A/N: Welcome to my third one-shot within the Eighteen Again universe. To the surprise of no one who has read Meet the Parents or Meet the Parents II, this is basically PWP, so reading neither is necessary to enjoy this. Still, if you like this, you'll like MTP I and II, and I hope you'll give Eighteen Again a shot.
The idea for this fic came through Eighteen Again chapters six and ten, and was one of the most requested prompts on my Tumblr ( scriibble-fics). Come hang out with me there! I'm constantly posting nonsense about future and current fics, offering sneak peaks at those, and I love answering questions!
Do let me know what you think! Feedback gives me life. Much love to you all.
Happy Birthday, Baby
"I've been tasked with keeping you away from the common room."
James brought Lily's hand—clasped in his own, their fingers woven together intimately—to his mouth. He kissed her knuckles, his lips soft and warm, and somehow just the brief, gentle pressure drew excited sparks from her stomach. "Have you, now?" he asked, eyes crinkling behind his glasses. "For my party, I assume. You were a good choice—which is why the lads picked you, of course. What'd they say exactly?"
The sparks in her stomach quickly turned to heat, heat borne from some place caught between pleasure and embarrassment, which battled for dominance in her veins. "The lads and I talked it over, and we think you're the best man—woman—for the job," Sirius had said that evening after dinner, when he'd held her back as they'd left the Great Hall. His smile had looked a little too knowing, really, when he'd added, "Seems like you've been distracting James all day, after all. Do you want to explain where you were at lunch, or why he fell asleep in class afterwards?"
No, she absolutely hadn't wanted to explain, thank you very much, and she'd told Sirius that as she'd felt herself flush from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair. Sirius hadn't needed to spell out any further that he'd clearly known that James' bright smile—too brilliant for normal birthday excitement, and that hadn't faded all day—had stemmed from something she'd done. He might have suspected that it had come from something sexual, but—
Well, he didn't need to know that a lot of James' unending giddiness—and the exhaustion that had followed—had stemmed from the hour she'd kept him trapped in his dormitory that morning, followed by her pulling him into the depths of the library's stacks that afternoon.
"What the fuck—" he'd said when she'd pushed him up against a shelf that held mountains of crumbling, old potions tomes. Despite the surprise in his voice—and in his wide eyes, and all over the vacant hold on his mouth—he'd realized her intentions quickly enough, when she'd gone to cup him through the front of his trousers. All at once, his jaw had snapped shut, so tense and taut that she'd heard his teeth crash together. He'd given a faint, almost breathless whine that had left her heart hammering well past her adrenaline at the sheer audacity of what she planned to do. "Lily—" he'd tried, her name a hot whisper against her hair as he'd hardened in her hand. "Don't—love, if you're going to get me worked up—"
"What?" she'd asked, fingers running along the thick line of his cock. He'd closed his eyes, forehead wrinkled almost in pain, like he hadn't just come in her mouth a mere matter of hours beforehand. "What, baby?"
They'd only started shagging in recent weeks—fully shagging, all of it, finally acting on every last thing they could think of—but that hardly mattered. They'd done it enough—and, lord, she'd thought on it more than enough—that she could almost fully imagine him entering her. She'd imagined all of it as her hands had gone to his belt—his heat, his thickness, his length—and it had left her momentarily second-guessing her decision to take him to the library. Maybe she should have dragged him back to his room or to a secret passageway or some abandoned classroom, because even just the thought of him had left her aching, as she'd ached that morning after she'd gotten him off and had refused to let him do anything to her in return.
Yet then he'd whimpered as she'd undone his belt and wrapped her hand had around his cock, and that had immediately convinced her of the correctness of her plan—her stupid, impulsive, probably idiotic plan that had had her sinking to her knees while he'd stared at her, eyes wide as he'd barely dared to breathe.
"Oh, holy shit, Evans," he'd whispered, voice cracking as he'd laced his hands into her hair, the pressure of his fingers soft and stroking. "Oh, holy shit, you—fuck, are you serious?"
"Yes," she'd said, and his cock had fucking throbbed in her hand as she'd freed him from the confines of his pants and trousers. "But I need you to be quiet. We're in the library, Potter, and I don't want to have to take points from you for not respecting that."
He'd laughed at that, the sound slightly wild and strangled and caught in the back of his throat, laughter that had died abruptly when she'd taken him as far into the back of her throat as her body would allow. After that, he'd seemed incapable of anything outside of shaking breaths and barely stifled swears and simply gawking at her while he'd held the length of her hair like his life depended upon it.
No wonder he'd fallen asleep in class afterwards. With the way he'd gone on about it after he'd come, as she'd tucked him back into his trousers and done up his belt when he'd seemed unable to do much more than try to catch his breath, she'd been surprised he'd even gone to History of Magic. Really, she'd almost expected him to insist that they spend the rest of the day back in his bed—and she might have gone along with it in that moment, honestly. Telling him no when he'd looked at her with such shock and awe and love and longing? Next to impossible.
"Sirius said I'm the best woman for the job," she told James in the moments after all of that flashed through her mind again in several seconds, each so hot and intense that she blushed once again. "I can't imagine where he got that idea."
He smiled at her, the look slow and almost lazy but dangerous, as they walked down a flight of stairs on the sixth floor, ostensibly on patrol. It did little to quell her rising heat. "No idea," he said, squeezing her hand. "Wouldn't know a thing about it."
"I'm sure."
Well, whatever. Had she told Dorcas and Mary precisely what she'd planned to do over lunch, and then exactly what she'd done? Absolutely. It only seemed fair that he brag a little to Sirius if he wanted to—and he almost certainly wanted to and probably would, if he hadn't already.
