"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough." (Frank Crane)
A little while later Eleanor faced Lucius at the doorway of the dungeon. They looked back one last time on the corpse of the dead muggle, the bound body of the chief Death Eater and the wooden box that contained the screeching homunculus. Then Lucius laid his arm across her back, lifted and lit his wand, and they walked up the long corridor that led them back to the fresh cold night air outside.
Eleanor retrieved the Malfoy broom from its hiding place and held it out to the blond wizard before her. He shot her an evil smile. "You rode that thing all the way down here?" he asked. "How often did you fall off?" "I didn't," she replied indignantly. "You are one determined witch," he nodded. "That or the iron grip of your thighs…" She swatted his chest in protest. "Come now, I know from experience, couldn't throw you either," he defended himself.
He levitated the broom, then gallantly took her arm to help her seat herself before mounting behind her and encircling her with his arms. "Where can I take you, my dear?" he asked. "Well, it's got to be the WOM owlery in the City first, for a letter to the aurors. Then I think you still owe me a Friday night date."
He lifted off, moving his body closer to her and peering over her shoulder. "Under one condition," he demanded. "You're not going to run away from me this Saturday morning. I think we deserve a good night's sleep first, but tomorrow you are mine for the day – and the night." She leaned back into him with a purr of contentment. "I think I might be persuaded," she drawled.
After a brief stopover in London and the dispatch of an owl they finally touched down on the forecourt of Malfoy Manor. She felt Lucius control the broom with his legs as it tried the same weird last minute bucking motion on him and grinned. So the broom's temper had been nothing personal. She tried to curl her stiff and cold hands. Despite the wizard's borrowed cloak she was freezing. Again he put his arm around her as he guided her up the broad flat steps that led to the deep, cavernous portal of his family home.
Suddenly a thought struck her. It was one thing to use a portkey that led into his private suite of rooms, but another to brazenly walk right through his house in the face of his whole household. She whispered her concern to him as he lifted the heavy latch of the door and heard a mirthless laugh in return. "My dear, I have had breakfast, lunch and dinner with my wife's lover for quite a while now. He happens to teach my son, apart from bedding the lovely Narcissa. So while I appreciate your sensibilities, they are entirely misplaced here."
She shivered, unsure whether it was from the cold or over the Malfoys' chilling family affairs, and felt his encircling hand briefly chafe her upper arm for warmth. A house elf stood at the ready in the large dim front hall, and she marveled at the vigilance of the servants, even this late in the evening.
Without acknowledgement Lucius handed him the broom, gently lifted his spare cloak off her shoulders, then pulled off his own, and left the poor elf practically buried under black bulky robes and fur before leading her up a generous curved staircase to the second floor of the house. After a few turns she recognized the hallway as the one he had carried her down on her first visit. Lucius was walking rapidly now, his arm still around her and practically propelling her forward.
The door he eventually opened did not lead to his bedroom, however, but to his study, which still looked the way she had left it earlier. She had little time to survey her surroundings, though, because as soon as Lucius had stepped through, he pushed the door shut behind them and she felt herself slammed none to gently into the hard carved wood.
She gasped at the impact and purely by instinct her hand rushed down to her wand sheath, but he was faster, grabbing and pinning her wrists by her sides and using the rest of his body to keep her in place. One of his knees shoved between her legs and a split second later his mouth was on her lips. While she relaxed somewhat on recognizing his intention, she found it hard to keep up with the assault on her face that had less to do with kissing and more with devouring. He was all teeth and tongue with little gentleness and grace, and the fact that he had not had the opportunity to shave over the last few days didn't help.
When he realized she was not going to defend herself, he released her arms and instead buried his hands in her hair, keeping her face positioned for him, and after a few seconds of surprised discomfort she found she stared to respond to his stark undisguised need. Her body arched off the door and into his, her now freed hands roamed over his back and flanks and clawed at his robes. She started to moan as his mouth moved to her neck, sucking and biting and returning over and over again to her now swollen and tingling lips. A thick, warm heaviness settled in her center, that she knew only too well and that over the last few weeks she had started to associate with him. "Need you – now…" he mumbled hoarsely, and she felt herself nod in assent.
