Author's Note: Ok folks, this chapter earns its M rating. So if that makes you uncomfortable, please skip it. Also, please review. I feel I took a bit of a risk with this chapter, and I am a bit nervous about its reception. If you don't review, I will assume I scared you off!

Thank you to yobadself for reviewing the last chapter!

Chapter 4: Carnal Knowledge

"Sev? Sev?" Lily gently shook him awake. From the clock that she could barely make out in the dim light filtering through the curtains, she knew that they had been asleep for a couple of hours at most, and it was now officially the start of 1975. As much as Lily loved to have Sev beside her in bed once more, each of them took up more room than they did as eleven year olds, and her twin bed was quite cramped with the both of them in it. She had tried to fall back asleep, but had given up, tuning in to the sounds of his slumber instead, when a thought suddenly occurred to her. Didn't boys get erections when they slept? She darted her eyes down Sev's body, but couldn't make see anything more than vague shadows. She immediately berated herself for even looking, but her own naughtiness also made her skin tingle. "Sev!"

He stirred awake, eyelids lazily drifting open. "Yeah?" His voice was husky with sleep and the sound of it made somethingheavy pool low in her pelvis.

"Do you ever think about me?" she asked,sliding her bare feet beneath the cuffs of his denims so that she could warm her frigid toes against the hairy skin of his calves. He still wore his socks, and they felt threadbare and scratchy against her heels.

"Of course. All the time," he murmured back, and she could feel the weight of his unblinking gaze upon her.

Maybe it was the lack of sleep, the alcohol still in her system, or the fact that everything felt slightly surreal in the dead of night, but Lily found herself possessed with an uncharacteristic boldness. "No, I mean. Do you ever think about me when you're, you know, wanking?" Her voice lowered down to a hushed whisper on the last word.

"Yeah. All the time," he breathed, and Lily's stomach flipped with a sudden rush of nervous arousal. "Does that bother you?"

"No. I like that you think about me," she admitted, and she heard Sev's breath catch in his throat. She screwed up all her daring and forced the next words out past numb lips. "What kinds of things do you think about doing with me?"

She felt Severus slip in at the edge of her mind, and images of them together began to flash before her eyes. She blushed as she realized she was seeing Sev's fantasies…the very things he thought about while he stroked himself late at night in the privacy of his own bed.

But as thrilling as it was to see the proof of his fantasies in her mind's eye, what she really yearned for in that moment was the deep huskiness of his voice in her ear as he described in detail everything that he wished he could do to her. She let her eyes fall shut, raising her mental shields, and just before she pushed him out, she caught a glimpse of his panic. She read his fear that he had overstepped his boundaries, gone too far and scandalized her. Well, she would just have to set him at ease.

She scooted closer to him, laying a hand on his bony chest as she lowered her lips to the delicate shell of his ear. "No, don't show me. Tell me. I want to hear you say the words."

Sev aligned his face with hers, until they were practically nose to nose, and spoke slowly, his voice thick with something Lily couldn't quite identify. "I think about holding you and kissing you and running my fingers through your hair."

"And?"

"And kissing your neck."

"And?"

"And your ear." His eyes swept down her face, settling on her lips. "I think about you sucking on my earlobe."

"Like this?" She nudged his head to the side with her cheek, exposing his left ear, then ran the tip of her tongue once around the lobe, before gently pulling it into her mouth. She nibbled on it gingerly, andfelt him shiver despite the warm cocoon of the thick duvet.

Sev brought his right hand up, clutching Lily's own hand in his where it still lay on his chest. "Yeah, just like that."

She pulled back, releasing his ear with a soft pop. "What else do you think about?"

"I think about your tits," he said, then ducked his head sheepishly. "Sorry."

She nuzzled his down turned face. "No, it's okay. Tell me. I want to hear you say it."

"I think about touching them, playing with them."

"With your hands?" she prompted.

"And my mouth…on your tits. Would you like that?" They were both breathing hard now, practically panting in the still of the night.

"Yeah…want you to…play with them. Do you want to touch me down there?"

"God yeah, so badly, ye haff no idea…wan' ter taste yer…there. Be' yer'd taste sweet a' honey," he said, voice roughened and ending on a lilt.

Sev's speech was a chameleon-like mish mash of various accents and dialects. When school was in session, it took on the precise, clipped tones of Received Pronunciation to match his peers. But, back in Cokeworth for the holidays, it inevitably receded back to its broad Mancunian roots. (As did Lily's, the more time she spent at home with only Severus for company.) But when Sev was drunk (or aroused, as it was turning out), his accent regressed even further, adopting his ma and da's Northern Irish lilt, with the odd bit of pikey1 slang thrown in here and there, a stubborn remnant of his traveller roots. If Tuney heard him like this, she'd say that he sounded like the tinker trash1 that he was. Lily thought he sounded exactly like the type of boy who could talk his way into a nice Anglican girl's bed while her parents were out of town.

