"So," Lord Voldemort said from the head of the table, "That is the plan. We know Eliza Atlas will have a pack of Dumbledore's allies at her house. We don't know who and we don't know how many. But with these tactics, we'll fight them, and I am determined that we will defeat them. Any questions? Yes, Lucius."

Bellatrix glanced down the table to where Lucius Malfoy sat beside his father. Her brother-in-law looked mildly apprehensive as he asked in a voice that was far more meek than usual,

"Are anti-capture protocols in place, My Lord, given the risk involved for this particular battle?"

"Yes." Voldemort left it at that. Bellatrix watched Lucius' face fall. The anti-capture protocols involved Death Eaters carrying small vials of poison into combat so that they could commit suicide on the battlefield if they faced the prospect of being taken by the enemy. Their master would not accept Death Eaters being interrogated for valuable information by the Ministry or by the Order of the Phoenix, so they'd all committed to sacrificing themselves if need be.

"Any other questions?" Voldemort asked lightly, but none of the others at the table piped up. Alecto and Amycus Carrow, with their fussy blond hair and matching facial features, sat in stodgy grey robes and were slightly huddled. Alecto Carrow was glancing periodically at Rabastan Lestrange, and Bellatrix smirked just a little. She knew that Alecto had a longstanding crush on Rodolphus' brother, which Rabastan did not return in the least. Poor witch, Bellatrix thought to herself.

"Dismissed, then," Lord Voldemort said from the head of the table. "I shall summon this squad in one weeks' time, when we will assemble on these grounds and go together to Eliza Atlas' house for the ambush. Thank you."

As the little team who had been assigned to the upcoming battle began to disperse, Bellatrix heard Alecto Carrow say somewhat desperately,

"Rabastan, you'll be at our cousin's wedding this Saturday, won't you?"

Bellatrix startled. Why Alecto had singled out Rabastan for the question, she didn't know, except that it was more obvious than ever that Alecto had a blatant crush. Adler Carrow, the twins' cousin through their father, who was younger by about five years, was getting married to Lulit Shacklebolt. The wedding was not going to be massive or extravagant, owing to the fact that war was raging, but would be a rare opportunity for allied families to gather carefully and celebrate the sacred Pureblood culture they were fighting to protect and elevate under the Dark Lord.

"Yes, of course I will," Rabastan said with a little laugh. He glanced at Bellatrix's husband, and Rodolphus reminded Alecto, "Our dad's been good friends with your uncle for years. We wouldn't be allowed to miss Adler's wedding if we wanted to."

"Oh, good," gushed Alecto. She flashed a grin to Bellatrix. "Thabo will be making you a gown, I suppose."

"I've got plenty to wear," Bellatrix said dismissively. "See you there, Alecto."

Bellatrix, of course, was far more concerned with murdering Rodolphus at the upcoming battle than she was with a social affair. Still, she plastered on a little smile and started to leave the room, until she heard Lord Voldemort say from the head of the table,

"Alecto."

Everyone paused and turned to look back to their master. Alecto dipped into an obedient curtsy at once, bowing her head as she awaited what Voldemort had to say. He met her eyes and said simply,

"I have killed the Potters, and thus the war and the progress of our movement enters a new phase of development. It is fitting that I be present at the union of two esteemed members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Inform your cousin Adler Carrow and his little bride Lulit that I shall be at the wedding on Saturday."

Alecto's face went scarlet. She nodded frantically. "Of course, Master. They'll be honoured, I'm sure."

"I will require a place as the guest of honour," Voldemort said slickly. Alecto's twin brother said frantically,

"We'll go visit our uncle and our cousin straight away, Master. Get it all taken care of."