He pulled her off the door and without releasing her, without even stopping his kisses, turned her and walked them both over to his desk, pushing her until the backs of her legs hit the flat wood surface. Her hands scrabbled at his ruined coat and shirt, while he lifted his head briefly enough to groan at the sight of a full row of buttons stretching from the collar of her dress all the way down the slim skirt. "You will be the death of me one of these days," he growled.
Slowly she moved her hand over to her wand sheath once more, and this time he let her. No time for niceties. "Vestimentascedo," she repeated his former spell, concentrating on both of them, and was glad to see that the bandage that still covered his wound was unaffected. The rest of their clothes lay in piles at their feet. She placed her wand to the side and turned to him once more as his hands curled around her hips and he lifted her so she now sat on the cool, smooth wood of his desk, but before he could move in between her legs, she put her hand on his chest and stopped him.
Eleanor was surprised that despite his former vehemence, he froze immediately, grey eyes focusing on her. "Not like this," she told him, taken aback at her own words and reaction. She had not planned any of it, but seemed to respond to something that was only now surfacing. He lifted an eyebrow. "I can't do this to your face right now," she tried to explain herself. "I want you, but I – I…" she stammered, failed, unsure of what she really wanted. She took a deep breath. "Take me from behind, please," she finished finally.
As she slid down the tabletop and against him, she registered a strange look on his face. For a moment his full lips compressed. His eyes became unreadable, but then his hands were back on her and with the same forceful intensity he had displayed before her flipped her and pushed her over onto the desk, barely giving her time to brace herself against the wood with her forearms. Seconds later he used his knee once again to open her thighs to him and she felt his hands at her opening. Without caress or preamble he parted her and dipped a finger into her spreading her wetness around. She hissed in surprise and pushed back to meet him.
She heard a subdued groan and glancing briefly over her shoulder she saw him grasp his already fully erect cock and give it a few quick hard strokes before focusing back on her. 'Lucius Malfoy in a hurry,' she thought, but her smile was cut off quickly and she gasped when he moved into her with one harsh thrust. The front of the desk cut into the flesh of her thighs and she was thrown forward. His hands gripped her hips and without further preliminaries he started to fuck her.
'Savage,' she thought, before the sensations and demands of her body took over. No studied cruelty, no calculated brutality, he was simply savage in the fulfillment of his needs, and she wondered what had brought it on. Then she gave herself over to the feel of the cool sweat-slicked wood beneath her, the pressure of the unyielding planes of his desk and the heat and friction radiating from the swift rough strokes of his cock that shook her body.
She was amazed at the intensity of her own reactions. Barely minutes had passed since they had walked into his study. He had taken no measures to bring her level of arousal up to his, yet here she was, splayed over his furniture, gasping and panting in full expectation of release. She matched her ragged breath to the rhythmical slap of their flesh and concentrated inwards, where she felt old familiar tension build. Not seeing him actually helped her focus, but then his pace changed, grew more irregular, jagged, and she realized that at this race he would beat her after all.
She had no problem giving him his release without attaining hers, but just as she had resigned herself, his left hand suddenly left her hip and she felt him bend forward, over her, as his fingers snagged a thick fistful of her curls and he pulled.
With a cry of pained surprise she arched up, head thrown back, throat curved, her hands pushing against the desktop, her body raising up to meet his. His next thrusts hit her at a completely different angle and her brief flare of anger dissolved in the immediate reaction of her body. All she managed was a hoarse shout as she felt herself tumble over the edge of her arousal, and her cunt gripped him in a series of violent contractions that seemed to take him right along with her.
He moved against her a few more times, growling in his release, then she sensed his movements in her subside and for a moment his body came to rest atop hers, his hands placed to she sides of her shoulders propping him up. The respite turned out to be brief, as he soon withdrew and straightened himself. Then he reached down to lift her and turn her back to him. Once she faced him again, he let go of her. His face was still flushed with passion, but his eyes had the same shuttered look she had noticed before he had pushed her over his desk.
