CHAPTER FIVE
Is she gonna strike the match
That'll surely light the flame
Is she carrying a torch for love in vain
He didn't say a word as he drove through the city, and it was just as well that he didn't. She couldn't decide whether she was angry or scared or appalled or-
Just plain excited. Though she knew it showed her naïveté, the poor little Weasley from the Burrow, she kept her face nearly pressed to the window of the car, watching the houses and automobiles and scads of Muggles walking along the streets.
When the car came to a halt in front of a house-though calling it a house was a bit like calling a thestral a pony, she thought-she couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed-and apprehensive.
Now she had no distractions, nothing to keep her mind off the matter at hand. She was really here, thousands of miles from home at the request-nay, the command-of a single letter.
Her steps grew slower as her heartbeat grew faster, and though the driver opened the door for her, he made no move to come in.
"You're on your own," he said, looking none too patient as she hesitated in the doorway.
It could have swallowed her up, this house, so full of shadows and tall ceilings it seemed to be. But she could feel the familiar tingle when she walked in-magic-and it set her heart just a little more at ease. A room expanded here, a chair conjured there-it made all the difference in the world.
So where was the wizard who'd done the magic?
Music pulsed, loud but at such a low register it seemed to be under her feet, around her skin rather than in her ears. It pulsed like something living, making her insides tremble.
"This is bloody well ridiculous!" she called, her words swallowed up in thick drapery and thicker tension, the trembles in her words swept away by the insistent beat of the elemental music that played on. She set her bag on the floor and turned in circles in the long foyer, noting the floor-to-ceiling pillars that held the heavy ceiling in place.
Just like a castle, she thought, her mind whirling, her hair fanning out around her as she whipped around again, thinking she'd heard something-something additional in the room.
All she got for her troubles was a flash of white, tiny as a scrap but solid. What was it?
To whom did it belong?
"Don't be a coward," she said accusatorily. Was this what she'd come for? To be hunted like some sort of fox?
"Virginia…" The curt whisper was all but engulfed by the swelling bass and she felt her knees turn to water beneath her. Desperate, she turned in circles, searching for her hunter.
"Stop it!" she commanded. "I came as you asked and now I'd like some answers!" The spine she'd inherited from her mother, the one that made her brothers step back a bit, showed itself and she tossed her head back, her mane of flame-colored hair shifting back away from her face.
She heard him only a split second before he was upon her, before a large, rough hand fastened over her eyes. He stepped to her front, pressing thigh-to-thigh against her,
a long, hard body pressed into hers, convexity fitting into concavity, softness yielding to solidity. He took two long-limbed steps, forcing her backward, stumbling into one of the ornate wooden pillars that stood every few feet. Taking advantage of the position, he pinned her there with the weight of his body, his hand anchored over her eyes.
It all happened in a matter of seconds, and before she could catch enough breath to scream, his mouth was over hers; where her lips ended, another's began, sliding over hers and teasing tongue to tongue, plunging then retreating, flicking then taking just a moment to release her-to lick at her lips.
Even as she nipped back at the lips on hers, tilting her head back as best she could, she shoved at him, her small hands ineffectual against the wiry strength that held her. His free hand tangled in her wealth of hair, and for the first time, he spoke directly to her, placing his lips so close to her ear it made her shiver.
"There we are," he said in a pleasant but unidentifiable whisper. "Who wants a dragon without fire, anyway?" He lapped at her earlobe, using his tongue to draw it between gently scraping teeth.
She struggled a bit, stopping when she realized with a thrill of panic that her attempts to free herself only brought her skirt riding high on her thighs, bunched between them.
"I've been waiting for this for years," he added, streaking his hand from her hair to her throat, from throat to covered breast, from breast to thighs. He paused there, his breathing growing labored as he stroked long fingers over her shaking thighs.
Mortified, intuiting his next move, Ginny emitted a long, keening moan as she tried to shake her head in negation.
She'd traveled thousands of miles, she thought. Hadn't she known-hadn't some low, crawling part of her even hoped-that this was what would happen?
And so when he stroked the backs of his fingers up her skirt and over the silk she wore underneath, his fingers came away damp. At the slight contact, Ginny's keening cry broke into a gasp and her hips rocked forward before she could stop them.
In the gloom, a small, hopeful smile sparked on the young man's face, and this time when he spoke, his voice was clearer.
"Looks like Weasley's a bad girl deep down. Wonder what else she's hiding inside?"
With one swift motion, he moved aside the thin barrier of silk between his flesh and hers and slid one long, fine finger into her heat. His gasp echoed hers as he felt her tighten around his finger, and he flicked his thumb lightly just where he knew she would love-and hate-it most.
Just before she peaked, just moments before she'd have begged even if it damned her, he withdrew his fingers and gave into the obsession that had spanned years, driving himself into her, arousal into arousal. A raw cry tore from his throat as her muscles fit around him, and he forced himself to be still, his teeth clenched with exertion.