"Pretty sure I owe you," he said casually as they entered the dimly-lit sixth floor corridor. He'd taken his wand from the back of his trousers and lit it with a simple, wordless twirl, but not for any real patrolling purpose. She saw that clearly written on his face when she glanced up at him, because he didn't even watch where he walked as he took her off into a smaller branch of the corridor's east wing. Instead, he stared at her—
No, he stared at her mouth, and that told her everything she needed to know without a single word necessary.
She licked her lips—a reflex, not a plan at all, but it should have been. He made a quiet sound in response, a sort of longing exhalation that he only caught after it happened. Laughter followed—soft and low and at himself—and she hoped her tone didn't give away how fucking weak the sound made her feel. "What do you mean?"
"Fuck off with that," he said, still chuckling. "Like you don't know. Do you just want to hear me say it?"
Honestly?
"Yes." His eyebrows shot up at her immediate answer, a surprise she didn't share, not even for a second. On things that could fuck off, bantering could fuck off, truly. She didn't have it in her to play their usual game of verbal foreplay, of taunting and teasing and trying to make the other break, not when she'd teetered just on the edge of cracking all day. "I love listening to you talk, but—especially when you talk dirty to me. You know that."
He stopped walking all at once, so abruptly that she nearly stumbled, but he held fast to her hand. "Yeah?" he asked. All laughter had vanished from his face, his jaw once again as tight as it had looked in the library. "So—what do you want to hear, Evans? Do you want to hear that you sucking me off in the library today was hotter than anything I've ever imagined, and that I've imagined everything when it comes to you? Do you want to hear that I can't stop thinking about it, like—fuck, like I'm obsessed, even past the way I normally think about you? Do you want to hear that even though I came so hard that my knees almost gave out, I started immediately thinking about how much I wanted you again? Because it's just like that with you. I never stop wanting you, love, and it's—sometimes it's worse after you do shit like suck me off in the library, because it just fries my brain. Do you have any idea—any idea—how fucking unreal you looked with my cock in your mouth, looking up at me like—"
"Oh, Christ, James—" The words flew from her mouth unplanned, and they snapped the strange, almost spell-like quality that had overtaken the corridor as her skin tingled and fire flooded her body and her breath came in so short and sharp that it ached in her chest. She reached for him but he acted first, jerking her towards him with such impatient roughness that it nearly hurt. Then he had her wrapped in his arms, almost crushed to him, bodies and mouths and every part intertwined until it felt like he enveloped her fully, and she couldn't think about anything else. She felt him move her with strong, purposeful steps, and then his hand went to cradle the back of her head mere seconds before he shoved her up against the wall. His hand cushioned the blow on her head, but the rest of her body bore the brunt, suddenly trapped between the hard lines of his body and the cold stone, overheating her front and freezing her back as her head spun at the slow, steady sweep of his tongue into her mouth.
His wand clattered to the ground, and that hand disappeared up her skirt, calloused fingers immediately between her thighs. "Yeah—you're going to keep saying that," he said, wrenching his mouth from hers so he could watch her face. She could feel his eyes there, dark and penetrating and full of need, even after she'd closed hers. "Lily, you were looking up at me like—like you couldn't fucking get enough of me, like you were drenched just from sucking me off, like—"
"I was." Her words came out breathless in comparison to the low, thick growl of his voice, a breathlessness that only increased when he slid his fingers along the satiny fabric of her knickers. "Fuck, I—of course I was. I love watching you lose your head over me. Your face—the way you looked—"
There weren't words that properly did it justice—not that she knew just then, anyway, because she'd lost the capacity for most words. Even if his hand hadn't danced a slow, teasing pattern just above her clit, she wasn't sure she would have managed to properly explain exactly what it did to her when he looked at her like he so often did in intimate moments—like she blew his mind, not just his cock; like he couldn't believe his luck; like he didn't want to even blink for fear of missing a single thing about her. Add into that the beautiful way he clenched his jaw and the taut lines of muscles and the perfect expression that he made right before he came, all flushed cheeks and furrowed brow—
"I would have gotten you off right there," he said, face ducking to her neck. His lips painted a slow, torturous path upwards, towards her ear. "I offered. I said—"
"I know. I know, baby." She did know, because she'd spent far too much of their afternoon classes thinking about the way he'd almost pleaded with her to let him touch her after he'd finally caught his breath in the library. He'd wanted to that morning, too, but with nowhere near the same fervor that had come over him during lunch. Her refusal that morning had seemingly lit a fire in him, and she'd seen remnants of those embers burning all through the day. In different moments in the hours that had passed, he'd looked at her with such clear and evident desire that she'd halfway expected their friends to start calling him on it. "I've been wet all day—"
He sucked in a breath, hot against her skin. "I knew it. Why—"
"I like making you wait."
That didn't sum it up, at least not properly. It didn't even begin to explain how her stomach had tensed with anticipation every time she'd caught him looking at her with such dark, blatant need, or how every time he'd touched her after that—his hand reaching for hers, his fingers brushing her hair, his arm around her waist—he'd sent a new flurry of desire rushing through her bloodstream. She'd seen all of that desire reflected right back at her in his face, and that? That was the sweetest torture she could imagine—wanting him, knowing he wanted her just as badly in return, but waiting to see who would crack first.
It was his fault, really, for challenging her so constantly and consistently, even way back before they'd become friends. Of course that need to challenge him lingered. How could it not?
He chuckled, his lips ghosting her ear. "You're such a fucking tease," he said, while his fingers offered their own teasing, finally, finally brushing against her clit in the faintest of caresses. "Such a fucking tease—but I love it. I love it. I always thought you were hot, Evans, but I had no idea that my beautiful, proper Head Girl thought about things like blowing me in the library. And then to see you actually do it—Merlin, I still can't believe—"
"Please take me somewhere and touch me. Please."