"Good. Dismissed, all of you," Voldemort said. His eyes locked onto Bellatrix's, and she felt her heart accelerate just a bit as she stared at him. His lips parted a little, as if he wanted to say something to her. She examined his long, thick scar, the way it sliced down his face, and she remembered vividly kissing him in his bedroom a few years earlier in Malfoy Manor. She remembered the profound guilt she'd experienced from him wounding himself trying to save her from Moody's Curses in battle, the way he'd held her hand and said kind words to her and kissed her and then gone back to being stiff and formal. And now… now everything was different. She started to take a step toward him, but he shook his head minutely, and Bellatrix heard Rodolphus' voice saying to Rabastan near the doorway,

"Yeah, all right. Come on over for a good ploughman's lunch, eh? Come on, Bellatrix. I'm starved."

"All right," Bellatrix murmured, and she turned to go with her husband.

"There once was a girl with tits to her knees, but she gave me a blow like a leaf on a breeze, and I told her, My Darling, whenever you please, come back to me for a rose, hey!" Rodolphus staggered into their bedroom and brought the bottle of cheap Firewhisky to his lips. Bellatrix scowled from where she sat in her bed. She snarled at him,

"It's two in the morning. You've been drinking with your brother for hours. I was sleeping."

"Mmm. Yes. I am indeed… mm. Very drunk." Rodolphus set the bottle down on Bellatrix's dresser with a loud clunk and began stripping off his robe. He unlaced his trousers and continued humming the bawdy song he'd been wailing when he'd come into the room. Bellatrix frowned deeply.

"What are you doing?"

"Fucking you, wifey," Rodolphus informed her. He nearly fell as he yanked off his trousers, laughing uproariously. Bellatrix scoffed and flopped down onto her pillow.

"No, thank you," she said firmly. "Not interested."

She thought of Lord Voldemort kissing her in his office, of his hands holding her cheeks, of his voice informing her gently that he'd loved her for a long time. She thought of how her master had ordered her to kill her husband so that she could be Lord Voldemort's at long last. She rolled onto her side and squeezed her eyes shut. And then she felt him - Rodolphus - his body too warm and too large behind her on the bed, his limbs snaking around her, his cock prodding between her legs. He was kissing at her shoulder blade in a sloppy way that felt like hell just now, and Bellatrix shuddered uncomfortably.

"No, Dolph," she huffed. "I just don't want it tonight."

"Well, I do," he drawled, sounding drunk and hungry. "You're so pretty. You know, Bellatrix, when we were at Hogwarts, I thought you were a pretty girl, but now that we've grown older, I think… she's quite a witch. You know?"

Bellatrix felt her thick brows furrow in consternation. If he'd been trying to eloquently compliment her, he'd utterly failed. She rolled over toward him to chastise him, but he seized the opportunity to snatch her face and to smash his mouth against hers in an aggressive, almost painful kiss. Bellatrix squealed in protest, but Rodolphus seemed to interpret that as enthusiasm. Bellatrix squirmed as she tried to move away from him, but her husband appeared to see that as a sign of eager want, and he grunted as he yanked her closer and shoved her legs apart. Bellatrix panicked, sensing that he was about to push his cock into her body when she most definitely did not want such a thing. She wrenched her face from his and shoved at his broad, muscular chest as hard as she possibly could.

"I. Said. No!"

She snarled like a feral animal and heaved herself desperately away from him, scrambling out of the bed and glaring at him as though he were a terrifying, infuriating creature. Rodolphus just stared at her with eyes glazed from firewhisky, and he scoffed softly as he tossed up a hand.

"All you had to do was tell me you were bleeding. Happens every month. How am I meant to keep track?"

Bellatrix felt her cheeks flush hot with rage. She balled her fists and said through clenched teeth in a lethal tone,

"It's nothing to do with my own anatomy, Rodolphus. I realise you may find it difficult to believe that a witch simply doesn't desire intimacy with you, but -"

"What, you don't want me?" Rodolphus sounded wounded then, almost broken. He tipped his head a little and said, "I'm your husband, aren't I?"

