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“I didn’t plan on an overnight,” Malfoy grumbles, sliding the hotel room key into the lock. It’s past midnight. Mercifully, they have this floor to themselves, and so their characteristic collegial bickering goes unobserved, unless one counts the marble busts and rare white orchids. The tone-on-tone decor is distinctly old money. “But until the curse wears off, it appears we’re stuck with each other.”
Hermione tugs at the red string tied around her wrist in a neat bow. “At least Rolf sprang for the penthouse.”
“That’s the least he could do. Sending us off on a wild goose chase—”
“Not a goose,” she corrects as the door opens. “A thunderbird hatchling.”
“Looked like a goose to me.”
Malfoy, ignoring the fact that the other end of the string is attached to his wrist—right beneath the band of his Audemars Piguet Royal Oak 41 (she knows because he never shuts up about the bloody thing)—strides across the parquet floors, dragging her along.
Despite her better judgment, Hermione gawks at their suite for the night.
The floors she’d already noticed, honeyed oak laid out in a geometric pattern that repeated throughout the warmly lit space, polished to perfection. The downstairs living area features a magnificent fireplace, Persian rugs in muted slate and ivory, and an L-shaped leather sofa draped with cashmere throws. Floor-to-ceiling windows look out over the Piazza della Repubblica, the height creating enough separation from the hustle and bustle to turn back time for the modern, touristy section of Rome and make it ancient again, formidable and mysterious against the wine-dark sky.
In the corner sits a navy blue Steinway. If she were here with anyone but him, she’d sit down and play. Sing, even, which she only ever does under the influence of too many French 75s.
“Geese can’t curse. Thunderbirds can. Especially when they’re so young. If you had only listened to me, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
Malfoy rolls his eyes, then slides them behind the sofa to appraise the hidden bar cart.
Now, had she seen the hatchling curse them? No. But what other explanation could there be for the string connecting them? She’d tried everything to untether them—diffindo, scissors, open flame. Malfoy was no use. He merely stood by as she experimented, fiddling nervously with his signet ring. Alas, nothing could cut through the string. It was as if it were indestructible.
Upon realising the severity of their predicament, Hermione wrote to her supervisor, Rolf Scamander, who offered to put them up in the St. Regis and send out a cursebreaker first thing in the morning.
They’d been working together for seven years now, she and Malfoy, off and on. He’d become a sort of rarities dealer for wealthy purebloods, seeking only the most pristine, one-of-a-kind items, and every so often in her capacity as Senior Director of Magical Creatures, a file would come across her desk that would interest him. Her meeting with the unicorns of the Mongolian-Manchurian steppe, for instance, gave him the opportunity to request their unique opalescent hair—ethically, of course. In return for Hermione’s inside information and frictionless introductions, Malfoy funds their little expeditions.
They’re not cheap. Malfoy ensures they travel in style.
Portkeys? They make her ill, so he flies them on his Gulfstream G550. Takeaway? He knows her dietary preferences and restrictions, and his private chef prepares meals and snacks in advance. Gear? Malfoy always wears a suit charmed against the elements, and though he’s offered many times to buy her the equivalent in a dress of her choosing—Hermione prefers dresses, even on windy days when they fly up or tangle around her legs—she always declines. He’s too generous with her.
They’ve never had an overnight. Never needed to. Usually they’re gone and back within a few hours. But now Malfoy’s downing Yamazaki 55 like he’d rather be anywhere but here.
She scowls at him. “What if alcohol affects the curse?”
He loosens his tie, revealing the knot of his throat as he pours another; a double. “Doubt it.”
Hermione fights a swallow. This is the most of him she’s ever seen. He’s always buttoned up, in control. Tonight’s suit is her favourite—the charcoal double-breasted Brunello Cucinelli, styled with a shirt two shades darker than his alabaster skin. His polished calfskin loafers gleam, even after a long day of tromping through marshland, and he’s slung his matching attaché case onto the sofa. The only jewelry he wears, other than his prized timepiece, is his signet ring.
No wedding ring. No girlfriend—or boyfriend, there was that rumour swirling during their eighth year about Malfoy and Nott. No children, either, which is a feat in their early forties, considering the rest of the way their peers have taken to procreating.
Hermione, for her part, has one failed engagement under her belt. And no children, either, though she’d like one. But there are obstacles. She wants a baby with the right wizard, and she can’t imagine being unable to work through her pregnancy, and then there’s also maternity leave to consider…
She has a bit more time, doesn’t she?
