A/N: *mad cackling in the distance*
xx-Kitten.
Relligo Spiritus
By Kittenshift17
Chapter Fourteen
The more he touched her, the more Hermione's energy returned, and with it, her long-neglected libido. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been as intimate with a man as she'd been with Snape and merciful Merlin, she hoped the intimacy would only deepen. She'd lost all track of time and space when he'd guided her back to the living room and pulled her down into his lap in his armchair by the fire, this time encouraging her to straddle him, rather than lounging on him as his hands roamed her back hungrily.
She couldn't have said just when it was that he'd managed to rid her of her shirt and her jumper, but the feel of his palms tracing over her bare skin was like heaven, and he kissed like the devil. She'd been lost to kissing him for hours, it seemed, snogging like they were a pair of randy teenagers back at Hogwarts in a dark corner. It occurred to her dimly as his tongue swept against hers while her hands carded through his silky black locks and fisted, holding him closer, kissing him deeper, and never wanting to stop, that she had never experienced this kind of thing at Hogwarts.
Her friends had. Ginny, on numerous occasions, had slipped away with various boyfriends to snog them in abandoned classrooms and dark corners and empty corridors. Ron had too when he'd been dating Lavender. Even Harry had snuck a snog from Cho Chang that one time, and with Ginny on innumerable occasions when they figured out their feelings for one another. But not Hermione. The closest she'd come had been when Viktor had kissed her goodbye shortly before the end of fourth year when the Durmstrang students had been packing up to head home.
She wondered if Snape had ever snogged anyone while he'd been at school. Based on his personality and his less than enticing appearance – especially when he'd been a teenager – she doubted he'd managed it. Maybe he had. He certainly kissed like he had plenty of experience now. Hermione didn't want to think too hard about just who he might've gained the experience with. Her money was either on Harry's mum, or fellow Death Eaters.
"You're thinking very loudly, Miss Granger," he broke their kiss to interrupt huskily and Hermione's cheeks heated as she leaned back a little, panting from their exertions.
"Sorry," she muttered. "You… you're a legilimens? You can hear me?"
He only raised an eyebrow.
"I never snogged anyone at school," he answered her pondering thoughts, and so, her question.
"Crap," she muttered. "Can you always do it?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I haven't been able to while we've both been so depleted."
"But when you're not exhausted and magically drained?"
"Typically," he admitted. "I tend to tune it out, these days. My interactions until reuniting with you were limited to muggles, and their thoughts are tiresome and irritating."
"Right," she muttered, uncomfortable at the very idea.
What little experience she'd had in the bedroom with men had taught her that sometimes the skill of her bed-partners was lacking and a little imagination was necessary to… erm… get there, as it were.
"I can assure you, I'm accustomed to tuning out the thoughts of whomever I am this intimate with," he informed her dryly, clearly dipping into her mind with horrifying ease. "Nothing can ruin such an experience faster than to know what a witch is thinking, and about who – or what – while I am servicing them."
"Servicing?" Hermione wrinkled her nose in disgust at the term. "Like a stud bull?"
His lips twitched cruelly at the way she flinched away from the metaphor.
"My experiences with women might as well have been of that nature, though offspring would've been the very farthest goal from anyone's minds."
"One-night-stands a regular thing for you, then?" she confirmed, frowning into his face.
"Regularity would be a stretch," he admitted. "I am not an attractive or a nice man, Miss Granger. The mere sight of me does not move women to throw themselves at me."
Hermione's lips twitched at his self-deprecacy.
"That makes two of us," she admitted.
"And here I'd imagined women would be swooning at the sight of you," he smirked.
"You're feeling better, then, I take it?" she asked, snorting at the poor joke.
"Immensely," he admitted. "Far from restored, but certainly better than I have in a very long while."
Hermione nodded.
"Me too," she confessed.
"I suspect I am not yet improved enough to control my natural inclination to legilimency, however," he confessed. "And as such, I would appreciate it if you weren't imagining me ravishing the few, wretched women from the Death Eater ranks whilst snogging me."
