Author's Note: You are going to love AND hate me for this chapter. Enjoy!!

She didn't move. She was the one who was tense now, unbearably so, incredulous at how much sensation his subtle movements could create. He bowed his head, his lips brushing her collarbone, his hair tickling her jaw. Damn these men and their lips. No, their lips on their own were not that remarkable – it was just that they knew how to use them. They were a weapon like everything else…

He was still, his only movement the expansion of his chest as he breathed. Then he tilted his head slightly and just grazed his lips against the side of her neck. She shivered, alight with uncertainty. Her body wanted him, there was no question about that, but her mind was not so easily sold. This was a can of worms she wasn't sure she could open.

He planted a gentle kiss on her chin. It was so strange; for all his dominance, he treated her like glass. Not that she thought for even a moment that he wouldn't rough her up if the occasion called for it. That was part of his appeal – his volatility.

He shifted forward, his hips pressing into her. Whether it was calculated or not, it sent a shot of debilitating yearning through her. Oh, these two…with Draco it had been need. With Lucius it was…want? She wasn't sure which was worse.

Her breath caught as he leaned down, his eyes closed, his hair curtaining them in a pale golden world. He stopped just short of her lips. He was so close that she could feel his presence against the sensitive skin. He breathed, a warm current of air tickling her, and opened his eyes.

She could see his pupils adjust to the light, constricting, dilating, constricting. She saw the fight there. It was want for him, too, want of something he had agreed to surrender. Want of comfort, atonement, pleasure, pain…he wanted many things. And…

If he kept going, she wasn't going to deny him. If he kissed her she would give in. Even that brief kiss outside her apartment had promised something that many women would behave foolishly to experience. But she wasn't going to make the move. No, she wouldn't do it…

He stayed where he was, that fraction of an inch from her lips. The tension was excruciating, building in her loins until she felt like she might explode. She didn't think he was quite as hot and bothered. But if he didn't feel it, he wouldn't be on top of her. He had been lying when he said he didn't desire her. Then again, she should have known. It was only her own stubborn optimism that kept her from acknowledging the beautiful liar that he was.

At last he drew his breath in through his teeth. "Mmm," he said, low and lusty, "the things I would have done to you…"

And then he slid away. It felt like having a silk sheet drawn off of her. He had exerted some prodigious control that she wouldn't have had, if she was in his position. It mattered little; he hadn't even kissed her, but she felt like jelly on the bed, felt like she had just had tumultuous sex with him anyway. Except for the bunched prayer for release that huddled somewhere in her groin; that threw it all off, because she knew she wouldn't walk away from sex with him unsatisfied. If she could walk after such a thing…

He had gone into the hallway to get a towel and now he reentered the room. He pulled on a robe and shucked his bottoms, stepping out of them in a motion so fluid that she wondered if he practiced it. It gave the illusion of a model on a runway, oblivious to the fact that his or her clothing was falling off.

"If I were you," he said softly, looking back over his shoulder in the doorway to the adjoining bathroom, "I would go."

The door closed, the water ran, and Hermione felt at once like she had been rescued from something perilous and like she would forever regret his damnable control - for she clearly had none of that.

No, she had none of it, for a few minutes later she stormed the bathroom like a soldier storming an enemy fortress. She was beginning to doubt her sanity. Did people do this? Obviously they did, but she had never in her life been so reckless…or so horny. What was wrong with her?

She would consider that later. No matter what she did she would regret it; she may as well enjoy that regret. Besides, Draco had told her to choose, to give them both a chance, and that meant…yes, enjoying their talents in all arenas. This one, though – if she didn't know for a fact that he had no wand, she would suspect him of bewitching her.

She turned her attention to him, outlined in steam. If he was surprised he didn't show it. He simply went on with his routine, ignoring her, though she could feel his eyes on her as she stripped. It was good to feel, for once, that she was on the offensive.

She moved toward the shower, taking a moment to marvel in what rich people could afford. The glass-fronted shower could probably hold ten people if they were crushed in like sardines, and half that comfortably. There were two showerheads, though as far as she knew he hadn't been sharing his ablutions with anyone. Until now.

Oh, she would never know what made a soaking wet man so attractive; it seemed like a law of nature. And what a body he hid beneath that expensive clothing! Though she supposed he had to be in some kind of shape to play football, even with 'geezers'. For all she knew he was a gym rat; it wasn't any more shocking than him talking on a cell phone and watching television more than she did.

