couldn't touch her at all.
Bellatrix's eyes skittered over her face like rainboots on ice.
"You can't even look at me." Hermione shivered, pulling her wrists in close, squeezing her fingers around them, rubbing away the circulation strain of the silk, rubbing it back into place. "This is never going to work. I'm sorry I even—"
"Pet—"
"Bella." The less-than-gentle dismissal in the name sounded far harsher on Hermione's lips. She squeezed them tightly shut, not liking the taste of mockery on her own tongue. "Sorry. I—Do you know what this feels like?" She squeezed tighter, clutching her right wrist in her left hand, her skin heavy and unwieldy after the delicate prison of Bellatrix's ties. "Of course you don't." This time, she let out the pained laugh. In its wake, she added "You made me want you."
Their eyes locked over her choked words, and now that Hermione had won the stare, she had to fight the urge to look away.
"You won. And I just…" She switched hands, rubbing, seeing, in a flash, herself standing where Bellatrix had in the forest, clawing at painless scars in the face of an all-consuming, distant storm. "…I still want you. You're the most…" She remembered Bellatrix's own words. Fear. Draw. "…terrifyingly beautiful person I've ever known and you just… you…" She felt heat rising on her cheeks and wanted to slap herself. She was naked, in bed, and two hours deep into ten a.m. sex with Bellatrix Lestrange, with Bellatrix Black, and still, the thought of saying the word "orgasm" aloud made her blush. "You... Um… You changed my world a little bit, just then. But you— Knowing you can't even stand to let me… for me to even touch you…? I can't bring you that? I can't give you—"
Her plea ended in a squeaky "Hey!" when Bellatrix flicked a thumbnail over her nipple.
"Talk less, pet."
Hermione blinked through a quick intake of breath, sufficiently silenced.
"Give a witch a thrice-damned minute. I haven't— I don't…" She let out a huff, then drew air back into her lungs, blinking twice, starting over. "No one touches me. I never— Not in— Well fuck, pet, must have been a few dozen years since… that. Touch me, you lose a hand, Mudblood or otherwise."
Hermione stilled. "Oh," she whispered. She saw again, in vivid technicolor: Bellatrix inflicting pleasure on a stranger. Nothing of the stranger touching back. "I—I thought…"
"You can." The reply was silted. She shook her head. "If you must. Just don't expect for me to… I don't… I don't like it."
The temptation to blurt out "What?" was almost overwhelming, but Hermione realized, very quickly, she already knew. Not the answer she'd get, if she pushed, but the crux of the thing. She'd heard it in Bellatrix's stories, seen it in her memories, felt it from inside of her. Pleasure was weakness. She could give it, thrust it upon another without hesitation, again and again, but to take it, to allow someone else to ply her to weakness was… unthinkable. Or at least more trust than she had to spare.
"Alright then," Hermione said, squaring her jaw. "I won't… I wouldn't want to do anything you're not… comfortable with. But if I could only..."
She reached out her hand, slowly, making sure Bellatrix could see it coming the entire way. An offering, not a demand.
Bellatrix sighed, a resigned sound, and her eyes narrowed to slits, but when Hermione ran two fingers across a cheekbone and down the corner of her jaw, she didn't flinch away.