It came out quickly, almost all one word, and she heard the smile in his voice as he swore softly. "Fuck. Fuck, I—there's no way that's ever getting old." His teeth teased her earlobe, light and faint, in a way she liked to do to him because it often left him shivering. She felt a similar sensation crawl up her spine as he slid his fingers over her slit, the stroke slow and repetitive and never once dipping inside her knickers. "I'll touch you, love, but I'm doing it here. I'm going to take your knickers off right here in the corridor, and you're going to come on my fingers."
Harsh reality came flooding back in a flash.
"James—" she began, voice tight, and her eyes opened unwillingly. The corridor was entirely still and lit with only the dimmest of flickering lights, as well as his wand, the tip brilliantly illuminated at their feet. No portraits moved in their hangings, and the suit of armor on the wall across from them gleamed like an immobile, silent sentry.
But they were in a corridor, for Christ's sake, which seemed a lot more public than hidden amongst stacks of books in the library, and—
His fingers swirled atop her clit in a smooth, quick circle, and she heard herself say his name again, sharper than before and almost panicked. "James—" He groaned against her ear, low and hot, as hot as his body pressed against hers. "Oh, that—"
"Evans." He drew his head back sharply, gaze meeting hers with such intensity that she almost whimpered. When his hand stilled atop her knickers, she did whimper, and a muscle worked near his ear, like he clenched and unclenched his teeth. "Love—if you don't want—"
"Touch me," she said, and his eyes squeezed shut for a second. Under her hands, tension broke across his shoulders, as open relief washed over his body. "It wouldn't—it wouldn't matter where we were right now. We could be in the Great Hall in the middle of dinner and I'd beg you just the same. I've wanted you all day. I need—"
"Jesus Christ," he said hoarsely, her usual swear, and his hand left the back of her head to join his other underneath her skirt, pulling impatiently at her knickers. "I would fucking die if you ever did that, Lily—"
He had to know that by saying that, it pretty much guaranteed she would do it, right?
She didn't know. He looked past the capacity for conscious thought, at least complex thought past want and need, which echoed how she felt entirely. He watched with great, almost furious interest as her knickers fell down her thighs, and after a second spent staring at them on the stone floor—like he wanted to memorize the sight of them there, around her ankles and then off entirely—he flipped up the front of her skirt. "Oh, fucking hell," she heard him mutter, low and distinct, when he finally slid his fingers along the line from her clit to her entrance. "Oh, fucking hell—"
His fingers dipped inside her—shallow, at first, in much the way she sometimes barely took the tip of his cock inside her, teasing him while she straddled his lap. Every time, he made the most delicious noises with each faint rock of her hips, and she heard herself make a noise she'd pulled from him many times, a strangled, wordless plea caught somewhere between a moan and a sigh. "Baby, please—" she said, and it didn't take more than that. His eyes snapped to her face, and he drank in her expression for the pace of several of her pounding heartbeats, each one seemingly an eternity. Yet whatever he saw there convinced him, because he ducked his head to capture her mouth against his, and then he sank his fingers into her fully in one slow, fluid movement.
He'd kissed her to silence her. She caught that only after she swore into the pressure of his kiss, unable to stop herself, and heard him shush her just briefly as he caught her lower lip between his teeth in an imitation of the way she so often kissed him. "Don't make me take points from you," he said, his tone gentle and teasing and intimate, before he deepened the kiss and swallowed any way she might have responded.
She had no response anyway, not when his hand offered her everything she'd craved literally all day, his fingers curling and slithering inside her while his thumb caressed her clit with gentle strokes in just the way she'd taught him. When she'd walked him through exactly how to touch her not long before—weeks earlier, but somehow a lifetime, all at once —she'd never expected him to surpass her in skill, and certainly not as quickly as he had. But of course he'd be better at it than her, and almost immediately. Wasn't he just good at everything, and without even trying? That ease with life had fostered and then grown his stupid ego, but—
No, he really seemed to try with her. She saw that when he pulled away from her mouth, their kiss broken inelegantly, so he could step back from her a little—just mere inches, but enough that she missed the pressure of his body immediately. "Sorry," he said quickly, his cheeks already flushed but going a little redder still. "Sorry, just—the little noises you make—the way you feel—you're not making this easy. I told you, love—I owe you, and I don't want to get carried away until I know I've paid you back for how incredible you were this morning and this afternoon."
He meant it. He meant it clearly and deeply, and it sounded like it pained him and brought him joy all at once, the same feeling his fingers inspired in her. They worked cleverly, bringing her knees just under the point of buckling with each twist and roll and stroke. Still, it just wasn't enough, and it left her feeling somehow grateful and longing and tortured and fulfilled all at once.
"I love you," she said eventually, because nothing else could explain how she felt, and even that didn't seem like enough. They'd only started saying it a matter of days earlier, but it had already started to fall short.
"Evans—" His voice took on the panicky note that hers had held only minutes before. "Lily, you can't—you can't say that to me when I'm trying not to fuck you. Seriously, you—do you really not know what that does to me? Wait—you seriously don't?"
She had no idea how he caught it, not when she didn't even think it—at least not consciously. Her mind had shut down save for thoughts that centered around please please please, and it took her an embarrassingly long time to realize what he'd even asked her, let alone react to it. Yet he'd read her correctly, because when her brain finally did compute his inquiry, she truly had no idea what he meant. Sure, he liked hearing her say that she loved him, but—
"Fuck—whatever." He'd started to sweat a little, evident along his brow and on the back of his neck, where she'd buried her hands in his hair. "I'll tell you later. Come."
