My skin burns as he touches me, hand trailing up over my thigh, under my dress and he hits just the right spot. Back hitting against a gilded mirror, I don't feel the pain with my legs spread out as Oliver-fucking-Wood grabs me by the hair and thrusts into me, the flames on my skin spreading to my insides. I scratch at his back, leaving marks under his half undone dress shirt and he lets out a low growl, going faster and deeper and I forget everything except the feel of his skin on mine.
Oliver kisses along my collarbone, up my neck, trailing thunderstorms on my skin with each kiss, and I moan loudly, the noise echoing in the empty entrance hall, and it feels like I'm falling from the precipice into a beautiful, radiant abyss, lost in his touch, the twinkle in his eyes and the way his lips feel when he breathes out my name into my skin.
He looks down at me, hands tangled in my hair, keeping me still against him, chest rising and falling rapidly as I come down from the incredible high of being with him and he kisses me, lips absurdly soft, our hearts beating together loudly in the silence of his house. Oliver apparated us here straight from The Nymph, ignoring my half-hearted protests. We didn't make it farther than the entrance before Oliver started kissing me.
I can't help but smile, and it's the first smile that reaches my eyes in months, maybe years. I've been lost in the darkness of my mind, the secrets and lies, the deep fear I've felt since I was a kid watching my father destroy us all.
"Hey," Oliver says and grins at me, but before I can say anything he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder, his back red with the marks I left and I smirk. One victory won.
"You're an idiot," I say between bouts of laughter but there's no force behind it and I don't mind being manhandled, my brain overdosed on the strange tendrils of happiness engulfing me, temporarily ignoring the traitorous thoughts of borrowed time.
He casually walks up the stairs, holding me firmly, my dress lying forgotten on the floor of the hall, tangled with Oliver's clothes and I laugh again.
"I don't think I've ever heard you laugh before," Oliver says, as he throws me down on his king-sized bed, and I stretch out like a cat, a half-smile playing on my lips. "It's…," he starts and blushes before he turns away from me and leans against a big window overlooking a forest. "It's nice."
I barely hear him, he says it so softly, but I do and I can't help but laugh at him again. "I didn't know you were so… sappy. Big Quidditch star, ultimate fuckboy Oliver Wood, blushing like a teenage boy," I finish and he faces me again, rolling his eyes. It's fun to tease him. In two strides he climbs up on the bed, leaning over me, eyes dark and mesmerizingly addictive.
"You," he says, kissing me on the lips, "need to stop," another kiss, this one on my jawbone, his hand creeping up and holding my arms above me, other hand lightly trailing over my ribs, brushing my tits, like lightning against my skin, and I arch my back into him before he speaks again. "Calling me a fuckboy," his voice sounds breathless now as I roll my hips beneath him and bite my lip. He's already hard and I love to make him lose control. Oliver lets out a growl before we're lost in the wildfire that we started, a fucking thunderstorm of skin against skin, his lips around my hard nipples, and I'm so fucking wet and turned on I can't stifle my scream when he enters me, burning down our hearts, like two shadows twisting around each other before we come undone, moaning against each other in shallow breaths.
Moonlight shines brightly down on us as we sit up against the headboard of the bed, Oliver's sheets crumpled on the floor and he grabs his smokes, lighting up, his other hand firmly around my shoulders, and the gesture is so familiar I automatically reach out to take the cigarette from his lips. It tastes sweet and spicy.
We smoke in comfortable silence, Oliver tracing a pattern over my shoulder, and I take in his room, which is, like the rest of his house, big and luxurious and bright, something I wouldn't have expected from him, but Oliver seems full of surprises right now, and I slowly feel the vision of him I had in my head unravelling. He can be soft and he's bright and there's mischief in his eyes that twinkle when he laughs.
And maybe I knew all this before, but damn, it was so much easier when he was just a Quidditch fuckboy.
"I missed you," Oliver murmurs, breaking the silence.
It might be true. It might be a lie, I can't tell anymore, what's real, what's in my head, what I want to be real. A shiver passes through me, despite the heat radiating off of Oliver's body.
"It's not like we spent that much time together," I reply after a while, sarcasm seeping into my words even though I don't want them to be true, but somehow, I can't stop myself from thinking this is fleeting, my mind racing, thoughts running toward that ring on Octavia's finger, how they fit together in a way the two of us never will.
"Well, I don't know if anyone ever told you this, but you're fucking amazing in bed so…"
I playfully hit him in the shoulder and he grins. "What? No praise for me? I'm offended," he says, pretending to be hurt.
"I think I need to do more research on the topic…" I trail off, twisting a strand of hair around my finger.
"Oh, you do, do you? In that case –" I don't let him finish before I sit up and kiss him, slowly this time, and when I straddle him, I catch sight of the two of us in the mirror across his bed. We look fucking hot together.
I don't sleep. Instead, just before the crack of dawn, I crawl out of bed, careful not to disturb Oliver, open his closet to find some old joggers and a Puddlemere sweatshirt that's too big for me, but it smells of Oliver and it's warm and that seems to be enough for now.
I tiptoe out of the room and walk down the stairs, appreciating the absolute silence, something my small flat in the always busy, but especially during the night, Knockturn Alley can never afford. I enter the living room and there's a piano there, just next to the fireplace, which makes me raise my eyebrows. Oliver didn't strike me as a piano player and with a sharp pang I wonder if it might be Octavia's. I shake my head, hoping I'll manage to shake off my depressing thoughts, and I walk out into the backyard opening up to the forest Oliver was looking at from his bedroom.
