In the several days following her trip to Portugal, Hermione saw very little of Draco. He'd had his mouth on her decolletage, a muscular thigh shoved between her legs, and a whole lot of audacity: so deliciously tempting Hermione had nearly invited him into her hotel room, drunk in a pretty, foreign place. It was something of a blessing that they rarely crossed paths at the Ministry; she wasn't sure she knew how to interact with him back in their normal habitat.
Being at home wasn't the same as being away. In Britain, she had a packed schedule that afforded her little to no down time. In Britain, she had a long, complicated history with Draco, a history that many—herself included, some days—might find insurmountable. In Britain, she didn't know if their night in Lisbon had been a one-off or the promising start of something more.
She wasn't sure if she should owl him, ignore him, or show up in his department and snog him at his desk.
Such uncertainties didn't stop the lingering memory of being wine drunk in an unfamiliar city and familiarizing herself with the shape of his upper lip, the feel of his tongue against her own, and the delightful pressure of his fingertips digging into her backside.
Hermione was surprised to find Draco assigned to her Hungary trip. He hadn't participated in her pre-travel meetings. His name simply got thrown in at the end, like an afterthought.
And yet, he was something of her only thought as she packed for her trip, mortified with her own daring as she picked out some of her nicest lingerie just in case. A girl could hope. Specifically, she hoped he liked sheer lace and satin ribbons. Greedily, indulgently, she fantasized about what Draco Malfoy's face might look like, seeing her wrapped up like a gift ready to open. Was it entirely professional to prepare for a work trip with lascivious daydreams about her colleague? Not in the slightest. Was it preferable to needlessly reviewing her proposal pitches for the umpteenth time? Most certainly.
Her supervisor had implied that her Hungary meetings wouldn't last long at all, which meant Hermione would have a thing she never had at home: time. Time she had an idea how to fill, assuming she wasn't alone in this lust-drenched spiral.
Cautiously excited, Hermione let her portkey spin her away, arriving at the Hungarian Ministry in Budapest to find Draco leaning against the stone base of a statue, waiting for her.
He wore a deep forest green suit cut to an obscenely fine level of tailoring, a black button up left open enough to show off the stark contrast between dark shirt and fair skin, a matching black pocket square, and some kind of lapel pin that looked suspiciously squamate in nature. His gleaming, white-blond hair was pushed away from his face, each strand meticulously placed. Hermione remembered how his hair felt gliding between her fingers, remembered how it felt to dishevel him.
It seemed deeply disallowed that he should be able to pull off a suit set in what effectively amounted to a not-very-subtle Slytherin homage.
He managed it somehow. Of course he did. He made it look complex, interesting, like severe green suits with impeccable tailoring were a totally normal mid-afternoon outfit option.
She hadn't been expecting to run into him so soon, otherwise she might have reconsidered the jeans and jumper combination she'd worn for travel. Dresses tended to be far too unruly when spinning across continents.
Draco grinned upon seeing her: a soft, bright smile that lit up his dark, severe styling choices. His dragonhide shoes—she assumed very expensive ones at that—clicked against the stone floors when he approached to greet her.
His smile traveled through time and space, as if the last week they'd spent not seeing each other in an entirely different part of the world simply hadn't existed at all. He offered to escort her to the hotel, showing her to her room. He then asked, almost shyly, if she wanted to have a coffee with him in the hotel lobby before their dinner meetings.
After nearly a week of uncertainty, the best she managed was something of a tease seeking clarity. "You mean like a date?" She smiled, aiming for sly, and trying desperately to wrangle what felt like a runaway pulse.
Draco paused, holding a door to the hotel stairwell open. "Ideally," he began, fingers barely skimming her lower back as she walked by, "yes."
She sat with him beside an enchanted fountain that wove music into its water, sipping kávé, and letting her knee press gently against the side of Draco's thigh as they chatted. It was a lovely start to what became a horrible, tremendously frustrating evening.
Their dinner meeting had been meant to include a meal and little more than a casual discussion of her program proposals, but turned quickly into an interrogation that forewent food entirely. Less than five hours in the country and it seemed wildly unlikely that the Hungarian Ministry would adopt any of her proposed educational changes.
By the time she and Draco left their 'dinner' meeting, his irritation simmered as palpably as her own. She was in a foul mood. Starving, too. Draco looked like he might snap if he had to translate another word.
It was as if everything he said, everything he tried to interpret, their colleagues sneered and rolled their eyes and acted as if every part of Hermione's program was laughable.
