Author's Note: I own no person, no place, no thing – except the plot! If you recognize it, it probably belongs to Ms. Rowling or some other awesome super-human.

Also, I haven't had to write this in a while, but: smut alert! Close your eyes if that's not for you. But if that sort of thing doesn't gross you out, you might want to hang onto something. It's going to be quite the roller coaster ride. acro

Chapter 31 Awkward. Difficult. Wonderful.

"Honestly, Draco, get your hands out of my trousers! We are in the Vatican, for heaven's sake!"

"Sorry, love."

"No, you're not. I can tell by that smarmy grin on your face."

"Oi! This is not a smarmy grin. It's my sexy, seductive smirk of seduction."

"Oh. Erm, sorry to tell you this, darling, but it's not working."

"Well, how about this?"

"Draco! Hands to yourself! Wait! All body parts to yourself! Oh for pity's sake, let's just leave before you get us kicked out."

"Excellent plan, Girl."

/…../

"So, you've been in my mother country for six days now, Drake. Have you asked her yet?" Blaise's voice came through Draco's mobile as he stared at yet another blank yellow notepad. Hermione had gone to pick up more brochures and travel information for Pompeii, so Draco had dialed up his best mate. It was an unbelievable relief to have Blaise to talk to again.

"No I haven't asked yet. I just haven't found the right setting. You know how it is," Draco groused as he picked at a loose thread on his shirt sleeve.

"No, I don't know how it is, dumbass. I'm living the single life, and currently still pathetically pining away for the same red-haired beauty that I've been pining for since I was fucking thirteen," Blaise sighed woefully.

Draco scoffed. "You aren't really, are you?"

"Fuck off, Malfoy. You've got your Gryffindor girl in Italy. All you have to do is let the weather and the venue be your guide. Everything else should fall into place, and it will be fucking romantic as hell. Just pick any damned restaurant that we ever ate at with our parents-"

"Not possible for Muggles, Zabini," Draco snapped.

"Oh. Right. Well, just any five-star locale will do in a pinch. Order the champagne, say the magic words, hand her the ring, and voila! How fucking hard can it be?"

"Harder than you might expect," Draco muttered. He was still aching with disappointment over his botched attempt the previous night.

"Bah, stop whining. You've already got the girl, and girls love jewelry. You are making this complicated," Blaise pointed out.

"But-" Draco began.

"No buts. For Pete's sake, Draco, you told me about those panties – hot damn that's any man's wank fantasy come true. If she's going to write across her ass that she's yours, you'd better give her a damn ring."

"Christ, I knew I shouldn't have mentioned that," Draco mumbled.

"What are you afraid so of? That she's going to run screaming?" Blaise asked.

Draco looked around the room at their gathered belongings. Everything was packed in two large matched suitcases, as well as the smaller bags that matched them as well. He and Hermione had all but entwined the very essence of their entire lives around each other, wholly and willingly, and more than anything, he feared breaking that by asking her too soon. He remembered her blush and flustered demeanor when she'd accidently mentioned children at dinner a few nights ago.

"Yes, that's pretty much what I'm afraid of," Draco confessed.

Blaise sighed. "All right, you're obviously not thinking clearly. Look, she moved you into her home, got you apparently awesome dogs that you ramble about like a fucking proud parent, shags you like there's no tomorrow, let you ward her home with Malfoy family enchantments, she got 'I love Draco' underwear-"

"Property of Draco Malfoy," Draco muttered.

"Same difference!" Blaise shouted. "Jesus, Drake, what does the girl have to do to convince you she's yours? Stop being a pussy and just do it!"

"Ew, did Blaise just call you a – no, I'm not going to say it, nevermind." Hermione's voice startled Draco so badly he leapt out of the chair and threw his phone as he whirled around to face her.

Hermione frowned at the mobile lying on the floor as she dropped her acquisitions on the sideboard, along with the hotel key. "Why was Blaise yelling at you? Were you two arguing? Did you even hang up the phone?"

Draco stalked over and picked up the phone, from which a squawking could be heard coming from the speaker. He quickly depressed the 'end' button. "Yes, our conversation was over. No, we weren't arguing, he was simply trying to get a point across. So what did you find out about the sights of Pompeii and Amalfi, Girl?"

/…../

For the rest of her life, Hermione looked back on the eight days she and Draco spent divided between the Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii region, and then later in Amalfi, as though it had been a time in a bubble. She never was able to quite put her finger on what it was about the experience, but it always seemed to her as if she and Draco had drifted in a fog of vaporized Veritaserum; whether they liked it or not, truths came out that they'd never really acknowledged or discussed with anyone before. It wasn't just the intimacy of getting away on a grand holiday together – which was understandably lovely and very intimate – there was something more to it. She supposed that part of it was Draco's pressing need to find a way to propose to her, combined with being confronted by some of the more benign landscapes of his childhood.

