He admired her luscious legs as she made her way from her companions to the ladies room. The cut of her dress was divine he thought as his gaze fixed on her wiggling posterior, bringing the tumbler up to his lips and sipping the honey coloured liquid that warmed his throat as it went down. Losing her in the crowd, he turned and smirked at the seething look on the face of the young woman's boyfriend as he stood next to him at the bar.

Draco looked positively murderous as he glared at his best friend.

"Fucking quit looking at my girlfriend like that Blaise" he ground out, angered at the predictable reaction that the dress she had chosen had elicited from Blaise.

Hermione had called him a chauvinistic prick in at least four different languages when he had suggested….alright, demanded that she put on something less provocative. Preferably something along the lines of the baggy oversized threadbare jumpers and tired jeans that she had worn in school. In this dress he noted she had curves to die for, the likes of which he would never have guessed in school she had. The dress was even more seductive than her business attire that drove his mind down into the gutter when left to wander unchecked. She had opted for high heels for height, knowing that she would be with two towering figures for the evening. Had she left the bedroom in kitten heels he would have owled Blaise 'Not tonight dear, I have a headache' and removed that dress with his teeth.

"Calm down Draco" the dark wizard chuckled "You've marked your territory quite literally as well as figuratively" he finished, downing the last of his drink, glancing at Draco's confused expression.

"She has a lovebite on her neck under her ear" he told him, grinning as he motioned for the bar-tender to refill their glasses. With her hair down, Draco hadn't noticed and the fact that Blaise had spotted it was a little unsettling.

"What happened to Bianca?" Draco asked, turning the attention away from his girlfriend's slender neck to Blaise's cavalier love life.

Blaise stilled his hand, his glass raised to his mouth and for a brief moment Draco thought he saw a hint of sadness flutter across his face.

"Married" he responded, bitterness just touching his voice, telling Draco in one word all that he needed to know. He had been into the woman he had his most recent fling with but she had returned to her husband forcing him to move on.

"And Fiorella? Or was it Fiorenza?" he asked, inquiring about the blonde Blaise had been in bed with when he had finally brought down the last of Hermione's walls of resistance. Blaise chuckled at the memory of the poor girl making her exit.

"Unlikely to return my call" he laughed, taking a sip of his drink.

Hermione returned and slipped her hand into Draco's pocket giving him a sly look before turning her attention to Blaise, engaging him in small talk about what he had been up to since school. He told her he spent most of his time in Italy as he had a villa on Sant' Erasmo as well as his apartment near the Palazzo Savorgnan in the CittĂ  Metropolitana di Venezia-the metropolitan city.

"It's funny" she remarked, "I visited Venice a few years ago and while I was staying here Ginny came out for a long weekend and she could have sworn she saw you!" she laughed, remembering how Ron had thought Ginny was 'completely boggled' as he put it.

"She did" he told her "I was crossing St Mark's and she was coming out of Cafe Florian, a drink in her hand, and as she lifted her sunglasses from her head she stopped, stared and shook her head in disbelief. By the time I had crossed the square she had vanished" he chuckled at the memory.

"Isn't it funny how you can go across the world and bump into someone you know, or be somewhere totally unaware that someone you know is in the next room" Hermione mused.

"We probably crossed paths many times without realising it" Blaise agreed, smiling. He genuinely liked Hermione. Having left England after the London Trials and spending so much time in the vibrant city that the muggle community had created here he had moved on from Pureblood Elitist ideology. With his Mother long dead and no one to influence his political thinking, he had allowed himself to formulate his own ideas and sense of morals-loose as they were and one particular friend had softened his thoughts on blood purity. Blaise turned his attention to attempting to signal the now busy bar tender and Hermione felt Draco lightly brush her hair away from his ear, briefly admiring the mark there.

"How come you didn't cover this with a glamour?" he whispered before planting a kiss over it.

"I thought you wanted Blaise to know I was off limits." she replied, a glint in her eyes.

"How very Slytherin of you dear" he murmured, before kissing her again. "Oh, by the way, I am aware of what you slipped into my pocket, you little minx, and just so we are clear we are getting out of here as soon as the opportunity affords and you are getting it." He punctuated the last four words with nips to her ear.

She smiled at the reaction she had banked on, as Blaise turned back to the couple.

"Good" she replied.