All speculation about his athletic pursuit aside, he was literally a wet dream. His hair fell in a saturated sheet made a darker shade of pale by the water. Strands stuck to his neck and shoulders; she longed to smooth them out, return them to the rest of their compatriots, or maybe just touch the lush wet tangles. He really did have great hair, bugger him for that – although on the off chance that she reproduced with either Malfoy, at least there would be a good probability of the children inheriting their hair instead of hers. Not that she wanted to reproduce. With either of them. No. Not now. Not ever? This was a scary train of thought; abruptly she switched tracks.

His body was solid, well-built, surprisingly fit. He wouldn't be winning any bodybuilding contests anytime soon, yet he was shaped in such a way that where her eyes could not find muscle, she knew her fingers would. Again that obsession with touching; she felt like a child left alone with a freshly made cake. Just as her eyes were about to drift lower, down to the places that really mattered, he spoke up.

"This is not a peep show," he said, a bit reproachfully.

"As if you're not looking at me," she retorted.

He shrugged and turned to face the spray, giving her a full and unobstructed view of his back. He had a back to die for, smooth, sinewy, perfect, and that rear end! It should be illegal for a man his age to have an ass like that. It was round and taut and – no, she couldn't stand there and apply adjectives or he'd be done with his shower by the time she got in.

Hermione took a deep breath and took hold of the shower door. Here went nothing. She stepped in, assaulted by steam and the smell of cleansing products. He cast one glance over his shoulder as she started up the second showerhead. He was doing an awfully good job of pretending that this didn't excite him, but she was fairly sure that he had his back to her for a reason. She was also fairly sure that if she pretended the same thing for a while, it would drive him to the point of ambush.

So she languished beneath the hot spray, closing her eyes and sighing. A well-calculated sigh could do wonders. A few minutes later when she opened her eyes, nothing had changed. His back was still to her, his broad shoulders working as he soaped himself up. Good God. He could make millions if he just marketed videos of himself to women with low sex drives. Forget pills and creams and acupuncture. One good look at wet, naked Lucius Malfoy would do the trick. He would open up their chakras, all right…

Thankfully the shampoo was on the tiled seating area in the middle. She wouldn't have to reach around him. Unfortunately, she couldn't keep looking while washing her hair; the last thing she needed was to drip shampoo in her eye and spend the rest of the day looking like she had conjunctivitis. She closed her eyes and focused on the feel of her fingers along her scalp. Away went the impurities of yesterday…agreeable as they were…

When she finished, he was facing her and rinsing off his soap. She watched the fine lather as it slid down his side, his hip, a muscular thigh, his knee (still with a little red slash across it, the remnants of that rough tackle at football), the pale, almost invisible hair on his calf, to dissipate between his toes and swirl into the drain. Then her gaze was drawn back up to what she had missed before.

How on earth did he possess so much control? His body had not yet reacted to her nudity or her proximity – but his eyes were closed. Men were notoriously visual creatures. He could weather his imagination better than what was really in front of him and that was where they differed; it was always her imagination that got her, sent her into overdrive, reeling at the possibilities, the maybes, the what-ifs…

It would be a good what-if. Even in his resting state, she could tell that it would be a very good what-if. But she wasn't going to push it. She was going to win this battle of wills. He would be the one to instigate. His restraint would only last so long. He would not leave her standing there in the shower. He would not choose the Bulstrodes and their tax evasion over her. Oh, what had she become, trying to manipulate a man who was doing his best not to break a promise to someone they both cared about?

She pushed that thought out of her mind, knowing very well that Lucius Malfoy could read her like a book and would only be manipulated if he wanted to. And however reprehensible she thought this was, it was far from the worst thing she had ever done. The universe had played a lot of cruel tricks on her, given her large helpings of fear, pain, and heartache, and now she was striking back. Most people behaved stupidly in pursuit of pleasure at a much younger age, but she had skipped that altogether. It was time to regress.

She rinsed the conditioner from her hair, feeling it slide slickly down her body, taming the tangles in her unruly curls. She might have to switch to whatever he used, because she could run her fingers through the wet ringlets without much resistance and that happened about as frequently as her trying to seduce a man twice her age. A tiny smile curved her lips. He was done, clean, but he still stood across from her basking in the water. And his eyes were open now.

The soap was in his hand. There was no other bar or container and he knew it. He was fighting back, however subtly. Her smile grew wider. She pointed at him and said,

"Accio soap."