"Why," he asked. She licked her lips, trying to get her breath back and looked at him in surprise. "Why what?" she asked. He clenched his long hands at his sides. "Why did you ask me to have you face away from me just then? Was it because of him? Did you imagine him in my stead?" She stared at him now, suddenly deciphering the expression of his grey eyes. He was hurt and angry, and with a rush of horrifying clarity she understood.
She slumped against the desk. "Oh gods, Lucius, that is so sick!" He bared his teeth at her as he spoke. "I saw you, I saw him as you undressed for him." Her thoughts raced. His need and the savagery of it had been a desperate attempt to reclaim her. She couldn't even imagine to what extent George Lepidus must have dogged Lucius' life, and wondered briefly, what else the chief Death Eater had taken from him over the years.
With a new resolve she stood up straight, battling every impulse to rant at him for crediting her with that kind of perversity. She forced calmness into her voice. "Lucius, the only way I will ever imagine Lepidus is in a nightmare where I wake up screaming with the terror of being burned alive. In fact, if you ever feel the need to turn me off sex forever, just mention him and what he most likely wanted to do to me in the dungeon and you'll be doing just fine."
She saw him relax a little, but realized she still owed him her true motivation. Gently she laid a hand on his uninjured arm. "I was under the imperius, Lucius. I couldn't help myself. Somewhere in the prison of the curse was this voice screaming at me in fear, in disgust, and I could do nothing about it. You really want to know why I turned away?" She indicated the large brass bowl filled with water that still sat at the other end of the table.
"Tonight when I came here, Dobby helped me find you. He suggested I skry for you. So I saw you. I saw Lepidus feed the homunculus with your blood, I heard him tell you about how your mother sacrificed herself for your father's ambition. And when I saw you cry, I knew that you had stopped fighting, that you had accepted fate, and that you would die. I was frantic, because I did not know if I could find you in time. And when I did, I almost doomed us both. In fact I made it worse. You would still die, but only after having been made to witness my death. Have you ever been under the imperius?" she asked.
He closed his eyes briefly, and nodded. "It was my first time," she said. "You must have felt it, how it kills something inside you. A sense of self, of integrity." She hesitated, then looked at him again. "A piece of your soul." Something unfroze in him at her words and he stepped up to her again, gently putting his arms around her. "I know," he whispered.
She swallowed. "Then there was the fire," she continued. Her voice sounded broken now. "I have never felt pain like it. And you – you rescued me, and healed me. And – and just now, I wanted you, I needed to feel you in me, to ground me, to make me realize that I was actually alive." She broke off, again finding it hard to put her emotions into words. "I needed the raw force of it, the animal part, not the love-making, no gentleness, but if I had looked at you, I – I…" She felt herself choking and finally gave in. "I would have bawled my eyes out," she finally finished, burying her face at his shoulder and clenching her fists in an effort not to let him hear her sobbing. He must have sensed her embarrassment, because he did not comment, but simply tightened his embrace and held her to him.
Finally she felt ready to face him again. She lifted her head, brushing her tears from her face. "I wouldn't have been able to do it, to go through with it when we both needed it, that's why I turned away." She sniffed.
He looked down at her now and gently stretched out his thumb to wipe the last traces of her tears away. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize…" he simply said, causing another lump to form in her throat. She really had to try and lighten the mood. At this rate she would eventually flood his study, and completely disgrace the Sartorius name. "It's all right. I'm just an art historian moonlighting as a schoolteacher. I'm not used to life on the edge. Tonight was a bit – intense."
The corners of his mouth stretched as he caught the change in her mood. "Well, you had me thinking otherwise," he smiled. "Dumbledore, the old fool, should have hired you for Defense against the Dark Arts, instead of that ridiculous Polish grandmother. You know, you managed to stand up to the wizard the Dark Lord himself chose for his lieutenant and his personal body-guard."