"I'm going to my sister's house," Bellatrix huffed. She dashed across the room to the wardrobe and flung it open, stripping off her nightgown and balling it up. She began dressing as quickly as she could, yanking on cotton undergarments and a simple black velvet frock. From the bed, Rodolphus said in a very groggy voice,

"What, you're running off to Malfoy Manor just because I wanted a bit of a drunken shag and you're frigid? Come off it."

Bellatrix said nothing to that. Her face felt hot and her eyes burned as she shoved her feet into satin black flat shoes. She held her wand firmly in her hand and ran out of her bedroom without another word to Rodolphus, but her mind was flooded with the idea of murdering him on the battlefield, of hitting him with a Killing Curse whilst Lord Voldemort looked on with pride. Their enemies would be falling around her, she knew, and perhaps some of her allies. She would take Rodolphus out so that no one but Lord Voldemort knew it had been her. And then her oafish, bratty lump of a husband would be gone for good. She'd known for many years now that she could never, ever love him, no matter how hard she tried. She'd tolerated him for well over a decade, and she'd fought alongside him. But tonight, for some reason, she despised him.

It was pattering cold rain when Bellatrix landed via Apparition outside the gates of Malfoy Manor. She stared through the iron up to the enormous house and wondered whether she ought to just go home. She could sleep in a different room, she thought, and ignore her drunk husband. He'd be dead soon enough by her own wand, gone for good. But right now, she wanted nothing to do with him. She shivered where she stood, not just from the early November air, as she remembered the feel of his sticky flesh and his erection against her, the smell of whisky on him. She shut her eyes for a moment and felt bile rise in her throat, and then she brought her wand up and murmured the spells to unlock the gate by dismantling Voldemort's wards.

She stepped through the enchanted gate and padded up through the Malfoys' gardens, trodding up the grand steps and reaching the huge doors. She would knock, under normal circumstances, but it was around half past two, and everyone was undoubtedly asleep. She had been told countless times, by both Tullia Malfoy and by her sister Narcissa, that she was always welcome at Malfoy Manor. So Bellatrix pushed the door open and walked into the manor's vacuous foyer, which was illuminated only by the dim, flickering light of a few sconces on the walls. She tried to shut the door quietly, and she moved with soft footfalls as she walked up the stairs from the foyer to the manor's main level. She walked down the corridor and headed in the direction of the staircase at the far end, thinking she would go lie down in one of the upstairs suites. Tullia and Cissy wouldn't mind, Bellatrix knew.

"Bella?"

She whirled around, so startled that she yelped rather loudly and almost tripped. She froze as she saw Lord Voldemort standing just outside his office, staring at her as though she were a ghost. He shrugged a bit and asked,

"What are you doing here?"

"I… erm…" Bellatrix threw up her Occlumency shields at once. She was not comfortable, for some reason, with her lord and master seeing mental images of the way Rodolphus had come into bed earlier and disgusted her. She felt dizzy and weak then as she said a bit helplessly, "Dolph got too drunk. We bickered. I came here to spend the rest of the night on my own, My Lord."

Voldemort narrowed his eyes and looked profoundly suspicious. He pursed his lips and just studied her for a long moment, then sounded a bit odd as he noted,

"Sometimes I forget how skilled you are with Occlumency."

"I had a very good teacher, Master," Bellatrix said softly, feeling the cold damp from the rain on her curls around her face. Voldemort smirked and nodded. He reached out with his hand and wandlessly shut his office door, and then he stalked toward Bellatrix. He approached her and licked his lips, and he said down to her,

"I was working late. Giving last-minute approval to Orlo Flint on what's being printed about the Potters in the Prophet in a few hours."

Bellatrix grinned. "All good for you, I hope, My Lord?"

"Quite so." His dark eye, the good one, studied her closely, and the one that had been badly damaged in Cornwall a few years earlier seemed lost in its blindness. Bellatrix's chest crumpled a bit as she examined once more the way he'd been so badly scarred for having taken a stray Blasting Curse in an effort to protect Bellatrix on that battlefield, and she found herself whispering desperately,

"I thought it was just the Anodyne Draught talking."