"More tangy like, actually," she replied with a giggle, deciding to tease him just a little. Well, maybe not such a nice girl anymore, as it turned out.

"You've tasted yourself?" he asked incredulously.

"I — I was curious."

"Oh god," he moaned. "That's dead sexy."

"Here have a taste right now." Lily disentangled her left hand from his right, and reached down, slipping her fingers down the front of her denims and into the slick wetness pooling in the crotch of her knickers. She hastily pulled them back out, accidentally on purpose brushing her clitoris as she did so. Then, before she could think better of it, she brought the tips of her fingers to Sev's chapped lips. He sniffed cautiously at them, and darted out the very tip of his tongue, curling it around the end of her fingers for a quick taste. The feel of his wet tongue wrapping around her fingers was indescribably erotic.

"You're right," he said, a slow smile turning his lips, "it is tangy."

"What about you, Sev, have you ever tasted yourself?"

He hesitated. "No."

"Not ever? Not even once, just to see?" she wheedled.

"…Maybe once," he admitted, and she could hear the blush in his voice. Lily didn't know why, but the thought of him tasting his own spunk oddly thrilled her.

"How was it?"

"Um…kind of bitter. Definitely nowhere near as good as you taste," he said with a sexy chuckle.

"How often do you wank, Sev?"

"Um I dunno…the normal amount, I guess."

She giggled. "What's the 'normal amount'?"

"Lily…"

"Please Sev. Don't be embarrassed. I won't make fun, I promise."

"Why d'you want to know?" he asked suspiciously.

"Because…I like to think about you touching yourself."

She wasn't lying. Ever since her first year at Hogwarts, when she had learnt from furtive conversations with her friends just what it was that boys got up to, Lily couldn't help wondering about it. She sometimes found herself fantasizing during History of Magic about Sev taking himself in hand…or about taking him in her mouth…imagining the way his head might fall back to expose the pale column of his neck as he came undone…

He interrupted her feverish musings. "You do? Wait, you mean you've actually thought about it?"

She returned her left hand to his chest, stroking idly over the rough cotton of his tee shirt. "Yeah, I think about it a lot. I want to watch you do it sometime."

"What else do you think about, Lily?" he asked, voice dropping an octave.

It was her turn now to paint a picture for him with her words. She opened her mouth to speak, but suddenly her throat went dry. She desperately racked her brain for something to say…anything that would sound sexy and not stupid out loud, but found herself tongue-tied. To buy herself a few more minutes, she brushed her lips against the side of his neck. He moaned wantonly, and the sound of it was enough to inspire her.

She continued her exploration of his neck, pressing an open mouthed kiss just below his ear. "I think about you licking me down there, your head between my thighs" — kiss — "your fingers inside me" — nip — "getting me ready…"

"Ready for" — pant — "what?"

She darted another kiss to the rim of his ear, before pulling back to look him directly in the eye. "Ready for you."

"You want me inside of you, Lily?"

"Unnngh, yeah. I want — I want to feel you…everywhere." She trailed her fingers down to his waist, and slipped her fingers beneath his shirt, caressing his hip. His skin was flushed with heat and clammy. You think about having sex?"

He raised his hand to clutch at her wrist once again. "Yeah…loads…"

"How do you want to… f-fuck me?" she stuttered the last two words, feeling shy and incredibly wicked at the same time.

Hearing that word fall from her lips fired Sev up, and his voice came out in a low growl that made her desire swollen flesh pulse with need. "I want to fuck you face to face so I can see your eyes. I wanna watch your face as I make you come."

She trailed her fingertips lightly over his upper abdomen, feeling the lean muscles there ripple beneath the pads of her fingers. "I wanna see you come too. What other positions?"

"You on top. I want to suck on your tits while you ride me."

She whimpered. It was so hot, knowing he thought about such filthy things…and hearing those — those words — drop from his lips in that wicked voice full of such dark promise…

"Go on…" she whispered on a sigh, burning to hear more.

"I want to bend you over that desk right there and fuck you from behind with my hand in your hair."

She mewled wordlessly, pressing her thighs together in a fruitless attempt to relieve the pressure, but the friction only made her throb harder for him.

"Lily, I want to ask you a question, but you don't have to answer if you don't want to, okay?"

"Go ahead."

"Do you ever touch yourself?"

She froze, mind hung up on the sure knowledge that nice girls don't do that. Or, at the very least, they don't admit to doing it.