She first noticed the strange feeling seeping over her the morning they'd signed up with a tour group to go hiking at Mount Vesuvius.

"Hermione! Hey! Hermione!" Draco called from somewhere in front of her. Their day-hike through the hills and lowlands had been equally invigorating and tiring. Their group was somewhere behind them, and Draco kept bounding ahead – and off the trail, for that matter – to look out at one thing or another. He'd been agitated since they'd arrived in Pompeii. Something about the place seemed to set Draco's blood alight. Hermione had never seen him so excited.

Part of her hoped he was looking for the perfect, serenely romantic location to propose – but then she accused herself of being a ridiculous girl again, and willed herself to behave normally.

"Where are you now? Hanging out of a tree? Standing on top of a great boulder? Which direction should I be heading towards?" Hermione called from the otherwise uninhabited trail.

"On your left!" Draco called from somewhere, unsurprisingly, to her left, and also not surprisingly, above her head.

Hermione smiled and sighed, and with a final backwards glance to make sure the tour guide didn't see her, ducked off the trail and quickly scurried towards the sound of Draco's call.

Draco's extended hand reached out to pull Hermione up, and she leaned up to grasp it before she crawled her way up the short rock-face to land alongside her boyfriend, who was dusty and a bit sweat-stained, just as she was, but unlike her, he was beaming.

Hermione gaped.

Draco Malfoy did not, as a rule, beam.

That was pretty much her territory – or the providence of any female, really – and it was reserved exclusively for times of great joy. It was brought on by nothing short of incandescent happiness. What on earth, Hermione wondered, could have made Draco Malfoy incandescently happy while standing on a dusty boulder on Mt. Vesuvius?

Unless…well, maybe he was about to, well…

"I've found it!" Draco crowed. "Look! We even carved our initials into the rock here."

Hermione frowned, and looked down to where Draco was pointing with his finger.

DM

BZ

There was even a rough carving of the Slytherin house crest.

Hermione knelt and pushed her fingertips against the carving. It hadn't been done using magic. The boys had actually had to chisel out the image with some other means, like any other boy would. 'Bully for them,' she thought. 'It was probably the first independent Muggle-type action they'd ever taken.' She looked back up at Draco and smiled.

"Is this what you've been so wound up about all morning?" Hermione asked as she waved her fingers across the carving.

Draco flopped down next to her. "I guess so, yes. It's funny, as soon as I thought of it, I wondered if it was here, or if I could find it. Every time I've gone to find anything from my past I've been blocked, you know? This is the first tangible evidence I've seen that my old life exists at all."

Hermione scoffed. "And what am I? Chopped Hippogriff kibble?"

Draco grinned ruefully and bumped shoulders with her. "You know what I mean. Blaise and I were thirteen when we put these here. It was the summer after Second year, and we had finished our first year of Quidditch with our new brooms. We used to fly here from his mum's villa-" Draco stood and searched the horizon.

Hermione was surprised when he suddenly huffed indignantly and turned away from his search. "Nevermind, we've got to get going. I have better things to do than – oh, wait, that must be it." Draco turned back towards the area he had previously turned away from, and scanned again.

Hermione quickly stood next to Draco, and watched his face as he scanned the distant landscape. She noticed when his eyes went glassy, and called, "stop there for a moment." Just as Draco started to wrinkle his nose in irritation, she turned and tried to make out the area where the Muggle-repelling wards must have been radiating from. Just at the gentle curve of the far end of the Bay of Naples, Hermione felt her irritation rise at wasting time standing on this Godforsaken rock when they had better bloody things to do – ha! That had to be it!

"Those are strong wards," Hermione murmured as she settled back down on the rock next to Draco and Blaise's graffiti. Draco looked down at her with a frown.

"Huh?" he asked stupidly.

Hermione tugged on his leg. "Sit down next to me, Draco, and stop trying to stare through the wards. There's a strong Confundus Charm on them, and it's disorienting you."

Draco obediently lowered himself down to the rock next to her, and blinked his way back to coherence. "Ugh. It feels weird. I have to say, this is the part of Muggle life I hate. I don't like being deceived like that, knowing there's more out there we can't see." Draco closed his eyes and rubbed at the scar on the side of his forehead. His temples were pounding after trying to stare his way through the enchantments.

