A/N: I got a request on Tumblr to post updates to this and Eighteen Again on different days to sort of spread the updates around, so surprise! Here's part II, and the final part will come next Wednesday.

Absolutely loving every review! Each one makes me more excited about writing this-and writing in general-and is such a shot of dopamine. I can't thank you all enough.

Part II

Transfiguration had actually started to turn him on a little.

He told Lily that in a note he passed her when McGonagall had her back turned, sliding the slip of parchment over to her across their shared desk. She ducked her head to avoid showing her laughter, hair falling in front of her face, and then brushed it all back so she could sit up straight again and scribble something back—although even her scribbles somehow came out in perfect penmanship.

Same, and it's all your fault. It doesn't help that you keep looking at me like that.

Oh, he was keeping that note. He was keeping it forever and he might even frame it.

We can miss Potions, he wrote, even though he already knew her answer. Sure enough—

No. She passed him the note back, paused, and then pulled the parchment towards herself again to add something else. We can miss History of Magic.

That note was definitely getting a frame.

"Trouble," he said after Potions, all but dragging her back to the common room. "You're trouble, Evans."

She laughed, her cheeks flushed with the sort of anticipation that always came before really, seriously snogging him. He'd come to recognize it, and like Transfiguration, that had started to turn him on a little too. He knew that if he told her that that she'd ask, "Well, what doesn't turn you on?" and he really had no answer to that. He even liked just watching her breathe.

He was in love and he knew it.

"Sirius is going to be so mad you ditched him," she said, following him past the Fat Lady. It was the middle of the day, which meant that not very many people lingered in the common room, only older students with a free period. She didn't hesitate to let him tug her up the staircase to his dorm, and he kind of had the feeling that she wouldn't have hesitated even if the common room had teamed with people. She looked that excited. "No one else will care, but he'll be furious." More than anything, it sounded like that tickled her. Really, it probably did. It gave her something to banter about with Sirius later on.

"I guarantee he'll understand. Code of the lad. You offered to skiv off class for me, love. You suggested it. He'll have a thousand questions, but he won't be mad."

(Sure enough, Sirius would go from annoyed to amused in the flip of a switch later that evening. "Can you imagine if sixth-year you could see you now?" he would ask, shaking his head while laughing. "You not only got her, you got her. I wish we had a Time-Turner so we could go back and I could tell sixth-year James just to see his face.")

Really, James kind of did too, because he'd constantly fantasized about pulling Lily Evans into his dorm room for years. She always wanted him desperately in those fantasies, often enough to beg him for it, even though he very well knew by that point that he'd never manage to hold off very long if he actually let her beg. He'd give her whatever she wanted immediately.

What she wanted was him.

She hardly even let him lock and silence the door before she was on him, his shirt fisted in her hand to drag him down to her and her mouth insistent on his, as if she knew that that was exactly what he wanted. But she didn't know, she couldn't know, and that made it sweeter. Her enthusiasm came organically, from what she really felt and not at all from how he wanted her to behave, and fuck if that wasn't the hottest thing he could think of right then.

"Bed," she said, mouth removed from his just enough to say the single word before she kissed him again, and he changed his mind in an instant. That was the hottest thing he could think of right then, because he'd never had her in a bed before.

His mates would have let him take the dorm. He knew that without asking. Sirius would take the piss out of him for it, and Remus and Peter would end up joining in, but they would give him the space of an hour or whatever he said he wanted. The three of them knew more than anyone else exactly how long he'd fancied her and exactly how fucking thrilled he was that he finally had her. Hell, they probably knew that even better than she did. But he hadn't asked for a handful of reasons—it felt presumptuous to think that she'd go for that, and the knowledge of a ticking clock, were the main two. He hadn't quite known how to ask her, and he knew himself well enough to know that even though she managed to block out the rest of the world every time he even got close to her—let alone touched her—he'd still know that his mates were waiting in the back of his mind the entire time.

Instead, she had suggested they skip History of Magic and she had lifted an eyebrow at him after Potions as she'd asked, "Your dorm?" With that, he had her all to himself for ninety glorious minutes.

He couldn't stop smiling.

He all but threw his glasses onto his nightstand as he took her to his bed, and then it was just a matter of shoes off, her pushed back against the pillows, and him settling over her before he could really, truly get into kissing her.

He went right to it, his hands everywhere he could think to touch her as her teeth nipped his lower lip and her tongue did wicked things to his mouth. Her face, her hair, her neck, her shoulders, her chest—he ran his fingers across it all. He slipped his hand under her skirt to caress her hip, and something about that made her moan into their kiss, which of course made him immediately set to trying to illicit that response again. He painted patterns against the line of her knickers, and she reacted beyond what he'd expected. She straight-up whimpered, that noise he loved so much, and he couldn't think about anything except how she might sound if he dropped his mouth to join his hand. Fuck, he wanted that.

Pulling back to kiss her neck sidetracked him completely.

He'd meant to kiss her neck, but then he caught sight of what she looked like on his bed, her cheeks flushed and her hair spread around her face and her expression full of nothing but intense, passionate longing, and that made him forget everything else.

"I can't believe you're in my bed," he said. His smile had immediately returned to his face, as if his mouth only knew how to do two things: grin like an idiot and kiss her. "I've imagined this. Oh, I've imagined this for years. Thank you for making it happen. I can die happy."

She laughed, and she had his tie unwound and off in seconds. "Dramatic," she said, because she tossed that at him often, usually whenever he started waxing poetic over something about her. "So dramatic." Her fingers worked nimbly down the front of his shirt, as if she took it off all the time. Really, that kind of had started happening. "Why didn't you suggest this, then?"

"Because I'm an idiot." He was an idiot, because he'd never had her underneath him before—no, he'd never had her horizontal at all. It changed absolutely everything, from the way she looked to the way it felt to have her legs open to make room for him when she lay splayed on her back. He knew the latter would end up making him ache before too long. "I'm an idiot and I didn't—I don't know. I didn't want you to feel like I was pushing it." She'd just undone his last button, but she didn't pull his shirt off his shoulders with the eager look she normally wore. Her face went soft instead, and she had that Look again, proper noun, where she stared at him with the sort of wonder and affection that made him want to be a better man. "What?"

"Nothing. Nothing." She pushed his shirt off then, and he sat up to take it off fully. "You're just—you're very considerate. I appreciate that you think about that sort of thing."

Well, he mainly thought about it because he wanted her to want him, so he'd happily wait until she got to where she couldn't take it and broke and initiated. Really, her reciprocal desire was maybe the best thing about it all.

He changed his mind swiftly when he saw her with her legs bent at the knee, her skirt pooling around her waist and her knickers on full display. Fuck, that was maybe the best thing about it all, just how she looked, because—

"James."

Her voice sent a physical jolt through his body, pulling him back to reality, and with that came a flash of embarrassment for just how hard he'd stared at her. Heat crept up the back of his neck. "Sorry. Sorry. You're—"

She could have covered herself, but she didn't. He forced himself to look at her face, and what he saw there sent another physical jolt through his body, one stronger than before. She had her lower lip between her teeth, and he knew what she grappled with before she even said anything. He also knew what she'd decided before she'd said it.

Still, that didn't mean he liked hearing it any less.

"You can take my knickers off," she said, and it took every ounce of self-control in his body to resist asking her to say it again, because he wanted to hear it a second time. And maybe a third. And probably a fourth. "If—"

"Don't 'if you'd like' this, Evans. You know what I want. Tell me what you want."

She smiled, either at the look on his face or the strain in his voice or both. "I want you to undress me and then I want you to touch me. Then I want to touch you, and I want you to help me learn how you like it. I'll do that for you too." She bit back her smile for just a second, but it widened teasingly over her flushed face anyway. "If you'd like."

He had no words.

He had no thoughts.

He made no conscious choice to swear, but he heard his voice almost outside himself. "Fuck, love," he heard, and he also didn't make the conscious choice to all but launch himself back onto her, his heart pounding as it never had before, maybe ever in his entire life.

The desire to remember it all burned hot and bright in his brain, one of the few things that came back to him in those first moments when sheer fucking adrenaline overtook his mind, body, and soul. (That wasn't dramatic, but just fact.) He wanted it all seared in his memory forever—of fully undressing Lily Evans for the first time, and seeing Lily Evans naked for the first time, and touching Lily Evans for the first time, and Lily Evans touching his cock for the first time, all those glorious firsts to come. He didn't want to rush it. He wanted to take his time.

He also had never wanted anything quite so badly in his life, which put physical desires very much at odds with mental ones.

"I'm going to be dramatic," he told her, unknotting her tie, throwing it aside, and then setting to her shirt immediately. Her neck smelled like her, just sweetness and warmth, and he dipped his head there to hunt down her pulse point. "Or what you think is dramatic. It's not. This is your warning."

He cut her laugh short by locating her pulse point and nipping there once, twice, a third time. "I like it." She nudged him aside so she could sit up and pull her shirt off, and he sat up with her, intent on getting her bra off immediately as well. She beat him there and unhooked the clasp, although she let him take the straps down and off. "It's—well, it feels unwarranted sometimes, but I like listening to you talk. A lot."

Had she ever admitted that before?

"'Unwarranted.'" He scoffed and drew her back down underneath him. "Love, I could spend the rest of my life telling you how stupidly beautiful and incredible you are and it wouldn't be enough. I wish I could show you, because—"

Her hands on his belt halted that dramatic tangent entirely, because it also halted his breathing entirely.