She'd assumed optimism when her supervisor said two days in the country was more than enough time. Perhaps naively, Hermione thought that meant her program would be a hit, easily integrated into the Hungarian Ministry's existing systems. Evidently the abbreviated agenda had been to limit how long Hermione suffered the indignity of being so thoroughly disregarded. Why even agree to entertaining her if they had no interest in her work?
Hermione went straight to bed after the meeting ended, too tired and annoyed to tackle her hunger. After a fitful night's sleep, she deeply regretted her decision in the morning, starving and irritable as she prepared for a new day.
Hoping to find something quick to eat before suffering through what she suspected would be another miserable day, she swung her hotel door open to find Draco on the other side, pastry bag in hand. Ravenous and exhausted from a night of poor sleep, she snatched the bag and tore into it.
Draco, for his part, looked perfectly put together: gray trousers, a black belt, matching wingtip brogues, and a crisp white button up with sleeves rolled all the way to his elbows. He wore no suit jacket, no tie either, which were perhaps the only indications he wasn't entirely as pulled together as his smart outfit suggested.
"Rough morning?" he asked, leaning against the doorframe while she crammed something sweet and delicious in her mouth, still struggling with her curl smoothing spells.
"Rough night too, as you know." She gestured with the pastry in her left hand. "Thank you for this. I was too annoyed to find a real dinner last night."
"You're welcome. I spent most of the night brushing up on my language skills, so with any luck today will go better than yesterday."
"Your language skills? Why? You seemed perfectly competent." More than. Exceptionally skilled, she might have said, if she knew better what they were to each other and how liberal she could, or should, be with all her swarming, complimentary thoughts.
"I can't help but wonder if yesterday was my fault—"
"No, Draco. I—you're doing wonderfully."
Draco held his mouth tight, like he wanted to fight her on the dismissal of his culpability, but resisted. "Thank you," he finally said.
"In fact, I can only imagine things would have gone substantially worse if you weren't here."
His annoyance seemed to soften, but he remained quiet as she prepared to leave.
"Is that," she started, half a pastry shoved in her mouth as she stared at his right forearm, "one of your tattoos?" She stepped closer at the same time he tugged his cuff down to cover whatever scrap of a tattoo lived just below his elbow.
His smirk was dark, devious, as he crossed his arms, fully concealing whatever secrets his skin bore. "It might be. Perhaps I'll show you later."
Hermione tried to match his smirk with her own, suddenly standing very close to him, close enough to smell his cologne, to see the slight shadows under his eyes. "A reward for surviving our meetings today?"
"Something like that."
—
A new day brought similar problems. It was clear the Hungarian Ministry had their own way of operating and they preferred to have no interference, not even the suggestion of interference. Rather than prolong the inevitable and subject both herself and Draco to more irritation, Hermione decided to cut their afternoon short, thanking her Hungarian colleagues for their time, knowing they had no interest in her work.
"I can see about earlier portkeys," Draco offered.
"Actually, I think we deserve to enjoy ourselves a bit, don't you? We have the rest of the night to recover from those awful meetings."
The readiness with which Draco recommended a place to grab dinner suggested he'd been hoping she might decline an early return home.
They ate, they chatted, and they indulged in some annoyed grumbling about their difficult meetings.
Throughout their meal, Hermione let herself appreciate him. She let her gaze linger on his open collar, his exposed forearms, and his mouth that apparently spoke five languages and of which she only knew three.
When Draco caught her watching his hands as they shared a dessert, he rose from his chair across from her and repositioned himself with her in the booth.
Hermione thanked Merlin for low lighting and nonverbal notice-me-not's, because Draco slid his hands into her hair, pressing her against the booth, mouth finding hers.
Hermione sighed, leaning into him, savoring the new hunger he'd opened up in the pit of her stomach.
"If I asked you to come to my room this time?" she asked, knowing it was forward and a little bit mad. She couldn't bring herself to care in the slightest. She wanted to keep touching him, be touched by him.
Draco smiled but shook his head. "No. Come to mine. I have a suite."
—
Of course Draco had a suite. Apparently he'd paid out of his own pocket for it, unwilling to accept the Ministry's baseline accommodations for a two-day trip.
Hermione had never so much as considered doing anything like that for herself. Nor could she resist rolling her eyes at his obvious showboating as he walked her through his beautiful rooms. A stupid and ridiculous waste of money.
Though, it was difficult to be that annoyed by his excess when Draco led her to his balcony, gauzy curtains blowing a warm summer breeze into the room with them. He stood with his chest nearly touching her back, arms bracketing hers as she leaned against the balcony railing, watching the city below them bathed in moonlight.