Fucking magic.

He rested his head against Hermione's shoulder and huffed out a breath as he willed his headache to abate.

Hermione sighed and reached up to caress Draco's head. "I wonder…" she mused absently as she stroked the side of his neck.

"What a surprise," Draco muttered. He ran his fingers across the initials he'd carved into the rock nearly seven years before.

"Oh, pish, you. I was just wondering if there were wizards here during the more infamous Mount Vesuvius eruption two thousand years ago. And if there were, what they made of it, and how they managed. Blaise's family's wards probably alert them to all sorts of natural activity so they can flee the area, not just so they can keep non-magical people from watching them fly in and out on their brooms."

Draco shrugged noncommittally. "Not sure. I only really know about Blaise's family. And yes, their wards alert them if the volcano decides to wake up and lose its shit. Blaise and I used to watch the volcano and hope it would happen. Good God, but we were morbid little fuckers."

"I can't disagree with you there. Did you two really anticipate the explosion for the kaboom experience, or was it because of the less savory, rampant destruction and widespread death of innocent millions that appealed to you?"

Draco sighed and stood. He turned and reached down with both hands to pull Hermione up alongside him. "With complete honesty, love, it varied widely in different years for me. At thirteen, it was the kaboom factor. At fourteen, after you'd slapped me, it was part kaboom, part kill-them-all. It was pretty much that way until the summer before Sixth year."

He turned and glanced upwards towards the bowl of the mountain that benevolently stood before them. In its slumber, it dominated the landscape, and generation upon generation of families had built their livelihoods upon its slopes.

"Draco? So, what happened Sixth year?" Hermione asked as they descended the boulder and turned towards the trail.

They walked more than a few meters, hand in hand, in silence before Draco was able to work the words out. "Hmm, well. You know how it was then. That was the summer Lucius went to Azkaban; the summer I was branded. Mother only let me spend a week or so with Blaise that year, because Lucius was so anxious to give me to his master. Blaise set me up with a rather loose-skirted Halfblood Italian girl that kept me entertained on the afternoons that he was busy with his local girlfriends-"

Hermione whacked his arm a few times, and Draco laughed and wrapped his arms around her and kissed her disapproving mouth.

When he pulled away he said, "Not to worry, my jealous one, I can't seem to tear my eyes away from you anymore, no matter how hard I try."

Hermione raised her hand again, and Draco danced backwards and held his hands up in laughing defeat. "I promise, I promise, no more teasing."

Hermione stopped walking on the trail and gazed at Draco, wondering at his manic mood. He'd been chaotically up and down all morning. And now, teasing her about other girls, well. That was usually territory they didn't stray into. Their relationship with each other was sacred. Even though it was obvious and clear, since they'd known each other since they were children, that they'd both had past lovers, they never spoke of such things.

Hermione's eyes narrowed, and Draco swallowed convulsively.

"I take it you don't find my waffling around the real subject terribly amusing, so much as terribly insulting, and would prefer I get back on said original subject, or shut the fuck up before I truly stick my foot in it, correct?"

Hermione nodded with a quick single jerk of her head.

Draco sighed and grabbed her hand again, and tugged her further along the trail. "It's this place. It messes with my head. There was so much freedom here, but it was always freedom at the precipice of something else. Freedom tinged with failure. Freedom at the edge of my innocence, such as it was. Freedom at the top of the world, feeling like a rooster crowing on top of his castle – that would have been the summer between Fourth and Fifth year. I had gotten my Prefect's badge, and Lucius had actually turned aside from licking his master's brand new feet to mutter that he was proud of me. And it all turned to shit so quickly. By the next summer-"

"Ah, yes, the one with the loose-skirted friend of Blaise's?" Hermione asked.

"Right. Should have probably left those details out, sorry. Anyway, that summer was the worst, because I knew what waited for me when I returned to the Manor. I knew what Lucius was going to do to me, and that there was no fucking way I could engineer any kind of escape. I would fly out here every night and stay until the sun rose. Some of the time I was just blank, waiting for sleep or some such shit, but a lot of the time, I would just stare at the mountain and just will it to blow out and take me with it."

Hermione's footsteps faltered. "What?"

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Don't act so surprised, love. I was far too much of a coward to do myself in. And I was too angry and racially skewed in my thinking to have the sense to realize that such thinking was socially repellant and geared towards potentially slaughtering millions of innocent people, just so I wouldn't have to face my own crap future. Yes, for the one thousandth time, I was a horrible kid. Aren't we all glad that the mountain didn't listen to me? At least I got to redeem myself."

