CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Earning Trust
She left the study before he could see her reaction-it was simply her eyes watering from the spirits, that was all, she'd not cry over his profession of trust, for Merlin's sake-and she wended her way back to the bedroom, his bedroom, with ease.
It completely slipped past her notice that he was right behind her.
She reached the bedroom door and stepped inside, ready to turn and close it, lock it, lock herself in and… and what? Lock him out?
She really saw no need for that.
Perhaps she trusted him in return.
Trust or no, a scream jolted up from her lungs as she saw him standing in the doorway, preventing her from closing it. "I'm fine," she insisted, holding onto the doorknob tightly. He was staring at her with those silver eyes, and it was disconcerting, the way he was looking at her purposefully.
"Maybe," he said, shouldering his way into the room and putting his hand over hers. For a moment, she left her hand where it was, her head swimming, and then she realized he wasn't doing it to touch her.
He was doing it because he wanted a grip on the doorknob.
She jerked her hand away without thinking of what would happen next, her cheeks hot. Would he never stop embarrassing her? There was something so prurient in every mood he made, she felt indecent just being in his presence.
When he stayed inside the room and shut the door, she raised an eyebrow.
When he locked it, her jaw dropped open.
"What are you doing?" She crossed her arms over his chest, pressing the fabric of his shirt against her bare breasts and ruthlessly ignoring how soft it felt. A few steps backward would give her some space, she warranted, only she nearly stumbled over the too-long legs of the pants he'd given her.
His pants.
His bedroom, his bathroom, his shirt, his pants.
He didn't have to try to consume her. He already had.
She frowned and turned slightly away from him, needing a bit of herself back as she waited for him to answer her.
"Maybe you can sleep," Draco said, biting off the words tersely. She was edging away from him like she was scared of him. It was ludicrous. "But I can't. That's my bed you've got there, and I intend to sleep in it. It's big enough for the both of us."
She let out an affronted huff.
"We won't even have to touch," Draco said, his voice all manufactured sweetness and eye-rolling sarcasm. "Your virtue, or whatever is left of it, can go the night untarnished."
"I'll be the keeper of my virtue, I thank you," Ginny retorted, and to prove it, she shucked off the pants he'd given her and threw them at him. "I don't need those," she added, mimicking his faux sweetness.
He caught them high because she'd thrown them high, and when he clasped his hands around the soft material right in front of his face, he regretted it. She'd been wearing them fifteen, twenty minutes at most, and they already smelled like her.
I am Draco Malfoy, he thought, but the confidence that statement usually carried was gone. So he added to it with a sentence he knew to be true. I am a masochist.
So he extinguished the lights and climbed into bed as she climbed in on the other side.
Ginny turned her back to the middle of the bed, her hands tucked up under her cheeks. He was silent as he pressed the bed down with his weight, but the room felt warmer with him there, and somehow less… empty.
If she could only fall asleep, she thought she would not dream of Harry.
But her thoughts were racing, tumbling one over the other, and she knew she would find no slumber as long as she was thinking about the past week, about the things he'd said, about the things she'd said.
"Do you have any idea what it's like to be with someone who is better than you in every conceivable way?
"Yes, I have some of idea of what that must be like."
"I've had few occasions in my life to know a trustworthy person."
She fought the absurd urge to cover her ears, as though the voices were real, audible.
He did not stir behind her, and she hated him a little for that. She felt like tossing and turning, why didn't he? He'd been just as much a party to what had happened between them as she. He shouldn't be restful.
She wanted him to be stirred up, if only just a little.
Draco laid with his hands behind his head and wished she would quit sighing. It was putting him on edge, those little sighs. What could she be thinking of, to sound so?
Likely bloody Potter, he thought uncharitably, and he resisted the absurd urge to reach over and give her something else to be preoccupied about.
He already knew how she reacted, how she responded to him. It would only take a touch to put her mind on him, he knew.
Only a touch.
So he kept his damned hands to himself and thought of all the names he'd like to call her.
"Draco?"
It slipped by him at first, unheard over the mental rant he was executing just to make himself feel better.
"Draco?"
A bit more insistent this time, accompanied by a shift of the large bed that told him she'd rolled over. He bit his tongue for an instant and reminded himself of all the self-control he had.
"You said you could sleep," he answered coolly, staying on his back.