His kiss against the side of her neck had her sighing, melting into him. With his hands winding around her waist, Hermione turned to face him, losing herself to open-air kisses in a foreign place.
They kissed their way back inside his suite, sinking onto a chaise where Hermione wasted no time settling herself in his lap. She kissed along his jaw, down his neck, over his throat. She unbuttoned buttons, created creases, mussed his hair. She made a mess of him. Which was the goal. Because her own heartbeat made a mess of her insides, and his touch made a mess of her knickers.
Draco hesitated, slowing as he pulled his face away from the side of her throat. He'd been sucking hard enough that she suspected she'd find a bruise there in the morning.
"Can I—can I get you anything? Water? A sober-up?" he asked.
Hermione shook her head, leaning in as she traced the shell of his ear with her tongue. "I don't need one," she said. "I had two glasses of wine hours ago. And a whole meal as well." She paused, pulling back. "Did you…need one?"
His hands hadn't stopped trailing all over her as they hovered face to face, cautiously navigating this conversation. He smiled.
"No. I just—I was hoping I might have you in my bed tonight and I want to be absolutely certain you want that too, not just because of some wine or a pretty hotel room."
A smirk wormed its way to Hermione's face. "It is a very pretty hotel room. But it's actually the promise of those tattoos that has me here, if you must know." It was the best she could do to break some of the tension. She couldn't remember ever being asked so forthrightly about having sex before. It had her mind spinning, wondering about pureblood protocols and whether that kind of consent was something he'd learned in his upbringing, or in spite of it.
Draco didn't waver, dark, lust-ridden eyes boring into hers.
"Yes or no, Hermione?"
He'd been using her given name since their trip to Portugal, as she had his. It felt like a mutual endeavor to be grown-ups about the fact that they'd once been fairly dramatically on opposite sides of a war.
But her name had never sounded like that before, so rich and drenched with promise.
She surged forward, kissing him again. "Yes," she mumbled against his mouth. "Yes, yes, please yes."
Her hands flew to his remaining shirt buttons, engaging all her dwindling dexterity to rid him of his smart shirt. She wanted him undone, unkempt. She also wanted to know what hid beneath his sleeves. She'd caught a glimpse that morning and the promise of seeing more had been a major motivation to keep smiling throughout her painful meetings.
Draco's teeth tugged at her bottom lip, hands gliding from her jaw to her throat and then lower, dipping to snag her wrists. "I know exactly what you're up to," he whispered with a smile pressed directly against her lips.
She sat back to examine her work. She'd exposed his smooth, strong chest. Her fingers twitched in Draco's grip; she wanted to touch him. "If I can't know what other languages you speak, I want to see these tattoos of yours."
"They aren't that exciting."
"I think I'll decide that for myself, thanks."
He held her hands steady when she tried to resume her assault on his shirt. Slowly, he guided her hands down, resting them atop her thighs. "You may look," he started, releasing his hold on her and lifting a brow. He pushed his shirt from his shoulders.
Hermione matched his lifted brow with her own. "But not touch?" Her fingertips pulsed against her thighs, greedier than she'd prefer to admit.
"Not just yet. Not all of them." His left arm emerged from his shirt first. Ah. His gaze drifted to the Dark Mark on his forearm, almost entirely faded, as if she hadn't already seen it for most of the day, exposed by his rolled sleeves. That wasn't the one she was interested in. It bore no consequence, not anymore.
So much for not touching. She leaned forward, one hand cupping his jaw, the other perched on his right shoulder and fisting his shirt fabric. She aimed for playful, even coy, as she dropped a kiss beside his ear. "That's not the one I want to see and you know it."
When she slid his shirt off his right arm, he didn't stop her this time. Instead, he rewarded her with warm fingers delving beneath the hem of her dress, gliding over her arse.
He had the night sky on his arm. Simple and stylized, black and white constellations sprawled across his skin from shoulder joint to just below his elbow. It had been Orion she spotted that morning.
"Watch," he said, just as she lifted a hand, intent on tracing every conceivable path between the stars. He drew in a deep, steady breath. The stars expanded, his whole arm breathing with him. When he exhaled, they shrank again.
"It's stunning," she breathed, mouth agape as she finally touched them, dragging her fingertips from star to star.
"It's something I chose." His voice was quiet.
He'd chosen these tattoos. The contrast with his other one went unspoken. She watched them expand again, in tandem with the movement of his chest, pressed to hers. He waylaid whatever other exploration she had planned by kissing her again, lifting her from the chaise, and delivering her to his bed.
