Disclaimer: See Part 1.
Author's Note: And now comes the smut. ;-) The NC-17 stuff is ahead so please don't read on if you're under-age.
For oh_honestleigh and sbeegee- the authors of some of the hottest H/Hr smut I've read, and for Shannon. *hugs*
Enjoy!
Just Lust
Hermione Granger had made up her mind.
Life was too short to wait forever for a certain endearingly-oblivious boy with messy black hair and green eyes to wake up and realize that she had much-more-than-friendly feelings for him and that she was not his sister or his best friend's girlfriend or anything that would make her off-limits in any way.
She was 19 years old today and had dated a total of two boys and had slept with neither of them because, somehow, deep inside her, at first unconsciously and then consciously, she had wanted him to be her first… Plus she hadn't been particularly attracted to Viktor and Ron, well, Ron was just Ron and something about the two of them together just never seemed to work because half the time when they were snogging, it was because they'd been arguing and the only time they didn't fight was when they snogged.
But that had been a year ago since she and Ron had broken up and in the meantime, she'd been preoccupied with helping Harry defeat Voldemort.
And now-now, when they were free and sharing a flat together in London with Ron helping Fred and George out when he wasn't off trying out for Quidditch teams and she was training to be a Healer for St. Mungo's and Harry was being bombarded with job offers and accepting none of them-now she had decided to act.
She didn't think she could stand living in the same flat with him much longer unless she did something. Seeing him so often, lounging around in the living room when she got home, stumbling out of his room in the mornings bleary-eyed with rumpled hair, coming out of the shower with only a towel wrapped around his waist… Great God but seeing him in only a towel…
So she had to act-or the next time she saw him after his shower she might just do something insane and grab him, drag him into her bedroom and… Discover what his body looked like without the towel…
But deciding to act and actually doing it were two very different things.
In the common light of common day, in all the mundane tasks of the week and in their flat, she couldn't drum up the courage to just walk up to Harry and say, "Fancy a shag?" or something.
If she couldn't have his love, she'd settle for lust. At least at first. It was how to make him lust after her that was the hard part. She knew him, knew how he thought of her; she was just Hermione, his best friend, and while he knew she was a girl and didn't think she was ugly, he also didn't really think of her in anything approaching a sensual way, didn't think of her body or of anything below her neck, really.
Which was why she'd agreed (to Ron and Ginny's amazement) to go out to a club on her birthday wearing a skin-tight top that left very little to the imagination and a skirt that, while not being very short or very tight, was still shorter and tighter than anything she would normally have worn.
Harry's jaw had visibly slackened when he first saw her but he'd shut his mouth and refused to comment, although she could see a muscle ticking in his jaw. Since then he'd made something of a point of refusing to look directly at her.
She stifled the instinctive pang of hurt-was she that unpleasant to look at?-and downed two shots of something (she didn't know what it was that Fred handed her with a sly grin but drank it anyway, another thing she would normally not have done) to provide some artificial courage.
And then set off.
She found Harry standing slightly off to the side-lines at the bar and looped her arms around his neck, smiling up at him. "Dance with me, Harry," she said softly, tugging him to the edge of the dance floor.
He swallowed, keeping his eyes carefully on her face. "Uh- Hermione- I don't--"
Just then, before he could finish what he was going to say (conveniently, as she could feel all her insecurities and her rational mind begin to break through her determination), someone jostled her from behind, pushing her off-balance and stumbling straight into Harry.
She was pressed against him from chest down, her breasts flattened against his chest, as her arms tightened around his neck in an instinctive move to keep from falling further.
He steadied her with his hands on her waist, his breath strangling in his throat.
"Let's dance," she said again, not giving him a chance to push her away and she could see the moment he gave in, his hands staying on her waist, as they began to move to the music.
She knew he wasn't the best dancer in the world and neither was she, but here, when it was too crowded to move much and too dim to see that well, it didn't matter and all that mattered was that he was here, dancing with her.
Then the music changed, became slower, more sensuous.
She hid a smile and moved in closer to Harry, resting her head on his shoulder and closing her eyes to breathe in the familiar scent of him-and all the while, she moved, her body molding to his, fitting against his as if she belonged there with him.
