CHAPTER EIGHT - What You Wanted
The color dropped from her face at his accusation, and she hated to think, even for a moment, that it was true. "I'd never compare the two of you," she finally said, standing slowly. She wanted to say there was nothing to compare, but they were more similar than either of them would ever have liked to admit. Instead, she looked at him in a haughty way her mother had mastered long before when chastising one of the Weasley men. "As I said before, I'll fetch dessert. I think you need something to sweeten that poisonous tongue of yours."
Her words mobilized him, had him up and out of his chair before he even realized he wanted to move. He wanted to show her, wanted to wipe him out of her mind for a moment, wanted to brand her so she'd quit fucking acting like someone else's, because one didn't tempt and tease a Malfoy and go no further with it.
She would be his.
Besides, she said he needed to sweeten his tongue, and he had just the remedy right in front of him.
"I think I've got something sweet enough right here, pining over her lost fiancé," Draco said, grabbing her by the arm and spinning her to face him. She didn't looked shocked or surprised at his movement, and when he jerked her to him, she didn't resist, but immediately moved her hands to clench in the material of his shirt so she could tug him closer.
Analytically, she had thought the whole thing through, had anticipated his reaction and had timed the whole thing in her head, ready to react in the way she'd formulated. But she hadn't counted on the heat behind his kiss, his tongue immediately tracing the line of her top lip before parting her lips and stroking over hers to draw it in. She hadn't counted on him propelling her to the wall, pressing himself into her and tugging her bottom lip between his teeth.
Analytically, she had anticipated much. Physically, she was flat bloody unprepared for the assault.
Is this what you wanted? he wondered as he pinned her against the stone wall next to her fireplace. She canted her hips a bit, rubbing her thighs along his, and he jumped, biting her lip just a bit too hard.
Ginny pushed a little harder, had him moving back, turning away, and now his back was to the wall, his shirt shifting in her fingers, a button popping off.
Now she could get her wits about her. She had to.
"Draco," she moaned, shaken by how real it-
was
-sounded. He did not stop kissing her, only moved his lips and tongue down, biting her chin and jawline and neck as her slim fingers shook and reached for something beside them.
Steady, she told herself, a gasp tearing between her lips as he sucked on the hollow of her throat. What was she allowing here?
Her fingers found purchase, grasped into a fist, and she broke from his hold, both of them panting, mussed, shocked, eyelocked with one another.
"You think I can't tell what you're doing?" she hissed, humiliated at the surety of her knowledge. "You think I don't know you wouldn't look at me twice if I hadn't been his?"
He bared his teeth but said nothing. He could barely think straight; the smell of her had crowded his head, the feel of her had crowded his body, and now she was bringing up bloody… fucking… Potter again.
You think I can't tell what you're doing?
Of course she could. Somewhere along the line he'd gotten too hungry for it, lost his cunning, and he remembered Pansy telling him their days of being thrown into certain houses were over.
Who was cunning now?
"I don't want to be your revenge, Malfoy. I don't even want to be the witch you use to scratch your itch."
Oh, but her body spoke differently, her breath still short, her pulse still skittering and fleet.
He would have spoken, attested to her duplicity, but he wasn't given the opportunity, didn't notice where she'd positioned him.
"Go home," Ginny said, slapping a powder-filled hand to the middle of his chest and shoving him into the Floo.
His mouth was agape-to cough, to curse, she didn't know-and then he was gone, swirling away in the ashes and embers, and she wished she could say the same for the thoughts he'd tangled through her brain, the heat he'd slid just under her skin.
He came out of the ashes filthy, cursing, his shirt half-unbuttoned. He was already reaching for his wand as both feet his solid ground. The conniving bint had better be ready for him, he thought, because he was going straight back to her flat and-
Bloody. Fucking. Hell.
It had only taken a moment for his eyes to clear, for him to blink the soot from his long, pale eyelashes, but by the time he did, he wished he hadn't.
Three Weasleys, the Mudblood, and Potter were staring at him.
From a kitchen table.
In someone else's home.
"Go home," she'd said.
Oh, you fucking bitch, Draco thought, his head spinning as he tried to puzzle out whether it had been intentional or accidental that he'd ended up in the Burrow..
"Well?" he snapped regally, treading out of the fireplace as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "What are all of you staring at? It isn't as though I asked you for your supper, is it?"
Before any of them could answer, or more likely, kill him, he'd stomped past them and out the door, too angry to be embarrassed.
He hoped like Merlin's dungeon she was ready for him this time.
~~~
She turned off the Floo immediately, afraid he'd only pop right back into it if she didn't. It would have been rational, she supposed, to want to cry, but instead all she felt was… unsatisfied.
If Ginny were well and perfectly honest with herself, the one thing she most felt like doing at the moment was taking a long, hot bath and working to ease the kinks in her back and neck and working to finish what he'd started just moments ago with his uncouth handling and talented tongue.
It was healthy, she insisted, to want sex. Her mother had explained as such in horribly starched and stiff words years ago, and she'd not abused that advice. She'd only slept with two people, and a fumbling, awkward, but wholly sweet first time with Neville really barely even counted as that first one.
She levitated the table back where it belonged, letting the dishes drop to the sink with an unsafe clatter. She simply didn't feel like cleaning up, didn't feel like doing anything but rewinding the night and starting over.
