Updated 14/2/19.

Beta'd by jamethiel

Beta's by Pidanka

"How's married life?" Blaise Zabini said and picked up the cup containing his low fat soya latte with extra foam. He stuck his little finger out to the side in a gesture that never normally failed to get Draco's back up.

Draco ignored Blaise and slowly stirred his own black coffee. "Granger wants a baby," he flatly announced.

Blaise didn't pass comment at Draco's use of 'Granger' instead of his wife's given name, but his eyebrows shot up at the word 'baby'. "You must be a very happy man."

"I've never felt so used." He sighed and pushed his drink away. "She can't stand me."

"You always get morose when you're waiting for a woman to fall in love with you." Blaise chuckled, and his eyes lit up with malice. "And, if what Luna's told me about your wife is correct, then you might be waiting a very long time." He propped his elbow on his knee and watched Draco from underneath his lashes. "How many times have you had sex since you got married?"

"Nearly every day."

"She can't dislike you that much then."

Draco sat up. "Do you know what Granger did?" he said indignantly.

"Do tell?" Blaise said. The smug bastard was looking more and more amused.

"She drew up a schedule."

Blaise slapped his hand to his face. "The horror."

"You don't understand," Draco widened his eyes, "she created a sex timetable, or, as I called it: the fuck schedule."

Blaise frowned slightly. "You mean, you have timetabled sex? Like a school timetable?"

"Yes."

Blaise's tongue poked out the corner of his mouth. "She did always seem to be organised. I'm not surprised she likes to be bossy in bed too." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Does she play the professor, and you the naughty student?"

"She isn't being kinky. It's to optimise her chances of getting pregnant. I'm serious." He pulled out a folded piece of parchment and unfolded it. He held it in front of Blaise's face. "Look."

"It's colour-coded," Blaise said, sounding shocked. He peered closer. "It's labeled Hermione and Malfoy. You've been reduced to your surname on your own shag schedule?"

"Fuck schedule," Draco corrected.

"You've sunk so low." Blaise shook his head sadly.

Draco shoved the parchment back into his pocket. "She announced it on Monday, at breakfast." He said 'at breakfast' as other people said 'genocide' or 'political reform'. "She turned to me and said," Draco pitched his voice in a falsetto, "Malfoy, you need to ejaculate during sex every day." He coughed. "It was like she was talking about the weather, or what she was going to do that day, and not my dick."

"Sounds like she was announcing what she was going to do that day."

He shot Blaise a blithe look. "I was eating my breakfast, and then I was discussing bodily fluids with my wife. I lost my appetite. I couldn't finish my egg."

Blaise pulled a face. "I can quite understand. A man can hardly eat egg whites when he's talking about his egg –"

"Zabini," Draco snapped. "Not another word."

Blaise looked like he was trying to hold back a laugh. Draco scowled and hoped he'd choke on it.

"When's your next," Blaise paused as if searching his vocabulary to find a word for what Draco and Hermione were doing, "appointment?"

"In ten minutes. We're meeting at my office. She could only 'fit me in' around her lunch break."

"Then why are you here drinking coffee with me when you could be pleasuring your wife?"

"Nope." He fixed Blaise with a look of overwhelming despair. "Sex is just for procreation."

"Who the fuck are you, and what have you done with my best friend?"

Draco pinned a smile to his lips. "Marriage. Marriage is what has been done to me."

"Fuck."

"Looking forward to your own wedding?" Some of the old swagger was back in his voice. Blaise would soon be joining him in matrimonial bliss. A misery shared is a misery halved. He held back a smirk.

Blaise pensively looked down into his coffee. "I'd be lying if I said I was ecstatic at marrying an almost perfect stranger on Saturday." He nodded once to himself and then downed the rest of the complicated drink. "Luna's weird, but in a good way. And the sex is great," he said, the words a rush. "After the wedding, she wants to date. I know we'll technically be married, but I'm rather intrigued about seducing my own wife. It seems very bourgeois." Blaise eased his way out of his chair and adjusted his suit jacket. "We should go on a double date."

Apparently everybody else was having sex for the sake of sex and not for some procreative mission to save humanity.

"Double date? I can't believe those words came out of your mouth." Draco's pinned smile slipped into a smirk.

"Not as disbelieved as I am that you're only having sex for procreation." Blaise shivered. "What a horrible concept."