Hermione faced Draco, but couldn't quite meet his eyes. She placed one hand on his chest, and felt his racing heart through his dusty t-shirt. She swept her downcast eyes across the exposed marks on his left arm. The Dark Mark and Phoenix tail feathers looked like regular tattoos to Muggles.

To her, they represented a hideous rite of passage, and an act of war against his own family. To him, they were his death sentence and his redemption. Every day that he openly showed his tattoos, he fairly beckoned for retaliation. Hermione worried that one day his marks would be seen, but she didn't voice her fears.

For now, well, for now, they had a week left in Italy, and an afternoon and evening in Pompeii ahead of them. A maudlin Draco was not what she needed on her hands when they went to the Garden of Fugitives. She swept her arms around Draco's midsection and rested her head under his chin. She felt his heart beat slow as he heaved a dramatic sigh.

"So, is this what we're doing now? Huge emotional hugs in the middle of the trail?"

"Mmhmm, I needed one, after the loose-skirt incident."

"Well, I suppose this is one aspect about Muggle life I do like. You can't curse me when I do stick my foot in it. I bet if we had our wands you would have jinxed my arse into next week, but instead of getting cursed by the brightest witch of our age, I'm getting hugged by Hermione the huggy Muggle," Draco quipped.

Hermione raised an eyebrow as she backed away from her boyfriend. "If we had our wands, I would have jinxed your arse for calling me the brightest witch of our age – you know how much I hate that term. It's been over-used to death, and people use it as an excuse to treat me like I'm not a real person. Besides, I wouldn't jinx you into next week, because then our holiday would be over. I was actually thinking of those really, really large teeth you hit me with back in Fourth year…"

Draco groaned. "You are never going to let that go, are you? Can't we just chalk it up to flirting and be done with it?"

Hermione's eyebrow went up even higher. "Flirting? Really, Mr. Malfoy? I had no idea you felt that way, considering you meant that curse for Harry. I had no idea the amazing bouncing ferret would have been flirting with-" she broke off with a gasp when Draco grabbed her by the waist and dragged her back into him.

"What did you just say?" he growled as he glared down at her.

Hermione reviewed her previous sentence and giggled. "Uh oh! I said the F-word!"

"And what did we say about that word?" Draco hissed as he snuck his hands across her ribcage.

"It's forbidden!" Hermione gasped as Draco's fingers tickled her mercilessly.

"And what am I going to have to do to you now, hmm?"

"Ah! You can torture me all you want! But don't take away my coffee!" Hermione cried. Her squeals of protest were overheard by their tour guide, who acerbically told them that he'd have appreciated it if they'd remained on the trail and with the tour group.

Hands clasped together and heads bent towards each other as they whispered of retaliation and torture, Hermione and Draco meandered along behind their tour group.

They were so busy teasing each other, in fact, that they were oblivious to the startled pair of eyes that appraised them from the deep shadow at the base of the boulder they'd sat upon. The owner of said pair of eyes had overheard nearly every word spoken between the two. The eyes were shocked to see that Mr. Malfoy was in fact, not living in the Canadian Arctic with a family of Eskimos. Ms. Granger was purportedly in Australia, according to the Prophet, but no, there she was, plain as day, holding hands and flirting with a legally betrothed man.

/…../

On the heels of the overwhelming success of her new knickers, Hermione spent several days contemplating the next, and infinitely more difficult, phase of her carpe diem agenda.

Sue had given her some advice shortly before Valentine's Day that had been rolling around in her head since she and Draco had arrived in Italy.

"The thing is," Sue told Hermione over a cup of tea one afternoon as the two visited with Lindy and Winnie in yet another vain attempt to coerce their friends from church, who were determined indoor girls and consummate couch potatoes, to join them in a jog. "You have to consider Draco – he's so controlled all the time; so damned stoic-"

"Well of course he's stoic, he's British!" Lindy exclaimed. Winnie and Hermione giggled, and Sue rolled her eyes.

"Anyhoo, all I was going to say was that even when Draco's down grubbing in the dirt with my fairy girls, you can see that he's on his guard. That man is wound up so tight I can't imagine he'll ever be able to just relax and let nature or spontaneity sweep him away. So essentially, you may have to shake things up a little if you want to move things along," Sue said. She complimented her statement with a jiggle of her chest, which set the others to giggling again.

"All right, granted, Draco's a bit of a control freak, but I can't fault him on that since I am too. And how in the world do I shake him out of his must-come-up-with-the-perfect-proposal strategy without a confrontation or full-blown argument?" Hermione asked. It wasn't that big of a mystery what Draco had been writing in those yellow notepads. He'd been doing it for long enough that Wanda and Hermione both had gotten curious, and it wasn't like he'd been terribly sneaky about getting rid of the evidence.

