Breath Mints / Battle Scars

Chapter 45: XLV

February 23rd, 1999

"Stay."

She's got her back to him, blouse halfway buttoned, wondering if anyone at the Ministry will notice she's wearing the same clothes as yesterday - and it's so quiet she's not even sure he really said it.

"What?" she asks in a casual voice, hoping he didn't and glancing halfway over her shoulder.

"Stay," he says again, a little louder - a little more sure of it. He's leaning back against the headboard, green sheets still tangled up beneath him, lazily swaying his propped knee back and forth.

She abandons the buttons and turns fully to face him. "I don't understand."

Draco huffs and swings his legs sideways to sit at the edge of the mattress. She's shocked how natural a movement it is to step between his knees when he reaches for her - to let his hands slide up the backs of her thighs.

"You should stay," he murmurs, resting his forehead against her ribs. It's a simple, subtle thing, and yet the blossom of heat it sends through her is anything but.

"Pansy and Theo," she says, more a reminder to herself. Already, her fingers are carding through his hair - still so surprising in its softness - and she wants nothing more than to let his mouth trail lower and lower on the path it's already started.

But Theo's letter still sits on the nightstand in her periphery.

"They can wait," says Draco, nuzzling at the space above her navel as he starts to untuck her blouse from her skirt. He's not often like this. And she wants to close her eyes and let her head drop back, but she stills his hands instead.

"I get the feeling he wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

Draco sighs, warming her skin with it briefly before he leans back. "That's what you get when you hang other people's clothes in public, or whatever the Muggles say."

"Is that what you call saving someone's life? Because that's what I did. And it's dirty laundry, by the way, not-"

He reaches up and covers her mouth almost like it's an instinct. She raises an eyebrow at him, but when he drags the pad of his forefinger down along her bottom lip, she doesn't think. Just opens her mouth and sucks on it gently.

Draco hisses out a breath and tugs her into his lap in one fluid movement. "You have to stay," he growls, mouth sweeping forward to trace the column of her throat - teeth grazing her pulse point and biting down.

Hermione allows herself a small moment of weakness. Figures she's earned it. She lets her head loll forward onto the smooth, warm curve of his shoulder, small gasp breaking on a moan when he flattens his tongue and laves it slowly across the expanse between her collarbone and her ear.

"I don't trust it when you're anywhere else," he whispers, nibbling on the lobe and making her shiver. "As it is, you're the one who asked to be taken to my bed. And I think I like the look of you in it."

She's helpless - can't not taste him, buried in the crook of his neck as she is, smelling his clean sweat; his sweet, smoky scent, like damp morning earth. She finds herself kissing along the cords of muscle of his throat - can almost feel the blood rush through his veins when his breath hitches and his grip tightens on her waist.

"Stay," he demands again against the shell of her ear. His fingers slide beneath the hem of her skirt, stretched tight where she straddles him. "Stay, and I can make you come. I'll make you come so hard, Granger, I promise." His teeth drag on her earlobe just as the warmth of his palm settles between her legs. "I want to taste you again. I want to eat you."