He would not turn to face her.
He would not turn to face her.
When he was certain of that, he congratulated himself inwardly and waited for her response.
"Did you mean it?" Ginny worried at her lip and wished for a little more light in the room, or a little less. She could see his profile, see the rise and fall of his chest under the thin white undershirt he wore, but she could not read his expression. She could see the pallor of his hair lit by moonlight, but no more than that. It would be so much easier to simply say what she wanted or decide to shut up if only she could see him completely or not at all.
He waited, not saying anything, half hoping she'd quit her nattering and fall asleep so he could lie where he was and breathe in her scent, and half hoping she would finish her sentence without any encouragement.
"Did you mean it when you said you trusted me?"
She sounded so far away. He wanted to roll over and pull her toward him so he could better hear her, but he stayed perfectly still. "I don't waste time saying things I don't mean."
Ginny closed her eyes and drew in a breath, one that was a great deal lighter than it should have been. When was the last time she'd felt truly trusted?
Her brothers had never trusted her. Loved her, yes, but trusted her? She was a girl, to be protected and sheltered, not confided in. Not entrusted with the truly important things in life.
Her parents? They loved her, as well, certainly. But she'd never been allowed to fight as her brothers had, and she'd never been told the things they had been told.
She could go on for days if she truly thought about it, but she didn't want to.
She simply wanted to think about this, now. A man who should have had no idea what trust truly was trusted her.
Draco nearly jumped out of his skin when a hand-not his own-lit lightly on his stomach, the fingers testing the weight through the thin cotton of his shirt.
"What are you--?"
He struggled to sit up, only to have her push him back gently, her face now near his, her hair tickling one of his arms. "Just trust me," she said, and unless he was much mistaken, she was taking some sort of joy out of handing his admission back to him.
She kissed him as though testing herself and him both, as though trying to find something, to figure something out, and he struggled to keep his hands where they were. She needed this somehow, and he figured he would let her have it. There was a determination in her voice, a promise behind the way she sucked lightly on his bottom lip before releasing it at the end of the kiss, that told him he didn't need to hurry things.
Her hands moved over his chest, rubbing over his muscles and the hard points of his nipples in a way that should have been innocent but was anything but. She squeezed here and there-testing again-and scraped gentle fingernails over his shoulders, against the skin of his arms.
He watched her explore, kept his eyes open as she placed tight-lipped kisses against his cheeks, against his chin, the moonlight making her hair an odd violet color, shifting to redder then bluer as she moved.
She pressed a kiss to his forehead, her hair tickling his ears and his nose, and then she moved her way down once more, kissing his lips. He wondered what she tasted there, and when she sighed and moved closer to him, sliding a leg over one of his, he stifled a groan.
Surely she knew what she was doing. She had to know.
He trusted her to know.
She felt powerful.
She knew he could stop her anytime he wanted to, knew he could take control of the situation as easily as he'd taken control of her at her own home, but he wasn't doing it. He wasn't going to. She moved her hands to the hem of his shirt, not ready to remove it; she lifted her wrists and ran only her fingernails over the slim strip of flesh exposed between shirt and pants, watching in the dim light the muscles there jump and flutter at her faint touch.
She scratched a circle lightly around his navel, her eyes widening as he sucked in a breath and made his stomach a concave fascination of muscles and ridges and unsteady shudders.
"Ginny…" It wasn't an inquiry, wasn't an interruption, he just needed that one word, needed to reassure himself who was touching him, whose fingers were even now moving over his ribs, slipping cool and uncertain under his shirt.
She did not answer with words, but instead moved both down and over, positioning her legs between his so she could move more freely, so she could touch closed lips to his stomach, so she could feel the crisp, gold hairs there bristling against her lips.
Draco took a handful of the pillowcase in each hand, his head tilted up slightly so he could watch her-Merlin, could he really stand to watch her torturous exploration?-as she pushed his shirt up inch by inch. She nudged her nose along the line running the middle of his abdomen, separating the muscles there, smelling him, elemental and male and faint cologne that made her want to weep somehow.
This was how he smelled, she thought.
This was how he looked and tasted and smelled when he let his guard down.
Something in her teetered and she ignored it ruthlessly, pushing his shirt higher and listening to his breath quicken as she did.
