CONTEST WINNER THIS CHAPTER: User theena.x recommended the song, "Crossfire" by Brandon Flowers for Blaise & Ginny this go around (actually, she recommended it for Draco & Hermione, but I thought it a perfect complement to Blaise's thoughts here, and it fit with the whole 'storm' theme I've got going for this couple). So, this chapter is dedicated to theena.x - congratulations! Lyrics for that song appear at the bottom of this chapter. Hope you'll find this song somehow and give it a listen.
Version 1.0 – 2015 – beta'd by Unseenlibrarian (once more, thank you for all your help!)
Revision 2.0 - 24 March, 2017
Revision 3.0 – 28 October, 2018
CHAPTER SIX (#3): Blaise & Ginny
Ginny's relaxing catnap lasted only twenty or so minutes before she began whimpering from what Blaise knew were probably the first cravings of her new power stirring through her blood. She turned over in his arms, snuggling deeper into his chest, trying to go back to sleep, clearly still tired from their earlier sexual exploits.
He waited until her light slumber overtook her again, and then carefully tested the edges of her powers with his own aura...
It came as little surprise that she was not just his physical ideal, but magically his equal too, although he could feel her rough edges when he carefully probed. She was strong, but clearly not confident of her control, as he sensed her fear, hidden under the layers of Gryffindor bravado. Coming to a place of equilibrium with her inner Veela was going to take work, he knew, for his Ginevra was emotionally and mentally a multi-faceted creature with a heart too wild for taming. She was brash, yet could be adorably shy, fearless and yet secretly riddled with doubt, and disciplining a temper such as hers was going to prove a formidable task. Good thing she had him as a sounding-board and a work-out partner, because he'd been there, done that, nearly lost his mind and life over it, and believed he could now use that experience to guide her properly to prevent her from hurting herself and others.
And your secret will be safe with me, always, he silently promised her.
Gently stroking the long curtain of her hair out from under her, sweeping it off to the side, he watched her sleep, fascinated by how she was letting herself be vulnerable to him at long last...and found that every touch only bonded him more to her.
He silently chuckled as he thought on the irony of their situation. No wonder he'd been so obsessed with her! The thing inside him had somehow known who she was to him, had sensed her importance to them before he'd ever put it together. His mate... Shit, even pure-blood Veela were unlikely to ever find their soul mate. How'd he get so fucking lucky? What good thing had he ever done in his life to deserve such a precious and rare gift?
Whoever was responsible was being named in his Will.
Against him, Ginny squirmed and moaned. Her legs made a little sawing motion against his, and then she was rubbing her damp core against his thigh and riding it in her sleep. Blaise felt her gush hot and wet as her arousal suddenly burned super bright once more. Her inner Veela was waking up again, and she was hungry for sex. She'd need to sate the beast so she could learn to control it before it controlled her. Better to get that done now, in a contained environment, away from others. With him.
The thought of all the things he could and would teach her over the next few months to help her learn how to control her lust got him harder than steel in a second, and in the next instant, he had her turned on her back, and was easing his cock into her sweet, tight body, joining them together again, as they belonged.
"Yes," she whispered, coming wide awake, her golden-brown eyes practically glowing now as her Sex-Witch side flared to life once again. "I need you!"
Her golden aura wrapped itself around him and reached for his inner beast.
Blaise groaned in ecstasy as he felt his Veela reaching back for her, felt as their auras slid together and melded once more.
It was the perfect fit, lock and key meeting and turning, opening them both up to reveal everything. He flipped them over so she was on top and let her lust guide his, but was careful to keep his Veela from ravaging his mate in its excitement. The thing was so beguiled by Ginny that it couldn't help but want to prove to her that it was her perfect lover, and in so doing, bind her to it. The urgency it felt to capture her, to dominate her, and to please her enough for her not to want to leave it was so strong a thing, it nearly overwhelmed his senses.
Instinct driven, magically compelled, Blaise let Ginny have him as she willed. She rode him, taking every inch into the slick heat of her body with fast, hard strokes, and he emptied his seed into her many times over the next hour, his releases coming upon him fast, like a firestorm raging out of control. She hissed, bit his throat, and moaned in his ear as she climaxed over and over again around his sensitive, throbbing prick.
And she fed off him, sating her Veela's needs from his life energy.
Finally, they both began to tire, having hit their limits. Blaise reached up and pulled her down to him, sensing the perfect moment for his confession. Grabbing hold of the back of her head, he pressed their foreheads together and looked her in the eye. "I love you," he admitted as he came in her one final time. She shuddered above him with her own orgasm as he stilled, his cock jerking and releasing, milked by her body of every last drop until he was seeing stars and she lay limp and quiet over him at long last.
