Don't Look Back
- 30 -
Pride / Fools
His breath hitches.
His body goes still and his fingers twitch beneath hers, almost as though he's struggling to decide whether to yank his hand back or grasp hold. Squeeze away some of that tension she can physically feel pulsing between his thighs.
But it's the look in his eyes that makes her sit back. Pleading and helpless and for a moment so young — so impossibly young and inexperienced that it's almost frightening.
This has to be his decision, she realizes.
She's done everything in her power to line him up at the target. Sanded the bow. Positioned his arm and stated his aim, all the while whispering her many encouragements. But he must be the one to release the arrow.
And she thinks he knows it too.
Slowly, she extricates herself from his lap, lifting her hand from his and doing her best to ignore the way his cut breath makes her heart race. She slides back on her palms, retreating to her side of the bed amidst the quiet rustle of bed sheets and nothing else. The firelight flickers across his face as he watches, wordless.
Wordless, but not thoughtless.
—what is she—
—wait—
—please—
—fucking ruining this—
—give up on me—
—don't—
—fucking idiot, wake up and fucking do something—
Silently, he works himself into a frenzy, chest heaving with each breath. And when the silence expands too far, she can't help but ask.
"Why are you so afraid of me?"
Malfoy's brow creases — a movement that's half pride, half uncertainty. "I'm not afraid..." he murmurs.
—I'm terrified—
She takes a breath and holds it, trying to analyze the timbre of his thoughts. Trying to discern whether these are nerves or whether he well and truly doesn't want this. But then something tense and sickly sweet throbs through her — all at once, forcing the breath out. And her eyes flit down, catching his hand as it flexes, groping himself for a fraction of a second before releasing again.
When her gaze snaps back to his, he groans — either because he's been caught or because it feels good. A bit of both, she thinks.
It's enough.
Fingers trembling, she forces out one more deep breath before reaching for the top button of her blouse. Knows as she frees it that she shouldn't be nervous. Not about this. No — they've already done this. He's already seen everything.
But it's different now. Something more than a means to an end.
A choice, this time.
And they both recognize the significance of that button coming undone. She senses it through the bond, making quick work of the rest if only not to lose her nerve.
He watches her slide the shirt off her shoulders like startled prey watches a hunter — or is it the other way around? She's not sure she'll ever learn the difference between hunger and fear when it comes to the look in Malfoy's eyes.
In the end, it doesn't matter. His thoughts give him away.
—happening now? Fuck—
—looks so soft—
—what do I—
—fuck...
Lifting the flimsy bralette over her head proves easier in the face of it, and Malfoy makes a quiet sound in the back of his throat as she tosses it away. She can feel his fingers twitch.
Exhaling, she rests her palms at her sides, trying not to think about how she looks or what he thinks. Trying not to think about how cold the air feels on her bare chest. There's less weight to her voice when she speaks this time, chastened by the exposure.
"Are you sure you aren't afraid?"
—oh, Merlin—
His throat bobs as he swallows and nods, eyes fixed below her throat and doing nothing to hide it.
She steels herself. "Will you help me with my skirt, then?"
Heat washes through him, bond forcing a flush to her face to mirror his.
"What?" he breathes. He knows she's more than capable of removing it herself, but he also knows that isn't the point she's making.
Shifting her feet against the sheets, she leans back a little on her palms and raises her eyebrows. "Will you help me?"
—fucking rip it apart if I—
—control myself—
—keeps fucking testing me—
Against the rough current of his mind, he sits forward slowly. Shifts up onto his knees and then leans carefully over her thighs to reach for the waistband.
"Sometimes..." Her voice falters, and she has to clear her throat. "Sometimes the zipper gets stuck."
—no it fucking doesn't—
"No it doesn't," he huffs, eyes downcast as trembling fingers find the zipper in question.
—torturing me—
—fucking hell—
—just stop fucking shaking—
Somehow, he manages to grip it tightly enough to pull down, separating the metal teeth along her outer thigh at an excruciating pace — the loudest sound in the room. She breathes in and he breathes out, both going deathly still in that moment after it reaches the bottom.