Faint surprise registered on his face as the soap slipped out of his hand. He didn't expect her to be able to do wandless magic. Then again she was pretty sure he didn't expect her to be trying her damnedest to get him to use his considerable…talents on her, either.

"Cheater," he said softly.

"You can try to take it back," she smirked as she started to lather herself up. Her nipples hardened under his intense gaze. A moment later he moved as suddenly as he had before, back on the bed, crossing the shower in three steps and wrapping strong arms around her from behind. He had pinned her arms down and his entire body was pressed against her back, every delicious inch. Every delicious inch of everything. She tried valiantly to ignore the burning persistence of his erection as it stirred against the small of her back. It was like trying to ignore Mount Kilimanjaro when it reared up, snow-capped, out of the brown African savannah. Merlin, was she comparing his manhood to a mountain? He didn't have anything she couldn't handle, though the handling would be quite agreeable.

"By force?" he murmured in her ear, bringing her back. "That's no fun." His teeth closed around her earlobe for the barest of seconds. "No, by the time I'm done with you, you'll be begging me to take it back."

It was only by virtue of the soap and their wet skin that she could twist around in his grasp. She cast games to the wayside as she dropped the soap, ratcheted up on her tiptoes, and kissed him. She felt him smile against her lips – Lucius 1, Hermione 1, a tie – before he, too, gave up the game.

His kiss bore none of the gentle politeness of that first one outside her apartment. He was pressing his agenda now, his tongue jousting with hers, and he allowed the arousal he had contained so tightly escape. His hands roamed, slippery with soap, nails raising red tracks that made her gasp against his lips. He could walk that fine line between pleasure and pain and she knew he would. Burying her in a hard, almost punishing kiss, he grasped her buttocks and pressed her against him. His proud length was positively throbbing, trapped between their wet, urgent bodies.

For all his talk she knew now how this would play out; he was going to bend her over and fuck her silly. Outlasting one another's scheming had been more than enough foreplay. And for heaven's sake, he'd only had his hand for company for the last three years as he wouldn't see the point in having relations with a muggle; he deserved a hard, turbulent, uncomplicated rendezvous.

He pressed a muscled thigh between her legs and backed her towards the wall. Surely he wasn't strong enough for this, he'd hurt his back if – no, no, he was more than strong enough. His hands shifted on her rear, lower, where it met the back of her thighs, and up she went in one flex of his arms. She battled back visions of cracking her skull on the marble tiles, tightly wrapping her arms around his neck. He was inside her a second later.

She couldn't help the low moan that bubbled out of her. She was ready for him, had been for half an hour, but finally she was getting what she wanted and it felt too damn good. He made a few minor adjustments as his mouth sucked a hard bruise onto her neck, a mark she knew she'd have to cover with makeup. After shifting her weight slightly and ensuring that they were balanced, he withdrew from her and pressed back in with a sigh.

The logistics were taken care of. He found a hard rhythm, burying himself deeply inside her with a deliberate roughness that made her head spin. The angle was divine, stroking her slick walls just so, and the rub of the warm, moist skin of his chest against her nipples was destroying her. Oh, for all its impracticalities, sex standing up was not to be dismissed…

He didn't make sounds, not like Draco had, but the hitching of his breath and his face told the story. His face…he wore an expression that could have been pleasure or pain or both, and only the person privileged enough to see that expression would know which it was. He was entirely unguarded, entirely revealed, knowing it and loathing it and loving it. Catching her staring, his fingers bit sharply into her buttocks and he rent her with a vicious thrust. The slap of wet skin on skin efficiently erased her ability to hold onto coherent thought. He was going to leave her bruised and sore and entirely happy about it.

"Ah fuck!" The words tore out of her. "Fuck…Lucius!"

His body gave a tremulous shudder at his name and he spasmed inside her. His breath became ragged. He crushed her against the wall, impaled upon his length, his will narrowed only to this. Somehow her coarse entreaty had unleashed an almost vengeful arousal in him. She saw in his eyes, inhuman in their determination, that he was going to make her come. He was going to force her into a quaking, screaming orgasm, draw each exquisite convulsion of pleasure out of her to feed upon, punish her with her own desire.

She could feel it, that spiteful release building in her core. He beat her toward it with each carnal lunge. She dug her long nails into his shoulders, uncaring of the welts they would raise, and at least he groaned. He would like that, wouldn't he. At the risk of serious bodily injury she extracted one arm from the support of his shoulders and snuck it between their bodies. Finding the raised protrusion of his nipple, she pinched. He drew a sharp breath between his teeth, his eyes sparking, before he wrenched her hand away and pinned it to the wall.