Heart pounding, lungs clawing for air, Blaise collapsed back into the mattress, his strength giving out. Ginny's Veela had nearly eaten him alive...and his beast was currently basking in the afterglow of being fed upon by its mate, totally blissed out.
She stirred under him, and he could hear the worry in her voice when she asked, "Did I hurt you?"
Blaise tiredly chuckled. "I think my inner Veela is purring at your feet. You've conquered him...for now."
"But you're okay?"
Sliding his arms around her waist, he held her close and gave a great yawn that had his jaw cracking. All he wanted in that moment was to sleep for a thousand years. Little Red had worn him out. "I think it's my turn for a nap next, and I'm sure I'm going to need stitches for some of those claw marks you've left on me, my lioness, but other than that, I'm really fucking good."
Prying his lids open he looked into her eyes, noting how the golden shine faded away...and couldn't help but notice the fear in them. Immediately, everything within him came awake and was alert.
"Did I hurt you?" he asked, concerned.
He knew from experience that his size and strength were, at times, overwhelming for his partners, and it wasn't as if he'd been particularly gentle in thrusting upwards into Ginny as she'd ridden him.
A gentle shake of her head contradicted the tears she continued to cry.
He rolled them onto their sides so they were facing each other, held her close and stroked her cheek. "Tell me why you're upset then. Did I not please you enough?"
She trembled in his arms. "I felt it...feeding. I felt the thing inside me eating your energy."
He smoothed hair back from her shoulder, gathering it at her nape. "You didn't hurt me, I promise. Our inner Veelas are mates. They're designed to share their lust as equals."
"Share? But I didn't feel your Veela feeding from me."
"Not then, no," he told her, wiping the tears from her cheeks with a gentle touch. "This time, we gave to you so you'd see how good a provider we can be to your mate. It's what males do in nature; they preen, makes something pretty for the female—a dance, a song, a nest, whatever. If she accepts it, then he approaches with his needs. Next time, my Veela will need back some of that energy it gave up, so he can finally show-off to you just how good a lover he can be."
She sniffled and wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand, clearly embarrassed by the display of emotion. "You're...you're sure I didn't hurt you?"
He chuckled and gave her a most satisfied smile.
"I don't think I've ever felt so...relaxed," he admitted, feeling that truth settle into his bones. He rolled them so they were on their sides, but still intimately connected at the hips. "For the first time in my whole bloody life, Ginevra, I feel that things are right."
A wrinkle appeared in her forehead and her eyes went distant. "You know, it's odd, but I get that."
Brushing a strand of hair off her cheek, he tucked it back behind her ear. "So what still has you upset?"
"I'm not-"
He reached up and gently traced the worry line that creased her forehead.
"You are."
Ginny sighed, and something gave then...one more trust was surrendered to him, unearned but offered all the same. "My parents, they knew about all this. They had to have."
"Probably."
Most likely, for it wasn't possible for the Weasley matriarch not to have felt something stirring within her blood all these years, especially given the raw strength of her daughter's inner beast. Besides, the woman's prodigious fertility screamed of a healthy sexual appetite, and given the well-known problems most pure-bloods had with conception, that could only be a Veela's influence.
His mate moved away from him then, turning onto her back and staring up at the white ceiling above through teary eyes.
Pulling out of her sex created an ache in Blaise's gut that he felt all the way up his body, but that was nothing to watching his mate inch away, purposefully creating a physical space between them so she could gather her thoughts and come to terms with all she'd learned tonight. The shattered expression on her face as she struggled to accept her new reality, to accept that she wasn't fully human, that her whole life had been one big lie perpetrated upon her by her parents...it made his heart ache knowing he couldn't take that pain from her.
It was ironic, but he knew exactly where she was on an emotional level at that precise moment, and not because he could sense her chaotic feelings through their mating bond. It was because he'd been there, too, remembered how afraid and disoriented he'd felt at the age of thirteen as he'd lain in his bed after his attack by Bole and Derrick, after...well, after he'd taken such advantage of Theo. Every single night following that event, the awakened beast inside him had clawed at his denial of it and its needs, demanding he hunt down a victim to feed it. Desperate for answers, lost and alone, he'd spent a lot of hours raging against it and then, when he'd gotten older, sometimes even crying in despair whenever he'd given in to its demands.
It was a strange thing to feel so betrayed by your body, the one object you assumed would always be yours to command...