Her body—her stupid, traitorous body, entirely under his spell—listened before she even truly took in the command. Her muscles clenched around his fingers outside her control, and she dragged him closer to her, back into the space he'd tried to clear. "Baby—"
"Fuck," he repeated, hotter than before, the single syllable somehow broken even before it left his mouth. He pushed up against her hip, hard through the fabric of his trousers. "Fuck, you—fuck, you feel incredible." His eyes closed behind his glasses and they stayed that way, squeezed tight like he couldn't look at her any longer. "Come, Lily. I know you're there. Come on. Come, and then—there's a classroom right down the corridor that I'm taking you to, and I'm going to make you come again with my mouth. I don't care how long it takes. Fuck, you can take all night at that, Evans, because I can't get enough of the way you taste—"
"James—"
His hand clamped over her mouth the second she said his name, and she heard her voice echo up the empty corridor, sharp and pleading and unexpectedly loud.
His fingers between her thighs never faltered. If anything, his efforts redoubled the second his eyes snapped open, and he picked up speed with the circles atop her clit. "Yeah, that's why we're going somewhere else the second you come," he said, his eyes crinkling fondly. "I want to hear you say my name over and over—and you're going to, Lily, I promise you that—but not here. Look at me when you come. Don't close your eyes. Look at me, look at me, look at me—fucking—there, love. There—fuck, look at me—"
Any fondness dropped from his face all at once as she came, replaced by such an intense hunger that she whimpered into his palm just at the sight of his face, let alone at the heady pleasure that washed over her body, flooding her core and running down the length of her legs and up into her chest and her neck and face. It was all heat, thick and somehow beyond just temperature, and his body tensed along with hers and then sagged, heavy and solid, the second he felt her muscles go slack in release—all her muscles, throughout her entire body.
"Merlin," he muttered, his lips brushing against her hairline. "Merlin, I'm addicted to watching you come, you know that?" It sounded like an internal monologue spoken aloud, perhaps one he wasn't even aware that he revealed, but he looked suddenly a little more present as he removed his hand from across her mouth. "I—sorry, love." He opened and then closed his mouth, fingers still moving between her legs, but softer, slower. "Just—couldn't have Filch finding us."
Oh.
Oh, he hadn't even planned it, silencing her with the palm of his hand. He looked as if he hadn't even thought it through, and it had only occurred to him in those seconds after she came, like he'd been right there with her, out of his mind just because she was—
"I love you," she said again, and the worry cleared from his eyes that had just started to gather. "I really, really love you—"
He smiled, slow and steady until it nearly cracked his jaw. "Yeah?" he asked, and he stopped smiling just long enough to tip her chin further back so he could kiss her. "You know, I—" He broke off suddenly, head turning so quickly on his neck that it wouldn't have surprised her to hear it snap, and then pulled away from her all at once. "C'mon," he said, bending to scoop up his wand—and then, a second later, bending a second time to pick her knickers up as well, which he shoved into his pocket. "You're looking a little too pleased for anyone to find us out here after curfew."
Well, she looked a little too pleased and he sported a very obvious erection, which she thought was rather more telling, but he didn't need to hear that to know she thought it. She caught it in the look he threw her over his shoulder, all good-natured teasing, before he took her hand and pulled her down the hall.
She heard what he'd already picked upon a second later: footsteps, probably drawn from her very real, very embarrassing inability to keep her voice down before his palm had fixed things for her neatly.
It took him two tries to get the classroom door unlocked, but that he managed on the second time surprised her in itself. She'd watched him struggle over much less complex magic during other heated moments with her, and after less than watching her come in a public corridor, something he'd clearly very much liked for the risk in addition to his admitted addiction. She whispered as much to him after he shoved her into the darkened classroom, a hand on her arse to usher her before him, and she heard him chuckling in the dark as he fiddled with casts to lock and silence the door behind them.
"You already got me off twice today, love," he said, and he succeeded in locking the door on his first cast. "Call me crazy, but it's a little easier to keep my head about me after that."
"So if I kept this up, what, you'd finally have the presence of mind to get your shit together?"
His laughter continued, soft and warm and pressed against her mouth when he reached for her again, his hand immediately drawn to her hair. "Absolutely, Evans," he said, and he painted a familiar path of kisses across her face—her mouth, each of her cheeks, her forehead, and her nose—that he'd first taken up in the initial weeks after they'd started dating. Her heart had nearly burst the first time he'd done it, in no small part because he'd only seemed to catch himself afterwards. He'd looked briefly, undeniably embarrassed in the flush of his cheeks and his inability to meet her eyes, like he'd revealed something deep and tender that he hadn't intended on sharing. "You have no idea how well-behaved and responsible I'd be."
Right. Sure. Like he even had that capability.
"C'mon," he added a moment later, and he again placed a hand on her arse to usher her in front of him, a common move in recent days he'd started doing often once he'd realized he could get away with it. "I want to see how wet I made you."
"Ego," she accused as heat rose in her chest, surely flushing her skin, although the darkness of the classroom mercifully cloaked that from his view. Still, she let him guide her towards a desk—because it was his birthday and so she'd give him what he wanted, she told herself, even though the promise in his voice made anticipation crest anew in her insides. "I swear, Potter—"
"I love that, you know." It sounded like he'd abruptly put all banter aside, a sudden flip, as they so often flashed back and forth between joking and serious and back again. He pushed her up onto the desk, lifting her body with supreme ease, and then dragged her as close to the edge as possible so he could fit himself between her legs. His body met hers neatly, like it belonged there, and his fingers fumbled at her tie for only a second, before he picked up the feel of it and unwound it from her neck in several smooth motions. "When you sound all bossy and call me Potter—I love that. When you said it in the library this afternoon, I seriously could have come right then." He gave a quiet snort of laughter. "If you hadn't already gone down on me once, I probably would have. It's fucking unfair, how you don't even have to do anything—"
"James, I sucked your cock in the library." He laughed into her neck, having dropped his face to hunt down her pulse point as his fingers busied themselves with the buttons on her shirt. "I wouldn't call that doing nothing."