It didn't occur to Ginny that she didn't feel like rewinding everything and avoiding Draco.
She simply wanted things to have been a bit more civil.
Never mind that more civility would have likely landed her in bed rather than doing dishes.
She was still debating that fine point when the door burst open, splintered at the lock.
It should have been humorous, and maybe years from now, it would be. Draco Malfoy, incredibly filthy, half-dressed, impeccable hair now at all angles and streaked with soot. But the look he was giving her robbed any levity from the situation.
"Go home, Weasley? If you only knew," he said, his voice so low she could barely hear him, "That was your home, and it was positively everything I've imagined it to be."
She'd been rooted to the spot from the moment the door had sent splinters scattering to the floor, but as he started taking deliberate, paced steps toward her, Ginny backpedaled, pulling chairs and a standing vase in front of her, between them.
And she had absolutely nothing to say in her defense.
He moved the chairs out of the way as though he had all the time in the world, and when he finally reached her, she'd done his job for him and backed herself right into the kitchen table.
"Your family, my dear hostess, was eating supper with the favored son." At the confused look on her face, he took her chin in his hand. "Potter, Weasley. Your family, ever so loyal to the ways of your whims, is having dinner with Potter." He put his lips to her ear. "They look to be doing just fine without you."
She swallowed back tears, knowing he would lie to his own mother if the purpose suited him; this, however, felt true. Of course they were eating with Harry, he'd become part of the family.
But it also frightened her that they might forget her completely and pick Harry up in her place.
"You're despicable," she said, but she wasn't sure who deserved that more, him or her.
He buried one hand in her hair, knotting it into a fist to feel the strands between his fingers, folded in the crease of his palm, but he did not kiss her. Instead, he kept his eyes unwaveringly on hers, licking her lips without touching his to her at all.
She trembled beneath him and parted her lips, shock ricocheting through her as he slid his tongue between them, sliding and withdrawing, sliding and withdrawing, an insinuation of penetration that made her wet, made her knees go loose underneath her, forcing her to put her palms to the edge of the table just to hold herself up.
Ginny's eyes started to flutter shut; she couldn't hold them open, and she couldn't bear to look at him any longer. It was like looking into the sun, too bright, too painful, too unbelievable. But the second she did so, his hand tightened again, sending stars of pain behind her eyelids, and she opened them again.
"You fucking bastard," she said, tears of pain gathering at the corners of her eyes, but even her protests were panted, moaned. He continued to pull, forcing her head back, forcing her to lean, and she slapped at him, scratched at him, trying to get him to stop.
Draco looked down at her, his lips parted with the force of his breathing, and as she leaned back onto the table, her breasts thrust out, he grew harder than he had been only moments before, when she'd been sucking on his thrusting tongue.
He let go of her hair abruptly; she was nearly laying on the top of the table they'd been eating at only minutes before. Draco shoved up the knee-length skirt of the dress, felt the knit material cling to his wrist as he pushed up, past the resistance of her loosening thighs, and covered her mound, pushing slightly and sending her laying full-out on the table. The crook of her knees just hit the edge, her pale feet with their painted nails dangling over the side.
His palm came away damp, a fragrant sign of her arousal spread evenly by the silky material of her knickers, and he couldn't help but breathe in her smell, the smell of fear and anger and sheer want that sent a lick of heat, a spot of wet, through him to match her.
Ginny found herself entranced now, watching his every move because all she wanted was that hand on her again, wanted something covering her, something touching her, because when he'd touched her she'd wanted to shatter, and when he'd taken his hand away, she'd wanted to weep.
Was this why she had left Harry? Because deep down, she had wanted something else? She didn't know, could barely even remember her own name, much less her past, and she wasn't comparing, couldn't compare, because it had never been like this, never ever.
Mindlessly, she reached out, anchored her hands at the back of his neck, forced him down to her with the pressure and sharpness of her nails, digging furrows just at the nape of his neck where the silky hair stopped, and she wanted to see those red marks she'd left amidst porcelain skin and flaxen hair, but she was too busy trying to nip at his jawline, press her tongue into the hollows of his cheek, of his throat, trying to push him inside her through his clothes and hers.
Draco cursed behind gritted teeth as she arched underneath him, as her thighs fastened around his and she began rubbing herself against the bulge in his trousers, trying to fuck him senseless without taking his clothes off. "Ah, Merlin," he said, his voice high and fraught, his anger long since replaced by its close cousin desire.
He finally managed to stop touching her, to stop using every bit of strength he had to hold himself up as she attacked him with her mouth, and unfasten his pants. His hair fell into his eyes, sweat stung in his eyelashes, and for a moment, as hot and frenzied as things were, he considered stroking himself and finishing it right there as his hand played over his throbbing erection. "Is this what you wanted?" he asked, his face turning red with the effort of self-restraint, the cords in his neck defined in his battle with himself and her.
Ginny tossed her head from side to side, not a negation but a censor. "Just do it," she answered, her voice low, animalistic. It would have been unrecognizable to everyone who knew her, even Harry. "Fucking quit talking and do it."
Later, when his brain was actually functioning and he could see more than her face and her eyes and a red haze over everything else, he would think it had all happened so fast, so unbelievably quickly. But all he knew the moment he entered her, and all she knew the moment he tugged aside her knickers, sending seamwork into shreds as he plunged into her, was-
This. Right here. Yes.