"Mmm. No." Voldemort quirked up his lips almost sadly. He huffed a breath and glanced to his side, for a portrait on the Malfoys' wall was eavesdropping. Bellatrix looked to see that the painting of Phaedra Malfoy, who was wrapped up in elaborate cream-coloured robes eating grapes and peering at Bellatrix and Voldemort with rapt attention. Voldemort turned back to Bellatrix and said hesitantly,

"I, erm… you know, I keep rooms here. I always have."

"Yes, My Lord," Bellatrix nodded. Her heart thunked then, metal on metal. "From what Cissy tells me, they're the same rooms they've always been. The same rooms you boarded in many years ago. The same rooms in which I visited you… after the battle in Cornwall."

"Yes. Well." Voldemort looked mildly uncomfortable then, until at last he noted, "It is very late indeed. I wonder if you wouldn't like… some rest. Away from your drunken husband."

His good eye glittered strangely then, and his mouth twitched a little. Bellatrix felt her mouth fall open, but she managed to nod and whisper,

"Yes, please."

"Right." Voldemort walked with her toward the staircase at the end of the corridor, and when they reached it, he let her go first. Bellatrix was oddly aware then of how he must be watching her move, watching her climb the stairs, and when they reached the next level, she walked beside him and found herself glancing up to his face every now and then and chomping her lip anxiously. Finally, they reached his door, and he pulled it open and let Bellatrix inside. She stepped into the dark, masculine sitting room, where a fire enchanted not to go out was raging in the stout marble fireplace. She continued on into the bedroom, and suddenly she was taken back to the day in 1977 when she'd come to see him in his convalescence.

She vividly recalled how his fresh scar had been shiny and new, barely healed and still very evidently painful. She could still see the crushed eye socket he'd had, the bruising, the break in his arm. She could hear his wheezing, could hear the crackle in his low voice. And most of all, she could feel his kiss, the very first kiss he'd ever given her. She nearly cried now, remembering that, thinking of how deeply it had affected her when it had happened.

"Bellatrix." Voldemort stepped up beside her and brushed his fingers against hers. She turned her face to look at him, amazed by the gentle attention he was giving her now. Just a few weeks ago, they'd been in a ferocious battle above Shaw Green outside Harrogate. Bellatrix had been on a broomstick, along with several other Death Eaters, dogfighting the enemy in the air. Voldemort, naturally, had been flying unassisted. Bellatrix had marveled at the way he'd so easily eliminated foes, taking out two at once with one catastrophic spell. She'd quickly cast a massive fiery Curse that had incinerated two of the broomsticks flying for the Order of the Phoenix, sending the enemy crashing to the Earth to their demise. After the battle, Voldemort had proudly told Bellatrix that she'd fought well, that she'd made him happy, that she was a good soldier and his best Death Eater.

But this felt very different. This felt so profoundly different from the years of praise for exemplary combat, or the occasional dance at a wedding or party. This felt nothing like a fleeting glance between master and servant during a communal meeting, or like a furtive planning session over goblets of Elf-made wine. Standing here, alone with him in a bed-chamber, his fingers twining carefully with hers, she was coming alive for him in a way that had never happened before. Her skin tingled. Her breath and heart quickened in tandem. Her mind began to spin. She felt foolish; she felt like a lovesick little girl. But she couldn't help herself. She adored him, very ferociously indeed.

"It's nearer to sunrise than anything else," he whispered. "You ought to rest."

She just stared at him, saying nothing. She tightened her fingers on his, and she watched his eyes shut slowly.

"Your Occlumency shields have crumbled," Voldemort informed Bellatrix matter-of-factly. "I can see what Rodolphus did to you. I tire of that feebleminded moron in general, and for him to impose his miserable carcass on you as though you are his personal toy… Bella."

He opened his eyes and glared at her, and she shrunk back a little, shaking her head helplessly. She shrugged and insisted in a cracked little voice,

"I shoved him away. He didn't manage anything. I'm going to kill him when we attack Eliza Atlas' house, My Lord. It's fine."