After all, what could he say? How could he tell her that he'd imagined that moment hundreds of times—especially in recent days, because he'd all but rubbed his cock raw thinking about her—but everything about all of it was better than he could put to words?

How could he tell her that even just the way she looked up at him then, eyes fucking shining, surpassed his expectations?

How could he tell her that he was very, very glad that they would do all of those firsts in the middle of the day, because he'd never even had her shirt off during the day before, let alone undressed all the rest of her? How could he tell her that he couldn't fucking wait to just look at her in the sunshine of his dorm, and that even that would make him lose his head?

He wasn't sure how to put any of it to words, and didn't have the brain power just then to figure it out. Instead he watched her hands at work on his belt and then the button of his trousers and then the zipper, and he did his best to commit it all to memory. After that, he stood to divest himself of his trousers fully, and his socks too, and just looking at her on her back in his bed, topless with a mouth turned sinfully red from his own—

He was harder than he'd ever been in his entire life. Hands down. No question about it.

There was also something to be said about working his hips against hers without the barrier of his trousers in the way, just her knickers against his pants. It was different—better, no doubt—because he was just that much closer to actually shagging her. He couldn't even imagine that—although he very much could at the same time, because he'd spent years imagining it. He just couldn't imagine it as anything more than a fantasy, not even then, when she arched her back into his mouth after he turned his attention to her breasts.

"Jesus fucking Christ," she said, all breathless wonder, like he hadn't spent weeks mapping out every inch of her chest over and over and over again. She sounded like that every time, and he hoped she never stopped. Yet something in the way she said it just then, paired with her legs locking around his waist and her whimper that followed his own sound of pleasure, told him that he was going to get his fantasy of shagging her fairly soon. Fairly soon. Within a month, easily, because she sounded just about as fucking frustrated but euphoric as he felt.

"Your legs like that," he said, and his hand shifted down automatically to push under her arse to try to get her closer, even though he knew there wasn't a way for that to happen short of both of them losing their clothes. "No—stop it," he added quickly, because she made as if to take her legs back, almost as if his words had made her catch herself. "I love it. I love it, but there's no way—no way—I wouldn't have lost my fucking mind if you'd done that earlier. I know I'm going to come eventually now, so it's fine. It's better than fine, love. Fuck. Fuck."

The heat had grown in his voice towards the end as he realized what he said: he was going to come eventually, and she was going to make that happen. He'd known it, but apparently it hadn't yet sunk in, and when it did—

He sat up sharply and knelt between her legs, intent on getting her skirt and knickers off immediately, but found himself sidetracked again.

That seemed to happen a lot around her.

He ran his hands up her legs slowly, from knee to hip, watching his progress the whole while. It fucking mesmerized him to watch himself touch all of that smooth, warm skin that he hadn't yet had full access to. He'd also never had access to her knickers, not to touch her wherever he wanted, and he skimmed his fingers across the soft lace that stretched from hip to hip. Her hips lifted at that, trying to arch into his hands like her back with his mouth, and he swore softly, fascinated and aroused and immediately keen to watch her do it again.

And if she did that just at his fingers, what would she do against his mouth?

"The zipper is on the side," she said, voice shaking a little. He'd trailed his hands gently down, back to the heat of her inner thighs, and she sounded more unsteady the further he got. "You know, for when you're done tormenting me."

He couldn't help it. He laughed.

It was the same sort of giddy, almost hysterical laughter that she inspired in him so often during intimate moments, because he hardly knew how else to cope with the fact that Lily Evans looked up at him with such longing that it bordered on irritation. He'd done that to her—he, James Potter had made her mad because she wanted him.

That could never get old.

"I want to look at you," he said. Her impatient sigh hit him unexpectedly, somehow just as endearing as it was arousing. "You're so fucking cute. You torment me by existing, love, but you act like I'm—"

"Zipper. On the Side."

That didn't help his laughter.

"Right, right, right, sorry." He ducked the look she shot him, still grinning, and bent to kiss the underside of one breast and then the other. "Honestly, Evans, it's—"

"I will lay here naked with you for as long as you want afterwards, if you'll just fucking—"

He'd located the hidden zipper on the side of her skirt easily, but only pulled it down halfway before he paused so he could look at her. "For as long as I want?" he repeated. "Don't make promises you can't keep, because that's a lifetime. I've wanted to know—"

"Potter."

That didn't help his laughter either. He also kind of liked it. A lot.

He gave in and unzipped her skirt so he could take it off, and that dissolved his chuckles almost instantly. He'd pretty much expected as much, at least in the part of his mind that functioned a little. Once he got her a little barer, past the removal of her shirt which still knocked the wind out of him, he figured that he'd lose the ability to banter. Fuck, just the sight of her bare thighs had derailed his brain entirely. He couldn't imagine what would happen when he finally saw all of her.

He'd planned to just take off her skirt, keen to see the different layers of her clothes, but in the process of pulling down her skirt, her knickers lowered an inch, maybe two at most. Just that, the promise of those two inches of skin, had him suddenly almost frantic, and the ability to laugh became just a distant memory. She lifted her hips so he could bring her knickers down with her skirt. He nearly yanked them down her legs, and he had no idea where he ended up throwing them. Over his shoulder, maybe, but he paid such little attention that he would have no recollection later.

Besides, clothing was a crime. Clothing was a crime, because covering up even a single part of Lily Evans was a crime against humanity.

She was perfect.

Maybe he thought so because he loved her and had dreamt about her from the moment he'd hit puberty, but if those things colored his opinion and made him biased, he knew it wasn't by much. She was just objectively, ridiculously ideal, like—

Okay, he probably couldn't manage objectivity.

"Stop it," he heard himself saying, and he also caught the thickness in his voice. After he'd started fucking gawking at her for several long moments, beyond words, she'd put an arm over her face. Even still, he could see the color in her cheeks. "Love, look at me."

She didn't. "I've never been naked in front of a lad before," she said, and then she started to laugh. It sounded not unlike his own occasional hysterical laughter, and as if everything had overwhelmed her out of nowhere and she hardly knew what to do about it. "And your face—you look like my body is about to bring about world peace or something."

That wasn't far off from how he felt, really.

"You're the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life." He couldn't lie about that even if he wanted to, although he also very much didn't want to. "You're—do you have any idea how much I'm going to annoy you from now on? Do you have any idea? I'm going to spend every second of every day trying to get you out of your clothes. Every second of every day."

She moved her arm above her head, and gave him what he wanted and looked at him. Based on the way she smiled, he thought then—and later—that she had no idea that that was exactly what he wanted from her—her naked and spread across his bed and looking at him, because he couldn't get enough of her eyes. "You have Quidditch. We have NEWTs. We have Head duties—"

"Yeah, fuck allof that." He ran his hands back up her legs from knee to hip, but it looked completely different with her naked. "This is my new mission in life. Everything else is an unworthy distraction." When his hands reached her hips, he looked back at her face. "Has anyone ever—"

There really seemed like no polite way to put 'fingered you,' and he also didn't much fancy the idea of putting it any way except politely when talking about what she'd done before him.

"Yes."

That made sense, but that Hufflepuff git was lucky he hadn't known anything about it. If he'd heard the year before that someone else had gotten their fingers inside her, he would have exploded from jealousy. (That wasn't dramatic either, but again just fact.) He would have made it his personal goal to make that bloke miserable, past what he'd already done just for dating her (which he'd eased up eventually when it had become increasingly clear that it only succeeded in making her refuse to talk to him).

Still, he would have forgotten that little life lesson—belatedly learned, but learned nonetheless—if he'd known. It bothered him very little in the moment—because he had her, after all—but sixth-year James wouldn't have had that to lean back on. He would have lost his fucking mind.

She licked her lips. "Have you ever—" Just like him, she stopped, unwilling to put it to words.

"Yes. Varying success rates. Women are complicated." That elicited a smile from her, one he returned with a certain degree of smugness. "He never got you naked though, huh?"

Apparently he could still banter. Who knew?

It was just like that with her. Even when he felt like he might spontaneously combust from wanting her, he still found it all too easy to laugh with her. He didn't have a ton of experience to draw from—and none where he felt like he did then—but what he had gave him the feeling that that was something unique to her. To them.

She rolled her eyes, although her smile stayed. "Territorial." Lifting a hand from the mattress, she held it out, beckoning him. "Come lay by me and kiss my neck and tell me dramatic things."

Was it dramatic to tell her he loved her? Because, holy fucking shit, he really did. He really did.

And was it dramatic to tell her that it was the greatest moment of his life when he watched her face as he finally—finally—put his hand between her legs and found her all but dripping for him? For him, James Potter. Him. He'd done that to her, and his ego had never skyrocketed so fast in his life.

She kept his ego suspended there, high above the clouds, as she made soft noises at his touch—a sigh at first, almost of relief, followed by one of those delightful whimpers when he ran his fingers over her experimentally, and then a tiny inhalation when he sought her clit with his thumb. He drank every sound in, determined to remember each one individually, eyes flickering back and forth from her face to between her legs, unable to decide which one had turned the throbbing in his cock to an almost-brutal ache. Both, probably.

He propped himself up further on his elbow, turned entirely towards her, and her hand nearest him went to wrap around his back, fingers in his shoulder. The other held the duvet tightly, but she put it over his for a second to shift his hand a little higher. And with that—

She gave that same gasp he'd heard the night she'd come in his lap, and even though he'd only heard it once, he still found himself somehow conditioned by it. His heart skipped a beat and he felt a swoop low in his stomach, both feelings present in the same sort of adrenaline rush he experienced when dropping dozens of feet on a broomstick. It was one of his favorite feelings in the entire world, and that sensation had seriously contributed to making him fall in love with Quidditch.