When he'd worked through the mystery, done the research and discovered the reasons for his aggressive, enslaving sexual needs, Blaise had been furious at having been so spectacularly deceived, too, and by the one person he'd assumed would never mean him harm: his mother.
It had been his father who had finally told him the truth, when he'd gone to visit him the summer after his Veela had been awakened...
"Is that why you left," Blaise had finally asked his dad, "because she's a Sex-Witch?"
His father had sighed, clearly resigned to finally having this conversation with him.
His parents' divorce had always been something of a taboo subject, and Blaise had tiptoed around it for years, not understanding why his mother and father didn't seem able to reconcile whatever had driven them apart. That summer, he finally got his answers...
"I will tell you truly, my son: never have I desired a woman as I have your mother. I still yearn for her today, beyond all reason, despite the long-ago ending of our marriage and the distance between us." He had looked out over the land that had been terraformed into a lush garden surrounding his estate, past its date palms and argan and wild jujube trees towards the hot desert sands of his African homeland far off in the distance, as if he could see beyond them, past the edge of the great dark continent, over the sparkling Mediterranean waves, and into the heart of Milan, where Carmen Zabini sat supremely unchallenged in her web of intrigue and played at 'cospiratore' with powerful politicians. He had lifted his cup, his eyes never leaving that horizon, and took a sip of his mint tea before adding, "But this feeling, I know it is not real. I know it is one she has devised to chain me forever to her secrets."
Blaise had been shocked by such a blunt and ugly truth from his usually staid father. In all the years he'd known him, he'd never once spoken ill of his relationship with Blaise's mother, even after their divorce.
"You didn't actually love her?"
"No." Diwan Idriss had set his cup aside and turned to his son. "I was charmed by her, of course, attracted to her magnificent beauty. What man would not be? But that was not the real Carmen. She... The Veela within her was always strong, and I believe it takes her sometimes. Enough that I never really knew the woman, only the beast."
Blaise had felt the cold hand of fear snake up his spine. "Takes her how?"
"With its lust, it enslaves its victims, even the one in whose body it resides."
"Why?"
"The Veela is powerful, like al-qraina. If you are not her mate, her only purpose is to seduce you into willingness."
"Willingness to do what?" he had asked, although he'd already suspected he knew the answer.
His father's eyes had been sad when he'd admitted, "To die for her."
That was when Blaise fully understood what had happened to Carmen's other husbands, the unlucky ones who hadn't escaped her as his father had...and what he'd been saddled with as a result of being her son. He knew then what he must do to keep the thing inside him in check if he was to remain Blaise Zabini.
Before that summer, he'd had plenty of reasons to be resentful of his mother; she'd driven his father away for a reason he hadn't fully understood, only to have a new line of men to serve as surrogates after him already waiting in the wings. Ironically, each one of them either left or mysteriously ended up dead, too. After visiting his dad in Morocco, however, with his newfound understanding of who and what his family was about and what had scared his father into running, Blaise was furious with Carmen, blaming her for the sum of his cursed, lonely existence. Her lies, her omission of the truth of their heritage had doomed him, or so he'd believed, and that resentment had sent him running into the arms of the only other Sex-Witch he knew, Madam Sabrina Aset, his mother's rival.
He still hated his mother, was wary of her. Whatever bond they'd had once upon a time, child to mother, it had been severed when he'd realized how she'd played him.
He could spare Ginny some of that pain, though, could be the calm in her storm. She needed a safe haven, a place to come to talk and to be listened to, a place to sate her overly-zealous needs until she learned how to tame them...and how to talk about them with her parents. Those were things he could offer her. Like a male courting his female, though, he just had to convince her to accept him in that role.
"Perhaps the reason your mother and father didn't tell you about it was that they hoped it would skip all of you," he gently suggested. "Why worry you all needlessly if no one manifested a Veela?"
She sniffed in doubt, but didn't come right out and argue against what he'd said. Clearly, she was mulling it over.
Good start.
"How...how would I ever talk to them about this?" She waved a hand down her body. "I mean...it was difficult enough having the 'sex talk' with them at eleven, just before I went off to school. How am I supposed to start this one off? 'Hey, Mum and Dad, just wanted you to know that I'm a Veela now, and I found out by accident by having sex with this incredibly amazing boy at school, who also happens to be Veela'? Yeah, that'll go over well. My father will hex you into an origami puppet, and my mother, she'll skip the creativity and go straight for incineration."
"Why do you need to tell them?" he asked, seeking a tactful way of reminding her that her secrets were her own to keep and no one else's business. Having come from a large, close-knit family, such a thing was probably a foreign concept to Ginny, but Blaise's relationship with his siblings had taught him long ago the importance of privacy. And it was clear from her dubious expression that the idea hadn't even occurred to her. "If you dampen your Veela's presence when around them, they'll never know one way or the other."