A fractious pause, and then Malfoy seems to give himself a jolt. Hooks his fingers under the hem and starts to drag the fabric down along her thighs. Her heart pounds in her chest, seemingly faster with every inch, and when the skirt reaches her knees and he's able to slip it free, she can't help but search his thoughts for—
— please, no...
It makes her pulse stutter — the sudden, overwhelmingly despairing tone of it. And when she finds his eyes, still fixed on her newly exposed skin, it's not hunger or fear she sees.
—Merlin, what did I—
—worse than—
—no. Fucking hell, no—
"Malfoy..." she stammers, one hand reaching for him instinctively, but it's like he doesn't hear her. And without warning, he suddenly takes hold of her waist and leverages his strength, flipping her onto her stomach.
She gasps against the pillow her face gets pressed into, immediately pushing up onto her elbows.
But he doesn't hold her down.
Doesn't do anything, really, despite what the excited spark in her gut might've suggested. Just hovers there, staring at the backs of her thighs. And she forgets to feel self-conscious, even stripped to nothing but her pants, once the tips of his fingers trail over the scars. Scars she's traced before — she knows the angles.
Scars he hasn't seen yet.
Her Glamour must've faded.
"Malfoy," she murmurs again, tone cautious as she tries to look at him over her shoulder. "Don't—"
"They healed so badly." His voice is a rasp. Broken in more than one place. And even feeling the way the rage in his gut curls inward — in towards himself — she can't help but wonder.
Swallowing thickly, she rests her chin on the pillow and fixes her eyes on the headboard, asking the semi-darkness. "Do you think they're ugly?"
That fury burns hotter — something almost like hatred coiling in his stomach.
—Merlin fucking help me—
—no, I—
—sick in the head—
—monster—
Her fingers twist in the fabric of the pillowcase. "What is it?"
He breathes out slowly. Through his nose, like he's trying to keep a handle on himself. "I don't want to say it out loud."
All at once, she feels her trepidation give way to curiosity. Instinct takes over.
Then don't.
They haven't spoken like this in a long while, and the way he tenses up suggests he forgot they could.
Tell me what you're thinking.
His fingers hesitate halfway through their second trace of the scars.
It's vile, comes his reply at last — and she wonders why she somehow finds it encouraging.
You've said vile things to me before. Many times.
Never like this.
She resists the urge to turn around and look at him.
Malfoy, I want to know.
Shakily, he exhales, and his fingers trace all the way down to the edges of the scars. Pause there, warm where they rest.
It's — it's not me thinking it. It's this fucking parasite, I know it is. It's the wolf. But I...
She waits in the silence, struggling not to hold her breath.
I just — the first thing that fucking surfaced in my mind was pride.
Pride? she echoes, toneless.
Some deformed fucking instinct is trying to convince me that these scars mean you belong to me.
Her grip tightens against the pillow.
He's right, she should be disgusted. She remembers the white-hot agony of those talons carving her up like it was yesterday. Will probably never forget it. Her scars are marks of survival — of freedom, at least from death. Not of ownership. And yet the first words out of her mouth are—
"Why would you need scars for that?"
Malfoy's touch disappears.
"What?" The word is barely audible.
She puts it in simple terms and tries not to overthink. "Like you said, I've just bonded our flesh. You don't need scars to prove I belong to you."
It's like the needle of a turntable slips in his brain, sending the same two words spinning and spinning.
—to me, to me, to me—
She wonders if he hears the same words swirling in her own head. Prays he doesn't and clears her throat.
"If it were up to me, I would belong to no one. But this magic is beyond either of us." She can no longer justify lying in a position so exposed, and she tries once more to rise up onto her elbows. "This is the hand we were dealt—"
Malfoy's hand suddenly flattens against her lower back. Tense and strong. He presses hard and — yes. Now he's holding her down.
A moment of unbearable silence. She can hear own blood pumping, pulse relentless in her temples.
"...Malfoy?" she whispers.
The pressure of his hand suddenly softens, palm smoothing out and spreading across the small of her back. It's a curious touch now, not a barricade. Like he's trying to map something out on her flesh with his fingertips.
What, she's not sure. As far as she knows, there are no scars there.
"You have freckles," Malfoy announces suddenly in a gruff voice. An answer to whatever question he heard inside her head. "That's what I'm looking at. I didn't know you had freckles."