Oh, he was really going to annoy her if touching her made him feel anything close to how he felt when he played Quidditch. And if he felt that way just from touching her, what the hell was he going to feel when he finally shagged her?

Her gasp made his cock twitch, and he knew she felt it against her leg. He felt it in his fucking soul, but he felt a lot more in his soul after that. Every noise she made hit him that way, one right after the other—and she made a lot.

"Right there," she said, and she sounded pleading once again, that tone he fucking loved and remembered and relished. "And then just—fuck—just back and forth or up and down or circles. Gently. A little more. Oh. Oh, fuck." The second 'fuck' came out even sharper than the first. "Yes, yes, yes—baby, that's perfect."

It was better than Quidditch.

She'd closed her eyes at some point, but she opened them to look at him. She'd caught him in one of those moments where he watched between her legs with fervent intensity, but when he glanced back up, just the look on her face nearly knocked him sideways.

She looked like she needed him, and she'd never looked at him like that before.

He could get addicted to that look. Hell, he'd only see it once and he was already pretty sure that he was a lost cause.

Her grip on his shoulder tightened when he slid a finger inside her, which she followed with a sort of breathless moan that he almost didn't hear. All his other senses collapsed inward on him suddenly, sight and sound and smell and taste just gone, everything vanishing except for the feel of her, which was followed by one very simple question.

How the hell was he ever going to last more than one minute inside her? How?

There was just no way, because it was all just way too fucking good—the look of blazing pleasure on her face; how fucking tight and wet and ridiculously perfect she felt; the heated way she said his name when he added a second finger; all the sounds that came afterwards, each one somehow better than the last. To think of feeling and hearing and experiencing all of those things while inside her? It would probably be over before it even began.

He bent down to kiss her neck, and the hand on his shoulder migrated to bury itself into the back of his hair. "I'll heal it if you leave a mark," she said, her voice as tight as she felt around his fingers, and that told him everything he needed to know about what she wanted.

So he experimented, both with his fingers between her legs, and with his mouth on her neck, and the pressure and movement of both. He'd already explored every inch of her neck several dozen times over, but never with the express permission to actually mark her, which changed things a little. What changed things the most was feeling how she reacted as he tried different things on different parts of her neck—sucking at her pulse point or biting near her collarbone or just barely kissing around her ear—because he could feel her contract around his fingers when she liked something particularly well. That feeling only increased when he slid further down to her breasts, and so did the continual use of his name.

But what made her react the most out of everything?

All he had to do was just talk to her and she would fucking lose it—and thank Merlin that she didn't hate it and actually really loved it, because he wasn't sure he could shut up once he started going.

In those moments of intense pleasure, she didn't even sound that different, not in her moans or whimpers or sighs. Her body gave her away instead, in how she felt and how pressure built inside of her, just steadily mounting the more he told her how absolutely fucking unreal she felt, and how she was more than he'd ever dared to dream, and that he was going to think about nothing except her for—

Well, for as long as he could imagine. He couldn't imagine ever not thinking about her—generally, certainly, but he also couldn't imagine not thinking about how she looked and sounded and felt.

She coaxed him along the way with little instructions. "Harder" and "faster" both came, followed by all the reassurance he needed to know he'd done the trick. She told him how good it felt in a dozen different creative ways, but she kept coming back to "perfect," and he couldn't imagine higher praise than that.

He ate his words when she came. That was the highest praise he could imagine, and she didn't even say anything.

He could tell when she got close, both in the way she moaned and in how she felt around his fingers, and he paused his attention to her breasts to watch her face. He didn't want to miss a second, because he knew—he just knew—that nothing would top the way he would feel when he made her come.

He was right.

She made a soft, single sound, no louder than any she'd made before—perhaps quieter, really—but it sounded unique, held somewhere deep in her throat. She bit her lip, and when he reached to tug that lip out from between her teeth, determined to actually hear her, her eyes flew open to lock onto his face. With that, she came.

Fuck, it was just incredible, a complete sensory overload of sights and sounds and feeling. She was all arched back and exposed throat and blazing eyes, and she clenched so tight around his fingers before that tension broke that he knew he'd come immediately if he ever managed to actually last long enough inside her to make her come.

Again, he was probably going to come before he ever even got inside her. That had started to feel more and more likely.

"Fuck," she breathed moments later, as she continued to spasm around his fingers. "Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck—"

Then she was on him.

He had no idea how it actually happened. She was flat on her back sounding almost weak one second, and then she had him on his back the next, her hips straddling his and her hair falling all around his face as she kissed him like she couldn't get enough of him.

Holding her there, one hand on her back and the other trailing down to finally touch her arse, his heart felt ready to literally burst.

It was maybe the happiest he'd ever felt in his life.

"Again," she said, still entirely out of breath. She sounded like she might never recover. She pressed kisses up his jaw, and goosebumps raised on his arms from the way she brushed her mouth against his ear. "Tell me you'll make me come again before we have to go back to the real world."

No, that was the happiest he'd ever been in his life. Easily. No question. He'd peaked.

"You say that like we're leaving. We're not. Ever." She laughed softly as her lips traveled down his neck, but he'd really kind of meant it. "You also say that like I'm not going to try to get inside your knickers constantly from now on. Constantly. I don't think you understand. You're—love, you're everything."

He didn't know it then—how could he?—but he'd have that thought about her on and off for years to come, and he never would quite know what he meant by it. Yet nothing else summed up exactly how she made him feel, and even that fell rather short, if he was honest. The world just felt brighter with her around, made that way by everything from her sitting on his lap in the common room, to bantering with her and holding her hand while they patrolled together, to her scolding him teasingly when they partnered in Potions. It felt brighter still with her laughing against his neck as she pressed so intimately against his cock that he could feel the wet heat of her through the thin fabric of his pants. It was almost unfair, knowing that he was so close to inside of her but also unable to do anything about it. It made him want to curse and plead and yell and groan all at once, his body and mind just utterly overwhelmed by her.

She pressed a kiss in the center of his chest, just one, very soft and singular. "Hey?" He looked down to find her smiling up at him with all of her hair pushed to one shoulder. "I'm seriously crazy about you. I'm sure you probably know that—you should know that—but just in case you don't—I'm seriously crazy about you."

No, wait, was that the happiest he'd ever been?

He drew her back up to kiss her, and he could have happily died that way, with her breasts flush against his chest and her mouth on his and her hair tickling where it fell over her shoulder and onto his chest. "I've been seriously crazy about you for years, which I know you know," he said, his fingers in her hair. "So it's about fucking time, Evans. It's about fucking time."

She laughed as she sat up, her hair tumbling down her bare back, and he knew she said something cheeky in return. He heard the sound of the words, but didn't comprehend exactly what she said, because how the hell could he when she sat astride him in bed while totally naked?

"James."

Apparently she'd said something that needed a response, because she looked at him as if she waited for something.

Unfortunately for her, he had no idea what that was, and he wasn't overly interested either.

"I can't fucking handle how perfect you are," he said, hands migrating to her hips. He ran them both up the smooth curve that came in at her waist. His throat had gone tight. "There has to be something wrong with you. What is it?"

"I have a horrible personality."

"Well, I know that, love. What—"

His eyes followed the soft movement of her breasts as she leaned forward just enough to press her hand over his mouth. "I'm going to repeat what I just asked you, because I feel like you didn't hear me. I know you would have responded if you had." She removed her hand and used it to brushed her hair away from her face, her eyes sparkling. "I asked if you had a preference on how I touch you. Do you want me to lay by you? Do you want me to sit up? Do you—"

Of course she could turn the single most erotic moment of his life to date into a conversation about logistics. Of course she could.

And of course that didn't detract from his excitement or enjoyment or sheer fucking giddiness, not even a tiny bit. If anything, he might have liked it, because it was so incredibly her.

"Come back here."

She leaned back down to kiss him, and then let him shift so that they lay on their sides, facing each other. It seemed like every angle with her offered something new and exciting and just utterly fascinating, and that time it came in the form of her legs intertwining with his, her skin silky and almost impossibly soft. He had access to so much more of her that way too—not just her legs in his, but her mouth near his and her breasts available for his hands and her arse just a simple stroke down her back. He had all of her within reach, every bit of her body that he'd dreamt about, and fulfilling that goal and fantasy that had plagued him for years felt almost as good as the physical reality of holding and kissing and touching her. Almost.

Nothing compared to the way he felt when she first slipped her hand past the waistband of his pants and wrapped her hand around his cock.

Within a matter of weeks, she would not only touch his cock multiple times, but eventually take him in her mouth and then finally inside her as well. Both of those things felt leagues better than her hand, as he'd known that they would even without prior experience with either act. The first time at each would floor him, stunning him past any recollection of his name or their location or the year in question (James Potter, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, 1978—not that any of that mattered)—and both would continue to floor him on and off for years. Yet the first time she touched his cock might have topped those moments just in sheer shock value, because everything was still so new with her then. He hadn't even gotten used to seeing her topless, let alone naked, and she'd never touched him below the belt. It stunned him.

He heard himself swear, a string of words pulled from lips he couldn't feel. He couldn't feel anything except her hand around him, and she hadn't even really done anything besides a few exploratory strokes.

It was all going to be over really, really soon. He was already throbbing.