Things had not been going well since Hermione's period started. Not that the bouts of unemotional sex they'd been engaging in could have been classified as a 'successful' marriage.

The week after they returned from their honeymoon, Draco had been about to floo from his office to Hermione's for their afternoon 'appointment' when an owl arrived. Her note was simple, and she informed him that she'd started menstruating and there was no point in him coming over.

He hadn't.

Instead he'd sat at his desk and brooded. He watched the seconds tick by and ran through what they would have been doing in his mind. Skirt up, knees bend, thrust, thrust, thrust.

It was almost comical.

Without their breaks to fuck, he'd barely seen his wife. For a whole five days he was reminded of what life was like without her. He'd suddenly had more time. He had played quidditch with Zabini, Theodore Nott, and a few of the other remaining Slytherins. He'd been surprised that they didn't ask him what it was like shagging the Gryffindor Princess. Draco had a suspicion that Blaise was behind that.

He'd explored Stoke Park and run along the grasses and paths for hours at a time. He grew to hate pedestrians. And prams.

Once, he'd clipped the side of a buggy while maneuvering his way around a shoal of mothers and had received a tirade of fury from the women which rivalled Professor McGonagall's shrillest scolds. He was normally good with women. Very good. But he'd been at a loss on how to charm what felt like fifty women who surrounded him and demanded tribute. He'd stammered an apology and then, in sheer desperation, had asked the make of the buggy. He'd said his wife was trying for a baby and that he was ignorant of these things. It had been like magic (and he was a wizard, he should know). They'd stopped yelling and had started pouring names at him like Mothercare, Kiddies-Kingdom, and Huggies. He'd barely gotten away with his life and the advice of what was the best brand of breast pump to buy.

He drank to pass the time. Which is what he'd been doing when Hermione came to him after six days.

He'd been lounging on her sofa – sorry, their sofa (what's mine is yours and all that malarkey) – and nursing a glass of some rot he'd found in her cupboard. He'd decided that he really must introduce her to better spirits. Then he'd remembered, with sobering clarity, that she wouldn't touch a drop until after she'd had the baby.

Baby. To his whisky-soaked brain it seemed an odd word. Like mollusk. Or candyfloss.

Until he'd met the mothers in the park, the concept that sex with Granger, and the subsequent pregnancy, would result in a baby had seemed fairly abstract and distant; a bit like Christmas in July. However, since then, the subject of the baby had been niggling at the back of his mind. It was like something he could see out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned to get a clear look it would be gone.

He swallowed more of that godawful whisky, and his mind began to spin pictures of some rosy-cheeked child – possibly the one on the front cover of Granger's book – with blond curly hair and dimples. Brown eyes, he'd decided, like their mother. His regressive-gene grey eyes could die with him.

Hermione's hand had reached out and taken the glass from him. She'd gripped it from the rim and, to him, her hand looked like a large pink spider.

"I'm not in the mood for games, Granger," he'd said, although slurred would have been appropriate too. "I won't be chastised by you for drinking."

"I have no interest in what you do or don't drink." Her breath had tickled his neck. He'd shivered. She'd hovered over him and knelt over his splayed legs.

Draco had heard the unmistakable sound of his zip being undone.

He had been about to snap some witty remark at her when her hand had closed over his semi- interested cock, and his brain went blank. She'd pumped him. Her hand was small, but her grip was tight.

It was the first time she'd touched his cock outside of actual sexual intercourse.

He'd closed his eyes and rested his head back against the sofa cushions and enjoyed the feeling of his wife's hands on him. The drink had muddled his brain, and he hadn't noticed what she was doing until the tip of his cock touched her opening. His hips had automatically snapped upwards; his dick wanted to be settled in her warmth. He'd groaned, loudly, when he was sheathed inside of her, and her hips pitched back-and-forth like the momentum of a sprung a jack-in-the-box.

He'd had enough self-preservation to keep his hands respectfully on her waist. What a joke. He was inside this woman, and his hands were 'respectful'. He should've been touching her all over; cupping her breasts, teasing her nipples, and palming her arse as she mounted him.

She hadn't even been short of breath.

He'd squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to see her face as she watched him come. Not like this. Not as she'd systematically rode him to release.