"Well, three blow-jobs a day for a week should do the trick. Say, one before every meal?" Winnie said as she brought her teacup to her lips.

Silence descended on the living room.

Winnie pulled the teacup away from her mouth. "What?" she asked innocently. "How did you think I convinced Michael to move us here all the way from North Carolina after we graduated from Duke, with prayer?"

"So, you're saying you were on your knees, just-" Lindy started, but Hermione whacked her with a couch pillow.

Once the laughter had died down, Sue picked the conversation thread back up. "Really Hermione, you may have to travel outside of your own comfort zone, but it might pay out well for you to simply keep Draco so over-stimulated that he just stops thinking with that incredibly logical brain of his."

"Oh, yes!" Lindy said. "I've got this really cool trick I do with my-"

"Good God, Lindy!" Hermione cried, and held up another pillow. "I don't need those kinds of pointers!"

Hermione stretched languidly as she listened to the sounds of Draco bustling around in the suite's small kitchenette while she contemplated the advice Sue had given her more than a month ago. In keeping with the spirit of her carpe diem agenda she'd been trying out during their holiday, perhaps it was time to be open to explore new things…

Hermione sighed. If only it didn't seem so instinctively distasteful, but she had to admit that she was fully aware that one of Draco's greatest sexual fantasies was to see Hermione – ugh – pleasure herself.

In all fairness, Draco argued that it was good practical knowledge for Hermione to know by touch what her body did and did not like. She just couldn't shake the thought that it would feel a great deal like handling her own internal organs.

'Bloody hell, stop being such a prude, Hermione. Just, go wash your hands first. Oh, and better trim your fingernails. Hang on…'

Ten minutes later, satisfied that she wasn't going to cause herself bodily harm, and hopeful that she wouldn't have to be at her exploration long before Draco popped back into the suite's bedroom, Hermione arranged herself in the center of the pillows and tried to summon some delicious memories to stimulate her interest.

Draco's tongue gliding down her neck, twirling around one nipple as he pushed her back into the pillows…

Hermione reclined backwards and relaxed her legs. One hand strayed across her belly just as Draco's would, tickling and teasing to get her giggling. Hermione didn't giggle this time, but she did smile to herself. She loved the way Draco took his time as he loved her body. He kept her so at ease and happy, there was never any time to worry about things going wrong.

Hermione sighed. Back to the task at hand – literally. She slipped the fingers of her right hand between her legs and felt the heat that always made Draco smirk with satisfaction. He was awfully smug, given her previous claim of frigidity, that he seemed to have no problems at all in arousing Hermione's body and reducing her to a quivering mass of uncoordinated limbs.

Hermione delicately spread the folds of her sex as she determinedly tried to focus on mental images of Draco… looming over her, wide black eyes and shark-like grin in the moonlight before he slid his body down the length of her and teased her legs apart…ahh…and there was that spot that he could press softly against with his tongue as he oh, so gently ran his fingers down her sex to open her up, to ready her for him…there…

Hermione sighed. Really, as long as she kept her eyes shut and used her imagination it wasn't so bad at all. Not better than the real thing, and certainly not something she'd care to take up as a hobby, thank you very much…

Her fingers quickened their pace around and around that tiny little spot that Draco knew so well, just as she heard her boyfriend leave the kitchenette and pace back towards the bedroom.

'Come on, Hermione. Project over-stimulate Draco begins now.' She sat up and opened her legs, just so, as she called his name.

"Draco…"

He walked into the bedroom in only his pajama bottoms and reading glasses. With the morning paper in front of him and a cup of coffee on its way to his mouth, it made sense that Draco didn't immediately notice Hermione sprawled out on the bed. But once she called his name, he looked up.

Hermione watched as the gears in Draco's brain processed the image before him, then consequently over-loaded, and possibly even exploded.

The morning paper slipped from his hand as his coffee cup smashed on the floor and his lower jaw came unhinged from his upper. His eyes grew rounder and wider, impossibly black with surprise and lust, as his attention focused on Hermione's nimble fingers.

Hermione figured Draco's IQ had descended to near grunt-only communication levels, so she assumed she needed to extend a formal invitation.

Plus, at this point she needed him.

"Draco…ah…come here…"

Honestly, it was nearly comical when all Draco could respond with was a choked gurgle. His empty hands clasped and unclasped several times as he stood motionless and transfixed on Hermione's activities, and a flush rose on his cheeks and forehead, as if he'd broken into a sweat.

