A/N: Thanks to all readers!
Chapter 54
Draco's brows met in a scowl. "How can you say such a stupid thing, Weasley? There's every reason. You know that we both want this, and now we can have it safely. I've found a way."
"I'd give up too much," said Ginny. "And I don't see that you'd give up a thing, Malfoy."
"Don't be an utter arse. I spent months planning this out, I took risks you'll never know. I've given up things—" Draco seemed to grope for words. "I can't tell you. I can never tell you, Weasley."
She stopped. Her heart fluttered. "What have you given up, Malfoy?"
"Didn't I just say that I can't tell you?"
"Yes. I heard that," she said.
"It's for your own safety," said Draco. "Weasley, what I've done, everything I've done, is only to keep you safe. But I can't tell you why."
A huge lump seemed to be forming in her throat. "Yes, well, apparently, you can't tell me much of anything. You never really did explain your reasons why you even wanted me to become the official Malfoy mistress in the first place, did you?"
Draco expelled all his breath in a sigh. "Look, I want you. I've never wanted any other girl this much in my life. I've risked things for you that you'll never know. Isn't that enough?"
"No," said Ginny. "That's not enough. I need to get back to my friends now. If anything's happened to them—Colin or Daphne or oh, gods, Dean! It's all my fault that Dean's there. He never would've gone down to the tunnels if it wasn't for me."
A change came over Draco's face. "Oh. I see. You're suddenly excessively concerned about the fate of Dean Thomas; is that it?"
"If you mean that I care about what happens to my friends, then yes, you're right," Ginny said icily.
"Only he'd like to be quite a bit more than a friend, wouldn't he?"
"And what if he would? He'd have more to offer me than you could, Malfoy," said Ginny, feeling as if she were inching further and further out onto a line without any net.
"Don't make me laugh. Thomas couldn't offer you a fucking thing. Don't you go to him. Don't you dare." Draco's voice had gone dark and feral, and the temperature around the bed suddenly seemed to have dropped twenty degrees.
"I'll do whatever I like. Don't think you can stop me. And you don't know anything at all about what Dean has to offer me!"
"Nothing. That's what he has, compared to me. You don't understand what a Malfoy can give."
"All right. What have you got, Malfoy? Tell me what you could give me!"
"Anything you'd ever want," Draco said intensely. "All the pleasure in the world. You already know that."
"That isn't enough," said Ginny. She stared into his eyes, wishing desperately that the clear and open gaze of that other Draco she had so briefly seen would return. He had to be in there somewhere!
No. This can't be. And then he raised his wand-
Draco blinked, and in that instant, Ginny knew that something had opened in him. But it had only happened for the blink of an eye. Then it had snapped shut. His eyes were like brilliant silver mirrors again.
"Everything would be open to you," he said. "Every opportunity. Your art could be placed in every gallery in the world, Weasley; you could move in any social circle."
"Are you mad?"
"No. I'd give you anything money can buy. I'm so bloody tired of seeing this rubbish on you." He flicked contemptuously at the material of her blouse and trousers. " I think you could benefit from closets filled to the brim with Balenciaga, Halston, Ungaro, Marc Jacobs… Gucci and Lauren handbags instead of that denim sack you haul around. And jewelry. I'd love to see you wearing nothing but canary diamonds from Boodles."
"Malfoy, if you think—"
"Of course I don't think that all of that is enough for you. I'm not half done, Weasley. A Muggle car, maybe? A Lamborghini Reventon, I think, in green, to set off your hair. How about a London penthouse flat? Something on Queen Anne Street? And a country cottage in Dorset."
"You're joking."
"I'm not. A yacht of your own, Weasley, an island in the South seas if you'd like that. Do you want your own art collection? Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Michelangelo? You can have it. You can have anything. All I want in return is you. Stay here, let me corrupt your innocence in the most delicious way you could ever imagine, and then, after that… we can do exactly as we like, wherever we like. I'll open a whole new world to you, Weasley."
"As your official Malfoy mistress," she said. The world was falling away from under her, bit by bit.
"If you want to think of it that way, yes."`
Her heart sank. Maybe she could say all of this calmly. No- probably not.
"So what's your answer?" he asked her.
"It's very simple," said Ginny. "You've insulted me more than you could ever know, and I'm getting out of here. You think I'm nothing more than a—" Oh, fuck, I'm just going to say it. "Whore. There, I've said it, and if you want to go into hysterics, Malfoy, you're just going to have to do it. Only a whore would sign some sort of agreement to let you fuck her so that you'd give her a load of cars and clothes and diamond necklaces. I don't want anything more to do with you, ever again." She pushed herself off the bed, savagely, with no desire to stay this time.
Draco's hand didn't grip her wrist very hard, but it was the tentative quality of his touch that made her turn round when she had been so sure she wouldn't do it for anything.
"Don't go," he said.
"Why not?"
"I was… wrong." His words were clipped and stiff and painful.
"Oh? Then why'd you say what you did, if you know that you were wrong?" she asked aggressively.
"Because you were going to Dean. Because I had… nothing else to offer you." He spoke as if each word cost him more than he could possibly afford to pay. "But I should not have said any of it. I should have known better. "
"You certainly should have done, Malfoy."
"Come back," he said quietly. "Please."
Ginny wasn't sure why, and much later on, she never would work out her reasons, no matter how long she spent thinking about it. But she did come back. She lay on her stomach on the bed, and after a while, she felt his hand stroking her hair.
"What else have you got, Malfoy?" she asked without looking up.
"Just… stay. " He gave a long sigh. "Weasley, just stay with me."
She rolled over on her side and propped herself up on one elbow. Draco looked incredibly tired, she thought. "So you want me to sign the standard mistress contract now, huh?"
"There's nothing to sign," said Draco. "You can have that letter of credit and anything else you like, of course. You can have everything I offered you and more. But I should've known that none of it would matter to you."
"Not really, no. I meant what I said, Malfoy. I was a tomboy, you know. I don't care very much about clothes and jewelry. Although I would like a Rembrandt just over the kitchen sink…" Ginny caught herself. She knew what she had to ask now. "But what else did these contracts always include? I mean, I can pretty much guess what they expected from the women. What about from the men, though?"
"What do you mean?"
"I think you know," said Ginny. "Those Malfoy men were already married, right?"
"Er… yes, they were. Purebloods from the oldest families marry very young, Weasley, and we don't marry for love. We don't have that choice."
"So what did they do with their wives?"
Draco was silent.
"What did they do, Malfoy?"
"They lived separate lives," he finally said.
She was sinking. Even though she was still lying on the bed, she was sinking and falling through it, because her heart had turned to lead. She chose her words carefully, so that there could be no mistake about her question and his answer.
"Malfoy, let's say for the sake of argument that I do this. I stay in this room, I let you seduce me, you spend the next week preparing me, and then I let you take my virginity and I become the new Malfoy mistress. I would be safe, right? We could be together?"
"Yes. That's what I know now."
"But would you really be all mine? Would you let everyone in wizarding society know that we're together now?" Ginny took a deep, deep breath. "Would you leave Astoria?"