"Fair." His teeth scraped her neck, slow and almost taunting, as her shirt fell open and he drew his hands inside. They felt hot against her skin—not warm, but hot—lifting goosebumps as he traced her sides with gentle caresses, the rough calluses on his palms scratching pleasantly. "Merlin, you're perfect," he added a second later as he cupped her breasts in his hands, his thumbs each toying with a nipple through the thin lace of her bra. Her head fell back, and he gave a long, low groan against her neck. "Lily—"
She dragged him closer as he pushed her open shirt down but not off her shoulders, just far enough that he could slide the straps of her bra down too. His mouth joined his hands all at once, stubble scraping, tongue sweeping, teeth nipping, and she gasped and then swore, both reactions entirely outside of her control, as her legs tightened on either side of his hips. "James—" she pleaded, unable to think much else aside from his name, as her legs wrapped around his waist in a desperate attempt to get him closer to her. He swore against her breast, the word as hot as his breath, and she shifted her hips, rolling against the length of his cock in a desperate attempt to get some sort of attention to her core—
"Oh, fuck," he hissed, and he altered the angle of their bodies all at once, suddenly pressing her back further onto the desk so he could rock his hips against hers in return, and with further pressure than she could achieve underneath him. "Fucking—holy shit, Evans. You're so wet that I can feel it through my fucking trousers—"
He wasn't about to change that by talking like that, or by the slow, sinful rock of his body against hers, or by cradling the back of her head yet again so he could lean her back further, until she sprawled flat on her back and he loomed over her, the muscles of his arms evident even through the thin cotton of his button-down. The latter had her pulling impatiently at his shirt, untucking it with whole fistfuls pulled from his belt, and her voice shook outside of her control as she pleaded, "I need your shirt off, baby, please—"
His hand underneath her head migrated to cup her cheek, and his thumb ghosted across her lips in the lightest of caresses. "Tell me why," he said, voice tight. She could taste herself on his thumb, nearly as familiar on her tongue as the taste of him, and she didn't think about what happened next. Without a second thought, she drew his thumb into her mouth, just as she had with his cock that afternoon, and that morning too.
His entire body froze, tighter than his muscles had seized at any other time that day, his eyes widening behind his glasses until she saw more white than iris, his jaw falling open in one swift motion—
"Fuck." He swore so loudly that she physically jumped, heart leaping in her chest, and then he wrenched himself away from her with such strength that her legs almost hurt as they fell from around his waist. "What the fuck, Lily—"
He sounded nearly angry, or perhaps broken, in those two sharp sentences and in everything that then followed. He dragged her back up into a seated motion, mouth pressed furiously against hers, and his hands followed that same furious speed as he yanked the shirt from her shoulders, unhooked her bra, and threw both someone on the floor. His glasses followed, torn from his face in the few seconds he could spare to stop kissing her, and then he had her mouth open under his again, the attention of his tongue greedy and aggressive, like he sought to draw the taste of her from her mouth into his. On each exhale, he groaned into the kiss, a sound further dragged out when he located the zipper on the side of her skirt with fingers that had begun to shake. After a handful of fumbling seconds, she felt the muscles of his arms contract as he clutched the fabric on either side of the zipper, and then the skirt gave way—not just the zipper, but the seam around it, splitting the skirt nearly in two.
"I want you," she said, the words harshly panted as he pulled back from her to yank the ruined skirt down her legs. His fingers might have shook, but her voice trembled, far past the point of any attempt at masking it. "Christ, James, I want you—"
"Oh, you're going to have me," he promised, dark and low and in a voice that trembled a little too, just the barest amount. "But I—fuck, I told you, I owe you. I owe you, and you're going to come against my mouth first."
"It's not about—" owing me, she meant to say, but the insistence died abruptly as he pulled his shirt up over his head, as he'd started taking it off of late in the most hurried of moments when they had little time. She'd wanted to unbutton it herself, to drag her mouth down each inch with every button and taste every fraction of skin she could find, but the abrupt nature of it killed that desire in her throat. Suddenly, she could hardly even think, could hardly even see, at least of nothing outside of her stupidly beautiful man with his broad shoulders and strong chaser's arms and rough, calloused hands. She made some truly unreasonable noise, some sort of strangled whine, as he turned to drag a nearby chair closer to the desk.
"I know, love," he said, the words short but somehow sweet. "It's not even about owing you." Seated in front of her, like a student drawn up to learn, he rested a hand flat against her stomach and pressed for the briefest of moments, until she gave in and leaned back so he could spread her thighs. "It's selfish, honestly. I just want to make you come again—and, fuck, I really want to taste you—"
"James—" His name escaped her lips as the stubble of his cheeks brushed against her inner thighs.
"—but I'm also hoping you'll let me turn you over after this, because—I love watching your arse, you know, and after the way you came last time—"
She cried out, broken, frustrated, dripping as he brushed his mouth against her clit, and wound her hands into the back of his hair, desperate to pull him closer. He'd only first broached the subject of shagging her from behind in recent days—very recent days, within the past week. The first time, it had gone okay, although he'd clearly liked it more than she had and he'd ended up finishing her with his hand. But the second—
She still had no idea what he'd done the second time, except that it had just worked, worked far beyond logic and anything she'd expected and unlike anything else he'd ever done. He obviously hadn't anticipated it either, evident in the sudden strain that had overtaken every part of him when it had suddenly all just clicked for her, strain present from his body to his voice to his words, and he just as obviously hadn't stopped thinking about it ever since.
Her patience broke.