She seemed to consider that, brow furrowing as she mulled over his words.
"Is that what you did?" she finally asked him.
"Yes. That and I skipped going home on breaks, staying at Hogwarts for the holidays. Summers I've spent with my father, who lives a continent away from the rest of us."
"But I don't want to avoid my parents!" she said with a frustrated sigh. "My family is...they're everything to me!"
That he could believe. He'd personally known five Weasleys since coming to Hogwarts and in his opinion, they were a veritable, undivided clan in the traditional sense of the word, and not just relations forced together by blood, as was his family. Ginevra and her brothers may squabble on occasion, as he'd witnessed more than once over the years, but at the end of the day, they had each other's backs in a way that Blaise could admit, made him a tad jealous. Lorenzo would rather stab him in the heart than help him, and he was the nicest of his eldest siblings.
"Then don't avoid them," he advised, "but remember that you're not obligated to tell them all of your secrets. Some things are personal. Just work on repressing your Veela's presence when in theirs. Like I said, if you're good enough at it, they'll never know. Later, when or if you're ever ready to tell them the truth, you'll have thought about the right way by then. There's no rush."
She sighed. "This is just like the secret I have of...him, of Tom. I've never told them. Never told anyone, until tonight." Her hands fisted the white sheets beside her, the knuckles going white. "I've hated it! Lying to them all these years, it...it eats at me. But I know I can't ever tell them," she confessed. "It would only hurt them, make them feel helpless, like they'd failed to protect me. I don't want to cause them any pain."
"So you'll bear the burden alone." Blaise felt his chest go tight at the thought. Unable to help himself, he reached out and stroked his knuckles down her cheek. "My brave witch, this is why you were sorted Gryffindor...and why you're loved by a Slytherin."
She turned her head to look at him. "I'm not trying to be a martyr or get sympathy, or anything like that. I just want to do what's right."
"I know."
The conversation went quiet for a bit after that, and it took everything within Blaise not to reach out and pull Ginevra into his arms, to close the gap that had grown between them. Instead, he waited for his cue to move, as patient as a snake lying in an open field during a lightning storm. Eventually, she took a deep breath and let it out, and he instinctively knew the really tough questions were going to start now. His girl's never-back-down attitude would, naturally, include her accepting all of the world's ugly and painful truths at their face value, and that fact only made him respect her more.
"So what is a Veela mating, exactly?" she asked. "Where do they come from? Why do they have mates? Why us?"
It figured she'd start off with the hardest hitting topic...
No, this was good. This was a way to bridge the gap between them and bring them back together. He could impart to her all he'd learned from his years of research, and then set about to teach her how to control her powers, as Madam Aset had once taught him. "You already know from classes that the Veela are of the fairy folk, magical beings who live in a vast underground kingdom that stretches under the hills here in Britain all the way to the Russian steppes in the east, and south, under the Mediterranean Sea," he began, recalling the facts he'd gleaned over that time from his private studies on the subject, as Hogwarts' curriculum barely scraped the surface when it came to the specifics of other species. "There are literally hundreds of different kinds, some really monstrous looking like the leprechauns and boggans, and others that look like us."
"The High Fae, you mean?"
Blaise nodded. "Yes, the High Fae or aos sídhe are distantly related to humans, and can pass for us if they glamour their wings to hide them."
"Wings..." Her gaze went distant as she considered that. "Eros has wings. At least he does on the back of the cards."
Yeah, he'd noticed that too, but wasn't that always how the little blighter was shown, like some cherub character with a bow and arrow set? "Artistic interpretation, most likely," he said, shrugging it off. "In any case, thousands of years ago, all of the fairies were part of the same kingdom, the Seelie Court, and they were all practitioners of white magic. There was a civil war, though, a quarrel over the rightful heir to the throne when the King and Queen died in an 'accident' that was suspicious. That squabble pretty much divided the entire Court and every species of fairy picked a side. Eventually, it turned into all-out war, and after two centuries of fighting, Queen Maeve and her followers who tried to usurp the throne finally lost the fight and were tossed out of the Seelie Court forever. They formed their own court then, the Unseelie Court. The two have played this cat-and-mouse game with each other ever since, striking when they can."
"The Unseelie are called the daoine sídhe, right?" Ginny shivered as if cold. "Dark fairies. They're the lot that tends towards the nastier stuff—cannibalism, necromancy, double-dealing, that sort of thing, right?"