Neither did she. She doesn't normally stare at her lower back in the mirror.
"Do you—"
"I like them," he says quietly, cutting her off.
The blush still makes its way onto her face, but strangely enough she finds herself fighting back a laugh. Because it's silly — bordering on ridiculous — that the first time he admits to liking something about her, it's this. The first time without it slipping out in a blind rage. Or exploding across the bond in scattered fragments.
A real compliment, for once, and it's this.
"Well." She does laugh. Can't help it. "At least that's one thing."
Malfoy doesn't laugh. His questing touch slows. Grows sleepy — almost drunken, fingers dragging across her skin.
"There are other things."
"...Oh?" She doesn't sound as calm as she'd like, and when his fingertips suddenly trail across the waistband of her underwear, bold palm caressing her backside, she only just manages to trap the surprised squeak in the back of her throat.
His touch is warm. Vibrant. Tingles almost like an electric current runs through it.
But then he takes it away, the same way he always does, inhaling sharply and suddenly growing flustered. She feels the panic seize him across the bond. Feels his hands tangle in his hair as he sweeps it back off his forehead.
"I..." he stumbles, shame coursing through the words. "I have no idea what I'm doing."
His thoughts are a whirlwind. Indecision and self-abuse.
—good for nothing—
—thinks I'm pathetic—
—if I do it wrong—
In the face of it, she gathers a deep breath and closes her eyes. If he were using the bond the way he should, he'd know the last word she'd use is 'pathetic.' Clearly, the communication is too one-sided.
Tucking her chin into the pillow, she sets that breath free and concentrates.
It's easier to send thoughts than images — but she knows it's possible. She's done it before, by mistake.
Determined, she opens her mind to the bond. Wide as she can. And she does her best to think of nothing but what she wants in this moment. What would feel good. What she'd ask him to do, if she could find the words.
She pictures him sweeping the hair over her shoulder, exposing the flesh between her shoulder blades — imagines his fingernails might graze her skin as he does it. Pictures him leaning down, the gust of his breath warm against her. Pictures his lips finding her pulse point. The way it would make her gasp. The chill that would run through her.
Malfoy's silence — his stillness — suggests she's succeeded.
"That's what you want from me?" he whispers a moment later.
A strange shyness seizes her for a fraction of a second, and she nods against the pillow in favor of admitting it aloud. She's admitted enough already.
He exhales roughly, as though he's come to some conclusion.
—fuck it—
"That's not me, Granger." The arm supporting his weight edges closer to the headboard, his shadow falling over her as he leans forward. "It's not in my nature to be gentle."
The words register too slowly. Long after his hand sweeps up the length of her spine — not a caress, but full of pressure — and his fingers tangle in her hair. He doesn't brush it over her shoulder like she imagined. He gathers her curls into a fist against her skull, weight of his arm pressing her face into the pillow, her gasp swallowed by the fabric. She has to breathe through her nose. And even if he leans down the way she envisioned, tender lips don't find her pulse point. Teeth do.
It's a bruising, punishing bite, and small shriek of pain drowns in the pillow when she feels it through his side of the bond too. The tension in his fist — the clamp of his jaw — they're a summary of his frustration. Of having been pushed to his limits for far too long.
And she's sure the mark he leaves will last for weeks.
She does the only thing she can think to do and pushes up into it. Presses back against him, fighting his greater weight to rise onto her elbows. And either he likes that, or he hates it, because the fist tangled in her hair frees it to slide around and take her by the throat. Her head winds up resting back against his shoulder, forced there by his grip, and she feels a strange burst of excitement flood through him when he feels the muscles of her throat constrict against his palm as she swallows.
It sets off an alarm in the back of her mind. Because, as much as she's starting to believe she might like it — if he gets a taste for causing pain straight away, she has a feeling she'll never know what tenderness he might've been capable of.
And panic drives her to take back the reins.
She shifts her weight to one side and grabs his wrist with her free hand, squeezing as tight as she can and dragging his fingers away from her throat. "I — I suppose that's easier for you, isn't it?" she gasps out, catching her breath. And when she can manage it, she twists beneath him, shifting onto her back so she can look up into his face. "Playing strong."
Confused and worked up, he stares down at her with a heated gaze.
