A/N: Thanks for reading and bearing with me! I have way too many stories that I am bouncing back and forth between right now and so little time, but nothing will ever go unfinished. Cheers! Currently unedited but bear with me. I'll update it tomorrow.

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Ch. 11: Shower Sex and Secrets

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Virginia woke well before Lucius did the next morning and the curve of her aristocratic neck bent just slightly when she turned to look at him as he slept. It was a painful surprise to her that she did not find him as handsome as she usually did, and that made a pit of guilt form and begin to gnaw at the bottom of her empty stomach. She gently crawled out of the bed, did her best to make herself modest, and went back to her room.

When she was tucked safely inside the warmth of her own bath water, Virginia forced herself to think about the night before. Her entire body ached from his rough treatment of her and she had tossed and turned half the night because she was so unsatisfied. It was completely unusual for Lucius to have such little regard for her pleasure, but as she raised her left hand out of the bubbles surrounding her small frame and looked at the ring there, she wondered if this was how it would be now. Were things able to change once an engagement was made in a pureblood relationship? It was times like this one that Virginia wished she had a better relationship with her mother. Her friends Amelia and Cecily certainly wouldn't know, and she had no one else to turn to.

When Virginia's pale and perfect skin began to wrinkle in the bathwater, she got out of the tub, standing with her bare feet on the cool white marble floor as she reached for her wand on the counter to spell her skin and hair dry. Once she had pulled her long, chocolate locks back into a chignon, she studied herself in the mirror and even a mere few seconds were too much for her to handle.

Her arse was bruised and tender to the touch and there were small, knut-sized deep purple bruises on various other parts of her body. She realized in that moment just how delicate she was, in the light of day, when she didn't know if she wanted to be touched like that.

Virginia wondered, as she looked at her reflection in the mirror and glamoured the bruises with some quick spells, why things were so different so quickly. She knew this should be a happy day, that she should have awoken and reveled in the bliss that should have come with being newly engaged. She should be over-the-moon. She loved Lucius. She wanted him and needed him with every fiber of her soul.

Well, she did yesterday.

"Harry Potter should mean nothing to you. You are marrying your true love," Virginia whispered to the mirror, but she couldn't quite manage to convince herself. After slipping on a black a-line dress and some matching kitten heels because she didn't exactly feel like wearing color that morning, she made her way over to her bed and crouched down until she was pulling out her present from Harry Potter.

She was just re-reading his note when there was a sharp knock on the door; she scrambled to fold the tissue paper back over the dress and shoved it back under the bed with the edge of her heel, "Come in."

Lucius didn't speak for a long moment when he entered her room, regarding her rather drab appearance, lack of makeup, and pulled back hair. He was dressed as well, with his hair pulled back and held there with a navy velvet ribbon that matched his robes, "Are you feeling well?"

Virginia knew this was his polite way of inquiring why she left his bed and she twisted her hands in front of her, nervously.

"Not really. I didn't sleep well so I came to take a bath."

"There is a perfectly suitable tub in my suite."

"I didn't want to wake you."

There was silence between the pair for a moment before Lucius made his way over to his fiancée and kissed her forehead lightly, "Did I scare you last night, darling?"

Virginia politely averted her eyes, looking down at her shoes, "I'm fine, sir."

A flicker of guilt passed over Lucius' face that Virginia completely missed. He ran his hand down her heart-shaped face and kissed her softly on the lips, "Rest today. I'll be home for an early dinner." With that, he was out the door and Virginia was left with an entire empty day before her, just as she was every other day.

*.*.*.*.*

"I swear you have to be some type of sex-God…" Lacey whispered into the pillow as she rolled off of Sirius and her body collapsed into a slightly sweaty mess of limbs next to him. They had woken a half hour earlier and he had already given her two successive orgasms.

"I think I could definitely keep you around. You do wonders for my ego, love" Sirius whispered into her ear, nipping at it as he moved his body to spoon her. She groaned when she felt his insistent erection pressing teasingly into the small of her back.

"That does wonders for me," she flirted back, gently pushing her body back into his and sighing at the delicious warmth she felt, "Baby let me take care of that…"

Lacey rolled over in his arms, their noses touching in their close proximity and she reached down between them, grasping his thick cock in her hand. He shuddered in pleasure and she smiled.

"Already have a pet name for me then? My, my things are moving fast…" his words caressed down her neck in time with his kisses and she closed her eyes, enjoying it, her grip on him loosening, "But you will have to make it up to me later. I have to be at the Ministry soon and you have practice…I'll have to make do with a cold shower."