"It's not fine," Voldemort snapped. "I am in love with you, and I have been for many years, and that idiotic lump of flesh has been your husband… I am meant to be your husband!"

He looked shocked with himself then, and Bellatrix staggered away from him at once, unable to believe what he'd said. Voldemort's pale cheeks flushed scarlet in the wake of his outburst, and his jaw dropped in apparent humiliation, his head shaking slowly with confusion at his own words.

Bellatrix scowled and tried to calibrate what exactly her master had just said. Marriage? Marriage? She'd been pleasantly surprised, admittedly, when he had brought her into his office after a meeting and had called her precious and his and had kissed her. After four years of hiding away the reality that he'd kissed her once long ago, him doing it now felt beautiful and wondrous. Hearing him say that he loved her made her heart sing. And she was neither angry nor frightened at the prospect of getting Rodolphus out of the way, after over a decade of a loveless marriage, so that she might more formally become the witch who belonged fully to Lord Voldemort.

But now he was saying that he was meant to be her husband, and somehow that felt like a fundamental paradigm shift. She'd served him very dutifully since she'd been a teenager. For thirteen years, she had devoted her entire existence to the Dark Lord. She had risked her life for him time and time again. She'd killed for him, tortured for him, over and over. She had shrieked Curses on rainy nights. She had sat through endless meetings. She had murmured plans for upcoming slaughters with him. She had studied Occlumency with him. She had danced with him, at weddings and parties, staring up at him and adoring him fiercely. She'd been given her custom star diamond pendant a few birthdays ago. Her life had revolved around Lord Voldemort for a very long time now. But marriage…

"My Lord." Bellatrix held up a hand as if to caution him, and Voldemort looked almost afraid, like he was terrified that another word out of him would shatter something. He hesitated and finally said in a careful tone,

"I misspoke. Forgive me."

Bellatrix let out a shaking breath and approached him again, closing the gap between them and putting her fingers on the brushed silver clasp binding Voldemort's heavy grey robe shut. She dusted her fingertips over the closure, teasing it a little, and gazed up at him, murmuring,

"If I could travel back in time, My Lord, and marry you instead of marrying Rodolphus Lestrange… believe me. I would."

Suddenly his good eye rimmed vividly red and boiled over with a solitary tear, which shocked Bellatrix more than anything he had done or said up until that point. He reached to hold her face in a trembling hand, and he nodded a bit as he said softly,

"So would I."

Bellatrix curled up half her mouth, feeling bitter as she remembered her wedding day. She thought back to the horrid white gown she'd been made to wear, to the dance she'd shared with Rodolphus, to her wedding night after Dolph had had loads too much Champagne. She thought of how she did not feel she had any choice but to marry him, how she'd felt so very trapped. She tried not to get emotional then as she reminded Voldemort,

"There's nothing to be done, unfortunately. It is a pleasant fantasy, isn't it? To imagine going back and changing it all? Undoing the damage, as it were."

"Yes," Voldemort choked out. He licked his lip and told her, "Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like, Bella, if I'd managed to intervene and confiscate you from Rodolphus Lestrange before he'd had the chance to make you his wife."

She laughed without any merriment and unhooked the clasp on his robe rather bravely. "That would have been extraordinary," she hummed, "but, alas, things are what they are. I will take him out in the battle that is to come, and I… you can have whatever you want, Master. You are the Dark Lord. You must have whatever you want, so…"

Her fingers drifted downward to the next clasp on his robe, and he did not protest as she unfastened it, nor when she undid the third and final clasp. She pushed the robe open and encouraged Voldemort to shuck it, and it fell heavily to the ground. Bellatrix felt suddenly like she was starved, like she needed him. She whimpered aloud, just a little bit, much to her own chagrin. She felt Voldemort's fingers thread into her curls as she worked feverishly with the buttons of his white linen tunic, and her breath sped up in her nostrils. She stared at his sternum and whispered rather desperately,

"I confess I have wanted something like this for a long time, My Lord."

