Chapter Fourteen
Arriving with a deafening crack of magic that spurred several dogs to go mad, Hermione hurried up the street from the partially secluded green space to Blasie and Lavender's home. Waving at one of their nosy neighbors who was out collecting the morning's paper and gawking at either her state of partial dress or the unsightly look of her battered face, she let herself into their home. Gently calling out to them, she removed her coat and hung it on the cloak tree in their entryway before helping herself to their kitchen cupboards.
After setting the kettle to heat for Lavender and fiddling with the overly cumbersome, Italian coffee machine Blaise insisted on owning, she let herself collapse on one of their island stools and stared at the black box. With her anger and adrenaline receding, her mind was becoming an emotionless void. The why of it all — though answer enough — didn't make sense to her and being an obsessive sort, she couldn't resist picking at it in hopes of understanding.
As enthralled and faithful to Marcus as she had been in school, it didn't prevent her from possessing a pair of working eyes. Adrian was fit — devastatingly attractive even, regularly striking women and witches dumb on the street as he passed them by. He was charming and charismatic; highly intelligent and skilled in magic. She couldn't think of a single person who didn't like him. He'd done the near impossible in school and been appointed Head Boy during her fifth year by unanimous decision of the staff and the Prefects the year prior. Even on the rare occasions he branched out from entertainment law and entered the Wizengamot, people fawned over him as he opposed them.
Throughout school and all the years after he had it all. It simply didn't compute with her brain how he could have wanted more. And not just wanted it but to have felt so entitled to it as to have gone to the lengths he had. He had played with their lives, their happiness, had left them irrevocably changed by it all, and held no regret for it beyond allowing Marcus to slip his leash, as he had referred to his manipulation.
How could a spot on a professional quidditch team mean so much to him as to ruin his friend's life? How could one witch be so coveted that he would rather destroy her in the process of taking her from someone else than leave her happy with the person she loved? She couldn't fathom it.
Prejudice and discrimination she understood. War, though devastating, she understood and knew that throughout history times arose when it was needed. She could even rationalize the blind loyalty to an idea or person regardless of the morality behind it having engaged in her own fair share of questionable practices during the war and after. But the insidious, malicious, downright villainous behavior of Adrian Pucey baffled her.
How could she have been so wrong, so blind, as to who and what he was? He had manipulated them both for years and with her foolish trust in him she had handed him the chains needed to keep her under his thumb time and again.
Startled out of her reverie as the kettle began to whistle, she hopped off the stool and removed it to a hot pad. Scooping in Lavender's prenatal tea blend, she retrieved a cup and started to pour just as her friend padded into the room, a slight waddle beginning to accompany her steps as her body continued to stretch and grow.
"You're up early," the blonde commented, twisting her torso as she chased the sash of her robe. Accepting the cup from Hermione she started to take a sip before dropping it, its contents spilling down her nightgown as the china shattered on the hardwood floors. "Merlin, Hermione! What happened to your face?" she shrieked, instantly taking hold of her jaw, making her wince as her friend applied a little too much pressure. "Blaise!"
"I'm coming, I'm coming," he grumbled, stopping for coffee first. "Bloody hell, witch, it's barely even dawn. What's going on? Shouldn't you be in a sex-coma right now? Or did I win the bet and Flint hasn't shagged you until you walk funny yet?"
"Look at her!" his wife demanded, clearing a bit of the sleep from his brain.
"I'll kill him!" he roared. "I will fucking bury him. Salazar Slytherin, what the fuck happened? I swear on my magic, Flint-"
"Didn't do this," both Hermione and Lavender responded.
Bringing a rag stuffed with ice over and gingerly holding it to her cheek, Lavender switched her decade's long script of vehement hatred to defense and said, "Marcus would never. For all his faults, hitting women has never been one of them. But whoever did this, I almost pity them because they don't know the hellhound they just unleashed.
"Remember what he did that Beauxbatons bloke when he grabbed your arm after you turned him down for the ball?"
Wincing as she moved the makeshift ice pack to her lip, Hermione nodded, "Yeah, I thought they were going to kick him out for that."
"They would have had Moody — or I guess Crouch — not witnessed the whole thing. I remember Madam Pomfrey said he damaged the joint in that wizard's shoulder so badly when he dislocated it that even after it was healed, he'd never be able to raise it up all the way." Looking to her husband, Lavender added, "Sweet, docile, romantic, gentle, all words you can accurately apply to Marcus Flint. Rabid hell spawn is also applicable when it comes to someone harming Hermione. He's bloody feral where she's concerned.
