Don't Look Back
- 12 -
Needles / Coils
Warmth crawls across the tether between them.
She can feel it leeching its way through his senses as she sinks down into the tub. Can feel the faint flicker of surprise that is the catch in his pulse.
She's felt him shower across the bond before; she remembers the way those fine hairs on her arms stood up as the heat spread over her. A brief but not unpleasant warmth, like passing by a fire in the cold.
This, though — she thinks it will feel different. More potent. More intentional. Lasting.
He shifts where he lies. In bed but not asleep, she can tell. She can almost feel the gears turning in his head as he riddles out what she's doing. Can sense his suspicion.
"It's just a bath," she says aloud for no one's benefit, watching the steam rise and settling back against the porcelain.
Her eyes fall shut as she works to clear her head, focusing once more on the pain she felt in him. Her shoulders throb with it, muscles strained as though she's made the same uncomfortable movement over and over again.
She pictures him yanking against those chains and doesn't have to wonder anymore.
Slowly, after warming her hands in the water, she reaches up and presses the pads of her fingers into the tense flesh between her shoulder and neck. Starts smoothing her way across the tendons, inch by inch.
Through the bond, his breath hitches yet again — a flutter in her chest.
She adds more pressure, finding a spot wrought with tension just above her left shoulder blade. Malfoy stiffens.
Breathe, she thinks, even knowing he can't hear. She works at the soreness with the flat of her thumb, gentle but firm until it gives way, uncoiling like a snake.
It's the first of many, and Malfoy seems to squirm under her distant touch — a phantom discomfort she can feel in the hard set of his jaw, the whisper of what might be satin against her palms. She pictures him balling Slytherin green sheets into fists.
Still, she doesn't let his uncertainty dissuade her, working through each and every knot of tension across the expanse of her shoulders until she feels the thudding of his pulse start to even out. Until the headache at the base of her skull begins to fade.
It takes nearly half an hour.
"There you have it, Malfoy," she says to herself, letting her tired hands slip back into the hot water and sinking down a little deeper. "I'm not all bad."
It feels like he's waiting for something, the way he lies so still. Waiting for her to hex the water to boil or inflict some sort of pain.
She swirls her fingers through the bubbles while he stews in his suspicion, creating little patterns until it feels like he allows himself to fall asleep.
With a sigh, she relaxes further, leaning her head back and shutting her eyes. She supposes she's never truly alone anymore, but at the very least she feels a sense of privacy when he's sleeping.
Turns out it's a much-needed bath for her as well. She's been driving herself half-mad with all this research, trying to keep up with her studies on top of it and struggling to maintain an air of normalcy around her friends.
She realizes she's barely been sleeping at all.
Stop thinking of Malfoy, then, her subconscious demands.
It's easier said than done, what with his senses all tangled up in hers. Still, she tries. Casts a charm to reheat the bath and skirts around the subject of Malfoy in her mind, focusing on everything he's overshadowed these past weeks.
A doomed endeavor, as it turns out, because what Malfoy's overshadowed — what he's somehow miraculously distracted her from — is Ron.
And now she's left wondering what he's doing this very moment. Wondering if he's with her.
Yes, she's decided she's no longer in love with him. That ship hasn't sailed, it's sunk.
And yet, knowing that does very little to diminish the ache. Like she's been slapped across the face not five seconds ago, and the sting just won't go away.
It feels like she's wasted so many moments thinking of him. Important moments. Her first kiss. Her first time.
Viktor was both, albeit almost a year and a half apart. He kissed her the night of the Yule Ball, and she'd been thinking of Ron. Wondering if he liked her dress or thought she looked ridiculous. Wondering why he hadn't asked her to go with him instead.
But Viktor was sweet in his somewhat clumsy, brusque way. They kept in touch, sending owls back and forth throughout the summer and well into Fifth Year.
He kept it all very proper, her being only sixteen.
