Chapter Fifteen

With the full-length mirror in her bedroom moved to the side of the bed, Hermione had an unobstructed view of her pussy sinking down Marcus's cock. Her eyes were hazy and her mouth parted as her head rolled back onto his shoulder and from side to side. The circling vibrations of his fingers around her clitoris was as hypnotizing as the rhythm of their moving hips and the claps of where their slicked skin met.

Reaching around the back of his head, she guided their mouths together, her tongue immediately seeking entry. While she set the tempo and led their bodies as she filled herself with him over and over again, he commanded their kiss. His tongue tangled with hers, massaged the ridges along the roof of her mouth, and repeatedly chased after hers, luring it back to him for more.

As her body — limp from the number of times he had pushed her over the edge of orgasm during the last several days — tightened and tensed under the coming deluge of release, her lips fell from his with a breathy, desperate moan of his name.

"That's it, Hermione," he sinfully cooed in her ear, his fingers creeping down from under her breasts to her pelvis where he started to push against the spot that would allow him to feel himself from the outside. "Let that sweet cunt of yours wring out my come so I can fill you up."

Bouncing faster under his words, she grew desperate not only for the world whitening sensation of coming undone but for the addictive feeling of the hot ropes of his release lashing free inside of her, a litany of unintelligible sounds escaping her.

Pushing more firmly on the spot that tightened her stuffed cunt, he groaned, "Merlin, I can't wait until you're round with my child and your pretty tits are leaking milk. I keep making love to you hoping that if I fuck enough of come into you, I'll have you claimed as mine before too long." Nipping at the straining tendon in her neck and lapping his tongue along it to soothe the pinch, he asked, "Tell me, Hermione, will you let me put a baby in you?"

"Gods, yes!" she screamed, as the coiling tension inside her core snapped, flooding her pussy and his cock with her orgasm.

In the blink of her rolled back eyes, Marcus had them flipped so that she was at the edge of the bed on all fours and he was behind her. With his hands at her hips, he pistoned into her using his leverage on her body to drive himself in deeper and harder. The fast, sharp slaps of their body coming together, drowned out the sound of rushing blood in her ears. Layered in over that, were her continued cries of a pleasure that was reaching the delicious border of pain from over exertion mingling with his deep, moaning grunts.

Then with a light pinch to her clit that triggered a sharp and quick second orgasm, he folded himself over top of her, hips pushing further and further in as he emptied himself inside of her. Leaving devoted, worshipful kisses along her shoulder blades as he kept his well used cock inside her swollen pussy, he wrapped his arms around her and brought them both to lay on their sides.

With their sweat once again cooling on their skin and their sensual and erotic touches turning lazy and loving, he pressed his lips behind her ear where it met her jaw and whispered, "Move in with me."

Whether it was a post-sex fog speaking or the delirium of having what was basically a honeymoon in their cottage wrapped in the sensation of falling in love all over again or simply that after the last several days with Marcus in her space, Hermione couldn't picture him ever not being there, she responded, "Yes," letting him slip from inside her as she turned in his arms.

"I'll start packing as soon as I go back to work and pay out the last two months on my lease. I should only need a week, maybe two."

"I'll pay it and come stay with you and help pack when I'm not at the pitch. That should make it a few days to a week instead."

"You're in a hurry," she giggled, rolling herself on top of him and pillowing her head on his chest.

Lacing his fingers at the small of her back and burying a kiss in her wild hair, he said, "I was ready to propose when I bought us this place. I wanted to propose; had planned on it and in ten years that fact hasn't changed. I lost too many years with you, angel. I don't want to lose another minute. I'm moving as fast as you'll let me. Second chances don't often come around, especially not with the outcomes we hope for. I'm not squandering mine. You're it for me."

Moving her hands to kiss his chest before retucking herself over him, Hermione murmured, "I love you, Marcus… gods, how I love you. Please don't slow down."

"I love you too, sweet baby. I always have." Beginning to trail his fingers along her spine, he prompted, "Finish telling me about you, Weasley, and Potter. We left off with my cousin hitching a ride on your floo escape."

"Merlin, I cannot believe you're related to him. Honestly, how did you turn out so wonderfully with a family like that?"

"My nan. She never bought into all that purity, Sacred Twenty-Eight shite. She wasn't able to keep my father from following in my grandfather's footsteps, especially not after he married my mother, but she was as stubborn as a hippogriff with me. I spent more time with her in her apartment within the manner than I did with my own parents.

"That's her promise ring I gave you. Not from my grandfather — he didn't have a soft or romantic bone in his body — but from the wizard she loved. The one she was going to run away with and marry until her family found out and forced her into a contract with the Flints.

