Exciting News: I just discovered how to reply to reviews! (Okay, not that exciting…)
Side Note: This isn't a really explicit NC-17 but I figured R wasn't strong enough. So, it's not too raunchy, in my opinion, just steamyhot.
Ah, and now, on with the third installment…
He stood outside pacing her door. He needed to tell her. She deserved to know.
The early rising students were milling about. Every so often they would pass him and whisper excitedly to each other.
He felt happy, liberated, and nervous as hell. He passed her door for about the hundredth time.
"Bollocks," he muttered.
She woke up to someone pounding on her door rapidly. She groaned pulling a pillow over her head and rolled over.
"Hermione?" she heard a muffled call through her door. She scrunched up her nose. Harry? Then all of last night came flooding back to her. All the pain, all the ache, everything. She threw the covers off of her as if they were made of lead. Guess he wanted to tell her the good news in person. She hated his politeness.
She opened the door and saw the back of Harry's head. He turned around surprised and greeted her with a large smile.
"Good morning." He said cheerfully. She inwardly sighed.
"Come in. Can I make you some tea or anything?" Harry seemed distracted by his happiness.
"Hmm? Oh yeah, tea would be great thanks." She turned her back to him and went to tiny kitchen. As she put the kettle on she nearly jumped out of her skin, Harry was right behind her.
"You look nice today." She gave him a strange look.
"I rolled out of bed." She said tersely. Frankly she was a little upset that Harry had come over to gloat this morning. Maybe she had been all wrong.
The whistling kettle was a nice reprieve from her thoughts of strangling Harry. She poured them two cups of tea and placed them on the table, motioning for him to sit down. She pulled out cream and honey and placed them on the table. She sat across from him, bracing herself for the news.
He took a sip of his tea and placed it down. Smiling brightly. She had never seen him this happy.
"I couldn't go through with it." He said simply, placing the teacup back on the saucer.
"Couldn't go through with what?" Hermione asked absently stirring her tea. He looked at her incredulously.
"The proposal, I couldn't go through with it." Hermione stopped stirring her tea and looked up at him.
"What are you talking about?" He would have laughed had it not been for the strange tone in her voice.
"Hermione, I didn't ask Ginny to marry me. I couldn't do it." He slowed his speech down so she could clearly hear every syllable. She stared at him blankly for a moment. Then, slowly he saw slight realization.
"But, you took her to Hedrick's." He nodded. "You bought her a ring." He nodded once again. "But you… didn't propose." Harry wasn't sure if that was a question or not so he simply nodded anyway. She seemed a million miles away, lost in her thoughts.
He couldn't have. He was going to, he told her he was going to. But he didn't. Her mind was racing. Why didn't he? Could he possibly, could he possibly have chosen her over Ginny. Could he finally, for once in his life, have been selfish?
"Why?" she asked distantly. His brow furrowed. Didn't she know? All those nights he made himself feel better, simply by telling himself that she did know how much he loved her, had he been lying to himself? Did she really not know how much she meant to him?
"Because I couldn't propose to someone I wasn't in love with."
"Harry," she breathed in realization. It hit her, he wasn't going through with it. He couldn't go through with it, because of her. He got up from his chair, moving to kneel down before her.
"Because you can't propose to someone," he brushed a strand of hair out of her face, "when you're in love with someone else." She hiccupped and he laughed just slightly. She always got hiccups when she was nervous.
"And who are you in love with?" she asked him quietly. His brilliant emerald eyes seemed to grow to a dark forest.
"You." He simply said as he captured her mouth in a heated kiss. It was frantic and filled with five years of longing, frustration, passion, lust, and love.
She welcomed him eagerly, opening her mouth as his tongue traced along the seam of her lips. She slowly lifted herself off of her chair, careful not to break the kiss. This was so much more than the previous kiss they shared. The want and need of the first kiss was amplified tenfold as she swore she could feel her heart hammering against her chest, literally trying to reach out to him.
"Harry." She gasped in between kisses. Her head was fuzzy, she couldn't think of much else except the feel of his lips crushed against hers, the taste of his tongue dancing, dueling with her own.
"Mmm?" He had moved to trail kisses down the side of her neck as he slowly pushed her back towards the bedroom. He began unbuttoning her night shirt slowly. She gasped as his tongue flicked over a sensitive spot on her neck. Her hands found their way under his well fitting t-shirt and she was pleasantly surprised to feel the taut muscles, she had so often felt in hugs, skin to skin. He was down to the last buttons on her shirt and he quickly pushed it off her shoulders.
"What about Ginny?" she suddenly remembered. It was more of a reflex to ask than anything else. She was so far away the name sounded only vaguely familiar.