Slowly, sinuously, she swayed with him, pressed against him, so closely that she could feel every muscle of his body as he moved with her, so closely it would have been impossible to fit even a sickle in between their bodies…
She could feel the reaction in his body, could sense the tension and maybe it was the alcohol or the music or the lighting or the atmosphere but whatever it was, she felt renewed confidence.
This was it. It was time to move Operation Lust onto another level.
Deliberately, she raised her head and tugged his head down and kissed him. Not a chaste, close-mouthed kiss, not a kiss that could in any way be described as one between platonic friends, but fully. Her tongue slid along his lips and inside his mouth, exploring the depths of it, learning the taste of him…
He had stiffened against her, his entire body stilling in surprise, but then-she felt a surge of triumph mixed in with her growing arousal-his head tilted, his lips softened, and then he was the one kissing her. His hands had tightened on her waist, then slid around her to bring her even closer to him and then one hand slid down her back in a long, slow caress to cup her bottom and bring her arching against him, against the tell-tale hardness in his trousers.
And the passion she'd only dreamed might exist between the two of them exploded.
Her fingers tangled themselves in his hair and she was vaguely aware of a muffled moan only to belatedly realize it had come from her own throat and had been muffled by his mouth.
Ohgodohgodohgod, ohyes, ohgod, yesyesyes…
He was the first one to break the kiss, breathing hard, staring at her in the dimness of the club with wide eyes as if he'd never seen her before.
And she didn't know which one of them made the first move but it didn't matter because his hand was holding hers and they were grabbing their cloaks and had left the club.
Her eyes met his just once when they were outside-he cupped her face and kissed her again, hard, on the mouth, his tongue thrusting inside and finishing the job he'd started before in the club, reducing what remained of her brain to incoherent wanting.
They didn't need to talk after he ended the kiss.
She closed her eyes and Apparated back to their flat, struggling to pull out her key when he appeared beside her and opened the door with a simple "Alohamora." She had the fleeting thought, the convenience of wandless magic, and then he was kissing her again and she forgot to think about anything except that his lips were on hers, his tongue caressing hers and, somewhere in the back of her mind with the last remaining bit of coherence, finally…
They were stumbling inside her bedroom (it was closer than his-and had the added advantage of being on the opposite side of the flat from Ron's) before she knew it.
Her hands were wandering all over his chest and shoulders and his back, exploring and discovering all the muscles she knew he'd developed sometime in the last year and more, feeling the way he tensed at her touch and loving it.
And then she was falling backwards onto her bed with him on top of her, her skirt riding up to her hips as his leg pushed her legs apart.
His lips left hers to scatter kisses and lick and suck and nuzzle their way down her jaw and to her neck. She threw her head back, her mouth opening on a soundless gasp, as fire streaked through her from where his lips touched her skin, adding to the wetness she could feel between her legs.
His hands palmed, then cupped her breasts through the thin fabric of her shirt and his breath was hot against her skin as he breathed, "My God, Hermione…" and he might have tried to say something else but it was lost in the pants of his breath as he pushed down her top and her bra to lave first one nipple then the other, kissing, sucking, arousing…
Her hands had slipped inside his shirt, then tugged it off him in one motion, before setting to work on his trousers. She had thought she might tease him a little through the cloth but the lust raging through her body promptly made her change her mind. Every inch of her body was on fire, screaming more, need, want, must have, all directed at having Harry's naked skin against hers.
She had wanted to incite lust in him; she hadn't quite counted on the full extent of her lust for him.
Her fingers were clumsy with haste and he helped her, quickly shoving his trousers and his boxers down and off his legs, freeing his erection.
The breath caught in her throat at the sight of him, arousal mingled with a distinct sense of triumph-he's aroused because of me; I made him look like that-and she reached, her fingers first lightly tracing along the hot, hard length of him. He shuddered, his hands falling away from where they'd been caressing her breasts.
And then she moved to kneel in front of him on her bed, obeying an impulse she couldn't deny-she wanted to feel this, wanted to experience this-and she wanted, oh she wanted, to give him this… She kissed him on impulse, her lips lightly touching that part of his body she was only now discovering-he groaned-she took him in her mouth, experimentally-his hands fisted in her hair and his hips jerked-she licked, sucked lightly, her mouth moving over him… He pulled away from her with a strangled moan. "Wait."
It was the work of a moment for him to tear her shirt and bra off her and slide her skirt, her knickers and her nylons down her legs, leaving her as naked as he was.