"He was a half-blood raised by his widower, muggle father and to disrespect muggles, muggle-borns, and half-bloods was a great offense to my gran.

"She loved him until the day she died. It was the first time I ever saw that ring entirely cased in white gold. She had slipped it from the chain that held her glasses around her neck and made me promise to only ever give it to the witch I would love as unendingly as she loved her William and he loved her.

"When I took it, it was two-toned as it is now. I watched the rose gold bleed out from it as I held it and when I went to ask her what had happened to it, she had already passed."

Taking her right hand and holding it up, he explained, "I used blood magic on it before leaving it for you. Nothing bad like you may think given the connotation with that branch of magic. Just a quick cut of my hand and rolling it through. It ties the wearer to the giver. As long as both remain in love, the two-tone metal stays, even after one dies. For the wearer, it soothes them when in distress. It allows them to feel comfort and love from the giver across a great distance, making it impossible for them to not keep it on their person unless the feelings between the two are no longer reciprocated.

"It's why when you came skidding down the stairs, endearingly and maddeningly late as always, I knew I hadn't lost you for good. You still wore it and therefore you still loved me as I loved you. And if you still loved me then we weren't over. I wouldn't let us be over."

Turning the double knot around on her finger, Hermione said, "I haven't gone a single day without this either on my finger, my bracelet, or around my neck since that morning. I honestly don't think I could have gotten through that year with Harry and Ron without it. It kept me sane in a time when I should have been losing my mind as they were."

Laughing without true mirth as she laced her small fingers through his, she brought them back around to his original question, shaking her head as she said, "This ring is also the reason we fractured. It and this house."

"How so?"

"Well, after our plan went pear shaped — which was par for the course back then — we made a very public escape with Yaxley in pursuit of us. He nearly had us, in fact he did which made me panic.

"He had a hold of Ron as we were sucked up the Ministry floo. We were on our way back to Grimmauld Place which was Secret Kept but with Yaxley holding on, it became compromised. I panicked and with my hand on Harry and his on Ron as the two of them fought him off, I Disapparated us."

"From inside the floo network?" Marcus asked in disbelief, sitting up and jostling her from where she had remained cuddled against him. "You Disapparated with three people in tow from inside the floo network?"

"It wasn't my most brilliant of plans but it was all we had. I bounced us around several times until we could finally shake Yaxley loose and once we did, I brought us to the only safe place that remained; here.

"I hadn't intended on burning the cottage's location so early on but in the process of making the jumps, Ron got Splinched. We stayed here for some time while he recovered and we tried to plan and understand what had been asked of us. All the while that locket began fucking with us. Ron more so than Harry or myself.

"I was down in the kitchen one evening after weeks of the tension and animosity growing between us all reading while on my watch shift when Ron decided to join me. I was chewing on the chain of the necklace, trying to puzzle out the importance of a book filled with children's stories and wasn't fast enough in hiding it.

"At first he thought it was the locket but that was sitting on the counter next to my books and again, I just wasn't quick enough. I think my attempt at getting the locket is what caused him to look closer but I don't honestly know. Regardless, his attention was caught and there was no way to back out of the fact that I was wearing a promise ring around my neck."

Humming his understanding as he followed along, Marcus pulled Hermione from the bed and handed her a shirt as he pulled on a pair of athletic shorts, saying, "And with having a crush on you and being hothead he exploded."

"Yep," she confirmed, jumping on his back as they made their way down the loft's stairs. "The moment it happened, my first thought was, 'Godric, if Marcus were still here he would not miss the opportunity to say, 'I told you so.''"

"And I did!" he crowed, setting her on the counter. "Does a fry up sound good to you? I feel like crispy potatoes and ketchup smothered beans."

"Perfect," she conquered. "But try to remember I do not need the same amount of food as you. I would explode if I ate that much.

"Anyway, where was I?"

"Weasley, ring, I was right."

"Oh yeah," she grumbled, giving him a faux sneer as he smiled triumphantly at her. "We had some awful fights over the years but nothing like this one. We ended up waking Harry as we got so loud with Ron demanding to know who the cottage belonged to, who bought it for me after I said I owned it, who gave me the ring, why I kept them a secret… it was ugly. We even began dueling — or rather he started launching hexes and jinxes at me and I deflected them.

"Thinking it would make him stop as he got more and more out of control, I finally relented and told them about you and I." Pointing to a black, imperfection in the wood flooring between the living room and kitchen, Hermione said, "That's where he lost complete control and accidentally conjured blue flame. I couldn't get rid of it without taking up the floorboards and with how old these are there was no good match to be had so I kept it in favor of the existing floors because…"

"We lost our virginity on these floors."

Smiling at him, she nodded, "Yeah… I just couldn't part with them. Everything of importance in my life is in this cottage. Everything of you..."