—
Hermione learned several things about Draco in the time she spent between the sheets with him.
She learned that when he kissed, his hands roamed aimlessly: kneading and dragging and overloading her in a way that kept her rocking against him, seeking sensation of her own.
She learned though, that when his hands roamed with purpose, he didn't kiss at all. He watched her instead. He watched her face as he lifted the hem of her dress, as he stroked his fingers up and down her thighs. He held eye contact when he ran his hand along the edge of her knickers, when he curled his fingers around them and tugged.
This man knew English. He knew Portuguese. He knew Hungarian. He knew at least two other languages she'd yet to figure out. And he knew unspoken ones too: questions asked and answered with eye contact, with touch. He spoke of desire with his eyes, pleasure with his hands. And when he put his mouth on her, she learned of skills beyond linguistics he had with his mouth. She benefited beautifully, breath stolen from the first touch of his tongue.
He had her writhing in a matter of minutes, squirming, torn between too much stimulus and not enough. In a distant, desire-dimmed part of her consciousness, she sought more pleasure, rolling her nipples between her fingers, drawing out deeper, full body sensations to pair with his fingers pushed inside her and his mouth driving her insane. He groaned, hot vibrations against her core as he watched her.
It was too much. She came with a gasp, clutching her breasts and canting shamelessly against his mouth. As her breathing steadied, heart rate hammering inside her chest, she vaguely registered Draco maneuvering her, hands looped beneath her knees as he pulled her to the edge of the bed.
When her eyes fluttered open, Draco was standing, grinning down at her, smug in a way she should have expected, knowing who he was.
"You can't expect me to survive you wearing those divine dresses that cling to your arse all day and not come for me at least once more. They're crimes against my sanity and I require compensation for the self-control I've had to expend." He paused, gently lifting one of her legs to rest an ankle against his shoulder. He fisted himself, dragging the head of his cock against her core. Teasing, suggesting, asking. "Can you do it like this?"
With him standing at the foot of the bed, thrusting into her with her legs held high? She had a feeling she'd manage. Even just the barest glide of his cock had her practically halfway there already.
She swallowed, nodding.
He cursed as he sank into her: at least three different language's worth. With one of her legs propped high, holding her open and allowing him to push deep, Hermione nearly forgot to breathe, so overwhelmingly full every time his hips met hers.
He leaned over her, stretching her more. It was a delicious burn in her muscles she hoped she might feel the next day. Propped up on one elbow, Draco used his other hand to pluck one of her nipples, grinning wildly at the gasp it forced out of her.
He slid his hand lower, over hard ribs and soft stomach. Lower still, to the juncture between her thighs, where a few precise strokes combined with a particularly deep thrust broke her apart. Her breath stuttered through her orgasm, one hand gripping Draco's bicep for dear life.
She caught another curse, another language, and then he came too.
Hermione lay panting, light headed. Chest burning, legs burning, blood burning. Draco's breath coasted hot across her sternum as he, too, struggled for air, forehead pressed to her breastbone.
In what could have been lifetimes later, he cast several charms: contraceptive, body cleansing, fabric refreshing. It was the last thing she remembered before she fell asleep pressed against his side, lips against the constellation tattoos dotted down his arm. That, and wonder at how bizarrely pleasant it was to find herself in bed with Draco Malfoy, skin to skin, in a foreign place.
—
Draco insisted on breakfast in his room together the next morning. Evidently feeding her was the least he could do after so thoroughly exhausting her the night before, and the morning after.
She hadn't known what to expect, waking up to a new day in his bed, nor did she even consider absconding in the night. She certainly had no complaints about the quiet, intimate morning sex they'd had while wrapped in soft cotton sheets, blurring lines between sleeping and waking, professional and personal, home and away.
She came once in a rolling, lazy kind of way, built while she clutched Draco's shoulder blades with short nails, sucking on the skin at the base of his throat.
She came a second time in a brighter, fast way. Flipped with her back to his chest as they lay on their sides, he slipped into her from behind and wasted no time chasing his own end, one arm banded across her chest, the other seeking purchase between her thighs. She had moderate concerns about noise complaints from their neighbors after that one. Though she couldn't spare much remorse for it, not when he came seconds after her she did, grip so tight against her chest she wondered if she'd find fingerprint shaped bruises in a pattern around her heart.
When she finally left his room, stuffed and sated, she showered, packed, and prepared for her portkey home. She found another note slid beneath her door when she went to leave.
Edesem, it said. You made a horrible trip infinitely better.