Things were precarious now, but it wouldn't take much longer. Pinned, his mouth plundering hers while he gave her a thorough fucking, she was flying quickly toward a thunderous emancipation. She could hear her own gasps and moans echoing through the steam-filled room along with the beat of his breath and their coupling.

It started subtly, a slight tightening of her entire being, and then engulfed her like an ecstatic charley-horse. Peals of fiery pleasure shot through her, from her toes suspended in the moist air all the way to the roots of her teeth. She screamed her pleasure, her thighs clamping around him tightly enough to make him wince and grit his teeth. Dimly, she knew she was squeezing the hell out of him, wringing his manhood with the contractions of her insides, and that was why he was still, his eyes rolled back under pale eyelashes, his breath uneven – he was trying to prevent himself from going with her.

He succeeded, though the effort took a lot out of him. He braced his arms beneath her backside and pulled her away from the wall. In a few unsteady steps he made it to the seat. With a flick of his arm the shampoo and conditioner bottles fell, clattering on the ground, and she found herself in his lap, still joined with him.

He was leaning back on his palms, his face lifted to her, his eyes half open as he regained his breath. She couldn't control the urge to kiss his slack, rosy lips. It wasn't like before; that tension was broken. She moved, repositioning herself, and began a gentle rock against him. She was in control now.

She surrendered his lips and moved to the top of his shoulder, burning that same bruising love-mark into his milky flesh. He liked it, that little edge of pain, and she liked giving it to him. She did, three more times. He looked like he'd been hit with paintballs; by the time she was finished she could feel the impatience in his bunched thighs. Her slow pace was killing him. He wanted to thrust home but he had given her the power to determine the tempo. He liked the small torture of that, too.

She made a snap decision. Dismounting his lap, she slid to her knees between his thighs. She didn't miss the clouding of his eyes, or the plaintive pulse of his member. She kept her eyes on him, gripping his length and bringing it to her lips. A small tremor went through him as she parted her lips and took him into her mouth.

He tasted good, clean, slightly salty, hot and silken against her lips and tongue. She let her mouth explore the shape of him. A muffled expletive made it past his lips, something that sounded suspiciously like 'motherfucker'. Then his hand came forward and wrapped in her wet curls. A gentle pressure asked her…begged her…

She gave him what he wanted. And he wanted it a lot; she tasted the salty-sweet precursor to what would come as she sucked him. It was delectable to feel the pulse of his desire as she drew her lips along it. He was alive beneath her ministrations, unable to keep still, gasps and soft, almost inaudible moans filling her ears.

He was becoming very tense and his leg gave a substantial jerk when she took more of him in, relaxing her throat and tamping down on her gag reflex. She breathed his smell as she moved, savored the soft tickle of the blonde hair that surrounded his sex, and enjoyed his sounds. She knew she was good at this. She'd been told as much by the few people ever fortunate enough to receive her attention. He was the third, throbbing, his chest heaving, that expression of exquisiteness back on his face.

A moment later he stopped breathing altogether. She felt his muscles clench. He tugged her hair, telling her what was about to happen, trying to spare her, but she stayed where she was. He came with a short cry, encompassed in her warm mouth, his hand tangled tightly in her curls as his hips pressed up toward her. And she tasted him, his desire, his virility, his power, his vulnerability…

She trembled against the shower wall a second time. Only it was her own shower in her own flat and it was her own hand that had driven her over the edge. Fucking hell. She had sat on his bed, bewildered, battling herself for nearly fifteen minutes. Paralysis didn't even begin to describe it. She had not stormed his bathroom, hadn't played mind games with him in the shower – she had been trapped in fight or flight and flight won when the hum of the water ended. Damn her. Damn her and her hesitation, her morals, her uncertainty, her rationality, her loyalty – whatever had kept her from throwing him down and fucking him. Damn. It.

She leaned against the cool tile, recovering. She was sure that he was not one of those men who were better in fantasy than reality. But now…now she'd never know, because he wouldn't give in to her again. He had faced his weakness, conquered it, and capitulated to his son's requests. Lucius Malfoy would not make another sexual advance on her…though the attraction would always be there, just below the surface, and he might give in if she made an advance on him. But how could she, now?

Disgusted, Hermione threw her loofah to the floor and shut off the water. She needed to get away from men for a while.