"James—shut up." It came out more snapped than anything else. He'd pushed her past the point of even attempting to soften the blow. "Fuck, you're the worst. Look, just—I know I said I like it when you talk to me, but there are limits, you idiot, and you've found them. Please shut up and—"
He laughed, and she opened eyes she didn't recall closing to see him smiling up at her, his expression the entire opposite of her words—shining with warmth and sweetness and fondness, truly loving, as his eyes roved each inch of her face like he committed every last bit of her to memory. "I love you," he said, still chuckling, his voice heavy with meaning. "Seriously—I love you so much, Lily."
That was all fine and good, and she absolutely wanted to hear it at literally any other time except just then, because he apparently didn't love her enough to give her what she wanted—
Then his head ducked between her legs with absolutely no warning, vanishing his face from view, and the rest of the world vanished swiftly afterwards.
She cried out, hardly feeling as her hair pulled with the way her head rocked back against her will. Truly, she couldn't feel anything in that moment except for the overwhelming heat of his mouth and the twist of his tongue that he delved inside her, and the moan he gave on contact that sent shivers up her spine. Goosebumps sprang to her legs as sweat gathered along her hairline, cold and warmth battling at opposite ends of her body and waging a war where they met at her middle. He ran his tongue over her repeatedly—along her folds, further and deeper inside her, swirling in a slow, teasing form that ended up below her clit as he pulled her closer to the edge of the desk, his hands reaching underneath her arse to open her legs wider, like he couldn't get enough of her.
Wasn't that exactly what he'd said about her, and the way she'd acted while on her knees in the library that afternoon? Fuck, she'd certainly felt that way, egged on by even the faintest of his stifled reactions and the way he'd all but stared at her, as if too stunned to remember to even blink.
She, on the other hand, had her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth thrown open, any attempt at holding herself back gone before she could even try it out. "James—" she begged, pulling at his hair, desperate to bring him higher, up where she needed him most. "Christ, James, please—"
His hands contracted against her arse, and he moaned again, dragging her legs up to drape over his shoulders. "I love that," he said, voice low and vibrating against her. The tip of his tongue danced against her clit, finally just circling in one slow, lazy motion that trapped everything—her voice, her pleas, her breath—at the back of her throat. "No—come on, love." The pressure increased, just the tiniest amount, still not enough to give her what she wanted. "Pull my hair—talk to me—ride my face—come on, Lily—"
Something in her snapped abruptly, and she pulled him towards her harder than before, thighs tensing on either side of his face. It turned out to be exactly what he wanted, evident in the low rumble in his chest as he in turn gave her exactly what she wanted, his tongue picking up the smooth circles he'd drawn upon her clit in the corridor that had made her come.
"James—" His name had almost started to lose all meaning, but it flashed in her mind repeatedly, the only sensical part of the world as everything else exploded into nothingness. His hands left her arse all at once, and she felt his fingers tease her entrance, slow and gentle and shallow under his jaw, which somehow broke through the haze that had overtaken her mind. "Oh, fuck, please use your fingers. Please, please, please—"
He acquiesced without pause, as he made a noise against her that rang with such thick desire that she could have drowned in it. She felt like she could drowned in him, all of him, as his fingers slid into her in a way she'd never felt before him, twisting and curling and sending her closer to the edge—the edge of the desk, where her body shifted of its own accord; the edge of climax, where she approached with each relentless trace of his tongue against her clit.
"Look at me," he demanded after her throat had started to physically hurt from the intensity of her cries. He breathed heavily between her thighs. "I need to see your face, Evans—"
He sounded like he did truly need it, the words almost slurred together with something far past desire, and she obeyed him without thinking. Her eyes flew open, and she had to force herself to focus enough for her vision to clear, but he came into view a second later. His mouth glistened wetly, and he dropped his lips back between her legs to offer a brief, intense suck to her clit that sent her fingers tightening so hard in his hair that her nails bit into her palms outside of her own control. "James—" she begged, because it was a beg, and she couldn't conjure any other way to sum up exactly how it all felt and what she needed.
His teeth ran lightly over her clit, the sensation so strange—pleasure, pain, something in between—that she gasped. In response, he jerked back, a question suddenly sharpening his features. "Did—" he began, apology lacing even the single word.
She didn't need an apology. What she needed was his mouth, and she told him that in several short, sharp words that had his expression clearing and a smile tugging across his face.
"Yeah?" His fingers had never stopped moving between her legs, but they worked with renewed purpose as he brushed a kiss to her thigh that made her breath catch in her throat. "Tell me you're going to come soon, love. Say it, and—"
"Jesus Christ, James, you know that—" she snapped, because how could he not know that she teetered on the edge? He played her body like a skilled musician, knew the ins and outs with astounding accuracy, and if she could feel the pressure mounting inside of her, she knew he could certainly feel it around his fingers and against his tongue.
"Say it anyway."
"I'm—" Her words halted abruptly, broken off sharply as he curled his fingers inside her, like he just knew that she planned to hurl something dark and biting his way. She did plan to hurl something dark and biting his way, because she could hardly stand the slow, sinful movement of his mouth across her stomach, from one hip to the next, so close but so far away from what she wanted. Yet he shattered all of that with a single movement, one stupidly simple but that did something truly astounding to her body. Her head fell back again, the muscles of her neck collapsing weakly as those in her thighs snapped to attention, and she just made out the swear he pressed into her hip bone, although she felt it more than heard it, her own cry drowning him out. "Fuck, baby—fuck, fuck, fuck—"
He shifted against her, and she heard his belt jingle, like he sought to undo the loops with one hand. "I'm inside you the second you come," he said, the pace of his breaths as unsteady as hers felt. "Can I—love, can I turn you over?"
For several seconds—or minutes or hours or days, she had no way of knowing—she couldn't respond. She couldn't respond because his tongue sought her clit again, and the fresh wave of pleasure that crashed over her body left her incapable of forming words. The ability for speech rushed back all at once, the second he curled his fingers again. "Oh—" The exclamation hurt her throat—no, her breath hurt her throat, as she heard each frantic pant leave her lungs. "James, you—fuck—you can do whatever you want to me."