"It was brainless lunacy for me to deny either of us any of this for so very long, Bella," Voldemort panted, and his fingers massaged her scalp. She pushed his tunic off, and he released her hair so he could free himself of the clothing. He unlaced his breeches and shoved them down as he kicked off his dragonhide boots, and then Bellatrix just gaped. He was thick and long, throbbing with want, larger by far than Rodolphus was. His manhood was not monstrous, but it was sturdy and masculine, with a little thatch of greying hair at his pelvis and a head that looked eager and swollen.

Bellatrix felt a flush of desperation between her legs and hummed with need as Voldemort's hands found her dress and started pulling, yanking at the velvet. She let him strip it off of her, drawing it up and over her head. It landed with his thick outer robe in a pool of fabric on the ground, Thabo Shacklebolt's luxury creations discarded and forgotten. Bellatrix's cotton underwear was quickly unfastened and stripped, and soon enough Voldemort was kissing her like mad with his hands coursing rapidly around her flesh. It felt good, so very good, but it also felt… familiar.

It was as though he knew her body, Bellatrix thought distantly as he caressed her where they stood. He was not acting at all like a wizard who had never touched her, who was new to kissing her. He was squeezing and weighing her breast just so, brushing his thumb over her nipple in precisely the right way to pucker it. He was dancing his knuckles down over her neck and collarbone, eliciting a shiver and a soft moan through their kiss, as though he knew very well that she was more than a little sensitive there. He held onto her hip and pulled her close, which she liked very much, and he stroked her back in circles between her shoulder blades whilst he suckled on her lip. His touch was expert, proficient, and his kisses were exceedingly skilled. Bellatrix finally pulled her mouth from him and stared up at him in shock, panting with exertion and feeling like her lips were bruised.

"What's wrong?" Voldemort huffed, dragging his thumb over her bottom lip. Bellatrix frowned a little and demanded quietly,

"How do you know so very well what sort of touches suit me, Master?"

He hesitated for a half second, but then shook his head and insisted, "I don't. I don't know. I just… want you. That's all."

"Oh." Bellatrix felt her cheeks go warm. She smirked. "Well, you do a very fine job, My Lord."

"Glad to hear it. Now, on the bed with you," he commanded. Bellatrix laughed just a little and headed for the bed, and as she climbed up onto the dark coverlet, Voldemort instructed her, "Lie flat on your stomach."

Bellatrix's skin prickled then. She felt her lips curl up just a bit. Sex with Rodolphus, especially in the last six or seven years, had become extremely rote and dull. Most of the time, he just lay atop her, heavy and swaying, and Bellatrix averted her eyes and functioned like a glorified plaything. Sometimes Rodolphus would barrel into Bellatrix whilst she was on her hands and knees, but it was usually a rapid-fire, predictable affair that was over before it really began, and almost never involved any romance, no proper prologue. But right now, Bellatrix's body was aflame with need, with desire, and as she arranged her body on the bed as Voldemort had told her to do, she felt that she was soaked between her legs.

"My beautiful Bella…" She felt him dragging his fingertips down her spine then, and her eyes fluttered shut where she lay with her face on one of his feather pillows. She hugged the pillow and sighed shakily as his fingers danced up and down her back before settling between her thighs. She moaned a little then, feeling him pulse his touch delicately around her entrance before pushing firmly on her clit. She dug her face into the pillow and keened as his hand massaged her, stroking her nub in insistent, deep circular motions that felt better than anything Bellatrix had ever done to herself. Again, it felt almost bizarrely like he knew exactly what to do, like he knew how to drive her quickly to the edge. It seemed like he knew her preferences on instinct, like he'd reached this level of expertise through trial and error on some phantom plane of existence.

But that, of course, was ridiculous.