"You're afraid to be seen as vulnerable," she continues, the heaving of her naked chest slowly growing steady. Her neck throbs where he bit her. "But it's a cop out, Malfoy. No one's watching."
The muscles in his arms coil as he holds himself up above her, and she notices for the first time how much his hair has grown, hanging down over his forehead. Longer than she thinks she's ever seen it.
"Someone is always watching," he breathes, brows furrowed as he searches her eyes.
Hermione shakes her head, and a small smile makes its way onto her lips of its own accord. "Not this time." She wonders if she has some sort of obsession with his mouth, once again finding her fingers drawn to his lips. She traces them gently, whispering, "I asked a favor."
"What does that mean?"
"I sent him away. The stranger — the wolf. However you think of him."
Malfoy's brow creases further, and now his eyes search hers for a lie. "What?"
"We're alone." Her thumb sweeps across his bottom lip — not soft, but dry. Yet another consequence of the Wolfsbane. "At least for now."
"How did you get it to leave?" His tone is incredulous. He doesn't even seem to notice the way she touches him.
Perhaps he'll notice a kiss.
"I asked nicely," she breathes, softly taking hold of his chin and bringing his mouth to hers. And at first, it's only her kissing him. He's gone stiff and cold again, as though he can only relax when he's in control. But when her tongue insists, carving a space between his lips, his arms start to shake. A few lashes of her tongue more and they give out completely, forcing him to sink down against her. A muffled groan vibrates in the back of his throat, his body warm and sweetly heavy as he rests his full weight, and she can only pray to whomever might be listening that he doesn't backpedal again. She doesn't think she could bear it.
He's good at this. He's very good at kissing. Always has been, she decides as she takes his bottom lip between her teeth. Even their first kiss — that disastrous, painful, premature kiss — wasn't bad on his part. He could've pulled away and left her with the humiliation of missing his mouth entirely. Could've bit her or shoved her back or possibly even gagged. Malfoy would've been the type. But instead, he let her do the shoving. Let her pretend she'd been on the receiving end and wore the face of a boy caught off guard. Not a boy disgusted.
It meant everything in that moment, she's realizing.
Malfoy speaks against her lips suddenly — she's been kissing him in a daze, lazy and thoughtless. "That kiss?" he demands. "That's what you're thinking about right now?"
His mouth starts to trail down along her jawline, and she tries to bottle up the pleased, little sigh she can feel rising in her throat. "I don't know, it just popped into my head."
He finds that abused pulse point once again, the soreness stinging through both of them, and he hesitates. Breathes hotly against her skin for a few long seconds, leaving her staring up at the strong curve of his shoulder.
"It's...he's really gone?" he murmurs, chest swelling against hers with each inhale.
"Yes."
Malfoy swallows. "For how long?"
"I don't know..." Her fingers start to trace instinctive little swirls across the fabric on his back. "Probably just for tonight."
He sighs heavily into the crevice of her shoulder. "Fuck."
And feeling that trepidation swirl in him once more, she offers what she doesn't want to offer — because it isn't worth doing it wrong. "We don't — we don't have to do anything, Malfoy. It's — we don't, we can just..." She trails off and clears her throat, feeling herself deflate even as she says it but doing what she can to hide it from him. "We can just lay here. You could get some sleep. I know you haven't been—"
"I don't want to sleep."
Her chest flutters with anticipation, but even so, she finds herself giving him another out. "You also don't have to stay. I'm not...I won't force you to stay. You can leave if you—"
"I don't want to leave." This time, he speaks against her skin, rough flesh of his lips grazing the bruise he left. And physically, she feels how much strength it takes for him to admit what he does. "But I don't know what I'm doing. I don't — I don't know where to start or what to do to you or even how to do it. I don't want to—"
"Malfoy..." she whispers, letting her fingers slip into his hair as a gelatinous sort of joy fills her veins. "Calm down." There's something charming and euphoric about him being afraid to displease her. But as Malfoy's pulse accelerates and he starts to overthink, she's suddenly hit with an onslaught of images through the bond. Memories, she thinks. Flashes of color and moving pictures. A magazine with a lurid cover hastily vanished when his father knocks on his door. Depictions of wildly ambitious positions and unrealistic expectations tattooing themselves onto young eyes as he flips through the pages under his bed sheets by wandlight. A couple he saw in an alley once, the woman with her face pressed against the dirty wall, crying out with false pleasure as the man took her from behind with a rhythm so punishing and fast it couldn't have been anything less than agonizing.