And she didn't have time for even a moment of self-consciousness because the moment she was naked, he was on top of her, kissing her again.
One hand was kneading her breast while the other slid down her body to cup the spot between her legs, his fingers caressing the wet, swollen flesh and then moving to caress the sensitive skin of her thighs.
She jerked, crying out involuntarily, her mind beginning to fly apart at the seams at the pleasure roaring through her.
He thrust forward, entering her in one smooth stroke and she gasped, stiffening, and stifled a cry of surprise against the bare skin of his shoulder. He stopped, though she could sense the effort it took him to do so in the way his muscles tensed beneath her hands. And she kissed him again, willing herself to relax as she acclimated to the feel of him inside her, stretching her, filling her…
This was Harry and this was what she'd wanted…
His hands moved back to her breasts, lightly squeezing her nipples between his fingers, before he flattened his hands-his beautiful, wonderful hands-on her again, sending further streaks of lightning through her already-sensitized body.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, urging him to move, and he did with a strangled groan in which she thought she could hear the beginnings of her name.
Yes, this was what she'd wanted. He was filling all of her, completing her in ways she'd never known she'd been missing… She'd been empty and this, him, inside her, was what she'd been waiting for her entire life…
And then she forgot to think, the entire world dissolving around her and narrowing down to only her and him, as their lips melded, tongues tangled, hands touched, caressed, gripped, their bodies merged and came together, driven by a primal force and need, driven to give, driven to take, driven to be one. The force was frightening, thrilling, utterly compelling.
And then she shattered, fractured-so fast, so intensely she saw rapture like a starburst on the insides of her eyelids.
He followed her in another moment, pushed over the edge by the feeling of her moist warmth clenching around him, exploding inside her body with a cry that was ripped from his throat.
He collapsed on top of her, gasping for breath, and just lay there, slowly becoming aware of her breasts pressed against his chest and that he was probably crushing her.
He rolled over to his side, slipping out of her body, not looking at her as the return of sanity made him realize what he'd done and with whom and feel the first stab of doubt and not a little fear.
She curled up next to him, one hand settling on his chest, and her eyes closed, her breathing becoming deep and regular.
And he knew he should stay awake, should try to figure out what had just happened and why and what this would mean for them, but the lassitude filling his body was overwhelming, the warmth of her and the comfort of her bed too tempting. He would just close his eyes and sleep for a little while…
Hermione came awake slowly to the realization that her pillow was warmer and harder than usual-because Harry's shoulder was serving as her pillow.
The memories of what had happened- the success of Operation Lust- had her eyes flying open, consciousness returning in a hurry.
Harry was still sleeping, looking oddly younger and more vulnerable without his glasses, his face wiped clean of any expression.
She let her eyes wander from his familiar features down his body-the body she'd explored and just begun to know a few hours ago, feeling a smile curve her lips.
She had rather suspected it and now she knew it. Harry was truly a wonderful shag.
Not that she had anything to compare it with. Her relationships with Viktor and Ron had never even gotten close to shagging and she'd almost begun to wonder if she were at all lacking in that department-when she'd realized that her reaction to the sight of Harry was not at all cold and quite evidence enough that whatever had been missing from her relationships before would most certainly not be missing in a relationship with Harry. He only had to smile at her for her heart to beat faster and those times when he would stretch, his shirt rising to show a strip of skin, her blood pressure and her temperature would rise with it.
To say nothing of the fact that he looked-positively delicious, for lack of another term, when he was only wrapped in a towel.
She sensed his return to consciousness in the way his breathing hitched slightly, becoming less deep and regular. She held her breath until, slowly, almost reluctantly, his eyes opened and looked straight into hers.
They were clouded with some confusion and uncertainty.
"Good morning," she said softly.
The sound of her voice seemed to jerk him into full consciousness and he stiffened, his eyes widening as he looked at her with some apprehension and a dawning regret.
He swallowed and then spoke. "Um-Hermione-I-what happens to us now?"
"Does anything need to happen?"
He gaped at her. "We- we had sex!" he blurted out, his cheeks turning scarlet.
She stifled a smile. (Harry could be so cute when he was flustered.) "I wanted you. You wanted me. We're both adults and neither of us is seeing anyone else." She kept her voice matter-of-fact as if she were listing grocery items. "Why does it need to be complicated?"