Suddenly he jerked into motion, stumbling towards the bed as he threw his glasses to the side and tore his pajama bottoms off. Before Hermione could even squeak out so much as a "hi," Draco had clambered on top of her and pulled her busy fingers away from that spot and into his mouth – "Ow! Why on earth are you biting me?"

He settled between her legs and sheathed himself inside her with a tremendous heave of his thighs even as he sucked vigorously on her fingertips.

Hermione's head snapped backwards as Draco thrust himself forcefully into her one…two…three…four…five times, and was gone-

Hermione burst into laughter.

Draco released her fingers to land with a wet plop on her chest, and he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against her breast.

"What was that?" Hermione asked as her laughter died down enough to allow speech.

Draco groaned. "I think if it wasn't for the fact that I'm still as hard as a tree trunk, I'd probably die of embarrassment. Just give me a second to collect my thoughts here…"

"Did I surprise you?" Hermione quipped.

"Most assuredly. I nearly had heart failure. I'm very sure I lost brain cells. Oh, God that was the single fucking most erotic image I've ever seen in my entire life." Draco sat up between her legs and grabbed her hand – the same hand he'd had tucked between his teeth just moments before. "Here," he murmured. "It's high time you learned, and I'm dying to show you."

He shuffled around until he was settled in his familiar pose, lying with his head and arms nestled between her legs, but Draco kept a firm hold on Hermione's fingers as he swirled their entwined digits around Hermione's clit.

"Draco! I don't need to do this! Wait, I don't want-"

"Shh, you started it, love, now you're going to finish," Draco promised, and urged their tangled fingers to twirl faster around her engorged flesh.

"But…but…" Hermione gasped and arched her back. This was wrong, and a little weird, and surreal, but Draco was guiding her fingers to places she'd never consider touching for any but the most clinical of reasons – and it was delicious and dizzying to watch Draco as he led her hands.

Hermione's legs shook as Draco licked and nibbled the sides of her legs, and then he rose to hover over her.

"Here," he commanded huskily as he guided her hand further south.

"Wait, I don't-" Hermione hesitated, then yelped as Draco pulled her hand away entirely and flipped her over onto her stomach. He dragged her up onto her hands and knees.

"Like this then," he said as he took her hand again. He leaned over her, and his iron-hard erection pressed against her bum even as Draco pressed their entwined fingers against her center.

"Draco…" Hermione gasped as he rocked against her.

"Go, love, it's all right. I'll show you," Draco whispered against her as their fingers slipped inside her body.

"Ah…sshhit-" Hermione's choked exclamation was cut off as Draco drew their bodies upright with her back pressed against his chest. He ran his free hand around to grab hers, and together they set to circling her sensitive clit while his other hand decisively led hers thrusting gently in and out, in and out-

"Right there," Draco panted in her ear as they push-pulled together. "Do you feel it?" he asked as their combined fingers pressed and rubbed and pushed against everything wonderful and strange and...

Oh, that was simply divine…

"Oooh!" Hermione wailed as the tension in her body coiled up. She shuddered and jerked in Draco's arms as the now-familiar waves of pleasure that had for so long been Draco's own to coax from her body were brought forth by her own hands.

Sensory overload. It was too crazy, too much. So intensely…tightwetslipperyhotohgoddraco…

"Close, love, so close. Come for me, there you go," Draco crooned in her ear as he coaxed her along, rocking her back and forth, back and forth…

With a tremendous screech, Hermione finally gave way. She felt, for the first time in her life, her body clamp down, vice-like, on her and Draco's fingers as she trembled through a powerful orgasm.

As soon as her muscles relaxed enough for Draco to slip their fingers out, he pulled Hermione's hand away from her body as he simultaneously flipped her over onto her back.

"Fuck," he groaned, and pulled her hand into his mouth.

Hermione, still dazed from her shattering orgasm, was barely coherent when suddenly Draco was on top of her again, just like before, thrusting madly. He lasted longer this go-round. Slightly.

Twelve quick rotations of his hips was all it took before Draco was shuddering and swearing, and Hermione's hand was dropped from his mouth once again.

"Good God, Girl," Draco groaned. "We're going to have to do it with the lights off for a month so I can find some self-control again."

Hermione grinned like a Cheshire-cat. "Does this mean you're over-stimulated?"

"Completely. I think even long-division and simple fractions are probably beyond me for the remainder of the day."

"Excellent," she said with a lazy sigh. "My plan worked, then."