This is what he knows of sex.
"Malfoy?" she says again, fingertips sliding from the crown of his head down to his temple, his face still buried against her neck. "All of that you're thinking about..." She massages a gentle circle just above his ear. "It's worthless."
He exhales loudly against her.
"I am not lying here expecting you to have at me for hours from dozens of absurd, uncomfortable angles, all the while showering me in orgasms."
He almost laughs. Almost.
"This is not a Quidditch game." The words flow freely. It's easy when they're true. "You don't win or lose with this. And we..." Her fingers tangle back into his hair. "We have something different, you and I. Different than any of those people you're thinking of, because we're paramours. If it feels like rapture just holding your hand, then I can't even imagine..." She doesn't finish the thought. Just lets it hover unspoken between them like a fantasy.
"Like rapture..." he echoes after a moment, voice muffled against her, and when she nods he lifts one hand to hers. Pulls it out of his hair and presses it down against the pillow by her head, fingers interlocking. "This?" he asks, and slowly the movements of his mouth against her shoulder become more languid. A french kiss with every word. "You like this?" He squeezes her hand for emphasis.
"Y-Yes — yes, I do."
He unlocks them again, letting his fingertips trace down her open palm before sliding back between her knuckles — a movement that's strangely carnal, as though he's proving her point. The runes carved into her skin are still tender. Barely healed. And he must feel the pulse it sends through her. Must feel the way her thighs clench, forgetting for a moment that his hips are between them.
"What else do you like?" he asks, voice breathy now.
She squeezes his hand back, eyes trying to drift shut as his lips make their way towards her ear. And her spinning mind spits out nonsense. "I — I like Greek mythology," she stammers. "And dragonflies and still lifes. No one really likes still lifes, but I do. And I like books that are so old the binding is falling ap—"
Malfoy groans loudly in her ear, annoyed. "Bleeding hell, Granger, I swear you'll take any chance to make things harder for me. I'm not asking about paintings of fruit sitting in bowls, I'm asking how you — the one with fucking experience — like to be treated in bed."
"Nicely," she answers without skipping a beat. Can't help herself, biting down on her lip to keep from laughing. There's something terribly funny about all of this. Something surreal and ironic and utterly lovely all the same.
"I swear on my mother's fucking life—"
I like to be encouraged, she tells him through the bond, because there's simply no chance of saying it out loud. I...I like encouragement and I like to be complimented.
Malfoy pulls away from her neck at long last, rising up onto one elbow to gaze down at her. Then, after an extended silence, he says, "Granger has a praise kink..." like it's fascinating, eyes shifting between each of hers.
"I..." She clears her throat, feeling her face going pink. "Well, yes. Is it really so surprising?"
"It's almost too on-target, actually." He smirks — the first true smirk she's seen from him in a long while. "Teacher's pet loves praise."
Indignation swells inside of her. "You might not know, but this teacher's pet almost never receives compliments, even from her best friends." Her tongue runs away from her. "So forgive me if I'd like the man fucking me to tell me nice things while he does it."
Malfoy rears back like she's blown smoke in his face, brows lifting and a laugh tumbling off his lips. "Fucking hell, Granger." He shakes his head in wonder. "I think that might be my kink."
"What?" she demands.
"You. Saying awful words." His expression sinks into something slightly darker. "And with that pretty mouth."
The excited little flutter she feels is hard to tamp down, especially considering he's never called any part of her pretty before. Not out loud. But she tries not to let it lift her too high off the ground. "Don't say it just because I told you I like hearing it."
Slowly, his smile straightens out.
"You like praise, but I'm not allowed to praise you?"
She exhales. "Not if you don't mean it."
One of those blond brows arches. "And how would you know what I do and don't mean?"
She has no answer. Can only blink steadily at him, clinging to her nerve.
Malfoy huffs. "We're never going to get anywhere, Granger. You're just as difficult as I am. What would you have me do? Take Veritaserum and then fuck you?"
It's a knee-jerk reaction to scoff, but she catches herself halfway through as she actually considers his words. "Come to think of it, that might be..."