She hadn't planned the words. She hadn't planned anything about her actions—what she said; the breathless, pleading way she said it; the increased pressure of her hands on the back of his head, as she just needed more of him in some indiscernible way. Despite her lack of planning, she still reaped the benefits. He sucked in a breath against her, almost choking on air, and then he made a sound similar to what he'd given in the library that afternoon, a sort of plaintive whine that made her insides twist. "Jesus fuck, Evans—" he swore, and his free hand slammed down on the desktop so hard that, if she'd had even a little more presence of mind, she would have jumped. "You can't fucking say that. I mean—it's not fucking fair—"
"Baby, please—"
His hand closed around her hip, and he pulled her closer to the edge of the desk, so far that she would have toppled off if not for the balance of her legs across his shoulders. After that—
It no longer would have mattered if he'd told her to look at him. Suddenly his mouth was somehow everywhere, tongue joining his fingers to thrust inside her, then twisting around her clit in tandem with the sudden addition of his thumb, the pressure hot and insistent and almost burning. It was all so much that she could do little more than squeeze her eyes shut and try to breathe and not to scream, and she only just managed the latter. The repetition of his name came from her mouth anyway, over and over outside of her control, and she could feel him groan against her each time, the sensation pooling in her stomach and traveling up into her chest and running down each of her limbs. Pleasure built, and then built further still, cresting so high it almost hurt, before—
She came, and it seemed sudden after buildup that had left her on the brink for what had felt like consecutive years of sweet, horrible torture. Tension peaked in her body, muscles pulled even more taut than in the corridor before, and then broke abruptly, her body collapsing uselessly, from the steady pull of her fingers in his hair to her legs on either side of his face. Normally he would have held her there, intent on dragging every last moan and whimper and use of his name out of her with his tongue, but the second electricity shot through her body, he jerked back from her and stood so quickly that she cried out in a new way, one borne of loss rather than pleasure. She heard the chair skitter uselessly behind him, and she opened her eyes in time to watch it rock onto the back two legs before righting itself again. Her gaze went automatically to his face, and any protest died in her throat.
"Lily, I—fuck, I'm sorry, but I need you," he said quickly, the words rushed and panicky and entirely unnecessary, because she saw that need reflected in his face. His expression had gone once again sharp, almost predatory, as he reached for her hand and pulled her up so he could flip her over and all but throw her across the desk. His hand bore the brunt of the collision, pressed flat to her stomach, and she could feel every single muscle in his arm held unbearably tight under his skin. He shook just slightly. "Tell me if I'm too rough," he added, and she heard his trousers fall to the floor. "Tell me, but—oh, fucking hell, the way you look right now—"
His voice weakened by the end, like the sight of her had knocked whatever breath remained right out of his lungs, and she glanced over her shoulder on instinct.
Her own lungs ceased to function in short order.
"You're beautiful," she said—no, blurted out, perhaps, that same thing he'd told her over and over again for months, but she'd never said in return. She'd told him he was fit—and probably too often for it not to go straight to his head—but beautiful? Never once.
Still, he was beautiful, and she couldn't get enough of the sight of him, his body all hard muscle that she could feel shaking against her, his arm bulging with tension as he freed his cock from his pants, his expression somehow slack but tight all at once while his eyes roved every square inch of her body with abject wonder. He was so beautiful that it twisted her heart and made her head almost pound and left her body unbearably hot—
He caught her gaze, and he whimpered quietly, his forehead creasing painfully. "Evans—" His voice came out choked. "Lily, love—please—"
"Yes—" she said, and he didn't need anything else. He thrust into her, and he swore at the exact same time that she cried out, although his voice overpowered hers almost entirely.
"Fuck," he said, and she could feel him twitching inside her for a second before he pulled out and thrust into her again, harder than before. "Fuck, Evans, you feel—I've wanted inside you all day—" The desk shifted underneath her at the force of his hips, and he bent over her further, clutching the rim of the desk so he could hold it in place. "Merlin, just—give me a second. Give me a second, and—fuck—I'll find it."
He didn't specify what 'it' was, but he didn't have to. He moved behind her, altering the angle of his cock experimentally—chest momentarily against her back; knees bent, pressing into her legs; hips twisted, tilting up—as he sought the way she liked him best. It all came together suddenly, like things shifted abruptly into place, as he hit a spot that left her gripping the desk and springing her legs back together to cross at the ankle in an attempt to increase the pressure inside her.
"There," she said, the word flying free from her mouth, but he'd already felt it.