She hadn't bothered to wait the two minutes. She'd just got off him and left the living room.

La petite mort.

Draco now understood why the French said it was to die a thousand little deaths.

"You're late," Hermione snapped at him the moment he walked into his office. She'd obviously been waiting for him.

"I know." He wasn't going to apologise for his spontaneous meet up with Zabini.

She stood in the middle of the room, and her hands gripped the handle of her bag like it was a lifeline. "I'm ovulating."

"How fortunate for you." He let his eyes linger on her and watched her uncomfortably stiffen under his scrutiny.

"That means -"

"I am aware of what it means, Granger." He closed the door behind him and began to undo his tie. "However, I have surprise meeting with the board at three o'clock, so can we get on with this?"

She opened her mouth, and Draco was sure she was going to complain. "Strip off, Granger –" he showed his teeth, "–you may be ovulating, but you've only got thirty minutes to get me to orgasm before my meeting."

Hermione fixed him with a filthy glare, but she started to unbutton. She was wearing a jumpsuit, and for them to have sex, she had to undress to just her bra. This was the most nude he'd seen her since she'd worn a bikini on their honeymoon over a month ago. She folded her arms across her chest, like a corpse, and covered the top half of her body.

"Don't be shy." He undid his cuff with a swift flick of his wrist. "We are married after all."

His mocking tone seemed to rile her, because she stomped over and stood, expectantly, in front of him. Her chin was up, and her hackles were raised, and her eyes flashed like the trickle of amber whisky in a glass.

Draco was hit with an overwhelming desire to kiss her.

By the way her lips twisted and thinned, he doubted she was struck by the same fancy.

"And where shall we go today?" he asked, a sneer warping his own mouth. "The chair? The desk? The carpet?"

"You bastard." He felt the hiss of her words on the newly exposed skin at the base of his throat.

"But at least choosing a position will be easy. From behind. So, you can pretend it's not me inside of you." His laugh sounded bitter. "Who is it that you imagine, Hermione? Which face do you picture instead? Brown hair, black even? No, I just bet it's red."

Her cheeks were flushed but with anger rather than desire. "Shut up."

She pressed a hand to his chest, and her nails scraped the fine cloth of his shirt. She was breathing hard, and her shoulders rose and fell with each inhale. Her mouth was open, and her lips were ruddy. He could see a slight tremble in them.

He wanted to kiss her.

He leant in close to her so he could see the pitch black of her pupils swallow the brown. The image of the cherubic-cheeked child, with Hermione's eyes, flashed into his brain. He approached, and her eyes narrowed. She looked at him as if he was an invading army. Draco felt something snap inside of him; something small and fragile which was cut by the loathing in her expression.

Hurt her.

"Does it eat you up inside," his voice slithered like a snake in the undergrowth, "to know that your child will be Malfoy blond and not Weasley red?"

The crack of her slap echoed around the room. Like a bee sting, the pain radiated out from the point of contact until the right side of his face felt numb. His tongue lashed out, and he tasted copper.

He wiped the blood away with his thumb. "I guess I deserved that."

"You did." Her voice was ragged and split like the frayed edge of a cotton t-shirt.

"I apologise," he said. He licked his lip and the cut smarted.

She stood on the balls of her feet, so her mouth was almost brushing his bruised cheek. "He's twice the man you'll ever be, Malfoy."

Draco didn't comment on the commonplace cliché of her statement.

"Perhaps that's true." He moved his head away from her and looked her squarely in the face. "But I can't compete with a dead man."

Smoke and mirrors. The phrase kept echoing around his head during breakfast with Hermione the next day.

He professionally rustled his paper. "There's been a rise on the price of Goblin-made items," he informed her. "Apparently it has something to do with the abundance of Leprechaun façades that have been inundating the market."

"Fascinating," she said. She sliced the top off her egg. The yolk spilled down the shell and pooled at the bottom of the egg cup, smearing the white porcelain. Potter had given that egg cup to them as a wedding gift. Not a set, just a single egg cup. Obviously, he'd had images of Hermione eating breakfast alone and bereft her husband's company. How wrong he'd been proved.

Draco picked up a jug decorated with a painted bluebell patten – a gift from his mother – and poured a soupçon of milk into his teacup. The whole nine piece tea set had been yet another gift from Narcissa.