Desperate to watch, he pulled his hand from the curve of her arse and worked to divest himself of his pants. She sat up to help, and he dragged her back down the second his pants were down and off so he could kiss her as fucking furiously as he felt. Desire had indeed transformed into something close to anger, just a pure need unlike anything he'd ever felt before. It felt as he assumed people must when they went mad—he was out of his body, out of his mind, just an aching bundle of nerves that throbbed specifically in his cock, which pressed into the warm skin of her pelvis.

"Love—" he all but begged when she pulled back, but his words died in his throat as he watched her wet her hand with her tongue with a long, slow lick. Her cheeks flushed but her eyes stayed locked on his, a juxtaposition of innocence and sin all at once, and the noise he made in response sounded feral. "Holy fucking shit—you can't—"

She couldn't put even filthier thoughts in his head about the things he wanted to do with her mouth—but there she was, doing it.

Her hand went again down to his cock, and he swore he could almost feel his brain melting as her exploratory touches became a thing of the past and she began to work in real earnest with slow, smooth strokes.

If he'd acted like a swearing, aching mess for weeks with the majority of their clothes on, he knew it was nothing compared to how he acted then.

He swore. He moaned. He watched her face. He said her name. He praised her with rushed affirmations. He stared down at the sight of Lily Evans jerking him off. When she slid her hand down to his balls for the first time, he inhaled sharply and then all but fucking roared, just beyond gone.

He directed her too, at least as well as he could. Really, how could she improve? He probably would have fallen to pieces no matter how she touched him—again, as he'd thought more than once, all she'd probably have to do was look at his cock and he'd come. He had to assume that that would change with time, but he hardly knew how to tell her what he wanted when everything still felt so new and good and just mind-blowing. Still, he told her when she did something he particularly liked, and she did many, from a certain speed or pressure, to a movement of her wrist, to when she paid significant attention to the head of his cock or his balls.

He already breathed harshly, but when she pulled back to rewet her hand and once again met his eyes to fucking stare at him while she did it, he really lost his head. She had to taste his fluids, but she still went about it eagerly, like she liked it, and that—

He was going to have graphic fantasies about her mouth every hour of every day for the rest of his life. He could feel it.

"Sit up so I can watch you better," he said, and his voice sounded strange, rough and low and unlike his own. She might have given him some sort of sass in return under normal circumstances—actually, he was almost certain she would have—but she'd apparently set that aside. She listened, and he settled onto his back again, burning with desire, while she knelt between his legs and went back to it, but with two hands rather than one.

That constant pressure on his balls—and behind that, fuck, because she stroked there when he asked her to and his world lit on fucking fire—meant that he would come within the minute. He could feel the beginning of the end building, and he told her that with quick, heated words.

"Look at me when you come," she said, and his stomach clenched with pleasure just at the sound of her voice, let alone at her words. She flushed again, although her color had never quite returned to normal. "I want to see your face."

Fucking hell, that she apparently liked watching him as much as he liked watching her? That hit him square in the chest so hard that he found he could hardly breathe, and it also pushed him one step closer. Then he looked at her—really looked at her—and that sent him the rest of the way. All of her got to him—her brilliant, mussed hair; the intensity of her green eyes; the fact that he could see everything from the graceful length of her neck to the soft shape of her breasts to the flat pane of her stomach. She was perfect—or at least perfect for him, like someone had compiled all the bits and pieces of a woman that he would find the most physically appealing. The outcome? A package of beauty and fire and wit who stared at him while she slid her hand up and down his shaft.

She was perfect and she was touching his cock and looking at him like she couldn't wait for him to come, and he did.

His world went fuzzy and then disappeared entirely as his eyes closed against his will. Cum spilled onto his stomach, and he hadn't even thought about what to do about that, although he didn't think of it immediately after either. Everything just stopped as time froze, and then the room spun, as if all the blood suddenly rushed back to his head.

And then nothing. Beautiful, wonderful, blissful nothing.

After several long seconds of that nothing, the bed shifted and she slipped away while he tried to get his breathing back under control. He opened his eyes just in time to make out the smooth, round curves of the arse he'd coveted for years, but then she got outside his field of vision and turned into nothing more than a blurry blob. Still, he didn't need clear vision to see where she went. She stepped into the adjoining lavatory like she walked around his dorm naked all the time (which, could she, because that would be great), and she returned with a hand towel. He'd just thrown his arms up over his head, utterly spent, but went to take the towel from her. Instead of handing it over, she wiped up the mess on his stomach in a single motion, as if she did that all the time as well. (Again, could she?)

He shouldn't have found it cute, but there was something fastidious and orderly and very her about it all, and his chest warmed with affection.

That affection had nothing to do with the fact that she'd just made his fucking month with how hard he'd come. Not a thing.

Still all methodical business, she returned the towel to the bathroom, presumably to the hamper that sat near the shower. He didn't care enough to ask. She could have chucked it out the window for all he cared. She could have chucked him out the window for all he cared. He was that far past logical thought.

After that, she went back into his arms, and he once again rolled to face her and pulled her as close as he could, his heart still hammering and his body nothing more than a mass of loose muscles and his brain basically leaking out of his ears. What more could he do than press as much of her against him as possible and return his hand to her arse? There were probably things he could do, but he couldn't think of any just then. He couldn't think of anything.

He brushed a kiss against her forehead, and she tipped her chin up to look at him. Her smile was small and private and somehow tender, as if she reflected his own contentedness back at him. "We're never going to another class," he said. "This is your life now."

"I could do worse." She closed her eyes, and he would have joined her if he hadn't felt the burning need to stare at her. "This is as far as I've gone," she said, and he realized why she'd closed her eyes. She hadn't wanted to look at him while she'd said it. "With anyone. Ever."

Again, he doubted that it would have put him off her if she'd done more with other lads. That wouldn't change her, and while he'd probably strive extra hard to become The Best, proper noun, he wouldn't have judged her for it.

Just the same, relief washed over him. He'd suspected as much, if she'd never gotten completely undressed with someone before, but it was reassuring nonetheless, because—

"Me too." He watched one of her eyebrows quirk, her eyes still closed. "What?"

"You could have done a lot more, Mr. Quidditch Star."

"Evans, there's not a straight bloke in this castle who wouldn't shag you. Even my mates probably would if I hadn't very clearly called bags on you years ago. You—"

"Territorial."

"Yes, I know. You keep saying that like it's news. But you could have gone through blokes with way more success than I could have had with girls, so don't come at me with that."

She opened her eyes, and her nose scrunched in a specific, Lily way as she smiled. "It's going to be you. You get that, right?"

Banter died on his tongue.

"What's going to be me?" he asked. It didn't matter that he just came. The promise he words held, vague or not, sent his heart rate right back up.

"All the rest. It's going to be you."

Yes. He'd definitely peaked.

Even just the intent in her voice made his brain explode all over again.

"Holy fucking shit, I hope it's going to be me, because I've never wanted anything more in my life." His mouth had gone dry, which made speech difficult. "Lily—"

He didn't have the words.

He didn't have the words to tell her that he couldn't even begin to imagine her with someone other than him, and when he tried to imagine it, it made him feel more than a little sick.

He didn't have the words to explain just how badly he wanted all of her, body and mind and heart and soul.

He didn't have the words to make it clear that he'd fallen in love with her, and that it didn't matter if she couldn't meet him there with her own feelings yet. He'd wait for that, just like he'd wait for anything else she wanted to give him. He'd follow her lead.

He didn't have the words to ask her if she felt any of those things in return. Even if he'd had the words, he probably wouldn't have asked her. Fear of her response left him incapable of speaking.

"It's going to be you." She sounded so bloody sure, more certain that he'd ever felt about anything in his life—and he felt certain about a lot. "I told you. You're dangerous, Potter. Sometimes I forget how to breathe around you."

He melted immediately, happy beyond conscious thought, and set out to make her stay in bed with him for well past History of Magic.

He succeeded.

xxx

On the day they first started undressing each other, he would have called the mood between them 'tender' if anyone had asked.

On the day that she went down on him for the first time? He didn't know how the hell to label that mood, except as 'shatteringly euphoric.'

Even though he'd spent those days showing up late to practice more often than any other time in his Quidditch career, Gryffindor beat Hufflepuff in their next match and advanced to the cup. Moreover, a scout for the Appleby Arrows had approached him after the game—the second one to watch him play that year, but the first to approach him—her face keen with no attempt to hide it.

"Let's set up a meeting for over your Easter break," she'd said, after she'd first complimented him on the seventeen goals he'd scored that game—not a personal best, but high nonetheless. "I think we could make you an offer you wouldn't easily find anywhere else."

Like he'd go anywhere else. He'd followed the Arrows since childhood, simply because his dad did and he'd learned Quidditch growing up on his knee. He knew every last obscure fact about their team's history, had all of the stats of the current players memorized, and owned only about eighty-six of their shirts.

Still, he tried not to show that. He did his best to keep his face impassive and his response cool, although he had a very good feeling that he probably looked about as he had when Lily had first agreed to go out with him: just stupidly happy and excited no matter how he tried to hold it in. Some things were just beyond repression.

One of those things was Lily Evans asking him to leave Gryffindor's afterparty to take her up to his dorm or some empty spot in the castle. A couple drinks had loosened her tongue enough to tell him exactly who and where and what she wanted: him, anywhere private, making her come.

She told him that while she sat on his lap in the middle of the fucking common room, although the din of their fellow revelers meant that no one heard her but him. That didn't matter. He still inhaled his drink.