Hermione stomps her foot as he fills the cut-glass tumbler again. “Malfoy, take it easy. I don’t have any potions on me, and I don’t want to spend the night next to the toilet.” When he looks undeterred, she pouts. This sometimes works on him, mostly when she tries to make her eyes very big and makes her bottom lip tremble like she’s about to cry. “This is my best dress, you know.”
It is her best dress. Vintage Prada from when Miuccia Prada was the sole creative director of the fashion house, before she founded Miu Miu in the early nineties. The column silhouette is deceptively simple, and the fabric is a weighty silk faille, matte rather than glossy, dyed a complex, moody shade—somewhere between oxidized plum and merlot—that shifts subtly depending on the light.
So maybe his fashion sense has rubbed off on her a little, over the years. It isn’t a crime to want to feel pretty.
Malfoy’s eyes drag down her body in a way that makes her feel feverish before he sets the whisky down. She wonders what it tastes like on his lips. “Only because it’s your best dress. Come have some of this; even the playing field. I suspect I’m going to feel this in a minute.”
He pulls another tumbler from thin air and pours her a healthy sample. She hesitates for only a second before giving in. She could use a drink.
Hermione glances at him as she brings the tumbler to her nose, inhaling the heady aroma of sandalwood and sun-ripened fruit. “Can’t believe you weren’t savouring this.”
“I’m anti-savouring.”
She raises her eyebrows, delaying her first sip. “Why?”
“Savouring implies there’s a ritual involved. Wealth has a way of making rituals… meaningless.” He trails his fingers through the air in a blasé motion. “Imagine, at a young age, having the finest of everything available to you at all times. Money is no object. You tell yourself you want what everyone has decided is the best, and you want as much of it as possible. You start with a country home and branch into villas, yachts, and the like. High fashion. Fast cars. Parties with no real end or beginning. Soon, hedonism becomes pedestrian.” His mouth flattens into a dissatisfied line. “Hollow, you enter the proverbial desert. At some point, you emerge, and considering yourself somehow enlightened, you begin searching for new experiences. When those begin to run out, you turn to quality. And then you start to understand that the only thing you really want is one money can’t buy.”
“Which is?”
“Time.” He frowns down at his wrist, where the red string sits alongside his timepiece. “And suddenly you don’t want to spend it sniffing the whisky when the point is to drink it. Savouring is a young man’s game.”
“You’re not that old,” she says gently.
Draco scoffs. “Not that young, either. Drink your whisky, Granger.”
She obliges him, his little speech running through her head on loop. The whisky hits her tongue, smooth and bittersweet, and surprising even herself, she finishes it in one go. When she sets the tumbler down, he refills it. She doesn’t bother with ceremony this time, just drinks while he watches, disbelief mixed with satisfaction written all over his face.
She likes surprising him. And maybe he’s right, at least about the whisky. It burns through her with pleasant heat, and suddenly her predicament seems much more tolerable.
The thing is, Hermione likes spending time with Malfoy. He’s still posh and a bit of a prat, but his old beliefs died with the war. They’d become friends during eighth year, and then he left for Paris, disappearing without so much as a goodbye. Fifteen years later, she ran into him on assignment in the 16th arrondissement, braving a late March downpour in her trustworthy wellies and not-so-trustworthy M&S trenchcoat. She choked as if she'd seen a ghost, but he held her steady under his wide black brolly and whisked her away to L’Archiste, where he insisted on ordering the entire menu twice over before apologising profusely, not only for frightening her but for losing touch.
Conversation was mostly stilted, but honest, and that was all she’d ever wanted from him anyway. Their partnership formed that evening. And when he took her back to her hotel in his Bugatti Veyron, opened the door for her and made sure she got upstairs safely, she felt what she feels now every time she walks away: a longing that he would call her name so she could turn around and run back.
In all their years of friendship—it is friendship, because beneath their argumentative natures, there’s a softness she shares with no one else—she’s never seen his chateau, or his pied-à-terre, but he speaks of them like she speaks of her London flat. He seems at home there; sure of himself, in a way that would have been impossible in their twenties and thirties. She’s a little sad he didn’t bring her there tonight instead of this beautiful but impersonal penthouse suite.
Hermione returns the tumbler to the bar cart, half-wishing she could handle another, but she doesn’t want to get sloppy. She doesn’t want to let anything slip, because Malfoy couldn’t possibly return her feelings.
They’re stupid, really, the feelings.
She’d like to attribute them to fondness. But fondness doesn’t explain the way she tracks his movements with a dry mouth, or how she catalogues his expressions with a passion she typically reserves for cataloguing XXXXX-class creatures. Fondness doesn’t explain the painful, unreasonable disappointment when he didn’t reach for her hand as they crossed the lobby tonight, or the way she’d noted—absently, damningly—that his hair is starting to go grey at the temples.