But she saw Sixth Year closing in ahead — the year she'd decided was her year. The year she'd confront Ron about her feelings.
And the thought of heading into that inexperienced terrified her.
This past June, she wrote her first letter to Viktor in months — a heinously brief missive about meeting her for a date in London that probably felt more like a command than an invitation.
He arrived, none the less, and she blindsided him with a hotel room.
It's hard to think about now, knowing it was wasted in pursuit of Ron. She realizes she was unfair to Viktor — all the tenderness he showed her, when she spent the whole night thinking of someone else.
But if her memory serves her right, it was good.
Not great, but by no means bad — and her distraction could easily be to blame for any diminished spark.
Viktor was gentle. Aware of her inexperience. Willing to go slow, willing to laugh with her through any awkwardness.
All in all, for her first time, she'll always feel incredibly fortunate. Someone kind. Someone gentle.
Malfoy would not be gentle.
Her eyes fly open at the unwelcome thought — a rogue stream of consciousness seemingly bursting in from nowhere.
There he goes again. Overshadowing everything. Appearing in places he has no business appearing in.
She's — that's...that's not even something she's considered. Not even something she'd want to consider, what with him being him and her being her.
Even in — even in moments like the one they shared inside the Shrieking Shack, she feels certain nothing would've come of it. They're meant to repel one another.
Yes. Exactly.
She tries to relax again, letting her wide eyes sink shut.
But he wouldn't, her thoughts continue, gone astray.
"That's just common sense," she says aloud.
Of course he wouldn't be gentle. The word 'gentle' doesn't exist in Malfoy's dimension. His family probably taught him to think of it as a synonym for weakness.
No, he wouldn't be gentle.
He would be selfish, not that it matters. He would probably think only of himself. Nothing of her. Nothing of what hurts, what's too much. He wouldn't start with a kiss. Wouldn't run his thumb across her cheek or hold her close.
He would hurt her, the way he keeps saying he wants to.
She can almost feel it now. The ghost of his hand wrapping around her throat. Squeezing until she fights for breath. No tenderness. Only pressure. Pressure and those eyes. Gray and heartless, glaring down at her — relishing in her desperation and panic — as he takes what he wants.
Take.
An echo of that voice from before. Not loud, like it was. She's not certain whether it's really spoken again, or if it's just a remnant from her memory.
Either way, it's enough to snap her eyes open again.
Just her. Alone in the bath.
Only she doesn't remember allowing her hand to slip between her legs.
Both the sight and the sensation have her biting back a gasp. She can't pinpoint when exactly in the last thirty seconds her nerve-endings caught on fire — when her own body turned against her — but she's forced to consider that it happened while she was thinking about Malfoy.
She tries to take her hand away. Fully intends to clench it into a fist at her side and cross her legs as tightly as possible. To physically restrain herself.
But just the slightest movement of her fingers is enough to make her breath catch, a spike of pleasure shooting up her spine — the water threshing as her body jolts.
And it's enough to wake Malfoy.
She feels him startle to consciousness, his heart rate a muted thud in her own chest.
There's a long moment of silence, only the quiet laps of the water against the edges of the bath to disturb it. She doesn't move and it seems neither does Malfoy — as though he's not certain what he's just felt, and he's waiting to determine how to react.
The wolf is not so indecisive.
Take, it says, clear as a bell. Unmistakable.
She feels Malfoy suck in a sharp breath at the sound, sitting up in bed. Now he knows what he felt. Now he knows, and he's nervous.
She senses it as clearly as she knows her own mind.
It's strange. Feeling him so confused and helpless. She remains still, letting it sink in even as she knows she should take her hand away. Should drain the bath and be done with this. A strange mistake. An accident.
But then again, she's never felt a shockwave quite like that.
She takes a moment. Actually allows herself to consider it.
Adrian said paramours were meant to ease the pain. If she had to define the opposite of pain, what she just felt wouldn't be so far off.