"Also, I told you they wouldn't last the night without fucking. Look," she smiled triumphantly, pointing to Hermione's neck and pulling at the collar of the oversized shirt she wore. "He definitely marked her but something tells me our girl was begging for it and more."
Swatting her hand away, she blushingly chastised, "Knock it off," rubbing her hand along the love bite her friend had just pointed out to her husband.
"So?" Lavender demanded.
"What?"
"How was it? It's been ten years and just the other week you confessed that he was the best you've experienced. Memory still ring true?"
"Memory pales in comparison!" she squealed, falling back onto the stool. "Oh my God, Lavender, it was amazing. All night long, it just got better and better. I would probably still be under him or over him or whatever had we not nearly passed out from exhaustion. And I'm so sore but in that yummy, delicious sort of way that makes you want to go back for seconds. It was incredible. Seriously, the best sex of my life.
"And my God the connection that was there…" sighing as she leaned back from the island with a dreamy glow to her eyes. "It was like no time had passed at all. I love him just as much now as I did then. I can't believe we let ten years go by all because of fucking Adrian. Godric, Mary, and Jesus, I could kill him. I mean to have done all of this-"
"Where's Marcus?" Blaise interrupted as Lavender asked, "Wait, what does Ades have to do with anything?"
"Still in bed," Hermione absently answered. "Adrian is the reason Marcus kept saying I was the one to blame for how things ended. I left a note at the office — sorry for how badly I wrecked your desk by the way — explaining everything as quickly as I could but he's behind it all. Our breakup, the years we spent apart, the blackmail!" she yelled, her anger beginning to flare back to life.
"You can't be serious?" Lavender shrieked. Grabbing the box, she demanded, "Let me see this," as her husband once again interjected himself into the conversation with his still half-asleep musings.
"Does he know you're gone?"
"What?"
"Marcus; does he know you left? Did you wake him and tell him — well of course not because he'd be here. So did you leave him a note?"
"Fuck!" Hermione yelled as Blaise led her by the nose through the dots, helping her to connect them. "Shite, shite, shite," she continued to swear as she caught sight of the time.
Though he had the week off, she knew he was conditioned to rise early for practices and training sessions and would be waking soon to find his home empty of her presence if he hadn't already.
"I have to go, now! Can I use your floo?" she asked, already making a mad dash for their parlor room. Explaining as she went, she summarized, "The box has the blackmail and Merlin only knows what else in it. The office has copies of letters and legal work with his handwriting and a note briefly detailing what I found this morning. Once I handle this, I'll send a letter with the rest of the information." Taking a large pinch of powder, she added, "Also, I'm taking an additional week off. I won't be in the office or available for anything except handling Adrian this week or next. If you need me, we'll be at the cottage; provided I didn't just set us back another bloody decade."
Throwing the powder in as she mentally added another line on the list of unforgivable grievances Adrian had committed, she called out for the round the clock pub Marcus had brought her to the night prior. Gracelessly stumbling out as if it was her first time traveling by such means, she gave a quick, "Hello," to the barkeep and hurried out to the Apparation spot. With his home in mind, Hermione turned on her heel and popped out with the first controlled echo of magic she had been able to manage since discovering Adrian's duplicity.
Without missing a step, she landed in his front garden and hastened up the path to his door, her movements effortlessly transitioning from one to the other. Taking only a moment to brush her filthy feet against the mat, she let herself back inside, the quietness from earlier, now heavy as her stomach started to turn. Not even out of the entryway and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt as if the feelings were her own that he had woken up and thought she had left him as he had done to her.
Softly making her way to the back of his home, she found him sitting on the floor and against a wall. Above his head the plaster was cracked and a hole forced through the space between the studs. Looking at the snow-like effect of the ruined wall, she saw his right hand stretched out and bloody while his left held an empty tumbler of what she assumed had held whiskey in it, the decanter shattered by the bar cart and the floor and wall stained with the amber liquor.
"Marcus?"
When he didn't answer, Hermione slowly walked into the living room not wishing to startle him. Saying his name again, she lowered herself to her knees between his legs and took the glass from his hand. With it off to the side, she reached out to cup his face and bring his glassy, bloodshot eyes up to meet hers though he closed them against the sight of her.
"I didn't leave; at least not permanently. I'm right here, in love with you like I always have been and am not going anywhere." Bringing one hand down his arm, she lifted his bloody knuckles to her lips, kissing them before placing his hand over her chest, the expanse of his fingers effortlessly reaching across her breasts. "You're right here. You always have been and always will be. I'm not letting you go. I love you."