One finger at a time, he took his hand away from her face.
Is she gonna break the locks
Take a look inside the box
Knowing that she could release Pandora's shame
She shouldn't have been surprised, that much she knew. After all, who better fit the term "arrogant bastard"? Draco Malfoy had practically invented it. But it was hard not to be shocked that the man who was buried inside her, the man who was making her want to weep with frustration, was the same one who had given her such grief back at Hogwarts. The same one whom she'd believed dead long ago, killed with his father.
And so the surprise was there, carrying his surname on her lips in a gasp that he cut off before completion by striking forward and catching her lower lip between his teeth.
"Ah-ah-ah," he said, his voice muffled by her full lower lip. "You think I came all this way to be called by the name of my father?" He wrapped a hand around the back of the pillar and pulled, seating himself in her even tighter and making beads of sweat pop up along his brow. "Not quite." He released her lip from his mouth with a slight sucking sound and licked his lips to seal in the taste of her.
Please, she wanted to say, the want rising in her like a fever. Please, I don't care what you want to be called, just… Though her brain couldn't coherently finish the sentence, her body knew how, and she raised herself on her toes and sunk back down, trying to gain some friction, trying to just finish the damned thing.
Had she forgotten cruel? Cruel, arrogant bastard?
His corded arms were trembling with the force of holding himself back, and it took everything he had to keep that high-society, golden voice steady. "We can get on with the proceedings, Weasley, it's only that I had a question first."
"Go… to hell…" she ground out, catching her swollen lip between her teeth and rolling her eyes back in her head. But she was already there, already in hell and being tortured by an expert.
How could hell feel so much like heaven?
"All in due time." He lowered his head then, as though to let it drop to her shoulder, but instead he placed a string of open-mouthed kisses along her neck and collarbone as he raised one hand lazily. One by one, he twisted the buttons off her shirt, taking just as much time as it would have to unbutton them properly. But after each one came off in his fingers, he tossed it aside, listening to each one scatter along the hardwood floor, the noise swallowed up by the bass beats that surrounded them.
"All those years I watched and wanted, and then I left. But I didn't forget." He spoke leisurely, twisting buttons between strings of words and not moving an inch, still planted so deeply inside her that he could feel every fluttering of every muscle, every strain of every slick inch of skin.
"And what did my ears hear, Weasley? What did my spies eye?" He struck out then, his mouth hot and quick, bringing blood to the surface in several places along her neck, scraping white teeth over white skin in others. "The Weasley family's crown jewel was pining. Pining away in England, and for what?"
One hand was buried in her hair now, jerking her head back to leave her throat exposed. The pulse in her throat flew at a jackrabbit pace and he laid his lips to it gently even as he roughly pulled her hair. "For whom, Ginny?"
When she merely glared at him with that same stare she'd always used just for him-the one that spoke volumes of hatred, disgust, and damn her, superiority-he smirked and executed one quick, tight roll of his hips, letting out something very near a purr as she screamed breathlessly.
"You," she panted, willing to tell him anything he wanted to hear, even the truth. She raised her hands once, twice, but they fell away weakly and rested on the pillar behind her, one landing squarely on his hand, fingers tensed, tendons standing out, and she dug her nails into it roughly.
"Don't lie to me, Weasley," he said, his eyes suddenly furious, and he let go of her hair so abruptly it rapped her head into the pillar once more.
"I'm not lying," she said desperately, wondering if anyone else had even noticed, anyone else had wondered what had gotten her down. "You… and others."
The thought of others nearly made him blind with rage, and so to keep himself steady, he set the pace.
He'd primed the pump, so to speak. Now that she was talking, she wasn't about to stop.
He slid out of her several inches, grimly pleased at the disappointment it wrought on her face, then eased back in slowly.
"What others, Ginny?" He braced one hand above her head, keeping the other low on the pillar, and timed his strokes to the music around them, his eyes nearly crossing with the sheer heat, the sheer fit of her.
"Tom," she gasped out, unable to help herself. "You, and Tom, and all of you…"
His rhythm broke and he slammed himself into her, pleased when her words turned to whimpers and she levered one hand around his neck to steady herself.
"Don't compare me to him," he insisted through clenched teeth, his mercurial eyes boring into hers. "Not now, not ever." He brought his lips close to her ear again, and when he spoke he was out of breath.
"Poor little Ginny. Sorry for all the lost boys of the great war, eh?" Her fingernails dug into the nape of his neck and he reared his head back, his teeth bared as she was pushed over the edge, the sudden rush of heat and wetness sending him over as well. They rode it out, completely silent; when he could feel the last of himself empty into her, he bit her neck just under her ear, feeling the last tiny shudder it sent through her as he spoke.
"I always knew you'd be my bleeding heart."