"You can't fucking say—" he began, but he stopped to correct himself quickly. "You can fucking say shit like that, and I want you to. All the time. You have no idea how hot it is. But warn me, love, because—"

"This is me warning you." She paused for effect. "I would very much like to go somewhere with you and tell you exactly how proud I was when watching you today. I want to show you, actually."

She gave him That Look, full of longing and almost need, that always went straight to his cock. He ate it up every time.

"Yeah?" Anticipation built in his stomach. "How would—wait. You're good to do this, right? How much have you had to drink?"

"Not enough that I'm drunk." She looked definitive, her eyes clear, and he believed her—and not just because he really, really wanted to. "I'll walk a straight line for you if you'd like. But I've obviously had enough that I'll sit here and basically beg you to make me come. Is it working?"

With his concern out of the way? Oh, it was working.

"Maybe." He couldn't hold back a grin at her long-suffering sigh. Sixth-year James would have come in his pants at the prospect of her sitting on his lap and asking him to leave a public good time to have a private better one with her. She still made him feel that way. "We could probably come to terms."

"Go on, then."

He didn't actually have terms, because they very much wanted the same thing, which left him with nothing to barter for. Still, she wanted to barter. She'd made it clear that he had the upper hand and that he'd briefly won the constant competitive struggle for power in their relationship. He'd come to eagerly crave that competitiveness just as he craved it in Quidditch, and knowing that he'd won for the night? That was sweet.

With nothing to ask for, he kissed her instead.

Their friends were used to the sight of them kissing or flirting outrageously or her sitting on his lap. The occupants of Gryffindor Tower had quickly become accustomed to those sights as well, although he knew that some people still stared, especially those closer to their year. They'd seen him pursue Lily and seen her reject him dozens of times, and then they'd seen that change over what probably seemed like a single day. No one outside of their close friends had paid close enough attention to watch him seriously graft for months, intent on proving to her that he was Decent and Had Changed and was Datable, all proper nouns. To most—but especially people outside their house—it had probably seemed like Lily had woken up one day and just agreed to go to Hosgmeade with him, as simple as that, and people quickly had had to accept a ridiculous amount of PDA from the pair. He couldn't keep his hands off her, and she never stopped him or even protested beyond banter. Half the time she grabbed at him, even. He liked those times best, without a doubt.

Still, he very rarely got her to full-on snog him in the common room—full-on, her hands buried in the curls in the back of his head while one of his caressed her hip and the other slid up the back of her jumper. Later, he would come to the conclusion that it was probably smart of her to usually prohibit that sort of behavior, because he knew he could find himself quickly carried away and forget that they were in public. Kissing her just knocked the sense out of him—what little sense he had to begin with, as she would later tease when he would tell her that.

Someone started cheering—Sirius, he had to assume, just based on the shit-eating grin on his face—and soon the entirety of the common room seemed to have caught sight of them. It took James a moment to even register something as loud as that, dozens of people cheering him on as he snogged the girl of his dreams, but it broke through the Lily-induced fog of his brain eventually. It seemed to have hit her first, and she pushed her face into his neck immediately, her cheeks hot against his skin. Still, he could hear her laughing—probably more at her behavior more than anything else, knowing her—and he personally thought he might never stop smiling again.

He still took the time to flip Sirius off, who winked in return, clearly delighted with himself.

"I've seen you drink before, love," he said against her ear, still stroking a path down her spine. She hadn't taken his hand out of her jumper, and he wasn't about to if she didn't make him. "I've seem you smashed—remember after the Quidditch cup last year? And before you say, 'no,' that's my point."

Her cheeks still glowed when she pulled back to face him again, and he lifted the hand from her hip to caress one blushing spot. "I'm glad you have a point, because half the time when you talk I'm convinced you don't have one. You just like the sound of your own voice."

"Fair. Very fair." He returned her smile. "Point is, I've seen you drink and I've never seen you try to drag a bloke upstairs." Because if he had, he would have lost his shit and derailed the common room party entirely in order to ruin things. He wouldn't have even hesitated. "Tell me you're like this because you're with me, and I'll go with you wherever you want and do whatever you want. Those are my terms."

He wanted to hear her say it, of course, but he also very much wanted to watch her roll her eyes at him, and throw out accusations of territorial behavior, and grapple with wanting to call his bluff and wanting him. Watching that play out on her face sounded equal parts amusing and arousing.

She didn't do anyof that.

She shrugged, drawing her hair to one shoulder. "I mean, you're right. Before you, I would have just spent a long while in the bath. I managed okay on my own. I'd gotten really, really good at getting myself off way before you came along."

The words came out casually, like she spoke of something she often would have during the daylight hours of breakfast or lunch, or like she might say while passing him in the corridors. But she'd never—never—said anything like that outside of some heated moment. Normally it would have turned her cherry red immediately—no, normally she probably just wouldn't have said it at all.

What the fuck else could he do but stare at her, mouth dry, heart pounding, stomach twisting with thrilled longing while a tiny bit of irritation prickled at the back of his scalp? How, how had she flipped things so entirely in her favor, and acted like she'd offered commentary on the weather? How did she do that?

"I'm going to need you to walk me through exactly how that scenario worked," he said, his voice strange to his own ears, and she finally got a little bashful then in the brief duck of her head. "Tomorrow. Tomorrow after dinner. Prefects' bathroom. I'm going to need you to walk me through everything about that, so I can make sure I'm picturing it correctly."

"Okay." A single glance at the challenge in her eyes told him that she meant it.

She'd surpassed his terms. By far. By farther than he knew he had any right to even ask for, and—

"Upstairs."

Her eyes flashed wickedly. "Oh?"

Okay, she'd probably earned the right to take the piss out of him a little. He deserved that, and he'd give it to her, as long as she did it quickly—although he'd try to get her there quicker if he could.

"Upstairs," he repeated more firmly than before. His hand under her jumper had gone to fiddle with the back of her bra without even thinkingabout it, but once he realized what he did, he wrenched his hand away. "I'll meet you up there. I'll go tell Sirius, and—"

"You know, it's funny. I've seen you at a lot of parties, and I've never seen you drag a girl upstairs." Oh, she was enjoying herself. "Is that—"

"Of course it's because it's you, Evans. I spend every second of every day thinking about you. It's been that way for years. You know that. Now, upstairs. I'm about thirty seconds away from throwing you off my lap."

File that last bit under 'things he never thought he'd say to Lily Evans,' and file her response—a bright peal of laughter—under 'reactions he never thought she'd give him if he was stupid enough to say something like that.'

Still, it worked. She stood up and went to the staircase. On the way, she stopped to mutter something against Mary Macdonald's ear. Mary immediately began to laugh, and she let Mary ask what looked like exactly one question before she flashed a smile and disappeared up the stairs.

His instructions to Sirius were incredibly brief. "I'm taking Lily upstairs—or maybe she's taking me, I don't know. Don't fuck with us, Padfoot. No pranks. We just came to really good terms—"

"'Terms'?" Sirius' eyebrows hit his hairline. "Of course you two have terms. Nothing has ever surprised me less. Let's hear it."

James really didn't know how to explain that he'd somehow managed to work it out so that he got to take Lily upstairs and she'd promised to go to the prefects' bathroom with him for the first time and touch herself in front of him. And when he thought about it that way—

Holy shit, he had won, and it was maybe the greatest victory of his life.

"It's complicated," he said instead, and Sirius continued to look like nothing had ever surprised him less. "But I'm fucking thrilled and you're not going to mess with that. Right?"

"Sure, mate." Hopefully Sirius meant it. Even after seven years of friendship, James sometimes still couldn't tell. "Think you'll shag her?"

He didn't even have to think about it. "No. I wouldn't want to do it this way, anyway. I'd want—"

Well, he didn't really know what he wanted, other than that he wanted it to be something more meaningful than some random post-Quidditch shag while the entirety of Gryffindor house could mill around outside the door, or Sirius could interrupt if he got bored and went back on his word. She deserved something better than that. She deserved the world, but he couldn't give her that, so he would give her everything he could.

Sirius picked up on all that, all the words he couldn't say. "You're so far gone," he said, shaking his head. "You know what's funny? I think she's right there with you. Sometimes I can't tell which one of you has it worse for the other. Bit mad to see. I still don't know how you finally flipped her, but I feel like you should probably offer courses. I reckon most lads would rather learn how to land a bird like that than listen to Binns go on about goblin rebellions."

James wanted to laugh at that. He nearly did, because there was no way that Lily had it worse for him than he did her. The possibility that anyone could even think that was ludicrous. Sirius needed his eyes examined, or his head examined, or both.

Still, Lily looked so fucking perfect waiting in his bed for him, stretched out across the duvet like she owned it, that he'd happily sign over ownership. Part of what made it perfect—and what made him think briefly back on Sirius' words—was the way she smiled at him, like she never wanted to see any other person again in her life. She looked at him like he was it for her.

The other part that made it perfect? She'd undressed already and waited on his bed naked, the most brazen thing he'd seen her do to date—although she'd top it in fairly short order, not that he could know that then. Her cheeks had flushed and went a little darker when he stopped in the doorway to just stare at her, stunned past movement, which made her look yet again like innocence and sin all at once.

It was the best day of his life. Full stop. The best day of his life.

"Do you know how often I've had this fantasy?" he asked once his throat worked again. It took several seconds. "Do you have any idea?"

"More than once, I take it." He could see the sparkle in her eyes even from across the room. "James, the door is open."

It was. He hadn't managed to close it, because the second he'd caught sight of her, all movement—and thought—had stopped.

It took far longer to shut and lock the door than it should have. He ended up having to verbally cast the locking spell, and use something simpler than usual too, even though he'd done far more complex nonverbal magic all year. She had just fried his brain.