Bellatrix huffed onto the pillow and squirmed against her master's hand, feeling him thrust a few fingers into her body and crying out against the fabric as her hand clutched the pillow for purchase. He twisted his fingers and pulsed his thumb on her, stroking her so deftly and assertively that Bellatrix could no longer stave off the inevitable. She trembled fiercely for a long moment, moaned far too loudly for her own good, and then came with a force she did not know was possible. She was aware, distantly, that her walls were clenching erratically and somewhat forcefully around Lord Voldemort's long fingers. The snapping of her womanhood on his hand felt so very good, for she'd never in her life experienced a climax like this whilst a wizard had his hand burrowed inside of her. Her voice, muffled by the feather pillow, was frenzied as her ears rang and went hot, as the room spun and she felt dizzy. The sensation of the satisfaction he'd given her was beyond exquisite, and it lasted for so long that it felt like a spell. But finally, finally, it faded, and Bellatrix panted with a hoarse little groan against the pillow, her fingernails still scratching at the sheets a little as she recovered. Voldemort was above her then, his body positioned over hers with his lips beside her ear, and he murmured quite gently,

"You do realise, don't you, that witnessing that level of pleasure from you very nearly made me spill myself? Hmm?"

"Ohh." Bellatrix could not find any proper words. She couldn't address him with sufficient respect right now. All she could do was turn her face a little and let him kiss her searingly hot cheek as his knee shoved her thighs apart somewhat roughly. She yelped and then sighed as he pushed his thick cock into her. He glided in easily, burying himself to the hilt in one fluid stroke, since she was utterly slick and swollen from her climax. He hissed and seethed with relief as he pumped his hips a few times, and he kissed her cheek again before he whispered,

"I spent years touching myself to thoughts of you, Bella. Spilling my seed to thoughts of you. Did you know that? Hmm. I'd see you kill my enemies in battle, gorgeous in the green glow of your Curses, and I'd go home and I'd stroke my cock thinking of you and I'd come hard with your face in my mind."

"Ohh." Bellatrix's body throbbed and buzzed with fresh arousal at the idea of that and she bucked her hips back against the feel of his cock. He jammed his pelvis forward, fucking her roughly a few times until she moaned loudly. He touched his forehead to hers and started to pant as his hips accelerated, as he worked like a machine to piston into her. She whined a bit, her fingers sinking into the sheets as she felt her body tightening helplessly again.

"I love you." His voice was furious then, a growl through clenched teeth, but he did not sound angry. He kissed her blazing hot cheek and gasped before he choked out again, "I love you, Bella."

Then he slammed his hips a few more times and went still, and she could feel him twitching inside of her. He made a few desperate noises against her face, his breathy voice juttering near her skin, and at last he collapsed away from her, pulling out of her body and landing ungracefully on his back beside her. He seemed completely exhausted, his chest heaving. He was glistening with a sheen of sweat, and his eyes were hooded and heavy. Bellatrix realised he was not at all a young wizard; he was in his mid-fifties. Sex like this must tire him quite a lot. Well, she was only thirty, and she felt like she could sleep for days. Still, she had no idea what to do just now.

"Stay," Voldemort murmured from where he lay staring at the ceiling. Bellatrix said nothing at all. Voldemort's head rolled until he was staring at her, with his good, dark eye and his most blind, clouded one. He nodded a little and repeated, "Stay and rest. Let your bloviating muttonhead of a husband sleep off his drink before you go back home. He'll be dead soon, anyway."

"Yes, My Lord. He'll be dead soon, anyway," Bellatrix affirmed. Something told her to curl up against Lord Voldemort's body, that he would not mind it if she did. She edged closer to him and carefully brought one leg over his hips and one arm across his chest. He hummed contentedly and whispered,

"Right where I belong."

Bellatrix said nothing to that. She just shut her eyes and let herself drift off to sleep, comfortable and satisfied, and finding herself looking forward to the upcoming Carrow wedding and the battle in which she would eliminate her husband.

Author's Note: This story has now passed the 100,000 word mark! Woo hoo! Thank you so very, very much for reading. I am extremely grateful for all feedback.