"I know, I—fuck, I know." His hand on her stomach dipped lower, pushing her legs back apart. "Not—not just yet, love." His mouth sought her hairline, breath searing her skin as his tongue danced along the back of her neck. "I want—I really want to enjoy this, I want to last, and I won't be able to if you're squeezing me like that. Merlin, just watching you come once had me fucking throbbing, but—the way you looked and sounded while riding my face—and the way you taste—"
She was gone. She was gone, entirely out of her head, floating somewhere near the ceiling as his thrusts rocked her body with such intensity that the desk rattled underneath her, each one harder than any way he'd ever dared shag her even in the final throes of passion. Sobs wracked her lungs, and it actually felt a bit like she cried as she pressed her face into the desk, condensation gathering on the woodgrain. "No!" The protest broke from her mouth the second he froze against her, pulling his chest from her back as if he meant to stop entirely. "No, keep—James, please keep—"
"Oh." He spoke on the exhale of a single breath. "It's not—is it too hard? I can—"
"No, no, no, it's exactly—baby, you feel incredible. I need your cock, I need you just like that, please—"
"Holy shit." His voice broke with strain, and suddenly he was on her again, with none of the experimentation he'd needed the first time. He just knew exactly how to angle himself that time around, even without the way she said his name in response. "Holy—fucking—shit," he grunted, skin slapping against hers. "Again, Evans. Say that—fuck, say that about my cock again. Do you have any idea—any idea—how many times I've thought about shagging you just like this? How many times I've imagined you begging me for it? Keep—love, please keep—"
They were begging each other, his voice just as cracked with screaming need as hers, pleas passed back and forth in a way that might have made her laugh if he hadn't overrun every single part of her—body, mind, and soul—with the overwhelming pleasure he dragged from her body. "Please make me come," she said, and he shoved her legs back together, his hands rough and impatient. Heat rushed through the pit of her stomach, friction building, as she squeezed her thighs together for each delicious bit of pressure. "Oh, thank you—thank you—"
He'd spoken those words teasingly in recent days, ever since he'd thanked her after the first time they'd had sex, simply because he hadn't seemed to know what else to do. It had become a running joke between them, but, no matter the intensity of the climax that he'd given her in return, she'd never before understood that he might have meant it when he'd expressed gratitude in intimate moments. It had never even occurred to her before, not like it did as he seemingly gave her everything her body needed more desperately than it needed oxygen.
He groaned, the sound low and needy. "Evans, you can't thank me right now. Not when you—fuck, not when you look like this and sound like this and feel like this. It's—oh, Merlin, that could make me come."
"Not yet. Not until—"
"Can you? Come again?" His voice broke again. "You've never—you've never come three times. Twice, but—even that—not often—"
"Yes. Yes, I can, but you—James, you must feel—"
"Of course I fucking feel it." He bent again, teeth scraping at her neck, body melded to hers. "You feel fucking unreal, Lily. If I hadn't already come twice today—fuck, curtains. There's no way I'd last with how wet and tight and incredible—"
She whimpered, the sound seeming to echo out against the desktop, as her hand sought the back of his head, holding him to her. "Use your teeth. Use your teeth and I—I'll heal it. I just—I need more, James, please—"
"Christ." He bit underneath her ear, tongue sucking the spot after she tugged at his hair, her arm pulling on its own accord. "I'll give you anything you want, love. Name it. Name it and I'll do it."
"Your fingers." She didn't know where the request came from, not even after she heard herself say it, but he followed through before she could figure it out. His hand fumbled between her legs, fingers shaking slightly, and that tremble shot up the length of his arm after he located her clit with his index and middle fingers, stroking slowly. "Oh—oh, James—James, James, James—"
His body coiled over hers, muscles clenched so tight that every bit of him seemed to vibrate against her. "I love you," he said thickly, and she heard herself whimper again while her head seemed to physically swim. "I love you. Fuck, I love you, and I need you to come. Please, love. Please—please come, so I—"
"Tell me. Tell me to come."
She didn't know where that came from either, but he didn't question it. "Come, Evans," he said, harsher than the begging he'd pressed against her neck, and—
Pressure crested, snapped, and the world exploded behind her eyelids.
"Yes," he said, the sound all sweet relief, and she felt him tip over the edge into oblivion too, losing himself inside her as her muscles spasmed around him outside of her control and her knees buckled and she heard herself sound like she sobbed yet again. "Lily, Lily—holy shit, love—"
Moments later, his body gave out too, slumping against hers with his full weight. He held her there, trapped between himself and the desk.
She didn't mind it, truly. It felt like she might never move again.
He moved her eventually, stirring sluggishly against her, righting himself, and then collapsing back into the chair he'd previously occupied. He pulled her with him, down into his lap, and she went willingly. Under her ear, his heart hammered frantically in his chest. "What did you just do?" she asked, and he laughed breathlessly against her hairline, where he'd taken to brushing the same faint, repetitive kisses he'd started in the corridor.
"That good?" A hint of his old arrogance crept into his tone.
Well, whatever. He'd at least earned the obvious stroke to his ego, and it was his birthday, after all. She'd give it to him. "Yes. That good."
"Mmm." She could hear the smile in the low, pleased rumble in his chest. "Good. I still don't think I properly paid you back, though, because—fucking hell, love. There aren't words for today." His fingers reached under her chin, the pressure soft and stroking as he tipped her head back to look at her face, and his eyes sought hers intimately. "Wait until your birthday next year. Just wait."
Next year.
Where would they be next year? Out of Hogwarts, and presumably together—he certainly sounded sure about that, and she couldn't envision a future outside of him either—but where? He'd have signed with the Arrows, probably, and she'd…what? Have just finished up her first term of training at St. Mungo's? Have worked six months in some Ministry department that Slughorn had set up?
She'd only ever known the wizarding world in school. It had come with its issues and flaws and problems, but the thought of facing reality outside the safety of the castle walls terrified her.
He didn't look terrified. His eyes scanned every feature on her face, his expression warm and soft and—
Safe. As safe as Hogwarts. Safer, really.
They'd be fine, as long as they were together. She didn't doubt that for a moment.
"We need to head back up," she said as he caressed the curve of her cheek. "Sirius will be waiting, and you know how he does at that. Besides, I'm leaking cum all over your leg—"
He snorted quietly. "It's my cum, Evans. That doesn't bother me. Let me hold you." He clearly didn't plan to give her a choice, as his arms settled more securely around her body, cradling her to him.
Well, again, it was his birthday. She rested her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes, her mind beautifully, blissfully blank, a true rarity. "Happy birthday, baby," she said, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck. "I hope it was a good one."
He snorted again, softer than before, and exhaled against her hair. "It was the best fucking day of my life, love." It was all dramatics and exaggeration and intensity—but, then again, so was James, and he spoke so earnestly that she believed him fully.