In contrast, he got across the room and onto the bed and onto her in very short order. She laughed against the first kiss he gave her, face glowing with obvious pleasure at the way she'd fucking floored him yet again. (How did she keep finding new ways to do that? It wasn't fair, but he also didn't want her to stop.) That laughter receded quickly, replaced by the enthusiastic work of her hands to help him undress as quickly as they both could manage. He felt fucking frantic, pushed even past his usual desire for her, which was already stupidly intense. On a high from a Quidditch win, followed by the wonderful bargaining they'd just accomplished in the common room, followed by finding her naked in his bed?

Now he'd peaked. He knew it.

"You're killing me," he said, that refrain he'd first said in the library that had become a constant between them. How—how—had he held off just jumping her for weeks? If he'd known that things would progress as they had since he'd first grabbed her in the library, he would have dropped every other part of his life to get to her immediately. "Jesus fucking Christ, love—"

That was her usual refrain, stolen right out of her mouth, and she laughed again into their kiss. His clothes had gone somewhere to floor, tossed aside just like his glasses, and every bit of her that touched every bit of him tingled. "I'm sorry," she said, hands running across his shoulders and down his chest. He tingled even further under her touch.

"No you're not, and you shouldn't be. How the fuck—" He wasn't even sure where he intended to take that.

How the fuck do you expect me to live through this without spontaneously combusting?

How the fuck do you just do this to me?

How the fuck did I get this lucky?

She cut the unspoken—unthought, really—question off entirely by wrapping her hand around his cock.

His mouth froze against her neck, because he always froze at first when she touched him, whether he expected it or not. He exhaled what felt like a decade's worth of breath, just immediately winded, and said her name against the spot he'd just bitten. She said something in response, some quiet affirmation that told him that she loved his reaction. She always loved his reaction, because watching him lose his head over her had quickly become one of her favorite pastimes. He didn't mind. At all. He'd benefitted enormously, and he loved watching her lose her head over him too—more, he had to assume, because no one could enjoy anything more than he liked watching her want him.

"I was really proud of you today," she said, and he heard that. He doubted he could ever not hear that, since they were words he knew he'd never tire of hearing her say. "I was a really proud girlfriend. I don't think I've ever felt like that before—certainly not with anyone else."

She knew what she was doing. "I'm appealing to your ego, although I am telling the truth," he could almost hear her saying, because she'd said it to him before more than once. She knew he got off—literally—on her thinking anything positive about him, and so she'd taken to telling him those things. He knew she played him, but he didn't mind. No, he liked it. She'd learned what got him off and employed those things because that got her off, and he couldn't imagine anything greater than that.

She made things even sweeter. Way sweeter.

"James, look at me."

He did, but it took effort. His cock already throbbed in her hand, and that ache just increased at the sight of her, because he loved watching the expressions that danced across her face in those moments. Her eyes drove him particularly mad, because they spoke volumes even when her mouth didn't. Everything came through in her eyes—longing, frustration, anger, happiness, desire, fucking greed or hunger for him. The latter two were probably his favorite.

She looked at him in just that way, like she needed him, and his hips bucked into her hand unbidden. "Can I—" she began, but she stopped herself short. And then—

And then she licked her lips, clearly trying to work herself up to something, and somehow he knew. He just knew. Her face had shifted a little, as he'd started to notice that it did when she made a major decision—agreeing to go out with him, asking him to undress her for the first time, and in that moment—

"Please," he choked out, his throat burning. "Go on, love. Ask me. Please."

Just like that, she knew that he knew too.

She bit her lower lip briefly, and just watching her mouth left him almost dizzy. "Can I try it with my mouth?" she asked, and the question alone had him convinced that he knew what a brain aneurism must feel like. He'd even expected the question, but it still broke his mind.

He heard himself say yes about seven hundred times, mouth on hers in between those affirmations. He also heard himself tell her that it was the best day of his fucking life, because it absolutely was, and she smiled at that.

"Dramatic," she said, and she released his cock and nudged him off her gently. He missed all of her immediately, but that disappeared in an instant when she used his shoulders to push him onto his back and then climbed on top of him, a reversal of their previous position.

He loved her on top of him more than any other way. He'd known that immediately, because it meant he had access to two things he really loved: looking at her and grabbing her arse. (Well, he liked her best on top of him of everything they'd done to date. Shagging her could and would change that, he knew—not that he knew that because he'd already plotted out all the different ways he wanted to take her. Not at all.) But he hadn't had her back in bed since they'd skivved off History of Magic together, and he suddenly realized exactly how much he liked her on top, because when her hips met his, he could feel the warmth between her legs pressed against his cock, and that—

He couldn't even begin to describe what that made him think and feel and want, because his brain had gone almost entirely feral. All he knew was that he wanted her so badly that he wasn't sure if he teetered on the edge of insanity or pleasure or something in between. He gripped her hips and pulled her down to slide across his erection, all done from instinct born out of the caveman part of his brain that just wanted to fuck. The room spun.

She felt fucking incredible.

It took several long seconds for him to realize that he'd done it without her permission, and he used every bit of willpower to let her go.

It seemed like she hardly noticed. She continued the slow, sliding rhythm that he'd started, her mouth on his neck, and he had his hands right back on her as soon as he saw that she was into it.

"I want you so fucking bad," he said, and the last word came out particularly choked, because she was pressed so intimately against him that he'd felt her contract at just the brief sound of his voice. He knew what that felt like on his fingers, and to have her that close to his cock, and know how good that would feel, sent the room spinning again. "Holy shit, just—I don't think you understand. I don't think you understand what you do to me, love."

He didn't understand it either, honestly. Sirius had asked him about it more than once. "Why her?" he'd asked point-blank. "There are loads of girls just as fit that you've never even looked at."

James hadn't explained it well. He hadn't managed to—and still couldn't—put to words exactly what it was about her that just did it for him. It was her sass and wit and kindness and intelligence, all wrapped up in her stupidly ideal physical appearance that seemed almost built for him. Other girls might have had better single attributes he could admire—a nice arse or a pretty smile or a cool personality—but no one else had It, proper noun, not like she did.

"I have some idea," she said, moving down his neck to his chest. He could hear her smile. "It's fairly obvious, and you're quite vocal about it."

"This isn't about my cock, Evans." He swallowed hard as her lips brushed his nipple. "Okay, this isn't just about my cock. I—fuck, I want all of you."

Should he have said something like that? He didn't even know as the words flew from his mouth, but he also hardly cared. It might have sounded tender and revealing and desperate, because it was those things, but he didn't mind baring that part of him with her. It wasn't quite 'I love you,' but it was fairly close.

Her lips passed his naval, which twisted with heat. "You'll have all of me," she said, and, fuck, he might have liked hearing that even more than he liked her mouth against his hip bone. "And that's not something I'd give lightly."

She meant more than shagging or anything physical, just as he had. She meant the depths of her, all of the wonderful, multifaceted layers of her that he'd admired for years, and only admired more and more as he got to know her. Hell, he even liked some of her worse qualities, like her stubbornness or her intensely competitive nature or her need to always have the last word.

(He wouldn't always like them, but he couldn't know that then, of course.)

He would have all that. She wanted him to have all of that.

"I have no idea what I'm doing," she said, speaking again before he could muster up the words to tell her that he didn't feel worthy of anything she wanted to give him. She glanced up at him and her eyes struck him. He couldn't wait for her to look at him with her mouth around his cock. How many times had he thought about that over the years? "I mean, I have some idea, but I've never done it, so I'm going to be shit at it."

"Evans, you've never been shit at anything in your life." The ache in his cock had started transferring to the rest of him, and his entire body soon hurt from wanting her. "And I want this so fucking bad that you could be shit at it and it would still be the greatest thing to happen to me, because you're you. Plus—I'm so ready for this that I'm only going to last about thirty seconds."

Maybe that should have embarrassed him, but it didn't. Watching her place a kiss near his cock—let alone feeling it—made thirty seconds sound generous.

She smiled, and she looked somehow soft and sweet as she pressed a second kiss lower down. That she managed to look almost innocent as she did so fairly blew his mind. "Tell me what you want as I go," she said, and he nearly snapped that what he wanted was her to just fucking do it already, because his nerves felt stretched to the breaking point.

He didn't have to say anything further. She slid her mouth slowly over and up his cock, and he swore so loud that it hurt his throat. In the short time before he came—the short time, too short, because he wanted to watch her suck his cock for hours—his brain never would come back. His world went blurry and his breathing became erratic and he couldn't focus on a single fucking thing besides her mouth and the way she looked, because watching her astounded and fascinated and floored him.

His hands went to her hair, desperate to touch her in some way, and she got into a steady rhythm as he wove the strands through his fingers. She added her hand when he asked, and brought the other to his balls when he asked for that too, and the uncertainty in her motions faded. She'd learned how to get him off with her hand by then, and she'd gotten really good at it. She could do those same things with the addition of her mouth, and once she understood that, she really understood it.

He'd choked out those requests in between the most heated praise he'd given her to date, as what was left of his mind threw every compliment at her that he could muster.

He told her that he loved her mouth even more than he'd known he would love her mouth, which said a lot. He'd thought about her going down on him for years.

He told her that sometimes he'd think about it even when they got into little bickering matches over the years, when his attempts at banter had either made her laugh reluctantly or fell short entirely, nothing in between. He'd watched her make some biting comment, and he'd fucking stared at her lips, imagining them around his cock.