They’re tethered together, and yet he’s never felt more distant.
Malfoy shucks and folds his jacket, then rolls up his shirtsleeves. He’s learned not to interrupt her silences too soon; learned that she thinks best when she goes quiet.
“You’re doing that thing,” he says at last as he settles on the sofa.
She crosses her arms. “What thing?”
“Staring into the middle distance like you’re about to defy international law.”
She huffs a laugh despite herself. “Sorry. I’m not sure what to do with myself. Usually we’re working, or if we’re lucky, eating somewhere with more than one Michelin Star.”
Before everything went sideways tonight, they’d dined al fresco at Aroma, enjoying a spectacular view of the Colosseum.
“Usually. However, seeing as we’ll be cursed at least until the morning, take a load off.” He pats the spot next to him. “If you ask very nicely I’ll even rub your feet.”
Hermione groans and steps out of her heels. “Would you? The cushioning charm wore off ages ago.”
He smiles, slow and familiar, and something in her chest gives an alarming little twist. Because the smile isn’t practiced or sharp-edged—it’s just Malfoy, older and softer and devastatingly real.
She sinks down next to him, the red thread pooling between them.
“I think it’s getting shorter,” Malfoy frowns.
Hermione thinks so too, but she doesn’t voice it. Instead, without an ounce of shyness, she faces him on the sofa and levers her feet into his lap.
Why did he offer to do this for her? Is it the alcohol? She doesn’t want to question it.
“This is really generous of you.”
“It’s no trouble. I thought the whisky might make me tired, but perhaps a few minutes of manual labour will wear me out.” He runs his warm, broad hand across her toes. She’d just had a pedicure; chose a pearlescent white bottle from a wall of vivid varnish. “I like this colour on you.”
She fights a blush. “Thanks.”
“It’s sweet.”
“The opposite of me, right?”
“Not at all. You’re quite the angel, I’d say, when you’re not dealing with the devil.” Malfoy throws her a sly glance. “Is your current beau not complimenting you enough?”
“No beau,” she gasps as his thumb digs into her arch. The pressure is sublime.
“Interesting.”
“Is it?”
“Very,” he says mildly. His hands work on her aching feet in tandem, melting away tension she didn’t even know she had.
“You don’t have a… partner?”
Malfoy hesitates, and Hermione’s heart sinks like a stone. “It’s complicated.”
She wants to ask him who, and for how long, and if he thinks he’ll marry, and if he does, when will the wedding take place so she can make sure she’s somewhere sunny, drunk off her arse. Instead, she says, “I’ve been thinking about that night in Paris.”
“I think of it often. I couldn’t believe you were in my neighbourhood. Fifteen years since I’d seen you and you hadn’t aged a day. Merlin, do you remember how good the scallops were at L’Archiste?”
Of course she does. She remembers everything.
“You never answered my question.”
His brow furrows. “Which one?”
“Why you left Hogwarts without saying goodbye.”
The room goes very still. Outside, the city hums on, oblivious. Malfoy averts his eyes, purses his lips, and exhales through his nose.
“I thought,” he says carefully, “that if I stayed, I’d want things I had no right to ask for.”
Her pulse stutters.
“And now?” she asks, barely above a whisper.
His gaze lifts to hers, unguarded and achingly familiar. “Now,” he says, “I’m not sure I’m any better at not wanting them.”
Instead of expanding on that thought, Malfoy shifts closer, long fingers working with practiced confidence, thumbs circling, pressing, learning the shape of her. Of course Malfoy is good at this; good in the way he’s good at everything he commits to—thorough, attentive, infuriatingly competent. She lets out a moan, low and involuntary, her head tipping back against the sofa.
“You’re too good at this,” she says, surrendering the compliment as she rolls her shoulders. The joints creak a little, and she wonders if he might rub them too, if she begged prettily enough.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? She doesn’t want to have to beg. As much as she feels for him, Hermione will never beg for his affection. She’s too proud.
He chuckles. “I’ve had a great deal of time to develop skills that don’t involve being insufferable.”
She snorts, then goes quiet as his hands move again, firmer now, coaxing her muscles into submission. Her pulse feels too loud. The cavernous penthouse feels smaller, narrowing in aperture until it’s only this lovely sofa; only her and Malfoy.
“Being cursed with you isn’t so bad,” she says after another minute of delicious torture.
“What if we were tethered together forever? Would you kill me?”