"Goblin manufacturers Nobbs and Nixs have announced that they're taking commissions again." He stirred the tea, and the silver spoon clinked against the side of the cup.

"Indeed." There was a little crunch as she dipped half a piece of toast into the yolk.

"I was thinking what this table needs is a Goblin-made centerpiece."

"I'd much prefer an ice bucket." There was a much louder crunch as she bit into her toast.

"I'll order one. We'll need it extra large to accommodate all the ice." Draco licked his fingers and turned the page. "How sad, it seems that one of the Weird Sisters is facing charges for improper use of magic and exposing himself to a Muggle woman. Oh – and they mean that literally."

Hermione kept her eyes on her egg, but she shook her head. "What is this country coming to."

Draco cleared his voice and read from the paper, "In the early hours of this morning, Mr Myron Wagtail was found in the fountain in Trafalgar Square wearing nothing but a Union Jack flag and a smile – that's something at least." He took a sip of tea. "Mr Wagtail, the front man for the globally successful band the Weird Sisters, proceeded to remove the flag and frolic in the fountain, all the while singing the band's hit single 'This Wand was Made for Waving'. Confirmed by eyewitnesses, Mr Wagtail continued in this manner for some time until a Muggle woman, on her way home from her Muggle job, stopped and asked him what he thought he was doing. At that point, Mr Wagtail showed her his wands." Draco closed the paper. "I think we can both guess where that was heading. So, are we going to talk about this?"

The question seemed to catch her off guard. She looked up. Her toast was halfway to her mouth. "About what?"

"You and I," he swiped his finger back and forth between them, "and our current pony ride around the subject. We are British, but there really is only so much our congenitally repressed natures can forgive."

"I have no idea what you are talking about." She added an extra 'h' to 'what'.

"I'm all for lying back and thinking of England," the corners of his mouth turned up, "but I'd much prefer to lie back and think of you."

Her cheeks hollowed like she was sucking a large and sour lemon. "What sordid thoughts go on in your brain are your own business."

"Well, I'm going to tell you what I'm thinking right now." He lowered his tea cup without a sound. "I'm very tempted to clear this table and shag you on it."

Two spots of colour appeared on her cheeks. "Your mother would be devastated if you broke her tea set."

"Not if it was in the name of procreation."

"I'm visiting you this afternoon."

His eyebrow quirked. "Are you?"

"Yes," she said, and it was the first time her voice didn't sound politely calm. "Just because I consider you to be a toff with the morals of a snake that doesn't mean my immediate plans have changed."

Draco folded the paper and dropped it onto the table. There was a fleshy, slapping sound as the paper made contact with the wood. "I'll make you a deal. I won't mention your past, and you won't mention mine. Fair enough?"

She lay on her front. She was flat on his desk and pressed into the surface he'd worked on for the past seven years. He cupped a hand over her sex and felt her wetness. Her arousal glistened on his fingers as he gripped her hips and thrust into her.

"Fuck," slipped from his broken lip.

His pumps were brutal, rough, and he chased his own pleasure. He drove her into the wood, and her body was slight and sweet under his generous assault.

She liked it.

She gave unsatisfied whimpers as her swollen core drenched his cock. She was milking him, soaking with desire, and Draco didn't know when he'd ever felt anything so good.

His climax was spectacular, and it had been easy to wait for Hermione's requisite two minutes to catch his breath before he pulled out and finger-fucked her to her own release.

He walked away from the desk and left his wife panting and shuddering on the wood. He picked up her discarded clothes and placed them next to her on the desktop.

"I'll be late tonight," he said. "I have a meeting which I suspect will run over. We can postpone this evening's entertainments till the morning, or shall I wake you when I return?"

"Wake me," she said. Her face still pressed into the desk.

It was only after he'd left that Draco realised that he'd shouted her name as he came.

Luna Lovegood and Blaise Zabini got married in a chapel which adjoined a prestigious Wizarding hotel by Loch Eil, in the Highlands of Scotland. The hotel fitted the groom's sophisticated tastes and the bride's peculiar ones. Luna insisted there were Will-o'-the-Wisps in the thick woodland around the hotel and chapel. Draco just thought the lights were the headlamps of Muggle cars as they drove along the road.