And, if she admits it, there's something inherently pleasant about making Malfoy nervous.
She feels very much in control, for once.
Take, the wolf repeats, sounding impatient.
"Take what?" she asks.
Take what you want.
She gathers a slow, steadying breath, watching the water lap at her toes. "I'm not sure it's what I want."
The wolf doesn't hesitate.
You want it.
A growl. A demand.
You want it.
Malfoy panics through all of this — reduced to pinpricks of nervousness exploding sporadically across her senses. She can feel him threading his fingers into his hair.
Almost instinctively, she asks, "Does he want it?"
Strange, the way she can almost picture the wolf's grin. Fangs exposed. Leering.
Yes.
She feels bold.
"Show me."
Take, is its reply, insistent. Take, and you will know.
With a deep exhale, she leans her head back once more. Shuts her eyes and urges herself to take a risk. Good things come from risks.
As do dangerous things...
But she resolves not to think on those in this moment.
She lets her hand relax, allowing the tips of her fingers to graze that concentrated collection of nerves.
Heat surges through her bloodstream at the touch, making her gasp, and Malfoy tenses up across the bond.
She hasn't done this in ages. Hasn't felt the need to, so distracted by everything else. And yet, with just this faint touch, she feels the consequences of neglect. The urgent coil of need low in her stomach.
Impatient, she curls her fingers again, and it's like stretching a muscle the way the warmth blossoms, spreading and bleeding out.
Malfoy's fists have curled into the sheets again. His teeth are gritted, his brow heavy with tension — fighting it.
Why are you fighting it?
She's far from sure whether the voice is hers or the wolf's.
It intensifies the need, and she can't control it when the thought of Malfoy's hand around her throat comes seeping back to the forefront. She doesn't care if he senses it. If the bond allows him to know the depravity of her thoughts.
She only knows the way it makes the fire between her thighs burn brighter, sparks exploding across her nerve-endings as her fingers slide lower. Circle her entrance.
Malfoy's panic spikes, and he seems to do the only thing he can think of.
A sharp pressure encircles her wrist, as though he's taken hold of his own with the other hand in a desperate attempt to stop her. She feels the force of it as he tries to pry her fingers away.
But it's not strong enough.
She tugs free of it and allows one finger to slip inside.
Malfoy all but seizes up at the sensation — she feels the brief lapse in gravity as he falls back against his mattress, still fighting it. Turning sideways and curling into himself in an effort to drive it away.
She thinks about stopping. Thinks it's possible she's hurting him, and for the first time finds the idea of it wholly unappealing.
Take, the wolf commands, sensing her hesitation.
"He doesn't want it."
He wants it. A growl. I want it.
And that's when her senses feel like they break apart — open up and out, spreading to encompass what they couldn't before. Suddenly she feels more of him than she's ever felt. An acute sense of each breath. Each thud of his pulse. The cold of the sweat beading on his brow and the coil of his muscles as he tenses further.
That isn't all she feels though.
There's a foreign, deep sort of ache she's not sure how to place, twisting in her gut. A need that isn't inward as she knows it, but outward. A craving to fill. To thrust. To take.
A want that's unlike anything she's ever experienced.
It doesn't burn, it cuts. Punctures like a needle, injecting desire thick as ink into her veins.
Whatever it is, it snaps her control in half, and her toes curl against the edge of the bath as she slides that finger in deeper. Pulls it out only to thrust in two. Starts to pump them in and out without hesitation. Without thoughts of consequences. No holds barred.
Malfoy writhes where he lays, flipping over to bury his face into the pillows, fists digging into the mattress on either side.
Please.
Is that him? Is it the wolf?
She has no way to tell.
Please. Please.
She curls her fingers inside, sliding deeper into the bath with a gasp and gripping the rim to steady herself.
Stop fighting it, she thinks, wishing for once beyond all else that he can hear.
It feels like a lightning strike when Malfoy gives in. She knows the exact moment he lets go — the exact moment he takes himself in hand.