The grass is soft and the night isn't too cold, and I wish it were. The cold would help me clear my head, make sense of what I'm doing here, but I'm left alone with my thoughts and that's never been a good idea.
I walk for what seems an age, aimlessly, but tempted, so fucking tempted to go back, grab my wand and apparate away. I'm not sure what I want, I'm not sure I trust him, I'm not sure of fucking anything anymore, except the way he makes me feel and my heart breaks a little at the way I'm on the brink of escaping once again. Self-destructive to the core, my mother would say, as if I'd ever been anything else, as if I can control it, the recklessness and the running and the endless darkness inside my head. I feel alive, for a while, and then I fade away into grey nothingness that seeps into my bones, terrible numbness that clutches me in its grasp, and when I can't deal with myself anymore, it's easier to run and forget and fuck and forget and never look back.
I blink a couple of times and realise I'm back where I started, dawn breaking and the low sun shining down on the big glass double doors of Oliver's living room that I left wide open, and I already know I'll sneak in, take my clothes, my bag with my wand and I'll leave and that will be the end of this madness.
Some part of me knew this was our last night, the mad part that let loose the happiness I'm not used to and now it's closing me off, and I steel myself for what I must do.
I enter the house, closing the doors behind me, but as I'm about to leave, I catch sight of the photographs above the fireplace, and I stop to look at them. There's two of Oliver and his parents, but all the rest of them are a much younger Oliver and a girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen, with the same dark hair and the twinkle in her eyes, the same as Oliver's. The similarity between them is astounding and she has to be his sister. She and Oliver are grinning in all the photographs, playing Quidditch together in a lot of them, zooming on brooms like two dragons conquering an army.
There are no new photos. In all of them, Oliver is just a kid and his sister a teenager.
"She died," a deep voice says behind me and I'm startled. I didn't hear him come down and I mentally curse myself for stopping, for wondering about his family, about him, for wanting to know him. I put the picture I'm holding back to its place and turn around. I'm even more surprised to see him standing there in his own joggers and a sweatshirt, holding a plate with toast and freshly made pancakes on it, the scent of them overpowering my senses. He made fucking pancakes.
"I'm sorry," I whisper, my voice cracking slightly as the deep hurt on his face becomes fully visible. He doesn't even try to hide it, not like he usually hides his feelings, face often unreadable except when he loses control. And I'm about to hurt him even more.
"Skye was… She was wild and free and she loved flying and one day she flew in very bad weather after an argument she had with our parents and… She fell. No reason, no... nothing. The Healers couldn't do anything for her," Oliver says in a low voice, setting the plate down on the coffee table. "We were close."
"I can tell. I'm really sorry, I had no idea," I say, knowing it's not enough. Nothing would be enough.
"It's… It's fine. It was a long time ago." In the dim light of dawn, he seems so vulnerable and I can barely move, but I take a step towards the entrance hall and Oliver looks up, a slight frown forming on his face.
"Why do you always leave?" he asks, standing up and coming towards me and I take a step back.
I'm silent as he stares at me, and I have to look away, tears prickling in my eyes as all the things that passed through my head on the walk back here make their rounds again and again and again, like endless knives tearing at my heart.
"You're engaged," I whisper, but he shakes his head at that, a stupid half-smile playing on his lips and I feel weak in the knees, weak in the heart and weak in the head.
"I wasn't with anyone when we met and you still left me. In London, in Berlin… And now. Freya –" he starts but I don't let him continue, fearing he'd make me change my mind, make me forget all the things I know are true about myself, all the things I've spent years knowing and fighting and always… Always fucking losing the battles against myself.
"God, Oliver! You… You've got a fucking future, a life and… And me? I'll be the hot thing on the market for a year, maybe two, then I'll fade away, most likely involve myself in a scandal, like fucking England's star Quidditch player while he's engaged to Octavia-fucking-Blackthorn! I'm a fucking mess, Oliver, can't you see that? I ruin everything I touch, like fucking Helen of Troy! I can't deal with… With the demons in my head... And do you know what it means to be a Veela? How does it feel to not have anyone trust you? To have them hate you just because you exist? I've been dealing with that since the moment I was old enough to know my own father hated me. Fucking hell, it's just easier to fuck off and get fucking high and not think about anything!" I yell out, shaking, not from anger, but sadness, and the look in Oliver's eyes seems to be mirroring my own.
He reaches out to take my hand, but I flinch away from him. Something flashes in his eyes, maybe hurt and anger, maybe something else I've never seen before but I can't let myself wonder, can't let myself think it might be anything other than anger.
"You'll never fade," he says in that Scottish drawl I've grown to love and I feel a tear running down my cheek. "Not for me."
I want to scream and I want to tear at my skin and my heart and make myself stay but I turn away from him, his dark gaze unbearably intense and I feel like he's giving up on me, on us. "Goodbye, Oliver."
I walk away, picking up my clothes and my bag, tears falling on the dark blue carpet, but before I can open the doors of his house, before I can leave forever, Oliver grabs my arm and twists me around, pressing me against his body, dark eyes sparkling in that same way they did when we first met. Those eyes would be my downfall.
He kisses me then, softly, his lips feeling electric on my own, and he tangles his fingers in my hair, pulling me even closer, so close that there's no space left between us. It feels like when I'm with him, when he kisses me and when he smiles, the darkness is just out of reach, a mere echo of danger.
"I want you to ruin me."