"What plan was that? For me to be completely stupid?" Draco asked from the vicinity of Hermione's navel. Hermione dragged her fingernails across the back of his neck and around his visible ear, and he shuddered.

"My plan was to over-stimulate you so you'd stop thinking so much and simply enjoy our time together on this holiday," Hermione said carefully.

Draco went still, and then rose up to gaze at Hermione. "I'm thinking too much?" he asked slowly as one eyebrow lifted with all the implication he intended.

Hermione nodded. "You are. Relax, Draco. We are here together, and all is as it should be. I love you and I always will."

Draco chewed on his lip as he gazed down at Hermione, naked and flushed and wild-haired after what could only be described as mind-blowing, life-altering lovemaking. What they'd just done was incredibly intimate; it took a tremendous amount of trust on both of their parts to be as sexually open and expressive as they'd just been with each other.

"So I should stop thinking so much and just go with the flow?" Draco asked. Hermione nodded, but Draco was distracted when his libido and adrenaline finally gave out and other sensations made themselves known.

"Ow!" he exclaimed, and turned to look at his foot, which suddenly let him know that it was in some way grievously injured.

Hermione sat up with Draco, who was leaning over his foot. "Where did all this blood come from – oh, Draco! Your foot! When did you do that?"

Draco nodded towards the broken coffee cup on the tile floor. "I must have stepped on a piece of the cup in my eagerness to dive onto the bed. This actually looks rather bad. I can't believe I'm just now noticing it. Fuck, this really hurts." Draco winced as he pressed the sides of the cut closed to try to stop the bleeding.

"It does look bad. I think you're going to need a stitch or two," Hermione said.

Draco groaned. "Bloody hell, I do not want to visit a hospital. We'll be there all fucking day."

"Not to mention dancing will be off the menu," Hermione said as she climbed out of the bed.

"Well, now, whose fault would that be?" Draco asked as he limped towards the loo.

"Are you complaining?" Hermione asked with a smirk.

"Oh, God no. That was totally worth it. I'd have taken a broken bone or two for that. In fact, I think I could die completely happy right now," Draco called from the open bathroom.

"Well, I really hope you don't plan on doing that anytime soon, Draco," Hermione called back as she pulled on some clean clothing.

"And why is that, dearest Hermione, my love? Would you miss me?" Draco asked as limped back into the room and tugged her into his arms.

"Of course I would, but that's beside the point. Put me down, you goof, you're getting blood all over the floor," Hermione complained, and pushed Draco towards the bedroom's window seat that overlooked the Bay of Naples, then handed him some clothing and a towel for his foot.

Draco sat and tugged on jeans and a clean shirt as Hermione attempted to wipe up the blood and coffee splattered on the floor. He frowned at his girlfriend as she busied herself with the mess of coffee cup bits and newsprint. She'd just evaded a fairly blasé question, and was now performing menial labor that the hotel housekeeping could take care of.

"Hermione, what's the point?" Draco asked.

"Hmm?"

"You said that you'd miss me if I died, but that was beside the point, and now you're bustling around like a busy little bee. What are you avoiding? It wasn't a serious comment, so why the serious consideration?"

Hermione paused in her act of placing coffee mug pieces into the rubbish bin. She shrugged her shoulders and sighed. "Not meaning to be maudlin, Draco, but, none of this," she waved her hand vaguely around the room, and out the wide window towards the deep azure color of the sea as she spoke, "would mean anything to me without you here. You're the last good thing I have left in my life, the one unspoiled part of my existence. I just don't think I have it in me to start over again if I lost you," she finished softly.

Draco's frown deepened as he considered Hermione, squatting on the floor, surrounded by coffee, rubbish and blood. "Love, you're not going to lose me. After all the shit I've been through, I'm damned near indestructible. I mean, given, I'd prefer to not take any more beer bottles to the head, but other than that, I'm good to go." He held out his hand to her, and smiled as she accepted it and climbed up on the window seat with him.

Hermione sighed and she leaned against her boyfriend's chest. "You know nothing's permanent. Someday, somehow, some part of our past will catch up with us in some horrible way."

Draco scoffed. "Yes I realize this, which is why I'm so adamant on reading the newspapers every single day. I don't want us to be caught completely unaware if there are magic users running around where we are, now do I? We're smart and capable people, Girl, and together we're still quite strong, even without magic."

"Yes, but what about-"

"Hermione, the only way I could die on you is if I was stolen away from you. Believe me when I say there is nothing in this world that I wouldn't fight against with every last drop of blood in my body to stay with you," Draco said quietly.

