Disclaimer: All things pertaining to Harry Potter are the property of J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Books/Scholastic Press and Warner Bros. I just like to play with them!
A/N: Ok, I'm so so sorry for the delay in posting this next chapter. It's taken a lot of work to get it how I wanted it plus I'm been ill recently. But all good things come to those who wait and I thank you for your patience. The next chapter will be the last one except for a little epilogue - some of you have given me some good ideas that don't fit into my plan for the fic but that I can't bear not to use. Hope you enjoy this one and please review again - it might inspire me to write the last chapter more quickly!
I solemnly swear that I am up to no good...
***
Hermione was roused from sleep by the sunlight filtering through a gap in the curtains.
The first thing she was aware of was that she wasn't in her own bed. The second was that she was pressed up against another body.
The memory of the previous evening's events began to filter into her brain and she remembered how she'd asked Harry to stay with her last night. And although they had fallen asleep on opposite sides of the king size bed, Hermione now lying on her side next to Harry, her head resting on his chest and his arm around her, holding her in place.
Despite her inexperience, she had always loved the feeling of being held in a man's arms. It made her feel safe and protected - despite being a characteristically independent woman who could definitely take care of herself, deep down she liked the idea of someone else taking care of her. Ron hadn't really been one for cuddling and while Alex had always seemed happy to just cuddle her, she realised now that he must have just tolerated it.
The heart-numbing pain she had felt upon the discovery of Alex' betrayal was still fresh and she was infinitely glad that Harry had been there for her last night.
Everything had happened in such a short space of time - one moment she had been at her flat preparing for a romantic night which would have ended in the loss of her virginity and the next she was at the Ministry discovering that her oh so perfect boyfriend had not only been cheating on her but that he'd been doing so because she hadn't been ready to sleep with him. The pain and humiliation had been so overwhelming that even though she rarely drank, she'd just wanted something to numb her senses.
It didn't surprise her that Harry had found her at Lucky's - the bar was his and Ron's favourite retreat - or that he had refused to allow her to drink anymore than she already had, that he had followed her outside when she left and that he had taken her back to his flat and offered her his bed while he only had the sofa to sleep on. Harry was hero, plain and simple.
He had always been her hero and not for the first time, she realised how lucky she was to have him as her best friend. He was so kind and caring and generous and one day he would make some lucky girl very happy.
She wondered if she would ever have that kind of happiness, if she would ever know the kind of love that Ron shared with Luna or that Ginny had found with Draco. She wondered now if she even knew what that was. Her feelings for Ron had developed in her hormone-driven teenage years, hence lacking the maturity of real lasting love, whereas with Alex, she had actually believed that she was in love with him. Still it wasn't true love unless you had total and complete trust in the other person and she clearly hadn't trusted Alex enough to take that final step in their physical relationship. As it turned out, she'd been right not to trust him - and she'd had a rather lucky escape in that she found out the truth before taking that step - though in this instance, the knowledge of being right didn't give her quite the same sense of triumph as it usually did.
She wasn't eager to jump into another relationship, but she did yearn to find true love. She just wished it wasn't so hard to find a good guy - and the fact that the bad guys were obviously now masquerading as the good guys made it even harder. It was said that the best relationships grew out of friendships, but unfortunately for her, with the exception of Harry, all of the men she was friends with were either married or in long-term relationships.
And while Harry was single, he was also like a brother to her and being more than friends with him would probably feel incestuous. She supposed it was rather a shame that they were effectively siblings - in addition to being a good guy, Harry was also a rather good looking male, from an objective point of view.
As she silently contemplated the physical attractiveness of her friend in whose arms she was currently lying, the man in question began to stir, his hold on her tightening. And all of a sudden her world shifted as still in the final stages of slumber, he obviously failed to realise who he was holding - as he pulled her closer so that she was all but lying on top of him, her breasts were crushed against his hard muscular chest and her hips came into contact with something else that was equally hard.
She gasped and his eyes opened and locked with hers. His molten emerald gaze drew her in and she couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't think about anything except the fact that his mouth was only inches from hers and the feel of his hard cock pressing against her was causing heat to spread through her body and pool between her thighs.
And then Harry lifted his hand up to her face and brushed away a curl before softly caressing her cheek and then cupping the back of her neck and pulling her towards him until their lips touched. His kiss was slow and soft, coaxing her to respond and her lips soon parted to admit his tongue. The heat between them grew steadily until Harry rather expertly flipped them over so that Hermione was on her back, his hips easily fitting between her parted thighs and his hand sliding up and under her t-shirt to cover her bare breast.
Her intake of breath made him pause for a moment and he pulled back and looked at her. And as if suddenly realising exactly what he was doing, he cursed under his breath and pulled away completely, all but leaping off the bed. He stood there looking at her laying amidst the sheets and blankets, his cock still noticeably hard beneath the thin cotton of his boxer shorts.
He looked positively stricken. "Merlin, Mione, I'm so sorry..."
The look of shame on his face was awful. "Harry, you don't need to..."
He held up a hand to halt her words. "Yes, I do. I don't know what possessed me to even...look, I'm, um, I'm going to take a shower. There's, um, plenty of food in the kitchen, so if you're, um, hungry, just help yourself to whatever you want."
And with that he escaped the room, leaving Hermione still lying in the same position on the bed, her body still tingling slightly and her mind going a mile a minute.
What the hell just happened?
Even being a virgin, she knew that most men wake up with, as Ginny termed it, `their wand ready to duel', but that still didn't explain why Harry had kissed her. Or why she had enjoyed it.