There were three things Draco liked about this wedding destination. The scotch and the Aberdeen angus steak were the first two. The last was the four-poster bed he and Granger were sharing. His head had filled with all manner of wicked and filthy ideas when he saw it.

Due to the wedding, the reception, and then the evening banquet, Hermione had been forced to break from her strict shag routine. While the ceremony was going on, he had offered to take her over the toilet cistern in the chapel's tiny loo, but he didn't think she appreciated his offer.

Instead, they'd slipped away after the speeches. Draco's best man speech had been met with applause and a certain amount of loud jeering from the Slytherin table. Blaise was the third of their crew to tie the knot. Theo was next; getting hitched to the old Ravenclaw Seeker, Cho Chang.

"Be careful with the dress," Hermione snapped at him. His hand was under the layers of skirt where he was trying to find her cunt between the tulle layers.

"Only Lovegood would choose such a frou-frou bridesmaid dress." He missed again and grabbed another tulle handful. He was hard, and his erection was uncomfortably rubbing against the tartan. He wanted her kneeling on the bed and clinging onto one of those pillars as he took her. "Just take it off."

"No. I'm not wearing a bra. I couldn't wear one, not with the backless cut of the dress."

Draco stifled a curse. "Take it off. I won't touch you."

"But –"

"Merlin, give me strength… Granger, I'm horny. I don't want to grab your tits." Lie. "I just want to shag you." Also, a lie. He started flicking the row of pearlized buttons that held the dress together.

She helped him get the mess of a dress over her head, and he even acquiesced to her wishes and hung it up in the wardrobe before he rejoined her on the bed. He only momentarily looked at his wife's breasts. Her nipples were pink; just like her lips.

He briefly thanked Blaise for the man's ridiculous notion to have all the groomsmen wear kilts. He lifted his kilt, something he never thought he would do, and positioned the head of his erection at her entrance.

She sighed with him as he plunged into her.

Pausing, he grabbed her hands and arranged them on the post. Then he seized her hips, pulling them flush with his, and fucked her. Fucking was the only way he could describe what he did to her. It was short, violent, and to the point.

Rather than him pushing into her, he concentrated on moving her back against him. The ancient bed trembled less, and he was gratified by the short gasps she gave each time his cock slid into her.

She'd come, which was great. What was better was that she'd moaned when she did. That low noise spurred him on, and he'd picked up his pace, dragging her climax out another few seconds.

Blaise had sent him a knowing wink when they'd slipped back into the reception an hour later. Draco thought it might have been Hermione's hair that gave them away.

Draco stormed down the corridors of the Ministry and towards Hermione's office door.

She had to stop summoning him whenever she wanted him. He might be able to resist her tersely worded notes, but his dick couldn't.

He walked into her office without knocking. "You have to stop ordering me here when you want. We have a fuck schedule, you're the one who arranged it –" Draco's rant broke off when he noticed Hermione wasn't alone. "Potter?"

"Good morning, Malfoy." Harry didn't look too impressed with his entrance or with the knowledge that his precious best friend had a 'fuck schedule'.

Draco stopped dead. "What a horrible surprise. Hermione," he turned to his wife, who was as white as the sheets they'd shagged on last night, "I believe you may have sent me an owl by mistake."

"No, not a mistake," she said, a little breathless and frantic. "A few weeks ago, do you remember me mentioning that someone was leaving active Portkeys around London which were transporting Wizards onto the Eiffel Tower?"

"Yes." Draco also recalled her telling him about it as they had sex over that desk. The desk which Potter was leaning against so casually. Draco wondered if he could drop it into a conversation with Potter that he and Granger had shagged on every flat surface in this room. "I recommended you investigated Cobbs & Webb's in Knockturn Alley. Why?"

"We struck gold," Harry said leadenly. "They were creating the Portkeys."

"Then you are both very welcome. Although a consultant's fee would not be out of the question."

Harry scowled. "Always money with you, isn't it?"

"However," Hermione said, holding up a hand, "someone else has started the same trick. Only they're sending people to the top of the Brandenburg Gate, in Berlin."

Draco raised an eyebrow but made no other remark.

"It's almost an identical method. The Portkeys are objects like doorknobs or a letter opener." Harry crossed his ankles and frowned at the end of his shoes. "The only difference is that on one of the wizards apprehended by the German Ministry there was an artefact. A Dark object. I don't know all the details yet, but the next two people who were transported didn't have anything on them. We believe that whoever is making these Portkeys is running a smuggling ring and muddying the waters by placing decoy Portkeys."