Scooting further between his legs, she positioned herself in his lap, wrapping her arms and legs around his body as she hugged him to her. Waiting for him to relax into her hold and drop whatever walls he had thrown back up around his heart in her short absence, she continued to whisper how much she loved him, how much she had missed him, and how serious she was in her oath to never be without him again. Slowly as each word fell from her lips and seeped into his heart, he started to let her back in and close himself around her, his hands holding her head in the cradle of where his shoulder and neck met and pressing into her lower back to keep her flush against him.
Shuddering against her as a single tear wet the shirt she wore, Marcus pulled back the slightest fraction, ready to fuse his whiskey coated lips to hers. However his ocean eyes zeroed in on the swollen nature of them making him put more space between them as his brow began to furrow and his eyes darken.
"Hermione…" he said slowly, gently taking her chin in his large hand. "Who did this to you?" the calmness of his voice chilling. Lightly brushing his thumb over her lip and turning her face, he brought himself closer to the bruised cut and asked more himself than her, "Whose ring is that? I can't make out the crest. Tell me, because whoever it was is going to eat that ring and their hand for touching you."
Taking a hold of his wrist, she freed herself of his hand and pressed small kisses to his fingers. Using him to pull on her lower lip until it pouted, she flicked her tongue out at his middle finger, swirling it around his first knuckle before sucking it into her mouth to the sound of his needy but reluctant moan.
"Angel, I'm serious," he groaned, his long lashes fluttering before his eyes rolled back.
Humming as his full lips parted and his head fell back against the wall, she widened her mouth to add a second finger, her naked pussy rubbing against the tenting of his joggers as she sucked both digits towards her throat.
Smiling as his hips flexed and moved with hers, she released him with a soft pop of her mouth and murmured, "Two weeks," before pressing a butterfly soft kiss to his lips. "I'm off work for the next two weeks and during that time, I want to discuss very little of work. We have many more things to catch up on than my having figured out who has been blackmailing you."
Leaning back in for another delicate kiss, he accepted the feather light touch before asking, "Is that why you were gone?"
"Yes, I got so blinded by the revelation I didn't think to stop and tell you of my departure. I'm sorry for how it looked," she responded, moving her lips along his jaw, neck, and throat every few words. "I would never leave you, especially like that. I could never cause you that sort of pain."
"And are they the ones who hit you?"
Nodding her head as she worked her tongue back up the other side of his neck, Hermione nipped at his earlobe before rising up on her knees. Pulling his shirt over her head, she quietly assured him, "It hardly hurts. Mostly tender and a lingering bite of the sting from when it happened but I'm okay."
"You shouldn't have to be though," he responded, brushing the back of his undamaged knuckles along the fingerprint shaped bruises that were coloring on her cheeks. "Gods, I might actually kill whoever did this to you."
"No, I just got you back. I won't lose you to Azkaban for murder."
"I'm sure I could find a sympathetic jury." Kissing the side of her mouth where Adrian's ring had left the most damage, Marcus offered,"I have a cream that'll help speed up the healing of these."
"Later, right now I need something else from you," she smiled, trailing her fingers along the waistband of his joggers.
"Was last night not enough for you?" he teased while helping her to pull his athletic wear down his hips.
"Not even close. I don't think a lifetime could even manage to be enough."
Tweaking her nipple and licking the stiffening peak of the other, he growled, "Don't say such things, angel. You know how much I love the idea of spending my life with you." Rubbing his thick cock between the lips of her cunt, he moaned, "Makes me want to fill you up until you grow round with our child so that I can ensure you stay connected to me forever." Biting at her shoulder as her hips continued to rock along his length teasing her clitoris, he made her infinitely more impatient for him, as he added, "And then keep fucking you full so there's never any doubt who you belong to."
Grasping the base of his cock, she angled him so that he was notched at her opening and slowly sank herself down on him, hissing at the stretch. Rising back up just as she came flush to his pelvis, she kissed him harder than her injured mouth preferred and dared against his lips, "Do it," before dropping herself back down on his length to meet his upward thrust.
Meeting her challenge, Marcus picked her up by her bum and moved them to the rug his couch sat on, meeting her challenge as he said, "Don't tempt me, Hermione. I've been waiting ten years to make you mine again. I will do anything and everything I have to in order to keep you this time," before loving and fucking her through the early morning sunrise.