"Lily? I won't think any less of you for it. I promise."

She forced herself to relax. Of course he wouldn't. This was Sev, and she knew from his numerous rants against the Victorian ideals of Wizarding Society that he was the last person on Earth to care what it was that nice girls did, or didn't do.

"Yeah, I do." It felt strangely liberating to just admit to it.

"How?"

"I rub myself with my fingers." Her fingers swirled around his belly button, imitating the motion for him.

He groaned, shifting his grip up her wrist so that she could move her hand freely. "And, when you feel that ache deep inside, what do you do then?"

"I use my fingers to try to fill it up. Sometimes I —" she paused, suddenly bashful.

"Go on." He was gripping her forearm so tightly now that it hurt, kneading the flesh in his mindless fervor.

She rubbed at the coarse hairs that ran a trail from his navel down past the loose waistband of his denims. "Sometimes I use — use m-my hairbrush and pretend it's the real thing."

Time seemed to freeze for a moment as Lily was nearly drowned in her mortification.

"Lily?"

She had turned away from Sev and buried her flaming face in her pillow. "Oh god, I don't know why I told you that. Why did I tell you that?"

"What's the matter?" asked Sev, laying a concerned hand on her arm and trying to turn her back around to face him. She resisted, praying for her bed to swallow her up. How could she ever look him in the face again after what she had just told him?

"I'm so embarrassed!" she whimpered, near tears.

"You have nothing to be embarrassed about! That's the sexiest thing I've —"

"How is that sexy?" she asked despairingly, finally turning back around.

"Because — the idea of you — that you want it so much that you would —" he drew in a sharp breath, his left hand pinching her waist so hard she wouldn't be surprised to find bruises in the morning. "God, Lily, you don't know what you do to me…" Encouraged by his words and the fevered desperation with which he still gripped her waist, she returned to tracing up and down his abdomen with her left hand, fingernails just barely grazing the goose-pimpled skin.

Suddenly, a thought struck her, piercing through the fog of arousal in her head. Was he…right now?

She shifted her thigh against his pelvis, feeling around for it, but she couldn't tell. "Are you turned on right now?"

"Yeah."

"Does that mean that you're — that you're — hard?" She held her breath in anticipation.

"…Yeah. Really hard."

She exhaled harshly as she felt herself start to throb between her legs. Knowing he was hard right now…hard for her. Her hand drifted lower, dipping beneath the waistband of his loose denims, and with her eyes closed, she imagined what his cock looked like right now…rigid and swollen…ready for her right now. She wanted so badly to inch her hand further down, slip it down inside his pants and grip him tightly. She wanted to know what he felt like in the palm of her hand…how long he was, how thick. She couldn't help her intense curiosity.

Her fingers brushed the elastic of his underpants, but at the last minute, she pulled back, suddenly nervous.

"What about you?" he asked. "Are you turned on?"

"Yeah."

"What does it feel like for a girl? You know, being — aroused?"

She shut her eyes and described exactly what she was feeling in that moment. "It feels like your — your fanny is throbbing, and you want to squeeze your legs together or rub between them. And deep inside it feels empty and there's this sort of achy feeling and it's like you want something to fill you up, to go deep inside to reach that ache —"

But before she could finish, Severus suddenly guided her left hand, which had been resting on his lower abdomen, down…down…her fingers just brushed something hard through the thick fabric of his denims, when she suddenly yanked her hand back, her heart hammering in her chest.

He let go of her as she'd scalded him, turning away from her and onto his stomach. "S-sorry. I shouldn't have gotten carried away." Watching his back rise and fall as he tried to get his ragged breath under control, she suddenly felt bad.

"No Sev, it's not that. I want to — believe me, I do — just not yet. I want to save something for later. If we do it all now, we'll have nothing new to look forward to. And eventually things will get…boring."

He chuckled. "Lily, there are enough things we can explore to last us a lifetime, trust me," he said, and she was reminded that Sev was a boy and of course he knew about things that they could do to each other that had never even occurred to her…things that he had probably heard about from the older boys in his house…things that he had read about in dirty magazines. It felt both wrong and incredibly hot to think of him, her best friend since childhood, looking at pornography. She felt hopelessly naive, while at the same time it turned her on that Sev was definitely not. His amused voice shook her out of her fevered thoughts. "Besides, sex could never be boring with you, Lily."

'pikey' and 'tinker' are both somewhat derogatory terms for Irish travelers.

Author's Note 2: This chapter closely follows my first ever experience with the opposite sex. Except, in my case, I had never kissed a boy, and still didn't until nearly a year later. Thank you to my beta, aberrantstrain, for not making fun of me when I told her that!

Please review. I am particularly interested to know what people think of this chapter.