“Of course not.” Hermione lifts her head to look at him. He’s irresistible like this, in just a shirt and trousers, rogue strands of white-blond hair falling across his forehead, mouth tipped up at one corner. He takes her breath away. “I’d move to Paris.”
“Would you?” Malfoy sits up a little straighter.
“All I need are my books, my cat, and my best dress, of course.” She winks, a little sloppily between the late hour and the whisky. It’s loosened her tongue considerably. “Paris would be perfect. I’ve been thinking of leaving the Ministry, anyway. Rolf’s a great boss, but I don’t know. I feel like I need a new adventure.”
She does not mention that she’d always hoped her next adventure would be motherhood. But with that window closing…
“Why haven’t you left already?”
She shrugs. Because of him, obviously. With every file she opens, she prays the contents are unique enough to warrant a floo call to Malfoy. If she had a baby, she couldn’t gallivant off with him to parts unknown in search of who-knows-what, so in some ways, she supposes it’s good she didn’t. She got more time with him, even if somehow, it’s never enough.
God, she really can’t do this tonight.
“I’m tired,” Hermione says, exaggerating a yawn by stretching her arms above her head and curling her legs. Her feet slip from Malfoy’s grasp. “Bedrooms are upstairs?”
“Take your pick,” Malfoy says as he rises. But when he helps her up, the string sparkles with magic.
It’s far, far shorter than before they started talking. There’s maybe ten feet of red string between them. Nowhere near enough to entertain the thought of separate sleeping spaces.
“Malfoy.”
There’s a tremor in her voice.
“I know. Why don’t we—why don’t you go ahead and freshen up and I’ll try to think of something.”
She does just that, grateful to have a moment alone, even if it’s in a bright bathroom where the mirror shows her every flaw. At least the hotel’s amenities are plentiful and top quality. The shower products are her favourite scent: Byredo’s Mojave Ghost. Still, it’s an awkward thing, knowing someone is just outside while you go about your nightly ablutions.
Hermione rinses herself in the shower, twists her hair into a low chignon, and performs a quick cleanse of her clothes. She considers transfiguring her dress into pyjamas, but it’s her best dress. She’ll just have to sleep in it, along with the ridiculously itty bitty g-string she has to wear to prevent lines showing through. At least she’s comfortable.
When she exits, Malfoy is fluffing pillows. It’s unbearably domestic.
“I’ve set us up on the sofa. You take that end.” He gestures toward the shorter part of the L. “I’ll take the other. The string will reach.”
Such a gentleman. It’s a shame; she would’ve loved the excuse to sleep next to him in bed, if only for one night.
Maybe it’s better this way. If they shared a bed, she’d never want the sun to rise again.
He takes his turn in the bathroom, and Hermione tests the length of the string to douse the lights. Nerves make her pace, her bare feet slapping against the parquet floors, her teeth worrying her bottom lip. When he emerges, damp from his shower, he’s wearing nothing but black pants.
“I sleep hot,” he says apologetically.
Seeing his neck without a tie earlier left her transfixed. Seeing him without a shirt? Sans trousers? She may have died and gone to heaven. She barely resists the urge to check her own pulse.
He’s got a bloody good body. Toned chest, nice arms, and it’s impossible to ignore how well he fills out his pants. She swallows as she finds the web of scarring that covers his left forearm.
Hermione remembers the day he cut the darkness out; the way he refused anything for the pain. Stubborn, stubborn man.
She kept vigil by his bedside in a hideous green armchair, reading to him from Dante’s Inferno until her eyelids grew heavy. It was the only time she’d slept in the Slytherin dorm. The only time they’d shared the strange intimacy of slumber.
Until tonight. How is she going to survive this?
She hugs her shoulders. “I usually get cold.”
They accio extra pillows and luxurious organic cotton quilts from upstairs, working in silence to create makeshift beds on opposite sides of the sofa. Malfoy’s is little more than a single bedsheet, while Hermione assembles a nest of quilts.
When they’re both satisfied, Malfoy says, “Goodnight, Granger.”
That’s it?
Of course that’s it. Why did she ever think there would be more? He’s had seven years to make a move. She could’ve said something, too. But she didn’t.
And now it’s too late.
“Goodnight, Malfoy.”
He extinguishes the lights, and they lay down. Malfoy doesn’t seem to notice her tussling with the blankets; trying and failing to achieve anything approaching a comfortable sleeping position. She turns onto her side, then back again, then stills, mortified by how loud the sofa creaks when she moves. Every shift feels like an announcement.