A laundry list of everything about herself she finds physically unappealing starts writing itself inside her head, and she swiftly changes her tune.
"No. No, actually, that wouldn't be good. What if you—"
Malfoy abruptly crushes his lips to hers and the rest of that sentence falls to its death. For once, she's grateful to be silenced, because she thinks he tastes better than winning an argument ever would — and god, she likes the way his tongue curls against hers.
"Tell me something else you like, then," he says when he comes up for air. "Something I'm actually allowed to do to you."
It's almost a trap, because it drives her to think about the only other experience she's had — and she has a gut feeling Malfoy won't take well to images of Viktor Krum materializing in his head.
No, she steers clear of it. Treads safer waters and thinks instead of what she's fantasized about when alone. The faceless, nameless man she used to imagine.
Well, to begin with, he wasn't fully dressed.
"Take off your clothes," she demands, syllables slurred against his lips and tongue.
The first taste of eagerness from his end swells across the bond to her in fragments.
—good—
—yes—
—that I can actually—
—yes—
He yanks himself away from her to start tearing at his shirt, forgetting it has buttons and clawing the whole thing off over his head. His belt breaks something when he sends it flying across the room — something delicate and priceless by the sound of it. And moments later, he's back between her thighs, now with only underwear between them. Thin, useless, unbearable scraps of material.
His hips shift against hers as he rests his weight back on his palms, and the friction feels like stretching an overworked muscle.
"That," she announces around a gasp without thinking. "That — I...I like that."
Malfoy's brow furrows. "What, just...this?" He does it again, hipbones scraping against hers, and this time the bond seems to wake to it. Halfway through the movement, his breath catches and his eyes squeeze shut, jaw clenching. "Fuck. Okay."
She's growing desperate, now. Arms winding around his shoulders, she pulls him down and presses her forehead to his. "Please, can we just — can we figure out how to do it perfectly later?" Her breath hitches as she lifts one knee and he's suddenly able to come a great deal closer. "Please, I — I feel..."
Empty.
She doesn't mean to say that word at all, let alone through the bond — and in the most ragged, fanatical tone, full of so much panic and lust it's humiliating.
But it has a strange effect on Malfoy, who suddenly doesn't want to play games anymore either. She feels his muscles coil, a powerful pulse of something she thinks she misinterprets flaring up in him. It's — obligation, almost. A sort of responsibility. Like he's upholding his honor, which she can't fathom in this context.
But then he says words she could never have expected. Low. Whispered with his eyes closed and his nose brushing her cheek. A promise.
"I'll make it go away."
She's never been so comforted by something in her entire life. So relieved. And when his hand slips between them and carves a path down the length of her stomach — down to the waistband of the last thing she's wearing — she thinks the anticipation alone might stop her heart.
His fingers tremble as they dip beneath, and his breath hitches as he slides his palm those last critical inches, patiently waiting for her to part her thighs just enough. She holds her breath as she does, feeling like she's preparing to jump off a cliff. He may've touched her before, but not like this. Not after a ritual like this.
She has no idea how she should expect it to feel, but when his fingers slip between her legs — when she feels exactly how warm and wet she is because she can feel what he does against his skin — the air gets stripped from her lungs. She gasps and tenses, and Malfoy sucks the air in through his teeth.
"Fuck," he breathes, hesitating. "It — it didn't feel this way before—"
"Are you out of your mind?" she blurts, desperate. "Don't stop there."
Dutifully, Malfoy adds pressure, mouth falling shut like a boy chastised into line. His eyes are fixed on her, watching as her back arches when the tip of his finger glides over the right spot. He watches like he's fascinated, and as much as she wants to stare back, she can barely keep her eyes open.
"Please just—"
He slides in three fingers at once. A stretch that's sharp and too sudden, forcing a mewl of pain from her throat — but it's almost worth it, because she gets to watch him correct himself. Watches him feel it through the bond, hiss a curse that's almost an apology, and then gently exchange three for two.
He sighs when she does, clenching around his fingers — all at once too much and not enough. She won't have the patience for much of this. They've waited too long, and she can feel him throbbing. Somehow knows what it's like to be so painfully hard you don't even know what to do with yourself.