Unknown, inconceivable sensations — a boiling, explosive brand of pleasure she's never known. He grips hard. Strokes upward once. The hair at the back of her neck stands on end, a moan ripping out of her throat.
She struggles to sit up, water thrashing as she grapples desperately for her wand on the floor. Tries to cast a Silencing Charm without losing the contact of her other hand. Without losing her grip on the electricity running through her. Through them both.
Malfoy has risen up onto his knees, one hand braced on the mattress, the other unable to stop. Pumping up and down as his labored breathing echoes in her ears.
Images fly across the backs of her eyelids. Flashes of her own face, cheeks flushed — her own curls, wild and scattered. Herself, leaning back against a wall, fingers tangled into the hair of someone he doesn't care for enough to flesh out in detail. Just a blur on its knees.
It's what he's imagining, she realizes. What he's thinking of.
The night he saw her across the corridor.
She pulls her fingers out, focusing on tracing lines up and down across that epicenter of nerves. Malfoy's gaze reappears in her mind, that phantom grip a growing warmth around her throat, and with every stroke of his, she imagines what it might feel like to have him inside of her. To be pinned down as he fills her. Stretching, caving. Driving deeper.
It feels wrong.
So incredibly wrong, and yet it's all she wants in the world in this moment.
Malfoy. Fucking her.
Just thinking the word brings color to cheeks. She's never considered it in those terms before. Never thought she'd want it in those terms before.
But the mere concept of it brings her so close to the edge she can barely breathe, and she swears she can hear Malfoy's cut groan in her ears as he's forced to consider it too.
What it would be like.
What it could be like.
"Fuck," she gasps out, and it takes her by surprise — the way the orgasm rips through every tendon, every ligament, like a wildfire.
Malfoy collapses with his, the tense press of his hand against the mattress trembling before giving way, and the sensation whites out her vision. Makes her spasm and shake, thighs clenching around her hand as the water crashes over the edges of the bath onto the floor.
Every inch of her skin feels raw and exposed as she comes down from it, her chest heaving, heart thudding like a hammer just beneath.
It takes great care to draw her hand away without accidentally grazing some flayed nerve. She lets it float to her side like it's weightless, staring up at the ceiling of the washroom and trying to wrap her head around what she's just done.
What they've done.
The wolf's voice trickles in like a dark reminder.
You wanted it.
She did.
It's a punch in the gut to admit it to herself, but at this point there's no ignoring it. No more pretending.
She wanted it.
And it would seem so did he.
She knows it's coming.
Catches herself almost deliberately walking slower — walking by herself — because she knows.
And like clockwork, the next morning as Hermione emerges from around the corner to the Great Hall, he's there. Leaning against the adjacent wall, arms crossed. Waiting.
The hall is mostly empty, the majority of the student body already at breakfast.
So no one sees the way he comes at her, pushing off the flagstone to charge across the distance between them. He takes hold of her arm before she can get a word out, dragging her back around that same corner and down the corridor a ways until he can pull her into the shadows beneath the Grand Staircase.
He wastes no time shoving her against the wall, never freeing her wrist from his almost painful grip.
"I told you not to fuck around."
She keeps her calm — expected this and prepared for it. She's steeled herself and decided not to allow him to rile her.
"I wasn't."
Malfoy squeezes harder, crowding her and dipping his head to growl in her face. "You're going to deny it?"
This close, she can smell the soap he showers with. Something like pine. She tilts her chin up. "I'm not denying what we did. But I wasn't fucking around."
"What would you call it, then?"
She quirks a brow. "Some people call it masturbating. But if you prefer, there's always self care? Autoeroticism? Touching—"
He drops her wrist and takes her face in hand — a movement quick and jarring, his fingers digging into the hollows of her cheeks not so unlike that night in the Shrieking Shack.
"Shut your mouth."