"We're done." He said kissing between the valley of her breasts. His hands fumbled around to her back to unhook her bra. She deftly lifted his t-shirt over his head, knocking off his glasses. Before she could make a move to pick them up, Harry muttered.
"Accio Glasses." They flew back into his hand. Hermione stopped her assault on his neck.
"Harry, you just- without a-" he smiled and popped her bra off. He took her hand leading her to the bed.
"There are a lot of things I can do." He said suggestively with an evil smile. Her hands went to his pants as his thumbs hooked under the elastic band of her sleep pants. They fell onto the bed respectively wearing knickers and boxers. Harry gently pushed her back against the bed as he began to explore her body, showering every inch of skin with kisses.
Merlin, she wanted him, no needed him, so badly. The tension and frustration of five years came flooding back to her, all to build up to this moment.
As he began to move back up to capture her mouth she could feel him pressed against her. The thought alone made her arch into him as they both groaned. Slowly she could feel her knickers making their way down to her ankles. He gave another wicked smile from on top of her before devouring her mouth in another bone-melting kiss. She pushed him off of her as she climbed on top of him.
Their eyes met and she could hear him literally gasp at the sight of her.
"You are the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen." She blushed and dipped down to his chest to begin her exploration of his body. Quidditch and Auror training had done a lot of good for him. She thought ruefully as she placed careful kisses on every inch of newly exposed skin. Finally she began to make her way up his body, removing his boxers. Once there was skin to skin contact he let out a near growl as he took her in his arms and nuzzled into her neck and she couldn't help but think that this felt right.
He positioned himself at her entrance, looking deep into her chocolate eyes as if he were reading her as plain as text.
"I love you." He said quietly. She smiled brightly at him willing herself not to cry.
"I love you too." With that he pushed into her, filling her and stretching her until she finally felt whole. She gasped, and Harry crushed his lips against hers once more, groaning at the feel of her surrounding him.
They moved slow and rhythmically at first, enjoying the feel of skin to skin on every inch. However, soon enough she was bucking her hips, urging him to move quicker and he happily obliged. All the time he was showering her with frantic kisses as if she might disappear. She wrapped her arms around him tighter as she met his thrusts with her own. And soon her eyes were closed as a thousand tiny stars burst against her eyelids. She distantly heard Harry cry out her name as his thrust became slower.
Finally, he collapsed against her, sweaty and tired. It felt good to have the weight on her and she smiled as they both lay there, reveling in the feel of it all. Her hands drew lazy patterns on his back and scratched through his hair and he would make a sound of content every so often accompanied with a kiss dropped on her shoulder.
She didn't know how long they had lain there, at one point they drifted to sleep and she woke up to a pair of brilliant green eyes studying her as intently as she had for her O.W.L.S.
"You're here." She didn't know if it were a question or statement by the way he said it. She nodded and he brushed hair away from her face. "You don't know how many times I've woken up in the morning and-" she smiled knowing exactly what he meant. Even as a grown man he could still be haunted by his dreams. "This," he motioned between them, "this is what I've always wanted." She smiled.
"Me too." Then her eyes fell to the picture sitting next to her bed of the three of them. The color drained from her face. "Oh my gosh." Harry immediately tensed.
"What, what is it?" he asked pulling her protectively closer.
"Ron-" she choked out. "He'll hate me, hate us, he'll- he'll-"
"Have to understand." Harry finished sternly.
"But Harry-"
"I'm tired of living my life for everyone else, to make everyone else happy. There's only one person I care about making happy." She smiled and kissed him, loving the idea that she could kiss him anytime she wanted. "Unless, you want to stay together with him." She pulled back but saw that his eyes were very serious. She could fell his muscles tensed all around her. She smiled.
"Don't be ridiculous Harry. I love you. You know I always have." His grip around her tightened.
"I'm sorry about all of this, it's just when the war was over everything was such a mess. Ron was going on and on about how when you woke up he was finally going to ask you out and Ginny was already proclaiming herself as my girlfriend again. I thought it was for the best." She smiled lazily and kissed his neck, finding the extremely sensitive spot behind his ear. "Hermione." His voice was husky and laced with desire. She could already feel him getting turned on.
"Harry, the second we leave this bed we're going to have one massive headache of a problem to deal with. Let's just make the best of this right now?" He smiled and rolled on top of her again.
"Let's never leave the bed." he raised his eyebrows suggestively before nibbling on her collar bone. She gasped.
"Now that, is a fantastic idea."
Merlin, how she was going to enjoy mornings like these.
A/N: This story has been such a headache blah! Once again sorry for the confusion. This is my first shot at writing NC-17/Rish stuff so any criticism/comments would be welcome. I didn't think this story would be NC-17 but I realized with all the build up I should probably give a worth-while ending. Anyway, I hope you liked it. Reviewing is always welcome…. Last chance…