"We were hoping that you might be aware of any black-market traders in Britain?" Hermione placed her hand on Draco's arm.

He tensed under her touch. Outside of intercourse, she tried to not touch him or encourage him to touch her. When she made physical contact with him during sex, he could see there was a rationale behind her actions. She needed him hard, so she held him. She needed him to enter her, so she positioned him.

This touch was soft and tentative, however. It was as if she thought he was some starved dog that would bite if she moved too quickly.

She looked more like the animal. Her teeth were whittling away at her lower lip and the epidermis was fraying under the pressure. She'd already bitten her nails to the quick.

He made himself relax.

"In Knockturn Alley, there's Noggin and Bonce." He consciously rested his hand over hers. "They used to run illegal trading out the back. Don't be put off by the shrunken heads, they're just for show. Mostly. Also, the Curiosity Shop often had items that looked benign but held great Dark magic. I'd have to do some research if you wanted other traders in Britain or abroad."

Since he took over the family business, he'd been slowly lancing the more illegal aspects of Malfoy Traders, which had grown like rot under his father's rather lax and sporadic rule. The company was legitimate now, yet Draco still had enough black market contacts to be useful to Granger.

"Would you–" she paused "–would you try and find out more?" She looked up at him; her eyes bright and interested. It was disquieting to be on the receiving end of anything but Hermione's scathing expressions.

The promise fell off his lips before he could stop it. "I will."

She smiled at him, and warmth touched her eyes, turning them to molten caramel. He wanted to run his thumb along the lines of her smile and memorise them before they disappeared.

There was a sound of the door being opened. "Good. Pack your bags, Hermione. We shouldn't be more than three days."

Draco tore his eyes away from Hermione's face and glared at Potter. "Pardon?"

"Hermione's coming with me to Berlin." Harry stopped on his way out. "Need someone from International Cooperation to be the diplomatic voice above the crowd." His tone was gruff as if he resented having to explain himself. "Can you be ready in an hour?"

"Yes," she said.

"I'll meet you at the Portkey office."

The door clicked shut.

"Three days?" Draco said, masking his disappointment with a drawl. "Whatever will happen to our timetabled sessions?"

She averted her eyes. "We'll have to put them on hold. Three days is a long time."

"How long will it actually take you to pack?"

Her lips moved as she considered it. "Forty minutes."

"That gives us twenty." Draco slung his jacket over the back of a chair. He rolled up his cuffs. "Lock the door." She looked undecided and was nibbling her lower lip like a rabbit. "Lock the door, Granger. I want to make you come."

He'd stripped her of her trousers and pushed her back against the flat of her desk. She'd protested when he'd shoved her neatly ordered files onto the floor, but she'd stopped talking when both his hands started stroking her cunt.

He rubbed deep circles over her clit and soothed and petted her folds. With her legs open, he could smell her arousal; a musky damp scent that made him grow hard. Not that he wasn't constantly hard for her anyway.

He slicked a finger inside her and curled it so he could brush her 'g-spot'.

Her teeth still cut into her lip, but now she was doing it to stop from crying out.

"Open wide," he said. "I want to hear you." When she didn't do what he asked, he started to massage her with the pad of his finger. "Let me hear you."

She opened her mouth but only let out a breathy gasp.

He added another finger.

"I know you can do better than that," he said, speaking slowly. "I recall the moans from this morning. You made a delightful noise when you came." He started pumping at an unhurried pace. A frustrating pace. "I want you to make that sound again but coming around my fingers instead. Can you do that? Can you clench – oh, you can."

He upped the speed of his thrusts as a reward.

"Good girl," he said. He knew in any other situation, Hermione would hate the patronising tone of his voice. Her moisture flooded his hand. "You're close. I can feel you're close. You're fluttering around my fingers. Ah, I can't tell you how good it feels when you do that around my cock." At the word 'cock', Hermione groaned.

"If you come, I'll fuck you on this desk. I will. I'll slip between your thighs, and you'll wrap your legs around my waist." Draco didn't get to finish describing what he would do next because she shuddered and came under his touch, gasping and moaning.

Her eyes were lidded, and she was looked up at him in a daze.

