**Author's Note: Thanks for the reviewer who caught my totally spastic mistake of calling Colin… well, Colin. I could have just let it go and not fessed up to my readers, but hey, I'm human. I goofed. Now… go read and forget all about my vulnerabilities!!!**
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN- Meeting the Family
"No more idiotic rules," he spoke, still holding her, but the gentle, vulnerable look on his face had been replaced by his shield, that smirk. He was still inside her, reluctant to leave, still trying to determine what exactly had just passed between them.
Gen bit her lip to hold back a smile, able now to do so since he was proposing a cessation of rules, and echoed him. "No more idiotic rules." It was an agreement of some sort, she supposed, and when had they ever agreed? It felt… strangely good. But uncertainty plagued her, and after he slid out of her, causing them each to gasp, she covered herself with small, ineffectual hands and watched him dress.
"Drake." Had she ever said his name, and just like that, so… needy? "What… what is this?"
For some reason, the question made him angry. If she'd asked a different way, if she'd said "Are we together now?", he'd have been fine. But to keep it so balanced, so casual, like the answer didn't matter to her, made him angry.
"You're supposed to be the brains here, Wesley," he said, so focused on his shirt buttons he didn't see the wince cross her face at his callous use of her surname. "So you figure out what this is, if it so desperately needs a title."
Indignation dwarfing shame, Gen removed her hands and stood, her whole body flushed with anger and the remnants of their actions. She saw his gaze flick up to her and grow hungry rather than detached, and she narrowed her eyes, tossing back her hair.
"Well," she said icily, not giving half a damn if he was looking at her that way. She was annoyed, dammit. She snatched her skirt off the sofa and fastened it with nimble fingers. "I can hardly think we'd need a title. It isn't as though you'll be telling your lackeys about us." She slipped into her bra and added bitingly, "Or, for that matter, your parents."
His lips lifted in a sneer, but there was misery underneath, dismay that their peace had been broken so quickly. He shoved a hand through his thick hair and said, "Nor you yours, princess, I've no doubt."
She paused with her shirt halfway buttoned, one sleep bronze brow hefted regally. "You're more than welcome to tell my father, Drake. I'd just love to hear you deliver the news that you've taken advantage-"
"Ha!" he interrupted.
"Of his little girl," she finished, but they were both smirking now.
"Would you love to hear that, then?" he asked, putting his hands to her hips and looking down at her with a wicked gleam in his eyes. "'Master Wesley, I fear your lovely, dulcet, well-mannered, even-tempered daughter and I have been, if you will, indiscreet.'" He paused his sarcastic banter as though thinking, and added, "'Twice.'"
"Fantastic," she said, shoving him away from her and barely checking her laughter as she headed for the door. "You can polish it up for when you come to dinner on Friday."
"Friday?!" he echoed, and he was totally unable to keep the panicked yelp from his voice as he followed her out the door.
~~~
"Something's different," Hermione said, but she barely glanced at the bowl full of water and wood chips on Harry's bedside table.
Later, she would chastise herself for being flighty and irresponsible, but for now she was focused on Harry. He'd been so quiet since his previous day's outburst in Potions, and she was certainly going to get him to say or do something.
"Harry, I know you're worried about Ron, but is it something more than that?" She sat Indian style across from him on the bed, her fingertips lightly touching his knees.
Harry was fairly certain his robes were going to ignite at those two points of contact, and it took him a long moment to discern what she'd asked him.
"Just tired, is all," he said. "So many things changing… and with everyone gone, y'know, it's harder not to think about Voldemort." Ron's antics and Malfoy's general prattiness had at least been good distractions, Harry thought.
Hermione saw his thoughts wander, saw him drift away again, and felt a spurt of annoyance. In a burst of inspiration borne of frustration and pent up want, she leaned into him and kissed him fiercely, as though waging some sort of battle.
Her eyes were blazing as she pulled back from him, taking in his wide eyes, his glasses sitting askew on his nose, his heavy, uneven breathing, and she smiled with a secret, feminine knowledge just a few years beyond her age. "You were magnificent yesterday," she breathed, and got no further than that.
He buried his hands in her hair-it was curly, sure, but who knew there was so much of it?-and kissed her, first matching her fierceness and fervor, and then leveling into a smooth, skilled meeting of lips she'd not have guessed him capable of.
As he grew pleasantly dizzy and Hermione pressed her hands into his thighs, Harry thought this would be a perfectly acceptable distraction.
~~~
Having a secret felt rather nice, Gen supposed. Then again, perhaps she was just trying to justify lying to her
friends, her family… and herself.
Pretenses of hatred became harder and harder to keep up as the week wore on, as study sessions repeatedly and invariably ended with them trying to keep their hands off one another. Sometimes they succeeded.
The snarls and sneers he sent her way by day certainly looked real enough, she supposed, if one didn't see him rubbing his fingers over a mysterious object in his pants pocket.
And when he did that, her snarls and sneers became quite real, indeed.
It would have been difficult to say with any certainty which of the two of them took the pretending harder. With each smirk of Drake's friends, Gen wondered what he said to them, what he had told them. With each shocked glance from Connor and Lucia and every protective glare from Rob, Drake felt defensive… and more determined to make this Friday night dinner an opportunity to prove to her she wasn't above him, or better than him. Her family would adore him by the time it was over.
And this want, this need for approval, didn't seem strange to him at all.
After all, he was just proving a point.
Right?