Placing his hands on either side of her, Marcus gave her a deep kiss, running his nose along hers as he pulled away, whispering, "I love you."

"I love you too."

As he cooked them breakfast, Hermione continued to tell the story of her time hunting for horcruxes with Harry. From how Ron stormed out that same night — truly burning the secret safety of the cottage and prompting her to cast the charm that made it appear to be demolished before she and Harry took off to live out of a tent in the woods — to his return weeks later. She told him of Harry's slip up with the taboo and what it had ended up costing her and Dobby.

Then as he joined her on the counter over them sitting at the perfectly good table in the kitchen's nook to eat the late breakfast he prepared for them, she told him in great detail about her break in and subsequent escape from Gringotts on the back of a dragon. Upon hearing that, he insisted she no longer had any excuse to avoid getting on a broom with him and made her swear to let him take her up one day soon, linking their pinkies together as she reluctantly agreed.

After, she finished off the story with the Battle of Hogwarts giving as much detail as she could without getting lost in the permanently seared memories. From there she explained how with the war over, what little had remained between the three of them had crumbled. Ron hadn't been able to forgive her for what he thought were mistruths and manipulations of him and she nor Harry, could forgive his abandonment during such a harrowing time in their lives, sending two of them on one path and the other off on another alone.

As for Harry, she had been far happier to explain why he wasn't a constant fixture in her life as he had been years prior. Several years ago, the Auror department had sent him on assignment to the United States. While there, he met the lovely granddaughter of Jacob and Queenie Kowalski and had gotten married within four months of his first date with the witch. And when Harry's time in America was up, he had elected to stay, enjoying the anonymity that came with not being the Chosen One. He now happily worked in an administrator's position in the law enforcement department that allowed him to come home at the same time each evening to his wife and infant son.

Following breakfast, Hermione and Marcus exchanged their bed for the living room's couch, once more indulging in their desire for the other one. Since they had come back together, they had been insatiable in making love to one another. It was a want as much as it was a need, neither of them truly content unless they had the other as close to them as possible. Their time in the cottage truly was like that of a honeymoon, the both of them sequestered from the outside world, uncaring if it burned down around them so long as they got one last minute to be together.

Once again coming down from the rush of endorphins, serotonin, and oxytocin with his large body pressed along her back, his arms banded around her and covering most of her torso with their mass, Hermione summoned one of the many novels she had purchased but never read — always too busy with work to lose herself in their pages — as he drifted off to sleep with his face buried in her knotted curls. Having dozed off herself at some point, the paperback slipping from her hands without a marker for her page, she was awoken in the early afternoon by the sound of Marcus sushing something that was beating around in the kitchen.

"What is that?" she sleepily asked, looking at his taut, bare bum over the back of the couch.

"Way to go, you menace; you woke her," he grumbled, snatching at what she assumed was their post that Lavender had been rerouting to the office to send with their personal owl each day.

"Artie, be nice and give him the letters."

At the sound of her voice, the owl let out a hoot and glided over to her, proudly offering up its claw as it perched on one leg on the couch.

Stroking the bird's moon colored feathers as she untied the bundle, she cooed, "Marcus is allowed to collect my post, okay sweet girl? He's mine and I don't think he'll be going anywhere or tampering with anything."

"Definitely not," he answered, giving the owl a smug smile before kissing Hermione's forehead, plucking his own letter from her hands.

Pecking the bird's beak twice, she said, "One for you and one for Lav," Artie taking off through the kitchen window right after.

"Small delivery today," Marcus commented, opening up the letter he received.

"Yeah, I told Lav and Blaise to only forward stuff from my mum and anything for you that wasn't work related. We'll be taking over your legal needs for the time being."

"And I assume the reason for that is part of what you'll tell me after your holiday is over?"

"Yes. I haven't taken more than a four day weekend — and only two, one for Harry's wedding and the other for the blessing of my godson — since we opened Golden Fire. So I plan to spend the next weeks indulging in all things Marcus Hawthorne Flint with only your job as a distraction. And maybe if you leave my pussy alone long enough, maybe a book or two."

"No promises on that, you're quite addicting," he purred, leaping over the couch back and laying himself over her body.

Peppering her with kisses that were slowly moving from playful to arousing, he suddenly stopped and pulled back to look at the gala invite that was getting bent between them.

"Did you say Lavender is forwarding post from your mum? I thought you said your parents were killed."

Adjusting his head so that it was pillowed on her breasts as he scooted down her body and stretched out on the sectional, she corrected her lie from a month ago.

"It's what I've been telling people since the end of sixth year. No one would look for my parents if they were believed to have been murdered by Death Eaters so that's how I made it look.