"Not yet," Malfoy whispers, breathless, sensing the direction of her thoughts. She opens her eyes to plead with him and finds his pupils the size of saucers.
They aren't the eyes of the stranger. Rather, they're the eyes of someone possessed. Someone inches from overdose. Drugged and unfocused and—
"Your eyes look like that, too," he says, and in the same moment he curls his fingers inside of her. Makes the muscles in her abdomen clench to the point of pain as a sound that's not quite human pours out of her mouth.
"Please."
"You're too tight," he pants, lips brushing hers. "If my fingers hurt, then—"
I don't care, I don't care, please, please, I don't care—
She's forgotten how to speak.
And he's forgotten how to argue.
He doesn't bother removing his underwear, he just drags it out of the way, and when his fist closes around himself it feels like the world tips sideways.
"I don't — my wand..." he starts to say. He's still thinking too clearly, which means he's thinking too much, and she doesn't want to think at all anymore. "The contraceptive—"
"Paramours can't bear children."
Malfoy goes still, and she wants to scream. Hates herself for bringing it up, because honestly she couldn't care less. She didn't care even when she first stumbled across it in the texts. To her, it's no great loss, though perhaps it should be. She used to wonder whether something was wrong with her because she never pictured herself as a mother.
But all in all, it's the last thing she wants to worry about right now.
"It's safe," she gasps out, fingernails scraping intricate designs into his shoulder blades. "It's safe. Please, just—"
With a groan, Malfoy lets go of whatever's been holding him together, and the restraints snap.
It's like stepping on a tripwire.
He pushes inside of her — the feeling she's been craving for far too many months — and their senses collectively explode. Combust. Fly apart beyond fixing.
Arteries and nerve-endings feel like they disconnect and rearrange themselves, a ripple of something hot and sticky-sweet slipping down their spines in tandem. Malfoy chokes on the sound he makes — something hoarse and animal and almost wounded in a way. She can't form sound at all. Her mouth just falls open in a silent cry, arm around his shoulders dragging him closer so she can bury her face in his neck. Can bite down on something, even if it's him.
Neither of them feel it, if there's any pain. They can only feel the pressure. The cup overflowing. The sense of fulfillment they could never've achieved any other way.
And again, it's not enough.
—have to—
—please, more—
—closer—
Malfoy makes good on his thoughts and doesn't ask for permission, sweeping an arm beneath her to lift her up. He sits back on his heels and doesn't let them disconnect for so much as a fraction of a second, gathering her into his lap — dragging her thighs as far past his hips as she can physically bear. Now, she does cry out, because her weight bearing down on them — forcing them closer — is so impossibly good it's almost sickening.
She's not even seeing clearly anymore. Doesn't know whether the bright light around them is fact or fiction. She only knows the slow, mechanical pace of him sliding in and out. Mechanical, because clearly they were designed to do this. Fools not to've done it sooner. Fools, such fools.
Her mouth finds his — where the real oxygen is — and she drinks her fill of him. Drinks until she's drunk, letting him guide her hips up and down with careful hands. His thoughts are static when she tries to read them. Beautiful, technicolor static. Words that have no real meaning, over and over again.
—inside of you—
—die this way—
—let me—
—I can't breathe—
—inside of you, inside of you, inside of you—
When the first orgasm hits, it's impossible to tell whose it is. It detonates from somewhere in the middle — equally shared between them.
It's unfathomably beautiful for all of a few seconds.
Then, all at once, the blinding ecstasy becomes dangerous.
Because as it swells up in her — electrical and overwhelming, driving her eyes back into her head — it then echoes again in him. And that echo rebounds back onto her, then back onto him, then back again. Violent. Brutal. Again. And again. And again, until they both see black. See stars. Until sweat starts to drip from his temples down onto her naked chest.
It's like a punishment. Like penance for having ever spurned their bond.
And for hours, they're slowly tortured with ecstasy. Unable to stop. Unable to pull away.
It doesn't stop until their muscles are ravaged to the point of numbness and the early morning light is slipping through the windows. Tears stain her cheeks. His throat is raw from crying out — for more and for mercy.
They curl into each other like dying flowers on those sweat-soaked sheets, chastened. Stripped of their pride.
The bond has shown its bloody teeth.