"We're friends!"
"We can still be friends-just friends who happen to have shagged."
When he looked like he was going to say something more, she cut him off with her lips, kissing him, her tongue sliding inside his mouth to tease his.
She could feel his response both in his kiss and in the growing hardness against her thigh-and sensed the weakening of his resistance as he gave in to the physical attraction between them.
She finally broke the kiss to whisper against his mouth, "Stop thinking so much."
She felt rather than saw his smile, felt his small, breathless laugh at her saying those words to him, when he'd always been the one to say it to her.
"That's my line," he told her quietly before he kissed her again, rolling them over until he was on top of her.
His hands set out to caress all the curves of her body, learning her, before his lips followed, leaving a damp trail of kisses down her body.
She gasped, her fingers tangling in his hair, clutching him to her.
And let the lust wrap around and through them, sweeping them away to the same passion-filled world they'd visited the night before-a world that seemed, somehow, to belong to them alone.
The universe narrowed down until there was only him and her, in a tangle of arms and legs and skin against skin, lips and teeth and tongues arousing, teasing, tasting, hands grasping, caressing greedily.
Until he was buried inside her so deeply she couldn't tell where she ended and he began.
She looked up at him as he stared down at her, losing herself in the deep green of his eyes, and knew a fleeting moment of clarity. This was what she'd wanted. She'd wanted to know what it felt like to have him above her, inside her, filling her.
She drew him back down to kiss him, offering him her lips, her body, her heart, her very soul-as he began to move.
She met him thrust for thrust, her cries mingling with his gasps.
Until the world exploded around them.
She cried out, her fingers digging into his skin as she convulsed around him.
He thrust one last time and spilled himself inside her with a shout.
She opened her eyes just in time to see the way his jaw locked, the look halfway between agony and ecstasy cross his features. She welcomed him, as one of his hands found hers, holding it in an almost-punishing grip as he rode out his orgasm. This, too, was what she'd wanted-to know what he looked like when he came and know that she had brought him there.
He rolled off of her, breathing hard. "Holy God," he breathed, the words barely intelligible through his pants.
She managed a slight smile up at the ceiling at the realization that he was still holding her hand.
Then there was only the sound of their breathing in the room as they both lay there, side by side in her bed.
She didn't know how long it was before she gathered the will and the energy to move, getting up off the bed.
She felt a blush color her cheeks in spite of herself at the sight of their clothes scattered all over the room, wherever they'd landed, along with his glasses (she couldn't remember who'd taken them off him or when).
She slipped into her robe, pausing for a fleeting moment to enjoy the sight of Harry lying in her bed, watching her with an odd expression she'd never seen before in his eyes, before leaving for the restroom.
When she returned, Harry was half-dressed.
He dropped a quick kiss on her temple before he left her room and she thought how-odd-it was that despite his earlier discomfort, somehow now there was no lingering awkwardness, some shades of embarrassment admittedly but no real awkwardness.
Until Ron stumbled out of his room a little while later when they were sitting at the kitchen table and asked with deliberate nonchalance, "Did you two sleep well?"
Harry choked on air, turning red.
Hermione felt herself blushing almost in spite of herself. She'd known that Ron would know that she and Harry had shagged but hadn't reflected on it beyond that.
"Er- I- uh--" Harry began and then stopped, his mouth closing and then opening again, at a complete loss for words.
Ron permitted his smirk to grow into a grin as he poured himself some pumpkin juice, but then decided to give Harry a break. (Besides, aside from asking how it was-and he couldn't ask that and certainly would not with Hermione anywhere within hexing distance-he couldn't think of anything to say.)
So he dispelled the charged atmosphere by asking-as if it were any other Sunday morning, "What are your plans for today?"
Hermione gathered her wits and answered with equal ease, "I'm having lunch with my parents and then spending the afternoon with my mum."
And somehow with those words, they could interact normally again as a trio of friends and flat-mates.
Normally, except for the minor point that Harry steadfastly avoided looking at Hermione as much as possible and flinched away from even the most casual contact.
But even that wore off as Hermione and Ron both studiously avoided reacting to it.
Harry relaxed a little, pushing the thought of the last night and 'It was just a shag, just lust' to the very perimeters of his consciousness.