"Thank the gods," he said. He quickly undid his belt and slid into her. Her channel was still spasming from her orgasm, and he felt no qualms about bringing her to a second shallower climax with his cock. It gave her something to think about for the next three days.

The fact that he also got to come deep inside her was a bonus as well.

Draco was getting along fine without Hermione.

He told Blaise so.

"I'm fine." Draco lifted the frying pan off the heat for Blaise's inspection. "Rare or Medium-Rare?"
Blaise gave him an offended look. "Rare. I'm not a heathen."

"Why are you here bothering me and not bothering your wife?"

"Because Luna," Blaise pointedly over-pronounced Luna's name, "reminded me that it was my solemn duty as your only friend –"

Draco glared at him. "You are not my friend."

"See, Malfoy," Blaise waved his hand in Draco's general direction, "this arrogant attitude is why people don't like you."

"Pot, kettle," he said, employing a phrase Granger liked to use on him.

Blaise ignored him, or perhaps he just wasn't educated enough to understand the nuances of Muggle phraseology. "Anyway, she told me that as your only friend I must comfort you in times of distress. Such as your wife leaving you to galavant around Europe with Potter."

Draco brandished the kitchen tongs at him. "Correction. They are working, not galavanting. And people do like me."

Blaise snorted and muttered something which sounded a lot like prat.

"Do you want this twenty-eight day matured Argentinian imported steak, or not?" Draco placed the steak on a plate and waved it tantalisingly under Blaise's nose.

"Give me that." Blaise held out his hand. "Your wife doesn't like you."

"I grant you, my wife is an exception to this rule."

"This is amazing." Blaise moaned as he took a bite of the steak. "When did you learn to cook?"
Draco shrugged. "Granger has an abundance of cook books. Which is incredible considering the woman lives on frozen macaroni and cheese."

Blaise gave him a sly look. "Are you learning how to cook for her?"

"No. I'm learning to cook for myself so I don't die from synthetic cheese exposure."

"Liar. You're trying to make Granger like you. No wait," Blaise pointed his knife at Draco, "you're trying to make her fall in love with you."

"I would never be so conventional."

"But you are. Learning to cook. And bringing home imported steaks." He turned the knife to point it at the food. "I bet these were going to be for you and Granger before she threw you over for Potter."

"Just eat your food and go away." Draco stabbed at his steak.

The truth was that things had been awkward – or more awkward – between Granger and him since he'd nearly kissed her. And then covered up his injured pride by mentioning Weasley. And then angrily fucked her over a desk.

Their sex was still physical and hot; that had never changed. She'd started schooling her features, however. He watched her fashion a mask whenever she was around him. Like a jigsaw puzzle, it would build; her eyes would harden, the corners of her mouth would turn down as if they were being pinched, and there was a constant frown between her brows. She'd avoid meeting his eye. Or concentrate on his forehead or on a point just beyond his left ear. He'd found this so disconcerting that a few times he'd broken off their conversation to turn around and make sure there was nothing behind him.

She'd looked at him with such a hopeful and unadulterated expression when he'd promised to help her and Potter. It had been bracing and refreshing, and, like ice-cold lemonade in summer, he'd felt all the breath knocked out of him for a second.

"I know you. You do this." Blaise said, and his eyes perceptively danced over Draco's almost-stupid smile. "When you were trying to seduce that French wine merchant's daughter, you went and bought the vineyard next to her family's property."

"It worked, didn't it?" Draco's mouth widened to a grin.

That had been a good summer. If only he could remember her name.

"Sure, it worked. Until her father threatened to put you in the grape crusher."

Maria, that was it.

There had been a lot of shouting in French, and Draco wasn't certain the girl's father had wanted to kill him or just slightly maim a part of his anatomy.

"The vineyard was a valuable, worthwhile investment," Draco said, folding his arms. "Look, Zabini. Granger isn't the type of woman to fall for a candlelit dinner."

Hermione Granger didn't do romance. Draco was aware of this, and this was why he'd spent the past two days researching and compiling information on every Dark trader in the United Kingdom. He still wasn't done. He knew he'd have to make a trip to Camden Lock and call in a favour with Kelpie King. The things he was doing for her. The last time he'd seen King, the giant of a wizard had threatened to slice out his spleen over a misunderstanding with a shipping order. He was going to endanger himself, life and limb, and all because she'd batted her big brown eyes at him.

