Another Turn of the Screw

"You should trust any man in his own art provided he is skilled in it." (Aristotle)

Eleanor woke in the early dawn light of an overcast and humid August day. She blinked, stretched lazily and felt her hand trail against the warm skin of Lucius' back. He lay on his side facing away from her. She saw the slope of his left shoulder exposed above the thin black satin sheet that covered him and his tousled, sleep-mussed hair that spilled across his pillow.

For a moment she just lay still and thought back to their conversation the previous evening. The image of her irate husband wielding his belt in punishment of a twelve-year old Draco remained vivid in her imagination. After all, Narcissa's account had been rather evocative. It still disturbed her, but she also remembered the haunted look in Lucius' grey eyes as he had spoken about the danger of Voldemort's diary, and had told her that he regretted his actions.

For her husband that came close to a confession of guilt. She had to admit that she truly believed his version of the events, and his words had effectively destroyed her suspicions with regards to her daughter. Together they would get to the bottom of Lavinia's strange bout of injuries, if they really had a sinister cause.

She hesitated for a moment, and then gently turned her body under the sheets to spoon around his sleeping form without waking him. She felt the light dusting of blond hair on his thighs brush against the skin of her legs, molded her hips and stomach around his firm buttocks and moved her chest against his back. As she laid an arm around him and gently stroked along his chest and flank he gave a soft, sleepy mumble that almost sounded like her name and settled deeper into her embrace. She smiled at his instinctive response to her and buried her face in his pale, silky hair.

As his scent filled her nostrils she found her mind travel back to some of the events that had followed their intense conversation about Narcissa's troublesome book. Lucius had eventually moved to the nightstand by his side of the bed, opened a drawer and firmly put away the biography. When he turned back he held a broad strip of black silk in his hands and looked at her in invitation.

"Blindfold," she said and swallowed. "For you or for me?"

He smirked.

"I think tonight you need it more than I do. And I think you already know why…"

"Blind," she said quietly, feeling a tingle of fear and anticipation. "Blind trust. Do you think you've earned it?"

"I think I've lost it," he told her, his voice sounding suddenly serious. "And I would very much like for you to prove me wrong, Eleanor."

She took a deep breath. How well he always knew how he could challenge her. How well she could guess what he needed. Silently she turned away from him in acquiescence and felt him come up behind her. For a moment the dark silk lay cool and soft against her closed lids, like a caress, then the fabric tightened as he secured it at the back of her head with a firm knot. For a brief moment she felt his hands laid on her shoulders in a parting stroke then he released her. She remained still in complete darkness.

"Stand up," she heard him. His tone anticipated no resistance, and she realized after a moment that he did not plan to help her either. Balancing herself against the soft yield of the mattress she stood slightly wobbly in the center of their broad bed, feeling suddenly very insecure and nervous.

"Well," he said. "That's a good beginning."

His voice moved around her and she noticed with a start that he was circling her, walking on the floor around the bed.

"Now, trust is about yielding control, and so I don't want you to try and touch me or try to discover by any other means what I'm about to do to you. You will have to find out in my time what I have planned for you. And if you want to prove yourself to me, if you want to reassure me that you truly trust me, I don't want any displays of fear either, no flinching, no evasion, no shielding yourself. After all, you should be truly convinced you don't need that with me. Can you promise me that?"

She took a deep breath.

"Hecate," she whispered to herself, and then louder: "I'll try, Lucius."

The mattress dipped and a moment later his voice sounded right by her ear.

"No, no, no," he taunted her. "Trying isn't good enough. If you merely try we might as well remove the blindfold. Do or don't do, Eleanor."

She turned her face in the direction he had last spoken from.

"I promise," she said, hoping her voice sounded more self-assured than she felt.

"Very well. You know that as always I want you to follow your will."