He told her that her tongue felt like magic and asked her how the hell she moved it like she did. That came out almost strangled, because she'd started experimenting by that point, confident enough in the act to try out a couple different things with her tongue. She did something—he didn't entirely know what or how—that hit the head of his cock in a truly mind-blowing way, and it felt so good that he could hardly breathe.

He told her that she was beautiful and incredible and beyond anything he'd ever imagined. She surpassed his expectations every fucking day just by smiling at him, let alone all the rest. That he repeated more than once, at least the 'beautiful' and 'incredible' parts. He couldn't come up with any other way to tell her just how good she looked and just how good it felt, and his brain latched onto those descriptors.

He told her that he might have liked her eyes on his face best of all, because she fucking stared at him. She took in every word he said, every expression he made. He swore he saw pride in her gaze, as if she took joy in the drama of his words (which were not dramatic, but just simple fact). She loved it, he saw just from the look on her face, and maybe not for the act itself. She loved the way he couldn't stop going on about it—about hereven though it made her blush a little. That cute innocence contrasted with sin once again at the filthy way she swirled her tongue around his cock. His hand tingled, remembering the way she contracted around his fingers when he touched her and talked. Fuck, she loved that every time, and he could almost feel his fingers inside her.

He told her when he got close to climax, even though he assumed she probably knew. His words came out a little less clearly, his breathing picked up its pace, and he started begging her, uttering pleases for reasons he couldn't articulate.

"Love, I—fuck. Fuck." His body sang as the hand on his balls went to stroke just behind there, and blood rushed in his ears. "I'm going to—I'm going to come in your mouth." It sounded dirty to think, let alone say, but he liked the warning all the better for that. "If you don't want that—"

She did want that. She swirled her tongue again, and he caught the look of triumph on her face when that did it and pushed him over the edge.

Over the months to come, she would get better and better at going down on him—just as he would on her. But nothing ever topped that first time he watched her swallow as he rained down broken curses and uses of her name. Nothing could top it, because the shock of it all hit him the hardest then—just as it had when she'd first gotten him off with her hand, and just like it would when they would finally shag for the first time. All those firsts were the absolute best, because they were everything he'd dreamt about and more.

Satiated.

He'd never used the word before, but he couldn't think of another way to describe how he felt when she pulled back and sat up onto her knees. For a second, the way she watched him reminded him of the way she sometimes looked at professors as she waited for a mark on a recent essay. She looked like she wanted him to grade her, and it nearly made him laugh.

"Come here." His voice sounded strange, but it didn't stop him from holding his arm out. "I don't know if I can talk to you yet, but—come here. Please."

He added the 'please' in case she gave him that classic line—"I'm not a dog, Potter"—but she didn't. She listened and moved up to lay against him, nestled against his body with his arm around her.

"Give me three minutes and I'll do you," he said, and she laughed, the laughter that he hadn't given.

"Charmingly put." Her fingers went to paint patterns atop his chest, a movement he doubted she realized she made. "You don't have to—"

"Evans, tell me I can do it back to you. Tell me."

"Demanding."

He found he could talk after all. "I want to watch you come. I'll let you decide how that happens, but I really, really want to make you feel like this."

She tipped her head back to look at him, and he kissed her. He knew he'd just come in her mouth, but that hardly bothered him—how could it, when it obviously hadn't bothered her? On top of that, she'd probably tasted herself on him from sliding on his cock, something else she apparently hadn't minded, and that revelation unlocked a whole new set of fantasies in his head.

His body felt like jelly, just entirely, blissfully spent, but he still had it in him to kiss her, and then really kiss her, and then roll onto his side so he could reach her better, and then—

It went further and further and he ended up with her very enthusiastically urging him on as he put his mouth between her legs.

As it turned out, going down on her was even better than he'd expected.

Things were just like that with her, he'd started to realize, and he'd increasingly realize it on and off as the years passed and she would leave and then return to his life. She fucking melted into his bed when he first ran his tongue over her, and she made a new, unique sound, something pretty and pleading that sounded like music to his ears. It turned out that his mouth just broke something in her, and everything—from the expressions on her face to the words she spoke to the way she moved—just looked and felt and sounded raw and open and vulnerable.

He loved it for those things. He loved it further for the way her hands grasped his hair, like she needed him there, pleasuring her—and he loved feeling needed, especially by her. He loved it even further still because she called him 'baby' when she asked him to move his tongue in a certain way or to add his fingers like she wanted. He'd already started to crave hearing that word from her mouth.

He loved it the most because she came hard and fast and unlike any way she had before. She hardly even made a sound, just soft moans and breathy pleas and his name spoken over and over, but her body shattered after she came. Afterwards, she somehow managed to slump down even though she lay on her back, and she looked like a marionette with its strings cut, just a pile of loose muscles.

She'd felt victory when he'd come—he'd seen it in her face—but he doubted it was anywhere near as strong as the absolute win that he felt then. That victory was stronger than anything borne from Quidditch, something he wouldn't have thought possible before that moment.

He liked making her come more than he liked playing Quidditch.

Fuck, he was so done for. Pack it in. His heart and head and soul were gone. They now fell under the property of Lily Evans.

He sat and watched her for a bit, admiring his handiwork that had left her looking as satiated as he still felt, but then went and laid down next to her again.

Having him close prompted something in her. He could do little more than kiss her for a few minutes, because she reached for him and wouldn't let go—not that he wanted her to. She just looked soft afterwards when she settled into his side, and she stroked his chest in a way he could only qualify as 'admiring.'

He loved getting her off for a ton of reasons—many of them selfish, because it got him off to watch her writhe in pleasure he'd caused—but he loved it a lot for how she always went afterwards: more affectionate, gentler, almost…loving.

At least he hoped it was loving, because he would have sold his front teeth in that moment to get her to love him. He would have done just about anything.

"I can't believe you just did that for me," he said against her hair, mind returning to the sight of her mouth around his cock. He slid his hand down the smooth length of her side, and then he drew it back up again. "I can't believe you just—Lily, that was—I don't have the words. I don't have the words, but if that's you being shit at it, I can't fucking imagine how fast I'll come once you think you've gotten good. You're already good. Fuck. Just watching you—"

He could have gone on forever, probably, despite his lack of the right words to say. If he couldn't figure out how to tell her that she'd overshadowed his Quidditch win with the sheer joy she'd brought him, he'd still say everything else he could think of. And he could think of a lot.

"I'm going to need you to do that again tomorrow," she said, cutting his ramblings short. "Maybe after my bath. Our bath, I suppose. I expect that you'll be in there with me."

Oh.

Oh, he'd forgotten that, and it made a perfect day even better.

Sirius looked like Christmas had come early when they finally returned to the common room. The party hadn't died down even a bit, and he pressed a glass of something in James' hand. "There's a rumor going around," he said, and he held a finger up to tell them to wait before he disappeared off into the crowd.

Lily's face had already started to flush. "Oh, Jesus Christ—you know nothing good ever happens when he looks like that. It actively scares me a little."

Sirius returned with a glass for Lily that held something that looked and smelled almost lethal. "Figure you'll want it," he explained, grin big enough that it probably hurt his face. "So, there's this rumor—I heard it about, I don't know, fifteen minutes ago?—that the pair of you are underqualified as Head Boy and Girl, because you apparently don't know how to use silencing charms."

For a second, James could only stare at him.

Then he started laughing.

"Fuck, I'm sorry," he said to Lily, and he was, but that didn't stop him from almost bending in half with laughter at the look on her face. She just stared at him, mouth slightly open, cheeks a truly fetching pink. "I'm sorry, love. I didn't think—"

"Do you ever think?"

"Sometimes, but I'm never going to be able to think when you're waiting for me like that. You're lucky I remembered to lock the door."

Sirius had watched the whole thing unfold like he took in the most entertaining of plays, his laughter complementing James', but he cocked his head with even more interest at that. "Waiting like what?"

Lily ignored him, her eyes still on James. His own eyes had started to tear up from laughter. "Do you think it's smart to put the blame for this on me? You really don't think that'll just make your life worse in the future?"

She made a very compelling point.

"I'm not smart." He saw her mouth quirk at the corners at that, and then he took his glasses off so he could dab at his streaming eyes with the hem of his shirt. "You knew that going into this, Evans. Don't act shocked."

"He's got you there." Sirius gestured to Lily to take a drink, and she gave him A Look of annoyance before she complied. "Lil, do you think it's weird that he calls you 'Evans' when you're fucking around? Because that's probably the most-discussed part of all of this, besides how loud James apparently is. I could have gone my whole life without knowing that, so I hate you a little for making me learn it."

Lily choked on her drink, and came up laughing so hard that Sirius looked like he'd won something.

"Do you call him 'Potter'?" Sirius pressed. "Is this just some weird hate kink the two of you have developed? Inquiring minds—"

James didn't have it in him to care that Sirius took the piss out of him—or that the entirety of the common room took the piss out of him, potentially. Not when Lily laughed like she did and swatted at Sirius in that easy way they'd immediately developed.

Not after what they'd just done in his bed that he knew he'd remember forever.

Not when the rumor going around revolved around him holed up in a room with Lily Evans. Jesus fucking Christ, as she would have said. He'd waited years for nights like that night, and he'd somehow manifested it into actually happening.

He looped an arm around her shoulders, and kissed her when she tipped her head back to look at him. Her eyes danced, and he ducked his head near her ear. "You're going to be the loud one tomorrow," he said, and he felt rather than heard her laugh.

"Make me, Potter," she murmured, and that was all it took for a heated swoop of desire to flash through his stomach.