"I tried to speak with them about it but they wouldn't hear of it, insisting that if the danger was that great I needed to go into hiding with them. I uh… I used the Imperius Curse on them to force their compliance and with them sedated in such a way, I was able to enter their minds and lock away all traces of them knowing about magic or even having had a daughter. After that, I made them believe they were different people and sent them on their way to a new life in Australia because—"

"Because Martha always wanted to spend a year traveling the continent," he interjected in understanding.

"Exactly. Anyway, with them gone Lavender and I trashed the house and then set fire to it casting the Dark Mark in the air for good measure. That night in the Prophet, there was an article about the gruesome murder of my muggle parents. It was such a victory for Voldemort's followers that no one ever confessed to having not been involved, let alone not even having known about it."

Counting her ribs with his fingers as she often did to him, Marcus surmised, "And that's why by the time I got here after the battle, you were already in Australia where…"

Smiling with self-deprecation, she confirmed, "Where I came completely undone from the war with drinking, partying, drug use, and entertaining far more sexual partners than I would have had I been in my right mind."

"Why do you still tell people they died?"

"Lavender and I inserted ourselves into my parents' lives in order to gain their trust so I could reverse what I had done. Unfortunately the existence of two Hermiones inside their minds made it difficult to fully reconnect the wires. I didn't want to take the risk of fracturing their minds so I made the decision to stop treatment once they remembered that they were Martha and Samuel. It's been easier this way not only because of the lie I told at the start but because she's virtually defenseless without knowing about magic and my being in Edinburgh while she lives in Hampstead.

"It's not so bad though. I get to be friends with my mum and she thinks of me as her daughter so I still have her in a way."

"What about Sam?

"A few years ago, daddy was helping a woman change her flat tire in the rain and a car driving past hydroplaned and…"

"Gods Hermione, I'm so sorry."

"I regret all the time I spent at school or with Weasleys. It's time with them as my parents I'll never get back. I mean back then I assumed there would be so many years with them that it would be okay but… it was all over so much sooner than I thought it would be." Wrapping her legs and arms around him, she said, "I think that's part of why I'm okay with moving at your lightning fast speed. I don't want to have any more regrets over lost time with those I love."

Slithering up her hold, Marcus brushed strands of hair back from her face as his massive hands cupped her cheeks. Kissing her with an infinite depth of passion that warmed her from the inside out, she felt more of the walls she had built in his absence crumble, her heart fully his once again. Not that it had ever belonged to anyone else in the interim, not even to herself.

Slowly easing them out of the tangling of their tongues, he kissed along her cheeks and jaw before making her erupt in unexpected laughter as he asked, "Want to have a baby?"

"Merlin, you're incorrigible. I don't think any more of your come can travel through my body without causing rather important organs to explode."

"I'm simply a man who knows what he wants and it's you as my wife and having my children. Until then," he said, reaching down to caress her lower abdomen, "I was thinking we could have a furrier sort of baby."

"What?" she asked, very much confused by the direction of his thoughts.

Sitting up, he patted around for the letter he had received. Upon finding it and its envelope, he handed the both of them over for her to read as he explained, "When you told me about Crooks, I started looking into breeders. If you're not ready, I completely understand and please know, I'm not trying to replace him either; that would be impossible. But this woman in Surrey—"

"Mrs. Figg," Hermione supplied, instantly knowing it was the wizard-born witch that Dumbledore had placed in Harry's muggle neighborhood to look after him.

"Yeah, that's actually right… that's scary."

"Not really, I know her — or rather of her — but that's not important, keep going."

"The amount of people you know will never cease to amaze me.

"So I was saying, Mrs. Figg had a new litter of Bengal half-Kneazles born a few weeks ago and just the other day began advertising their coming availability in the Prophet . I wrote to her with a bank slip to cover the cost of a hold on the whole litter so you could have first pick and she's gotten back to me with pictures of each of them.

"Do not feel like you have to accept this. I know having and selecting a familiar is a very personal decision but I just wanted—"

Interrupting him with a hard press of her lips to his, she emphatically repeated, "Thank you," kissing him between each one.

Eagerly pulling out the pictures of each kitten and watching their little personalities play out in the photos, Hermione found herself experiencing love at first sight. Holding up the picture of a particularly large and chubby, silver colored one, she exclaimed, "Him! I need to see him in person to be sure but he's the one, I know it."

"You would pick the biggest one," he teased.

"What can I say?" she giggled. "I have a type — big, cuddly giants."

"I'll show you cuddly," he growled in warning, lowering his face between her thighs where he spent the afternoon devouring her pussy before taking her to Surrey on his broom as she had promised to pick up their first born — the nickname he gave their kitten the moment she picked him and held him out for Marcus's inspection as proud as any new mum showing off her baby sticking.