"Such a responsible rake you are," Lacey gave him a lingering kiss before begrudgingly getting out of bed and Sirius had a moment to himself to appreciatively watch her naked arse saunter across his bedroom as she picked up her clothes that were scattered everywhere in the heat of last night. After a few secret tugs on his cock under the sheets, he got up as well, planted a kiss on Lacey's shoulder blade as he walked past her, and slipped into the shower in the adjacent room, purposefully keeping the door open.

Lacey was halfway through clasping her bra when she could no longer ignore the silhouette of Sirius' body behind the steamy, glass shower door, "You want me to join you, don't you?"

"It's okay babe, I'm almost done, and then you can hog it all you want…" Sirius replied through the noise of the shower, but although Lacey detected a joking tone in his voice, she also could tell he was still turned on by the low pitch. She didn't reply, just quickly stripped her panties and bra back off and was soon opening the shower door and clumsily pushing inside. The smile on Sirius' face told her that she had made the right decision. With more skill that she felt she would ever have at the task, Sirius grasped her now slippery body in his arms and pinned her up against the wall of the shower and as he did, she wrapped her legs tightly around his waist, shocked and turned on to find that his raging erection had not flagged since he had gotten out of bed.

"I am never going to be able to get enough of this, to get enough of you," Sirius said huskily before kissing her under the stream of water, both of them only able to breathe because they were breathing in each other. Water droplets gathered on Lacey's long eyelashes and pressed Sirius' hair against his forehead. Her fingers made paths along the tattoos on his neck and chest, connecting the water droplets there, making them bead together and form rivulets that raced down the hard planes of his body, which already made him look as if he would never age again. Her back slid up the cool tile as he adjusted her body and swiftly entered her, both of them moaning at the feeling and the relief of being so close once more. Sirius braced his hands against the tiles by her shoulders and thrust into her as the hot water fell on Laceys breasts, snaking off in paths over her hard pinks nipples.

It didn't take them long for them to come like that, and in a daze, Sirius slowly and carefully extricated himself from his lover and both used the rest of the time making a more practical use of the shower.

Twenty minutes later, the pair were clambering down the stairs of Grimmauld place and entering the kitchen, where Tonks and Remus were sitting with nearly cleared plates. There was a hot pot of coffee on the stove and Sirius poured some for a very grateful Lacey.

"Have the two of you ever heard of silencing spells?" Tonks began the conversation casually as she flipped through the newspaper, one hand idly rubbing her swollen belly. Lacey shrunk into the corner, sipping her coffee and avoiding her former Professor's eyes.

"Get over it, you are just jealous because if Remus were to even come near you with his thing, you'd go into labor," Sirius chuckled to his younger cousin, who shot him a dirty look. Remus pretended to be very interested in the crusts of his toast.

"Sirius, I've got to run to practice, thanks for the coffee…" Lacey finished to the room in general, even though she was being ignored and made for the front door. Sirius followed, hurrying to get there before she did so he could chivalrously open the door for her. She laughed when he did so, but it soon turned to shock when the pair were met with half a dozen flashes going off in their faces, and the subsequent smoke from the ones that created moving images. Lacey wasn't exactly surprised that the press had found them, and all she could think of was to grab Sirius and kiss him hard on the lips.

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"So this is where you get to live, forever?" Amelia asked Virginia, wide-eyed, as she took one last long drag from her cigarette before Virginia summoned Lexi with an ash-tray and made Amelia put it out. Cecily was running her long, pale pink-tipped fingers over the mahogany banister at the foot of the staircase.

"Chienne," Cecily smirked good-naturedly, but Virginia didn't quite grasp why her friends would be so jealous of her. For the whole morning she had felt trapped in Malfoy Manor, and she thought that inviting her friends over would make her feel differently.

"Lexi, could we take tea in my room?" Virginia asked the house elf politely, and she smiled widely before scurrying off, clearly happy about the engagement. Virginia led her two closest friends on the briefest tour of the Manor she could get away with before ushering them into her room.

"For pretense for your Mama I presume?" Amelia raised an eyebrow and Virginia nodded, her eyes darting to her bed and thinking of the box underneath it as the three girls sat on chairs in the little seating area arranged by the unlit fireplace. Lexi wobbled in a few moments later with scones and a tea tray twice the size of her body. When the girls were alone again, Cecily grabbed at Virginia's hand and oohed over her ring.

"If he ever divorces you, you could sell that and live comfortably for the rest of your life," Amelia mused darkly, running a hand over her dark, shiny bob haircut. Virginia bristled, not wanting to think of any reasons why Lucius might want to separate so soon.

"It's lovely isn't it?" Virginia continued the conversation, but the girls did not help her. Both of them sat across from her, staring her down, "What? What did I do?"