He would.

xxx

James couldn't pinpoint the exact moment that Snape heard about his post-game celebrations with Lily, but he would have bet quite a lot of money that he could estimate within the hour if asked.

Nothing else really explained the curse Snape threw at him in the grounds a couple days later. Even though they'd never stopped fighting, it came a lot less often and only when prompted, typically when James heard Snape or one of his foul mates use the word 'mudblood' or if Sirius ran his mouth a little too much. Yet as far as James knew, Sirius hadn't gotten anywhere near Snape or his friends all day—and he would have known, because he and Sirius so rarely separated.

Things escalated quickly. It went from a two-man duel, with James hurling something back at Snape, into a multi-person chaotic mess, he and his friends against Snape and his.

It usually went that way. Really, seeing things go any other way would have surprised him. It just seemed inevitable that they'd all end up hauled before the heads of their houses, sitting opposite of a lengthy lecture that McGonagall and Slughorn tag-teamed in the Transfiguration room. They'd never teamed up before, but the Slytherins had the raw end of the deal, in James' opinion. Slughorn might get red in the face and bluster, but he was all talk and no action. McGonagall, on the other hand? She was legitimately terrifying when angry, and while he was kind of used to it, he knew they weren't.

She didn't pause to fix Peter's nose, which still gushed blood, until after Slughorn had taken his students away. (The look Snape cast James over his shoulder suggested that he very much did not consider things over between them.) "I hope you're proud of yourselves," she said, and Peter's nose gave a crack! as it healed. "I don't know why it still surprises me whenever the four of you end up in this sort of trouble. Fool that I am, I halfway expect this antagonistic behavior from them." She threw a hand in the direction of the door. "After seven years, I still haven't learned to expect it from you."

She looked at James longer than the others. He knew that for a fact.

"We're sorry," Sirius said. He had the beginnings of a truly spectacular bruise forming even then, one that would eventually take over his entire jaw before Lily would heal it. Despite that, he grinned. Dueling always got his spirits up. "Do tell us—what would you have us do the next time Snape curses James when his back is turned? Talk it out? Lie down and just take it? We're open to suggestions."

He stumped McGonagall for several seconds. "I would have you not tear up the grounds with your actions!" she said eventually, although she looked a little less angry. Her sharp eyes went to James once more. "You're bleeding, Potter."

He was, and quite spectacularly, from the gash Snape had opened on his forehead. "It looks worse than it is," he told her as she approached, wand aloft. "You know head wounds—they just bleed a lot, even when they're not bad."

"You shouldn't know that at eighteen, not enough to speak like such an authority on it." She prodded his hairline, and the spell felt very cold and then hot. He knew the bleeding had stopped without reaching to check. "Are the rest of you alright?"

"Smashing." Sirius looked like he meant it. "For the record, Professor—if we don't wreck the grounds next time, are we good to handle things this way?"

McGonagall acted as if she hadn't heard him, which gave them answer enough.

"Madness," Lily said in the common room that evening. She'd curled up in James' lap when he'd pulled her there, and she ran her fingers through the back of his hair in slow, repetitious movements. "You really think this is over me? I can't believe—"

James didn't hesitate. "I can."

Remus didn't hesitate either. "Nothing else makes a lot of sense, unless Sirius and James did something Pete and I don't know about." He looked to James for answers, not Sirius, presumably because he knew he'd get nowhere fast with Sirius. Sirius managed to look seriously affronted at that, a look he had absolutely no right to wear. "No, I didn't think so," he added at whatever he saw on James' face. He returned to his Defense Against the Dark Arts essay. "You know what I can't believe, Lil? That it took two days for that news to travel. It really shows how isolated Slytherin house is, because Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff knew—"

Lily twirled her wand and Remus' chair flew out from under him, although landing on the floor in a heap didn't wipe the grin off his face. He looked like he'd expected it, because he managed to not even upset his ink. "You were saying?" she asked.

"Get mad at James if you want to get mad at someone," Remus said, laughing as he righted his chair. "I can walk you both through silencing charms if—"

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself." Despite the sarcasm in her words, Lily smiled. She almost always smiled at Remus, as she always had, and she let him get away with murder too. Remus could sass her with no repercussions, unlike anyone else James knew, and he had hated that once with fierce jealousy. "I expect this sort of lip from Sirius, but you, Remus? You?"

That brought Sirius into things, of course, and eventually he took over enough that Lily settled silently, her cheek on James' shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly against her hair. "Not about Snape, because even though I know this makes me sound like I'm a first year—he started it. I'm sorry because I know locking and silencing spells, but—seeing you in my bed like that, I just—"

She lifted her head just enough to look at him. "I'm not mad at you," she said, and she made it sound like he'd be crazy to even think that. "I know I gave you shit that first night—I'm never going to stop giving you shit, honestly—but I made you go up there. You can't—"

James snorted. "'Made me.' You can't make the willing do anything, love."

"Yes, well." She waved a hand, as if brushing that aside. "I should have checked, because I think you would have literally left the door open if I hadn't said anything, and I knew that. I really wasn't thinking clearly, because you were all I could think about."

"I'm going to need you to say that about eight more times."

She smiled. "No."

"I'm happy to take you upstairs right now and show you that I know how silencing charms work."

"How kind of you." Her cheeks had gone a little pink, but less than when he'd teased her about it that night, or the day before. She'd come to see the entire thing as funny immediately, way sooner while taking it way better than James would have dared hope. The whole thing had already morphed into banter, something not even Snape could disrupt, apparently. "You know, I can't even get upset over this," she went on. "All it's done is make people think I blew your mind—"

"You did."

"—and it seems that whoever overheard you—my guess is the sixth year boys, since they go the second-furthest up your staircase—didn't hang around to hear me. If anything, you've probably just made blokes interested in me, which—"

Which he hadn't thought of at all, and it wiped the self-satisfied smile off his face.

"Fuck off with that." Even as he said it, he couldn't help but admire her face as she laughed. "One of these days I'm going to end up actually throwing you off my lap."

Her eyes narrowed in challenge. "You wouldn't."

He wanted to call her bluff, but he also very much didn't want to deal with the fallout of tossing her onto the common room's carpet—not just for her reaction, but for how the hell he'd explain it to their mates. "I wouldn't," he said eventually, and it chafed his pride to admit it. "But I'd like to point out, for the official record, that it sounds like you're trying to goad me into some sort of territorial display. You don't even have to encourage that, Evans. I'll just do it. I don't know what 'it' is yet, but I'll figure it out."

She kissed him, which was about as soothing to his pride as it could get, at least short of her making a loud, public display of dragging him out of the common room or up the stairs. "Stop it," she murmured, mouth just removed from his. He could hear her smiling. "I'd think you wouldn't need much reassurance, since you heard me last night."

His stomach clenched painfully with pleasure just at the thought of her in the prefects' bath with him, her cheeks flushed and her fingers between her legs, and how she'd literally almost collapsed when she came against his mouth after he'd dragged her out of the water.

He swallowed hard, and knew she heard it. "I might need a reminder. You know. For reassurance."

"I'll give you that," she said, and with such promise that his hand on her hip closed on instinct. Her own hand continued its slow progress in his hair. "I'm glad you're okay," she added, and her tone had changed entirely. Her face had too, her teasing smile replaced by a furrowed brow and the corner of her lip between her teeth. She no longer spoke about them, but about the duel that had triggered the whole conversation. "I know what they're willing to do—and what they did to Mary, and they had no reason to attack her other than 'for a laugh.'" She sounded bitter, and he didn't blame her. "They actively hate you. I can't imagine what they'd do to you if they could."

Or to her, because they actively hated her too, but she didn't mention that. Really, she might not have even thought about it. Worrying over someone else without any regard for her own safety? That had 'Lily Evans' written all over it.

"They're not about to do anything too horrible when we're this close to taking our NEWTs and getting out of here." He really hoped he believed his own logic there. Snape had that sort of foresight—he could hate him and still think that—but he wasn't as sure about some of his friends. None of them had ever struck him as especially deep thinkers—and that came from him, who had really only just started thinking most things through, and as someone who constantly hung out with Sirius, who would never lose his teenage recklessness.

Still, it was kind of nice—kind of really nice—to watch her worry over him after a duel rather than kick off over it, as she might have in years past.

Then again, he'd gotten in a lot of duels then, most picked with other people just for the fun of it. Understanding undoubtedly came a lot easier when she hadn't yet had to deal with him seriously fighting anyone since they'd gotten together, nothing outside of a minor duel or two (with Snape, as always) that had stayed quiet.

Actually, when he thought of it—

It was the first time he'd fought Snape (that she knew of) where she hadn't gotten mad at him for it. No, she'd not gotten angry other times when she'd seen a justification behind a fight. It was the first time she'd not only not gotten angry, but sided with him and expressed concern.

It was the first time—the first time of many for the rest of their lives—that she wouldn't assign a single scrap of blame elsewhere when he got into a skirmish, not even a passing, 'Did you do something?' even though his behavior would sometimes warrant that.

It made his throat a little tight.

"Thank you for caring," he said, and the worry on her face quickly transformed into surprise. "You'd be a shit girlfriend if you didn't, but I never specified that you had to be a good girlfriend when I asked you, so you caring was never a given."

The worry that had transformed into surprise transformed into a smile, just like that.

Apparently, he could do that to her.

Apparently, he had that power.

It was the first time he'd realized any of that, and if that didn't indicate that she felt something towards him that came close to love, he didn't know what did.