Hermione wrapped her arms tightly across Draco's waist and buried her face into his shirt. She inhaled deeply, enjoying the pleasurable tang of the mildly salty air that permeated the room, as well as the natural scent that was purely Draco, and tried to shake off her morbid thoughts. "You're right, I know," she agreed.

"Of course you know I'm right. I'm brilliant, and you're the brightest witch of our age," Draco said in his best mock-serious tone.

Hermione shot up and stared at him incredulously. "I can't believe you just said that!" she cried. "Didn't we just agree a few days ago, I wouldn't say the F-word, and you wouldn't use that phrase? And then you just went and said it!" She smacked his chest. "You shit! You know I can't stand hearing that!" She smacked him again.

Draco chuckled and grabbed her hand. "Stop hitting; I'm already injured," he groused playfully.

Hermione roused and pulled Draco into a half-cocked standing position. "You are going to be even more injured if you don't watch it, mister."

Draco pushed his uninjured foot into a shoe, and then collected his wallet and mobile and met Hermione to walk down to the front of the hotel to make their way toward the nearest clinic facility to stitch his foot. As he hopped, he considered their conversation, and the wild bout of lovemaking before that that, and what had triggered his injury in the first place. He smirked to himself. That image of Hermione with her head tossed back and her fingers tangled between her thighs was going into his permanent high-point memory file. His beautiful, passionate, devoted, wickedly smart, and wonderful Hermione was utterly perfect for him in every way.

"You know, love, even though you are the, ahem, You Know What, you were wrong about something," Draco remarked casually as they hobbled down the stairs. "This really bloody hurts by the way."

"What was I wrong about?" Hermione asked absently as she pushed open the lobby door.

"You said nothing's permanent. It's not true. Some things are permanent," Draco said as they made their way to the sidewalk.

"Like what?" Hermione asked as she waved at a passing cab.

"Like us," Draco replied, and tugged at her hand to pull her into him.

/…../

Hermione hid behind her guidebook as Draco lay on a hospital bed with his foot propped up. A nurse had already come in and cleaned the area around Draco's cut foot, and all they had to do was wait for the physician to sew in the stitches. Hermione considered herself a tough girl, and she'd seen her fair share of horrible injuries during the war, but she firmly believed that magical wound sealing was much more humane than stitching. Ugh!

Hermione held her book firmly in place as an older gentleman strolled into the room and spoke exclusively in Italian to Draco and the nurse. Judging from his jovial manner, yet business-like scrutiny of Draco's wound, Hermione presumed he would be the physician they were waiting for. Her rough knowledge of the Italian language couldn't keep up with the man's rapid speech, however, so she remained hidden behind the book and kept her eyes glued firmly to the tiny map on the page in front of her.

Her knowledge of the language, however, was far more advanced than Draco realized. She'd been studying the maps and guidebooks in the ten days they'd been in Italy, and the constant influx of Italian conversation around them, combined with her own research, had given her a solid foundation roughly equivalent of the speech pattern of a toddler.

So when the physician asked Draco in a teasing voice, "what is this, you were too busy staring at your beautiful wife and didn't watch where you were stepping?" Hermione was able to very nearly understand every word he spoke.

She was further surprised, and very glad for the book to hide her flush when Draco chuckled and responded, not to deny that she was his wife, but to confirm his question entirely. "Sir, you have no idea how right you are."

To Be Continued.

P.S. Snowpocalypse! If you live in the States, you heard this phrase a lot last month. Living in Atlanta, I was part of the whole 'paralyzed by 2.6" of snow' population. So humiliating. But, I must admit, it took me four white-knuckled hours to drive the twelve mile route from office-elementary school-home. In the end, I was fabulously distracted by a winter-wonderland for several weeks last month and missed out on posting this chapter on ARL's birthday. Yay, ARL is one year old! To all of you who have been with me from the start, thank you! And to all of ARL's new followers (just pushed over 1,000! Holy cow!), I am so thrilled and dazzled by your presence. To everyone in-between, and all of the awesome people who review so faithfully to let me know how I'm doing (cringe, cheer, cheer, cringe; whatever it may be!), you guys are the best!

Right, anyhoo, chapter 32 is coming very soon. I'm not messing around here; this one's a long time coming and I won't be torturing you with waiting two or three months. I'll have it up in a few weeks at the most. I've been waiting forever, since it's the chapter for this segment of their lives. I am so excited, I could squee.

Mega-thanks, as usual to Phnxgirl for her beta-read. What would I do without your encouragement? Talk to myself a lot more, and write a lot less, that's for damned sure.

acro