"It's what you aren't doing. Last time we saw you, you were talking about how head over heels you were, and then you started acting weird and disappeared." Cecily began.

"And the next time we hear from you, you are engaged and don't seem to be happy about it one bit. Come on darling, we are your best friends. If you can't tell us, then who can you tell?" Amelia wondered and Virginia felt positively scrutinized by her two friends, inwardly debating on whether she should reveal things carefully or if she should break down and finally let out all of her feelings.

A sympathetic look from Cecily as the blonde reached out and held Virginia's hands made tears spill down her cheeks and she decided on the latter.

"I should be happy…I really should…from the moment I met him this was everything I wanted and I wondered for so long why he didn't want it too. Even after Lacey…" Virginia sniffed.

"Lacey?" Amelia queried and Virginia's face went dark.

"The reason I was so distracted that day at lunch with both of you. I saw Lacey Delaney, the Quidditch player I asked you about. She was sitting on the other side of the room with Lucius…"

Both Amelia and Cecily gave synchronous gasps that would have been comical in any other situation, but it only made Virginia cry harder, "Lucius lied to me about her. And she came here one night. I think he was seeing her but he promised he ended it and then he proposed…"

"So is that why you aren't happy? You think he is still cheating on you?" Cecily wondered.

"No!" Virginia had hoped that there had never been an infidelity in the first place. She had never seen them kiss, and the last thing she wanted to think about was if Lucius had had sex with that girl, "He wouldn't. He said she was just obsessed with him."

"Or but was he obsessed with her?"

"Amelia, stop, you aren't helping," Cecily shushed the girl, who sunk back into the toile covered wing backed chair.

"I'm unhappy because things have changed with Lucius and I…and because I met someone," Virginia admitted, and she felt horrible for saying it out loud, and simultaneously ridiculous. She had barely had a five-minute conversation with the green-eyed infamous man.

"Someone else? That you want to be with?"

Virginia didn't exactly know how to answer Amelia's question except to get up from her chair and retrieve the hidden box under her bed. After opening it and telling her best friends what had transpired between her and Harry Potter she was met with a smile from Cecily and a blank stare from Amelia.

"So romantic!" The blonde clasped her hands together, but Amelia wasn't completely convinced, "You've never even been on a date with the man. You don't know him. And I'm pretty sure he has a girlfriend…some girl that plays on the Harpies with Delaney, do you read nothing?"

Virginia felt as if she had been smacked in the face. Amelia was never one to hide her feelings, but to think that she was possibly dealing with two cheaters instead of one? It was a bit much for her to handle.

"Sorry, V, I just don't want you getting hurt. I don't know for sure, but why don't you give it some time…see if things here straighten out…" Amelia offered.

"And if you need an escape plan, we can provide it…" Cecily finished. It put Virginia at ease for the moment, but deep down, she knew that she craved more. More experience. She was so young, and a marriage like this was picture perfect for any pureblood girl, but Lucius was just one man. What if she hadn't experienced enough? Would she always wonder what if?

As she said goodbye to her friends and crawled onto her bed to wait for Lucius to return home, she wondered if she was really any different than he was.

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As Lucius prepared to head home early from the Ministry, he felt decidedly unsettled. He knew something was off with his darling Virginia, and knew he might have pushed his power too far on their first night as an engaged couple. However, the brunette waif waiting for him at home was only part of his worries. The other half of his mind was occupied with thoughts of Lacey Delaney. His ego was severely hurt that after he bid her goodbye, as terrible as he was, that she hadn't once tried to contact him.

That was a first for Lucius, but he also greatly admired her pride. In so many ways it made him want her more. He wondered where she had gone to and he pulled out a fresh piece of parchment from his desk and wrote a short, but very clear note to her. He folded and sealed it and left it with his secretary whom he gave explicit instructions to only allow it out with the best owl the ministry had. When he was finished, he grabbed his things and his walking stick, shrugged on his outer robes, and headed for the lifts to the Atrium.

Lucius grumbled when the already full lift stopped on the 7th floor and in swaggered Sirius Black, giving his usual charming smile to the women in the lift before situating himself in front of Lucius on the harrowingly fast ride to the bottom floor. Lucius could not stand the man, nor his penchant for jewel-toned vests and skinny trousers and was especially pissed off when he had the nerve to tip his head facetiously towards him before going on his way. Lucius scowled as he headed for a floo, hoping that Virginia would be happier when he returned.

A/N: Hope you like! What do you think Lucius wrote to Lacey? Will Virginia see Harry again? I would love your comments and feedback. They make the chapters come faster *nudge nudge* ;).