Hermione's face glowed beet-red.
"Sorry," she bit her lip, toying with a lock of his hair at his nape.
"If you must think of anything, keep the imaginings to your own fantasies, rather than indulging in any featuring myself or my dalliances," he chided.
"You would… prefer I be snogging you and thinking of shagging… I don't know… some famous Quidditch player?"
"Do you fantasize of shagging a famous Quidditch player?" he asked, and Merlin help her, he looked positively wicked as he taunted her.
"What if I do?"
"Krum, I suppose?" he guessed.
Hermione rolled her eyes.
"Been there, done that," she admitted before she gasped, covering her mouth with her hand and widening her eyes at him.
"It would seem the rush of endorphins and magic is lowering your inhibitions like a fine wine," he teased, his smirk growing.
"Not good," she frowned, her face on fire.
"Inevitable," he argued.
"We should… go back to decorating the house," she suggested, not liking the idea of continuing to snog the man if he was going to make fun of her for whatever might pop into her head, intentionally or otherwise.
"If you imagine distance will diminish the legilimency effects, you are mistaken," he informed her even as he slid his hands up the length of her back from where they'd dropped to rest on her rump, pressing her closer to his chest like he didn't want to let her go.
"That may be, but I can put up a concentrated effort of remembering Christmas carols and decorating ideas rather than accidentally revealing my every fantasy to you," Hermione pointed out.
"Ashamed of your desires, Miss Granger?" he smirked and Hermione suspected that she was not going to enjoy his moods in the coming days with his strength returning, and with it, his penchant toward cruelty and torturing those around him. Even if only verbally.
"I'm not ashamed," she shook her head. "I just don't want to subject you to them, since, as you say, you cannot filter them out."
"Worried I'll stumble upon something you'd rather keep hidden?" he challenged.
"What if I am?" she bit her lip.
His dark eyes searched her face slowly, an evil smile playing at the corners of his mouth, and Hermione wondered if he got a kick out of making her squirm.
"Is it something… immoral?" he guessed. "Or just something embarrassing?"
"I'm not having this conversation with you," she said, working very hard to keep her thoughts on remembering the gingerbread recipe her grandmother had taught her, rather than letting her mind wander to anything she might typically imagine to bring herself off.
"Perhaps both?" he asked.
"Stop," Hermione commanded.
"I can't," he admitted. "I don't have enough of my magic revitalised to filter the barrage of thoughts in your head."
"Well, try," she scowled.
"Will you make the gingerbread your reciting the recipe for?" he asked, changing the subject and letting her off the hook for the time being.
"I suppose I could," she frowned. "Unless you object to me taking over the kitchen for a little while?"
"Be my guest," he invited calmly.
"I already am," she pointed out. "One who should be helping with the holiday decorating, rather than snogging you silly."
"A little more snogging would probably restore our magic enough to allow a filtering of the legilimency," he pointed out.
"And expose you to my unsavoury thoughts while we do it?" she challenged.
Hermione was surprised when he shrugged his shoulders.
"If you'd rather wait for the filter to return naturally, we can," he offered diplomatically. "Of course, that could take days, or maybe even weeks."
Hermione narrowed her eyes on him, very pointedly thinking the word 'bastard', at him and earning herself a truly evil grin.
"Come here," he commanded in reply, his hands finding the back of her head and guiding her mouth back to his.
Hermione surrendered when kissing him again sent another rush of magic and strength and power sizzling through her every cell, ambushing her blood and making her dizzy. Merlin, would it always feel like this with him? Would they be trapped in this cycle for the rest of their lives? Or would he kick her out of his house the minute they could both function without the need to spoon every night to keep from fainting during the day? Was he just insisting they snog now to gain enough strength to throw her out on her ear and never have to hear from her again?