"Technically, all fae dabble in deal-making. It's a fairy family trait," he explained. "As for the other things...really any of the species classified by the Ministry as 'magical beings' could use black magic and engage in some really disgusting practices. Humans are notorious for it. Just look at He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."
"Or Umbridge," his partner added with a mocking smirk. "That nasty bitch got fed for it, too!"
He tossed her an appreciative smile. Everyone had hated that pink menace, even him. His Veela, the randiest bastard he knew and who would fuck an Erumpent if desperate enough, had positively cringed to the darkest corner of his soul every time the woman had hovered around him in D.A.D.A. class. Thankfully, even it had some standards. "Right. The important distinction is that the Unseelie are simply the group of fairies that haven't signed any treaties with anyone. In general, they tend to stick to their own and view others as either an enemy, a tool to be used, or food. They're not really considered friendly, more ambitious."
Ginny tossed him a teasing grin. "Are you sure we're not talking about a certain House filled with Silver Snakes?"
"You want to be spanked again, don't you?"
She laughed and it was a bright, lively sound that temporarily broke the tension.
A breath later, and her next question plunged them right back into the seriousness of the situation, however.
"So which Court do the Veela come from?"
And here was where Ginny freaked out, he thought.
"Unseelie," he told her.
His mate paled and seemed to go all icicle on him, her merriment lost in a blink.
"Are you saying I have an evil fairy in me?" she asked, alarmed by the prospect.
"Not evil," he cautioned, wanting to derail that belief from the start. "There is no good or evil in this tale. Unseelie are just willing to use dark magic, if they must. Seelie Court prefer not to stray from the path of the white. That doesn't necessarily make the Unseelie their evil opposites by default, though. You can use dark magic for good purposes."
"Like?"
"Like casting a Jelly-Legs Jinx at a robber to prevent him from running away, or sending a Bat-Bogey Hex at a rapist, so his victim can escape."
She turned her head to look back up at the boring, bright white ceiling again. "Is that why cold iron works against the Unseelie? I remember Moody saying it grounds and nullifies dark energy."
"Yeah, it's sort of an Unseelie's weakness. I'm not sure how it works, but everything in the literature says it does."
"Well," she huffed, "that certainly explains why there are no good luck horseshoes hanging over any door at our house." She shook her head, and the sense of disappointment flooded her magical aura once more. He knew it was because she was feeling blue over the deceit her parents had perpetrated in regards to their heritage. "Anyway, can we skip to the part about Veela matings and why they happen to the mixed offspring of Veela and humans at all?"
Blaise sensed her agitation through their bond, knew it wasn't directed at him, but he felt helpless nonetheless. He wished he could just wave his wand and make everything better for her, but short of an Obliviate, that wasn't in the cards. The best he could do was to answer her questions and hope it could fill in some gaps for her. "All pure-blood Fae have mates. It's some sort of magically-evolved mechanism for survival of the species, to ensure they continue breeding. No one really understands how or why it came to be, though, or even how mate selection takes place. It just is," he admitted. "It's like being born magical in humans—either you are or you aren't. No one knows why or how it happens."
To his relief, Ginny rolled onto her side to face him once again, propping up her head on her hand. It was a good sign of her trust in him, he thought. Mirroring her pose, Blaise felt encouraged by this new turn in their relationship.
"So, you and me, you're saying we were magically fated?" she asked him.
"Mmm, so it seems, kitten."
She gave him a shy smile. "I like that."
Well, well. It seemed his mate was something of a closet romantic.
Would the surprises never end tonight?
"Me, too," he admitted.
Ginny reached across and hesitantly touched his free hand, which lay between them on the mattress. She gently ran her fingers across him, tracing the bones in his hand, clearly as eager to touch him again as he was her. "It seems too good to be true, honestly. A hot bloke born just for me."
"I'm sure one of the Arithmancy boffins in our group would claim it a statistical improbability, given how rare male half-breeds are born to Veela-Human pairings."
Slowly, she pulled her hand away from him. "Does it ever...end?" she asked in a small, concerned voice. "I mean, we're not full-blood Veela, right? So this presence in my head, will it disappear some day? I feel it now, like some kind of ghostly twin or something." She tapped the side of her skull. "It's in my head, hovering there, listening and watching. Does that ever stop, though? What if it leaves me once it gets what it wants, and then...you and me...?"
She left the thought hanging, but he understood what she was really asking: she was afraid he'd stop wanting her without the Veela between them.