She had felt more aroused by a single fleeting kiss from Harry than by all of kisses she had ever shared with Alex and she wished it hadn't have ended so abruptly. Or at all. And for the first time in her life, she hadn't felt uneasy about where a kiss might lead. She'd actually wanted more. She'd actually wanted Harry.
Her rational mind tried to tell her that she couldn't trust her feelings, that she was clinging on to Harry because he had been there for her when she needed him and that given the circumstances of her split with Alex, she obviously needed to prove that she could still be desired.
But her rational mind was wrong - her sudden feelings for Harry weren't borne out of emotional vulnerability. She had never felt at ease in either of her prior relationships, not the way she felt at ease with Harry and it now felt as though those relationships had merely been like northern stars pointing her towards the one man she was destined for - the man who was her best friend, the man she trusted with her life and the man that she knew she'd been waiting for - the one who would make her body sing.
Desperate now for Harry to continue where he had left off, she got up and padded barefoot across the hall to the bathroom, where she could hear the shower still running. Slipping through the door, she saw the silhouette of Harry's naked body through the glass walls of the shower and her pulse quickened. Moments later, he shut off the water and turned to open the door and step out of the cubicle.
He stopped when he saw her and not giving him a chance to speak, she moved closer to him, sliding her hands over his wet chest and up to his shoulders. As she reached up to kiss him, he took hold of her upper arms to stop her.
"Hermione, I..."
"I want you, Harry," she whispered, their lips now millimetres apart and their breath mingling. With a boldness she didn't know she possessed, she slid her hand down his body and curled it around his rock hard cock, making him groan, before he pulled away from her again.
"Mione, you're killing me. I want you too, you've no idea how much...but I can't."
"Feels like you can to me."
He gave a short chuckle. "You know what I mean. Hermione, you don't know what you want right now and I'm sure as hell not going to take advantage of you when you're still hurting from what Alex did to you."
"My noble Harry," she said, smiling as she brushed a lock of hair out of his face. "It does still hurt, but it's more what his betrayal represented than the betrayal itself, if that makes sense. Because Alex wasn't the one for me. You think that I'm vulnerable right now, that I'm confused, but I've never been more sure of what I want. You're my best friend, Harry, but I want us to be more than friends. And I'm finally ready to take that step...with you."
He lifted his hands to cup her face, his eyes holding hers. "Merlin, are you sure about this?"
In answer, she leaned forward and kissed him softly, before pulling back and smiling at the ridiculous grin on his face.
"Um, I'd kind of like to take a shower first."
He seemed to understand that she needed some time to prepare herself, physically and mentally, and picking up a towel, he wrapped it around his hips.
"Okay," he said, heading for the door. "Yell if you need me to scrub your back."
She grinned and when he'd gone, she pulled off the t-shirt and boxer shorts she was still wearing, pinned up her hair to stop it getting wet and stepped under the shower. After washing herself, she turned off the water and wrapping her body in a towel.
Walking back across the hall to the bedroom, she found Harry sitting on the bed, the towel still covering his modesty. He looked up when she entered, her smile mirrored on his face.
He held out a hand and she didn't hesitate to take it, trusting him completely. He drew her down onto his lap and slowly removed the pins from her hair, which tumbled to her shoulders. Cupping the back of her neck, he brought her mouth to his and kissed her with lingering gentleness. He didn't attempt to remove the towels or force intimacy, but as his kisses fanned the flames within her, she grew restless, her hips shifting in his lap and she felt his hard cock pressing insistently against her thigh.
"Mione..." he whispered against her lips.
"Mmm, Harry..."
"What do you need, sweetheart?" he asked as his mouth hovered over his pulse point.
"Need you..."
In response to her plea, he took hold of her hips and flipped them over so she was lying on her back. With a slightly wolfish smile, he tugged at her towel until it fell open, revealing her naked flesh to his hungry eyes.
"Merlin, Mione, you're so beautiful..."
She never believed herself to be beautiful and if it had come from any other man, she would have been sceptical of such a statement, but she knew that Harry wouldn't lie about something like that.
Then her thoughts scattered as he covered her breasts with his hands, teasing her aching nipples into hard points, before taking first one and then the other into his mouth, causing breathy moans to escape her. Leaving her breasts, he began move down her body, pressing open-mouthed kisses to her stomach and his tongue circling her navel along the way.
When he reached the space between her legs, she tensed slightly. No one had ever touched her there before - she hadn't even experimented on her own. Harry must have sensed this, because he looked up at her and then reached out one hand to lace his fingers with hers.
"Relax, sweetheart. I'm going to make you feel so good."
He bent his head again and she cried out at the first stroke of his tongue. She had heard enough of Ginny's comments about Malfoy's `talents' to understand that the act was supposed to be very pleasurable for a woman, but this was beyond anything she could have imagined.
She gasped as he eased two fingers inside her, her body immediately clamping around the digits. His tongue focused on a particularly sensitive spot, teasing her slowly until she arched her back and her free hand twisted in his hair, silently begging him to give her the release her body craved.
Although she was a virgin, she wasn't completely ignorant of the mechanics of sex - having of course read extensively - and as the most delicious sensations skated through her body and pressure began to build in the pit of her stomach, she realised that she was moments away from experiencing her very first orgasm.
And then Harry began to suckle her clit while crooking his fingers inside her and her legs started to shake. As she came with a scream, stars burst in front of her eyes and her body shuddered uncontrollably, his name escaping her lips in whispered praise.
***
Mischief managed!
I'm sorry for stopping there but I didn't want to rush this part of the story because it's so important, so I've given you a taster (excuse the pun!) of Harry and Hermione together to whet your appetite!
The climax is up next...
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