He felt his pulse accelerate and marveled at it a bit. He wasn't aroused-not yet, not really-but he felt if he didn't move right now, if he didn't speak or shout or shudder, he was going to fall apart.
But he checked it mercilessly, feeling himself start to tremble beneath her hesitant touch.
Ginny found herself face to face with him once again as she pulled his shirt over his arms, and she couldn't resist kissing him again, looking in those eyes and not caring what he was thinking.
She propped one hand on the pillow next to his head, moving her thumb back and forth over the pillowcase and catching a few strands of his hair, shifting the strands over one another and over the linen as she did so. She put her weight entirely on that one hand and sightlessly unbuttoned the overlarge shirt with deliberate, paced movements.
You don't have to-
But he wasn't about to say it out loud. The moonlight was both kind and unkind, and he couldn't see the small patch of freckles between her breasts as well as he might have liked. He finally moved to touch her, moving one hand with the intention of pushing the shirt off her shoulders, but instead he thrust his hand under the heavy mass of her hair, anchoring at the nape of her neck and kneading a bit, pulling her down so her chest pressed to his.
Another kiss shared melted into several, and by the time she pushed away from him, they were both dizzy.
This was so different from what had happened before, Ginny thought. She was making it different.
She sat back on her haunches, shaking back her hair and watching him watch her. What would it take, she wondered, to shake that unflinching look on his face? She walked her fingers up his thigh and rubbed her palm over him, pleased when she felt his hips thrust up, when heat pressed into her palm. As the weight of him changed, grew more insistent, she felt a matching tug, a bit of give that made her face hot.
She moved her hand away from him, gratified when he thrust his hips forward as though missing her touch, and she moved her knees as wide as she could, now outside the narrow span of his legs rather than between them, straddling him to meet give with take, settling herself lightly to feel his heat and rigidity through his pyjamas and her wet knickers.
Draco groaned as she began to grind herself against him, her wet knickers affording no question as to her reaction to him, her folds clearly defined somehow despite the barriers between them, the cleft of her sex lining unerringly along his length.
His back arched and he pressed his head into the pillow, knowing he'd done more than enough wicked in his lifetime to deserve something so dastardly as this but wondering what he'd deserved to feel this damned good, and he couldn't believe she was holding out this long-one touch, he had thought, would have her undone, but she was outpacing him by far, her movements slow and measured. If he'd only been watching her face, he would have thought her unaffected, but he could feel her against him and he knew differently
When she finally pushed his pants off him, pausing to blow feather-light breath over his jutting erection, he conceded the point to her, whatever that point might have been. Sure, he had taken her on her kitchen table, but this?
She was ruling him completely, and for some reason, he was letting her.
He was completely bewitched.
He held back a shout as she slid off the edge of the bed, taking his pants along with her, but when she hooked her thumbs into her blue underwear and tugged them down, he breathed a silent thank-you.
His hips were already moving, setting a small, unconscious rhythm as she remounted the bed, crawling toward him. He could simply thrust against thin air, watching her like this, and find completion, but he wanted to be in her, wanted her around him.
He expected her to pounce, as predatory as her posture was, but she took her time, kissing one knee and then the other, pressing two fingers to one hipbone, then the other. When she finally lined up with him, her curls rubbing brashly over his, her lips came only to his throat and she dipped her tongue there slowly as she rocked first forward on her knees and then back, the shallow penetration she achieved fitting perfectly with the advance and retreat of her tongue where his pulse was now roaring.
She did not ride him, but raised her hands to link with his, gentle, patient fingers prying open stiff fists as she pressed her knees into the softness of the bed and took him into her, the hem of his shirt tickling his sides as she rose slowly up and down, her eyes on his in the unwavering moonlight.
He wanted to kiss her, found he could not reach her, and so kissed her forehead as she murmured his name, otherwise soundless in the coupling she'd initiated.
His climax was silent, his head thrown back, muscles of his throat working with his convulsive swallows as his back arched and his breath left him and then returned to him in a gasp. It went on for long moments, a plateau rather than a peak, and as it coursed through him in long, blinding jolts, he banded his fingers tight around hers and willed her to come along.
She dropped her head to his chest and pressed her lips there, and though he could feel her clench tight around him, the one thing that made him most certain she had reached completion was the quiver in the soft lips pressed just near his heart.