"Understand me now, Ginevra, and believe: I will never give up on you. You are mine, and I am in this to the end, my lioness. Of that, you can make book." Knowing from her surprised expression that he'd laid it on a bit too thick and that he was shocking her by the intensity of his feelings, he eased back a bit. "Besides, it doesn't work like that. Once a Veela wakes up in a halfling, it's there for life. Like being a Lycanthrope, the beast inside doesn't go away. You just learn to live with it."
"Oh." She looked down at the space between them, as if a bit overwhelmed by what she'd heard. "I... Um... The, um, Veela... It's really pushy. Is it like that for you?"
"'Pushy' is an understatement," he confirmed. "The little bastard knew what you were to me long before I did. It's the reason I kept shoving at you over the years, in fact, although I didn't put together the 'why' until tonight."
"Mine... I don't fully feel in full control anymore," she confided in him. "It...scares me, honestly."
"You can learn to control it, shove back." He inched a bit closer to her on the bed. "Mine gets the hint quickly once I show it who's boss."
"How?"
"You make it clear that you give only what you want and resist as hard as you can when it tries to force you."
That seemed to intrigue her. "How? Will you show me?"
"You want to try now?"
"Yeah, I do."
The thought of teaching her how to refuse his attempts at seduction to rein in her Veela had him going hard again. Unfortunately, Ginny's eyes dropped to his hips, noticing how his flesh swelled for her. She licked her luscious, pink lips in response.
"Alright, then rebuff me," he told her, wiggling closer until their breaths mingled and he felt the heat from her skin pour off her newly awakened body. "Tell your inner Veela to go to hell when it tries to push you into accepting my temptation."
"Okay, I can do that."
She sounded a little too cocky for someone who'd just been introduced to their inner Veela, he thought, so to test her fortitude, he shifted closer and rocked his hips forward, letting his stiff prick rub against her inner thighs, teasing them. Ginny sucked in a hard breath and her breasts shuddered. "No, I won't give in!" she said through gritted teeth as he reached for one perfect, tender nipple. Flicking it with his thumb nail, he felt her whole body light up at the sensation and she arched into him with a moan. "Oh, fuck! Do that again!"
"You're supposed to be resisting me," he reminded her.
"I-I'm going to...any minute now." She began to pant as he rubbed slow circles around her areola and rolled his hips again, pressing the tip of his cock higher up her thighs to tease her sex. "Wait for it."
He chuckled, amused by her silliness even in the middle of something this serious. It seemed she had a touch of her older brothers' sense of humour, those wild twins who had earned the respect of every House while they'd been at school. It was really quite charming, and unexpected. Until tonight, all he'd ever known of her had been the face she'd shown him: guarded, mistrustful, challenging. He'd spied her over the years laughing and frolicking with others, but he'd never been on the receiving end of any look from her other than that of fear, wariness, or outright disdain. Tonight he was seeing a whole other side of the woman, had been given the rare opportunity to see past her shields and into the spirited heart of her—the darker side of her pain, the fire of her passion, the silly playfulness.
It was more than he could have ever hoped to find in a partner, more than he deserved.
He would earn her trust, earn her love, prove he could be the mate she had merited.
Gently, he plucked her nipple with his fingers and her whole body jerked as if it had been pleasantly shocked. The gold in her eyes swirled into life, indicating her Veela was taking over.
"Ginevra, you're losing. Reassert yourself."
Clutching the scant inches of bed sheet still between them, she shook and he could feel her struggling with the thing inside her. That crease returned to her forehead as she closed her eyes and clamped down on her back teeth.
"It's...strong."
"You're stronger," he reassured her, dropping his mouth to that same nipple and taking it between his lips. He gently suckled upon it to the chorus of Ginny's moans. "You can do this," he whispered against her wet breast around soft licks. "Think like a lioness, not like a cub."
The prodding of her pride was the right button to push. With a snarl, her hand landed on his shoulder and she gave a small shove to force him away from her. Then, she flipped onto her back in the middle of the bed again, hands at her sides but curled for battle. Staring up at the white ceiling far above them, she growled aloud, "This is my body, bitch. You obey me!"
Against her magical aura, Blaise could feel her thwarted Veela's mounting panic and fury. It was the nature of the Unseelie to be in a position of power over their victims, to conquer and control, and being collared was their greatest fear. Like his had done so long ago to him, Ginny's inner beast fought being caged now that it had tasted a bit of freedom. It wasn't going to go quietly under her whip.
To his surprise, the Veela within him rose up in solidarity, sensing its mate in distress. It whimpered and snarled, demanding to be set free so it could protect its love, the creature that resided within Ginny. With a well-honed mental effort, Blaise fought it back and forced it into submission.