He kissed her dizzyingly, rolling his hips up against the junction of her thighs where she sat straddling him, and Hermione's thoughts scattered like pigeons before a cat, sizzling from self-doubt to sudden, sticky lust in a heartbeat because Merlin's little green apples, hadn't it been too long since a man had frotted her like that? Snape broke their kiss at that moment to emit a low, wicked chuckle, before he dropped his mouth to her neck, kissing her hotly and trailing a burning line of nips and licks over her sensitive skin that made her quiver in his arms and sent another rush of power surging through her.
Hermione tipped her head back, surrendering to the sensations when he latched onto her throat, sucking forcefully and drawing blood to the surface, giving her a love bite like they really were horny teenagers.
"That feels so good," Hermione whispered breathlessly, rolling her hips in time with the rock of his underneath her. Severus hummed against her skin, releasing the love bite only to nip her sharply instead before laving away the sting and kissing his way up to nibble on her earlobe.
Goosebumps broke out all over her body and she quivered in his arm when his warm breath tickled the sensitive shell of her ear, making her crazy. Merlin, she'd always had the most sensitive ears. A soft breeze could stir her arousal, and the pinch of his teeth into the soft, fleshy lobe drew a low moan from her lips. He hummed again, this time on a little laugh of amusement, and Hermione trembled, rolling her hips a little more forcefully.
She wanted to ravish him, she realized hazily.
Right now, more than anything, she wanted to remove the barriers their respective trousers made and she wanted to feel him plunge deep inside her, filling her up to bursting. She wanted to shag him right there on the armchair, until she couldn't take it anymore.
"Your ears certainly are sensitive, aren't they?" he teased huskily, evidently hearing her every thought with as much clarity as if she'd voiced them aloud.
Hermione ought to be embarrassed, but she was too turned on to care.
"You have no idea," she muttered, rolling her hips some more, grinding on him through their trousers and making herself slick with lust.
"You would regret it afterward," he murmured into her neck, dropping his mouth to the sensitive skin there once more and leaving her tingling earlobe be for the time being.
Hermione didn't disagree with him, though she wasn't so sure he was right. Sex, after all, was sex, and any two people could have it with a modicum of enjoyment, most of the time. She'd yet to come across anyone she'd bedded who she hadn't enjoyed being with. But then, she supposed, none of them had been her former teachers and none of them had had reputations as dark as that of Severus Snape. She rather doubted she would regret sleeping with him when she wanted it as badly as she currently did. But it would make things incredibly awkward while they continued relying on one another to regain their strength if for any reason either of them regretted it after the fact.
"We should return to decorating," she said eventually when his ministrations only made her want to bed him all the more, while he seemed resolved to resist. Snape sighed, his face buried in the crook of her neck where he'd been kissing her maddeningly. Hermione felt him nod, though his hands didn't lessen their grasp and the lump in his trousers didn't soften.
Hermione sighed too before she untangled her hands from their home in his hair and pushed against the back of the armchair, lifting herself up and off him quickly. She peered down at him for a long moment, the yearning to ravish him warring with the assertion of good sense, and Hermione chewed her swollen lower lip while she ran both hands through her messy curls. Snape looked back at her guardedly, as though he didn't know what to do about their predicament, particularly given the raging erection tenting the front of his trousers.
"I'll string some more holly, shall I?" she suggested, stepping back from him and turning away to seek out the bag of decorations they'd purchased so she could get on with the job.
Snape didn't answer and he didn't rise from his chair for a few minutes after she moved away, and Hermoine watched him surreptitiously out the corner of her eyes while she unravelled some more holly and began feeding it over the bannister of the staircase. When he did rise, he glared at the front of his trousers for a moment before running his hands through his hair and striding into the kitchen. Hermione watched him under the pretense of untangling some tinsel from the bag to string around the tree, while he fetched a bottle of whiskey from the shelf above the fridge and twisted the top off. He drank directly from the bottle, gulping down the mouthfuls greedily and Hermione smirked to herself before turning away and returning to decorating, setting some ornaments upon the mantel and arranging a tree skirt around the base of the tree.
Maybe she wasn't the only one struggling to control her libido. Hermione couldn't have said why, but that knowledge positively delighted her.