~~~
It was just plain weird, and Rob didn't like it one damned bit.
It wasn't as though he hadn't enough problems of his own, but to sit down to a Friday night supper with that… git and his smarmy smirk and his highbrow gestures… well, it was just too much for Rob.
Added to the mere presence of Drake Mallory was the plain and simple fact that Gen hadn't informed her family of the guest until Thursday morning on her way out the door, stating it as loftily as she would have announced her shoe was untied or it looked like rain.
"Drake Mallory's coming to dinner tomorrow night, hope you don't mind."
Rob could have sworn he felt steam rolling out his bloody ears.
And it did no good to complain about it to anyone. The only person who even listened to him with any sort of attendance at all was Lovejoy, and she was clearly mad. He'd liked to have strangled her when she started lecturing him about underestimating that bleach-blonde ferret. Then again, he was already wont to strangle her, but for whole other reasons.
Yes, Rob had plenty of problems, but the most current one included sitting beside that git and watching him kiss Rob's parents' arses.
Drake smiled sweetly at Mrs. Wesley, nearly making Gen's eyes bug out of her head. It had been shocking enough when he'd shown up wearing a tie-actually knotted all the way up-but he'd brought her Mum flowers.
It was appalling.
"Explain to me once more how you know Genevieve," Mr. Wesley inquired, more out of sheer forgetfulness than any intent to interrogate. He was having a hard time concentrating, as he'd spent a great deal of time thinking about how particularly lovely his wife looked this evening and how he probably ought to bring her flowers more often.
Smashing woman.
Drake widened his eyes at Gen, who sat precisely across the table from him, and then spoke directly to her father. "Well, sir, your daughter was kind enough to lend a little of her time and… talent to me." The pause, though imperceptible to everyone but Gen, colored her cheeks. Did he have to be such a subversive pig? "You know," he finally elaborated, "To help with schoolwork."
"He really doesn't need much help," Gen demurred, then narrowed her eyes and added, "Well, not in that area, at any rate."
And as dinner ceased and dessert came, the Wesleys barreled on in conversation, sometimes with Drake, sometimes around him, sometimes engaging a surly Rob into their discussions, and Gen had nearly relaxed when the bloody awful prat moved.
She was taking a swallow of her water when he ran his spotlessly polished shoe up her leg and directly between her legs.
She choked, sputtering water all over the cheerfully checked tablecloth, and the bastard just sat there looking solicitous as though he hadn't a thing to do with it.
By the time Gen had caught her breath and wiped up the mess she'd made, he'd started moving his foot.
He hadn't planned on the action, really, but she'd given him a look sometime between beef roast and cheesecake that had made him want to throw her across the table, parents or no.
She was becoming a sick addiction, and he had no wish to do anything other than feed it. After all, what had he to lose? When he was finished with her, he'd be finished with her. It was no different than anything else he'd ever wanted and gotten, really.
This, too, would lose its shine. All pretty toys did.
Her cheeks flushed and she tried to shift. When she did, she found out what he already knew: it only made matters worse.
"All right, show's over," Gen said abruptly, the words bursting from her mouth in a short-winded gust. Her knickers were wet, for God's sakes. It was just… indecent. "It's well past time for Drake to get home."
"Genevieve!" her mother said, eyebrows lowered dangerously. "For heaven's sakes, don't be rude to your guest."
"By all means," Rob snapped, his first addition to any conversation about Drake, "Be rude."
That earned him a slap on the bones of his wrist with a metal spoon.
One more reason to hate Drake Mallory, Rob reckoned.
"It's quite all right, madam, Genevieve is quite right," Drake said, lifting her mother's hand and kissing it. Gen barely refrained from rolling her eyes, and then he shook her father's hand. "I must be going. Thank you for a lovely dinner. You have a very comfortable home."
The hell of it was, Drake thought as Gen all but shoved him out the door, he hadn't been lying. The dinner really had been lovely-cooked by someone other than a French chef with too much ego and too little common sense-and the home was just that, a home.
Perhaps Gen and her family really were better than him, but he wasn't about to admit it to her as she walked him out the door and strode to his car in long, purposeful strides.
"Something the matter, oh baby of the family?" he asked innocently, tugging on her hair and enjoying the fire it shot as she whirled around.
Gen thought she'd cooled down enough to look at him, really look at him, but when he looked at her like that, she had a hard time thinking anything. "Get in your car," she managed through clenched teeth, digging for and finding the anger she so needed. "I asked you to meet my family and you make a mockery out of it by… doing that?" She couldn't even find the words.
But the words she'd found had shocked him enough. "Meet your family?" he repeated, sexual thoughts suddenly dampened. "I thought this was just a dare."
What did it mean? What did it imply?
He tried to scoff at it, both inwardly and outwardly, and found himself oddly unable. He'd liked her parents. Perhaps Rob was still a great, gangling ogre, but…
"That's right," Gen said hurriedly, wanting to clap her hands over her mouth. God, things were getting out of control, and all she wanted was to go back up to her room and sleep in the bed she'd had for as long as she could remember and look at the familiar, fading wallpaper, and pretend to be a little girl again.
Watching him interact with her parents had been too much.
It had been too natural.
It could be too easy, she thought, to…
And she wouldn't let herself finish the thought.
"Go home," she said, leaning forward to kiss him quickly at the corner of the mouth, unable and unwilling to send him home angry. "Please."
Shellshocked, he did as he was asked for once in his life.
He had no way of knowing someone was waiting up for him at home.