"What instinct is it that makes you grab me this way?" she asks, working to keep her voice even despite the way her pulse spikes. "You're out of your mind if you think I won't hex you for it."
Malfoy's sharp eyes flit between hers. The pressure of his hand doesn't diminish so much as a fraction. "Why did you do it?"
"For myself."
He gives her a jerk, and she uses the movement to snatch her wand from her pocket, quick to hold it up to his chin.
His eyes just tighten.
"You're lying," he hisses.
"It's my body. I'll do what I want with it."
Malfoy's face dips closer to hers, chin pressing into the tip of her wand — a threat. "If you knew it was a way to torture me, you'd have done it much sooner. You're lying."
She searches for the words she knows will frustrate him most.
"It felt good."
His fingers dig deeper, well and truly bruising. "What makes you think you have the right?"
Her jaw aches. She presses hard on her wand in retaliation. "I was only taking Adrian's advice."
"Adrian?" he snaps, surprised by the name but by no means retreating.
"Yes." She dares to smile up at him. "After all, you told him about me, didn't you? He suggested I make myself useful."
"And you think that was useful?"
She fights against any and all reservations to tilt her face closer to his. "You certainly seemed to enjoy yourself."
His eyes flood with rage.
"I feel everything you feel." She can't help but drive the knife in deeper. Wants to see what'll happen. "I know what excites you. I felt it."
Something glows behind that rage. Something he's trying to hold back.
"Do you know what excites you, Malfoy?"
His heart starts to pound. A staccato beat in stark contrast to her own languid pulse. She's in her element when she's in control.
"Do you know what makes you come?"
Malfoy's breath hitches, not expecting her to speak in such terms. The fury in his gaze diminishes to make way for something else. Something dark and conflicted. Full of an intent that makes the muscles in her stomach clench the way they did last night.
"Do you know what you think about?" she asks, voice dropping to a whisper. It takes a concentrated effort not to glance down at his lips, only centimeters from hers the way he looms over her. "Want me to tell you?"
Malfoy's looking at her lips and not even bothering to hide it. "Yes," he says in a voice much changed. Distracted and dazed.
She lets the tip of her wand slide out from under his chin — slide up the line of his jaw towards his temple. She taps it there once, accentuating her words. Words it takes a great deal of courage to force out.
"You think about fucking me."
It's almost drunken, the way he sways towards her. Like he's magnetized.
"Don't you?"
"Yes," he breathes, and she can feel it against her lips, he's so close.
"I think about it, too."
Malfoy breathes in. Holds it. His gaze is fixed on her mouth, bruising pressure fading until he cradles her face in a grip that's almost delicate.
"Sometimes, I think it might not be such a bad idea."
"Yeah?" he forces out, and his nose grazes hers.
"Yeah," she murmurs. "I think I—"
"Hey."
It's a nervous, familiar voice, built up to sound tough. They break apart with a gasp and find Neville with his wand aimed, a few feet away in the lonesome corridor.
He's pointing it at Malfoy, and she realizes that all he sees is Malfoy's hand on her chin and her wand pressed against him. All he thinks is he's helping.
"Let go of her," he commands, his stance strong even as his voice falters.
Malfoy, having realized exactly who's stumbled upon them, sinks back into his own arrogant confidence. He releases her chin, pivoting to face Neville and straightening up to his full height.
"Really, Longbottom?" he sneers. "Here to save the day for Granger? A fucking knight in shining armor?"
She doesn't like the way it makes Neville stutter — the way he flushes cherry red.
So she steps out from the shadows of the staircase towards him, looping her arm through the one not pointing a wand. "I think I did need saving, actually."
Malfoy's lip curls up as he watches her, fists gathering at his sides.
"Thank you, Neville," she says, staring directly at him. Seeing him fight to swallow back all the rage and frustration she's stirred up, all the while proving her point. "He might've eaten me alive."
They walk away together, Neville's wand still out at his side, leaving Malfoy under the stairs.