Draco stabbed at his steak. "I have the perfect relationship – sex and no talking. Why would I bother learning how to cook for her?"

Blaise gave a noncommittal shrug. "You make a valid point. Hand me a glass of that Pinot from your vineyard, which you absolutely didn't buy for the purpose of seducing a woman."

Draco loudly cracked his jaw but mutely poured Blaise a glass of wine. "I don't need to seduce Granger, I'm already sleeping with her." He sipped his own wine.

"True, true. But not because she wants you, she just wants your… what's the Ministry correct term for spunk?"

Draco's wine went down the wrong way, and he spluttered. "For fuck sake, Zabini. That's my wife you're talking about."

"I know she's your wife." Blaise slowly crossed his arms. "All you ever do is call her your wife. Have you ever actually called her Hermione?"

He briefly thought back to that time when he'd called her name as he'd climaxed. "I have."

"Other than during your wedding vows?"
Draco sucked his lip. "Possibly not," he said, avoiding Blaise's eyes. "But all she does is call me Malfoy."

"For one thing," Blaise raised his index finger, "your name is actually Malfoy, whereas her name is no longer Granger. Point two," he lifted his middle finger and waved the offending digit in Draco's direction, "if you keep only doing things tit-for-tat then you will never get anywhere with her. You'll just circle each other like a couple of Goblin wrestlers until one of you dies." He spun his wine glass like a connoisseur, which he most certainly was not. Other than the colour, Draco wasn't even sure if Blaise could tell the difference between a Chardonnay and a Merlot. "Which will probably be you," Blaise brandished his middle finger again, "because she's a vastly more violent person than you are."

"Hermione isn't violent."

Blaise threw his head back and laughed. "Then how do you explain that cut lip you were sporting at my wedding?"

Draco unconsciously touched his healed lip. "I may have said something –"

"– Malfoyish." Blaise slammed his glass down, and the wine sloshed over the edge. "Luna was right about you. You really are the auditor of your own undoing."

"Carefully Blaise, you're using words of more than one syllable." Draco took a restorative drag of wine. "What else has Mrs Zabini been saying about me?"

Blaise's cheeks flushed. "It's Mrs Love-Zabini-Good. She wanted a double-barrelled name, but she said that Lovegood-Zabini didn't give off the right aura."

It was Draco's turn to laugh. "And does she? Love Zabini good?"

"Shut up, Malfoy." Blaise viciously chewed on his last piece of steak. "Luna also told me something very interesting about Hermione."

Draco sat up in his chair. "Which is?"

"She doesn't like roses. So you ought to get rid of that bouquet you have in the hall." Blaise stood up and clapped Draco on the back. "Tell you what, I'll take it off your hands. Luna loves roses. And by the way, she does. Love Zabini good."

"Fuck off."

Blaise only left after he'd exacted a promise out of Draco to follow through with that double date and bring Hermione around for dinner. He'd swaggered off with the flowers as well.

That evening, Draco found himself looking across the living room for Hermione. She normally sat curled up in an overflowing armchair with a stack of books beside her. When she read, she had a habit of playing with her hair. She'd curl her wild curls around her fingers and leave them in spun ringlets.
She also made noises.

Little sighs and the occasional grunt when she disagreed with something she'd read. It was alarmingly sexy and unconsciously done.

He'd watch her for hours, his own voyeuristic activity concealed by a book, as she read and touched herself. They were unerotic touches, but just the sight of her fingers brushing a lock of hair away or feeling a spot on her neck could arouse his interest.

She lacked arts and finesse, and she seemed blissfully unaware of her beauty. Whenever she did try to employ sexual arts on him, she always looked strained. When she gripped his cock and pumped him, there was a technical element to her actions. It was as if she'd read it in a book, or textbook, and she was simply employing her hands for the purpose of getting him up and not pleasuring him. He supposed he would never receive a handjob from her given that she'd made it clear that she only wanted him to come inside her.

He was fine without Hermione.

The house was empty, but he'd grown up in a large and almost unoccupied manor.

Nevertheless, nothing could've prepared him for the fear that gripped him when the next morning Potter's stag Patronus bounded into his office window.

At St. Mungo's. Hurry.