He was on the move again, and now she felt a light tug on the hem of her silk slip. She remained still, but the next second she almost started back as she heard and felt the light fabric tear with the sound of a sharp object being sliced through it. Air cooled her skin where the covering had already been cut and she gasped when she briefly felt something cold and pointed graze her navel. It took all of her willpower not to take a step back. She breathed rapidly, trying not to imagine him wielding a knife while balancing on the unsteady surface of their mattress. She began to feel that this was taking a test for her trust a bit too far.

The scraping, ripping sound had now reached her throat and she felt her ruined dress come apart completely. Two sharp quick tugs cut through her shoulder straps and the silk fluttered down sliding over her back and legs and pooling around her feet. She did not wear anything else and now stood before him completely exposed.

A soft, satisfied chuckle came from somewhere off to her left and the mattress moved as he shifted again. Next she thought she heard something like a mumbled incantation, but he spoke too softly for her to hear the spell clearly. She gasped in surprise as a moment later her feet lost contact with the bed and she seemed to become weightless as she lightly lifted off the ground.

"Lucius!" she exclaimed, instinctively grasping for support.

"Ssshhh," he soothed her, not quite hiding the amusement in his voice. "Remember what you promised. No orientation, no vantage point, no leverage… It's tough, isn't it? But you know I won't let anything happen to you. You trust me, you know you're safe. The less you move, the less you'll float around. At least you are not suspended by your ankles."

She compressed her lips and tried to hold still. Of course he hadn't forgotten how he had got trapped in her ward spell earlier that day. And of course he would not let his humiliating experience slide by without taking revenge, either. Her train of thought was abruptly cut short when she felt the object that had touched her before now laid lightly and coolly against her neck.

"What is that, Lucius?" she asked in alarm, not quite expecting he would hurt her, but still feeling disturbed by the cold anonymity of the touch.

The point moved along her collar bone.

"Can't you guess?" he teased her and dragged the tip in a slow deliberate spiral pattern around her left breast gradually centering on her nipple.

As he reached the cinnamon-colored skin of her aureole she suddenly felt a brief surge of energy and the touch turned to ice. Her nipple stiffened and crinkled in protest and she gasped, barely keeping her arms from crossing protectively over herself.

A soft laugh answered her.

"I see your reactions are strong as ever," he complimented her. "No clue yet?"

The sensation of cold stopped and the movement continued down her stomach, in a lazy swirl around her belly button and then came to a stop a couple of inches below her navel, right on top of a very suggestive chakra point. Lucius could be expected to know his magical anatomy. The previous sensation of cold was replaced by waves of pulsating warmth, and she thought she heard him softly murmur under his breath as a spark of familiar tension ignited deep within her.

At that moment she knew what he was touching her with and what his incantation was. She felt mild surprise that a wizard would know and use a formula that every witch somehow managed to pick up sometime in her teens, then her sensations took over and she began to curve inwards on herself and her incipient climax with a deep moan; and at the very same moment she realized she did not want this.

"No!" she exclaimed straightening with an effort of will, not reaching to stop him, but truly trusting that he would respect her wish. She felt him lift his wand and the spell immediately and bit down on an involuntary gasp of frustration at being so suddenly deprived of her pleasure.

"What's wrong," he asked and she read concern in his words.

"Not like this," she explained. "You can't just turn me on like a television with a remote."

She knew the comparison to muggle technology could be interpreted as a deliberate provocation, but ever since his exile he should know what she meant and she heard no objection from him.

A moment later he touched her again, but this time the warm, dry skin of his palm had replaced the impersonal feel of his wand as he gently laid his hand over her stomach.

"Subscribing to the old principle of the alchemists, are we?" he mocked her gently. "'You must do everything yourself.' Well, I guess I can manage, despite my old age…"

A moment later she felt his body pressing against hers and he whispered a new incantation to her.

"Levitatus."

She felt him weightless like her now, holding on to her as they floated in mid-air somewhere above their bed. He kissed her, his hands roaming over her skin that still felt hyper-sensitized and chilled from straining for any kind of sensation before.

"You trusted that I would stop," he said, satisfaction in his words. "You just knew. I heard it in the way you told me."