"I won't let you hurt anyone!" Ginny was saying, still arguing with her Veela. "I'll accept you, but I won't let you rule me!"
Her Veela's rage exploded. Through their bond, Blaise felt as it clawed her up inside, attacking Ginny's mental barriers and shredding them. She screamed and arched, raked at the air as her body jerked.
Bloody hell, but her Veela was powerful, possibly even more so than his now that Blaise was feeling its actual fury!
Watching her fight was difficult, but Blaise knew it had to be done. She had to win this now, to establish dominance over her Veela in the beginning or her whole life would be controlled by its voracious needs and dark desires. It could force her to hurt others, could enslave her to its sexual whims...unless she set the ground rules now for how they would live together. Unseelie Fae bowed only to the greatest strength and the cleverest mind.
"No!" she roared at the creature, but despite her protestation, her eyes flared a bright, molten gold.
The Veela was winning.
Fuck this, Blaise thought and reached out, placing his hand over one of hers, hoping to ground her and lend her some of his magical strength. At the same time, he again was forced to repress his own Veela's desire to go to its mate's aid in a similar show of encouragement.
Despite his best efforts, however, it seemed as if the Veela within Ginny was quickly taking over.
Desperate not to lose the love of his life, Blaise conceived of a very Slytherin plan to get her attention... "Ginevra, if you lose, I want you to know that I'll still happily shag your Veela."
Becoming violently jealous, it seemed, was yet another condition under which the two of them might be considered equal, because her head turned sharply towards him at the threat and she actually snapped her teeth at him. "Don't you dare, Zabini, you rotten fink! I'll beat you to a pulp if you touch her like that without me!"
The golden shine began to fade from her eyes.
Well, well...
"Come on, Red, you can't honestly expect me not to lust after her," he pushed, closing the distance between them and pressing his rock-solid cock against her hip. "I mean, look at how well she fucks! I'm hard just thinking about it now."
Ginny's lips curled in anger and she reached out to grab hold of his shoulder, letting her nails sink into his skin. "You horrible man-slag! I'm going to tear you to pieces once I'm done with her!"
Inside, Blaise was chuckling. His witch's violent covetousness was truly a thing of beauty...and predictability.
"Right. In the meantime, I think I'll take her for a ride," he said, coming over her and spreading her thighs with one of his. "I'm sure you won't mind me teaching her how to submit properly, since it seems you can't get the job done."
As her eyes quickly returned to their normal shade of whisky-brown, Ginny pounced with a strength he hadn't expected of her. She rolled them and knocked him onto his back, pinning him down by sitting atop his chest and shoving hard on his shoulders. "You rutting, ill-bred mingebag! I'll skin your rotten, fickle hide and turn you into a dress!"
Blaise laughed with a joy he hadn't felt in a long time.
Oh, but his girl had the filthiest mouth!
Wrapping his arms around his lover, he pulled her into him, rolled them again so he'd end up on top to prevent her from successfully strangling him to death, and kissed her soundly to stop her snarling at him. "Ah, vita mia," he teased, "sei incredibile, sei bellissima, sei la mia rosa! I knew you liked me enough to fight for us!"
She slapped him across the face.
"What do you take me for, you lousy louse? Of course I like you!" she growled. "I sucked your cock, didn't I?"
He dropped his head and laughed until he was sick.
His kitten really did say the most outrageous things!
"Oh, tesoro, my love, you are simply amazing! "
She went still and quiet beneath him quite suddenly.
"Y-You really do love me, don't you?" she asked, her voice trembling at the idea. "It wasn't just something you said in the moment earlier."
He brushed her hair back from her eyes. "What does your heart tell you, my lioness?"
Her gaze met his, and in her eyes he could see his future.
"You're sure you want to?" she asked him instead, kneading her nails against his chest. "I mean, I'm not the easiest witch... And I won't ever go soft on you if you decide to go up against me in Quidditch again."
How was it she could make him smile so easily when no one else could?
"Quite sure."
"I could easily love you," she admitted, baldly and without pretense. "You're charming, sly, smart, sexy...and you respect me." Her mouth twisted. "In fact, I think I'm in serious trouble here already."
"You are trouble," he countered with a smirk.
She gave him a flat look. "You're begging for it."
"Where you're concerned, always," he easily admitted. "Shall I get on my knees again for you?"
"I wouldn't say 'no', if you did."
He made to move her off so he could do just that, but she wrapped her long legs around his waist and held him firmly cradled against her. "Not right now." She caressed the muscles of his chest and shoulders and arms with a heavy-lidded, exultant expression. "Instead, I think I want something else from you."
This conversation was going places he liked...