She responded to his kisses, capturing his lower lip between her teeth for a moment, then running a soothing tongue over it. She understood what he was telling her. She had made her point, interestingly enough not by yielding to him, but by resisting him.

"Yes, Lucius, I knew, without a doubt. Is that proof enough?" she asked.

Suddenly the blindfold didn't matter any more. She playfully reached between them where his erection trailed across her belly showing her that he, too, had made some sacrifices during his previous restraint, and stroked and caressed the silky skin stretched tightly over the heated engorged hardness of his flesh. But his hand almost immediately came to rest over hers and he stopped her.

"Oh no, my dear," he said with a laugh. "If I cannot rely on any help, neither can you. You will have to work for this, just like me. There will be no more shortcuts tonight."

As she lay curled up to him in the soft light of morning her lips stretched in a reminiscent smile. Most muggle authors who had written science fiction stories about sex in zero gravity hadn't even scratched the surface. To bring someone off without any leverage but by what you could work up by grappling with each other in mid air was precisely what her husband had termed it: Work!

Hard, sweaty, slippery, delicious work that made your muscles ache and that took so excruciatingly, so teasingly long that their final release had been just unbelievably intense. And just mere moments before she had come, Lucius had suddenly reached behind her and had pulled the blindfold from her face. She had looked up, blinking in surprise. A movement off to the side had captured her attention and she had seen an image so erotic she would not get it out of her mind for a long time to come.

The tall, broad silver mirror on the wall by her side had shown her their entwined bodies floating upright in mid air, framed by the black muslin draperies of the four-poster bed, straining against each other, skin glowing with pale luminescence in the flames from the braziers that illuminated the room, gold and copper hair floating like a halo around them, long, muscular limbs sliding and writhing as they both struggled towards their climax. He had his head thrown back, neck bared towards her and she could see the fingers of her hands dig into the taut muscles of his back while he held her hips to him.

She found the physical response to her memories about as strong as to the infamous spell Lucius had tried on her earlier and shifted herself into closer contact with him, deciding that she might want to wake him after all. But just as she lifted her arm that encircled him she heard a rap on the door to their bedroom.

"Master, mistress," called the squeaky voice of a house elf through the thick wood. "Please forgive Nibbs. There are two visitors, a muggle auror and Miss Brannock. They say it is most urgent that they speak with you. It's about a dagger."

Eleanor sighed and felt Lucius stir in her arms.

"Goddess!" he complained, immediately wide awake, as usual, sitting up and shaking back his mussed hair. "What's going on? What time is it?"

"There go my plans for the morning," she mumbled, then added in a louder voice for the elf. "Show them into the green salon, bring them something to eat and drink and ask them to wait for a few minutes, Nibbs. We'll be there."

It seemed an inauspicious start to the day as a little while later Eleanor felt her husband's hand gently laid against the small of her back as he ushered her into the reception room where a man and a woman waited for them. The man quickly crammed a last piece of toast into his mouth as the green-robed woman got up and walked towards them with a slightly strained looking smile.

"Eleanor, I am so sorry we have to do this," she apologized.

The older witch lifted an eyebrow.

"Do what, Marigold?" she asked.

"Question you and your husband," interrupted the rough voice of the man. He joined them and indicated Lucius Malfoy with a quick jerk of his head. "Detective Jones, Scotland Yard," he introduced himself and held up a sealed plastic bag. "This is the murder weapon. The aurors have identified the provenance. It belongs to the Malfoys."

He placed the bag in her hands and as she looked at the contents she felt sure that she was looking at the very same dagger that Mundungus Fletcher had mentioned to her husband the previous day. Somehow the wizard had known ahead of the investigators. How?

"You know this weapon?" he asked.

Eleanor handed back the bag.

"No, I have not seen it before, but we have nothing to hide," she said with conviction. "We will be happy to answer any questions you may have."

Jones nodded curtly.

"Very well, we'll conduct the interrogation at the Ministry. Mr. Malfoy I trust you have no objection to cooperate with us? Miss Brannock, your portkey if you please."