"Oh?" he asked with interest. "Is it something only I can give you, then?"
"Yes," his beautiful mate whimpered as she rolled her hips and let her wet core ride his stiff cock. "Oh, Merlin, only you make me feel like this, Blaise!"
"Like what?" he whispered, letting his lips ghost over hers in a barely-there caress. Just that fast and he was willing and ready for her again, as if his body hadn't emptied itself multiple times inside her already tonight. She undid him easily with a glance and a word, more even so than with a touch. It was because he did love her—not just her Veela, but her. "What do I do to you, Ginevra?" he pressed, desperate to know if what they shared went both ways, or if it was only the sex that brought her to him. "Do I make you feel cherished?"
With a sly wiggle, she notched him at her slick entrance.
"Yes," she said, "and I'd feel more so if you'd make love to me again."
Make love.
Not just sex then.
He groaned as he adjusted his hips and pushed forward into the hot, clenching depths of her body. She cried out in pleasure as he fed her every inch, arching under him and digging her hands into his arse to hold him inside when she was finally filled.
Blaise stilled, his prick wedged so deep up inside her, his fists planted into the mattress.
"Ginevra, look at me."
She peeked up at him, her eyes still that lovely shade of whisky-brown he'd fallen into time and again. It was just her and him, then. His Veela was watching and enjoying the feelings, and hers...had gone oddly quiet and was withdrawn from this moment. Testing the edges of her magical aura, Blaise was surprised to find the creature had fallen asleep, apparently exhausted from all the sexual excess coupled with its earlier fight for supremacy. It had been bested...for now. If there was one thing he knew for certain, however, it was that its war against his Ginny wasn't done. It had taken him several mental clashes with his Veela to put it in its place and finally come to an accord. Despite that it still, on occasion, tested his control, seeking to take over when it was feeling particularly neglected. It was just the way the daoine sídhe were at heart; they either fought, fucked, or schemed. His mate's Veela was not just powerful, but also crafty. It would wait for another opportunity.
But for now, it was just the two of them, connected and whole once more.
"I'm yours," he promised her. "Don't ever doubt that."
Their lips met and it sealed the deal.
Slowly, he began to love her as he should have the first time they'd had sex, with tenderness and care. As he moved over her, he whispered promises of love in her ear in his native Italian, told her how beautiful and sexy he found her, and swore to protect her from anyone who would ever seek to do her harm ever again. He hadn't been there to stop Tom Riddle when she'd been younger, but he would never fail in that duty again.
"You're going to be the love of my life," she demanded of him just before she tumbled over the edge with a cry of pleasure.
Devoted to serving her every whim, he willingly agreed.
TO BE CONTINUED…
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
cospiratore = Italian for 'conspirator', or someone who participates in a conspiracy.
al-qraina = Moroccan mythology. "Patients who suffer from consecutive failure to realize their expectations and wishes are told by traditional healers to be hounded by a female jinni called ttab'a, or al-qraina ("companion" derived from the Arabic word "qarin"), who utterly hampers their way to success. It is thought that unless patients appease her wrath by sacrifices and fumigation, she may never slacken her crippling chase." (source: Moroccanworldnews dot com)
vita mia = Italian for "my life" (a romantic term for someone who means the world to you)
sei incredibile, sei bellissima, sei la mia rosa! = Italian for "you're incredible, you're beautiful, you're my rose!"
tesoro = Italian for "treasure"
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Musical Selection for this Chapter: "Crossfire" by Brandon Flowers. Lyrics are as follows…
There's a still in the street outside your window…
You're keeping secrets on your pillow.
Let me inside - no cause for alarm.
I promise tonight not to do no harm.
I promise you, babe, I won't do you no harm.
And we're caught up in the crossfire
of Heaven and Hell,
and were searching for shelter.
Lay your body down...
Lay your body down...
Lay your body down...
Watching you dress as you turn down the light…
I forget all about the storm outside.
Dark clouds roll their way over town.
Heartache and pain came a'pouring down,
like chaos in the rain.
Yeah, they're handing it out.
And we're caught up in the crossfire
of Heaven and Hell,
and were searching for shelter.
Lay your body down...
Lay your body down...
Lay your body down...
Lay your body down...
Lay your body down...
Lay your body down...
Tell the devil that he can go back from where he came.
His fiery arrows drew their bead in vain.
And when the hardest part is over, we'll be here…
and our dreams will break the boundaries of our fears.
The boundaries of our fears…
Lay your body down…
Lay your body down…
Lay your body down…
Lay your body down…
Lay your body down…
Lay your body down…
Next to mine.