I’m still awake. I’m miserable. I can only think of you.
Twenty minutes later, she’s aware of every sound. The hum of the aircon, the drip of the shower. The even cadence of Malfoy’s breathing. He’s already asleep.
How nice for him.
Hermione stares into the dark. Her eyes have adjusted, but she’s not going to look at him. No. She’s going to shut her eyes and count hippogriffs until sleep takes her. But when she closes her eyes, her other senses sharpen. The faint scent of him lingers in the air—the smooth sandalwood note of Mojave Ghost, the expensive whisky, and something unmistakably masculine, unmistakably Malfoy beneath it all. She pictures the sharp line of his jaw, the way his mouth curves when he’s amused, the exact weight of his hands on her feet earlier, firm and confident.
And then—damn her foolish, foolish heart—she cranes her neck to look at him.
He’s beautiful.
Backlit by the twinkling lights of Rome, Malfoy lies on his back, his arms tucked under his head. His chest is bare to the night; the white bedsheet rumpled at his hips. His hair has fallen in his face, right by his nose, where she knows it tickles him. Does it bother him in his sleep?
An intrusive thought rears its head like a backfiring spell, dangerous and impossible to ignore. She could brush that hair away. Touch the silky strands while he dreams, without him ever being the wiser. She can’t. Well, she can, but she shouldn’t.
But this chance may never come again. Can she deny herself the temporary bliss, and thereafter, the infinite torture?
Her feet are on the rug before she can talk herself out of it. She kneels before him in the dim light, hovers her fingers over his face ever so gently, trying to figure out how to do this without waking him. Maybe if she—
“Angel?”
She tips her head back, despairing. She was too cautious. She missed her chance.
“Just me,” she whispers, smiling sadly to herself. How she’d love to be his angel.
“Granger. Angel.” Malfoy’s voice is rough from sleep. He opens his eyes for the barest of seconds, cups her cheek; strokes his thumb across her heated skin.
Here is where, if she could, she would stop time.
Quick as a flash, his other hand closes around her wrist, yanking her up on her feet. The string between them slackens, then goes taut, and Malfoy’s arm bands around her waist, pulling her down to the sofa, pressing her back flush against his chest and her arse against his—
He’s hard. Oh, fuck, and it’s big. Life-alteringly big.
“Am I dreaming?”
Hermione doesn’t mean to wonder aloud, doesn’t mean to break the spell, but Malfoy only tightens his grip on her. His question falls hot on the back of her neck.
“Do you want to be?”
Her heart hammers violently against her ribcage as she turns to face him. Unable to find the word, she shakes her head. No.
It’s unclear who moves first because they’re both moving, in perfect unison like they’ve closed the gap between them a thousand times. Their lips meet on his throaty groan, and he swallows her desperate sigh.
He isn’t savouring her. He’s devouring her.
She finally knows what he tastes like; relishes the smooth, expensive notes of Yamazaki 55 underneath a wisp of spearmint toothpaste and delicious, delicious man.
“What do you want?” She asks breathlessly, happy to be starved for air from this point forward if he will only keep kissing her just like this.
Malfoy’s cheeks are flushed, pupils wide with desire. She can’t suppress her joy in this moment, grinning like a loon, knowing he is just as affected as she is.
He reaches to play with the hemline of her dress. “What can I have?”
“Everything,” she sighs, and he swoops down to suck at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. One of his hands is buried in her hair, while the other busies itself with rucking up her dress, one excruciating inch at a time, his fingers tracing soft circles across the sensitive skin at the top of her thighs.
“Don’t say it if you don’t mean it Granger. What I want…”
“What do you want?”
Her breath hitches as he nips at her jawline. He’s hesitating. Maybe he wants something unconventional?
“I want so much more than just tonight. I want all of you, all to myself.” His hands still. “And I want…”
Hermione nods encouragingly. “You can tell me. I’m not opposed to trying new things. As long as we talk about it first, I’m sure we can—”
He interrupts her with a strained sound. “I didn’t mean to—this is hardly the time or place, I just can’t seem to keep quiet about it any longer.”
She blinks into the semi-darkness. So, that sounds a little worrying. Still, he looks like he might break if she doesn’t say something reassuring. “It’s okay.”
She kisses him tenderly, and he moans into it, hand sliding up to grip her hip. She grinds up into him, wishing he’d put those wicked fingers between her legs and find her red g-string; feel how wet she is for him. Because she is soaked. Soaked. From nothing more than kissing and a little heavy petting. He should be proud, honestly. If only he knew the extent of her desire; how many years she’s longed for this moment, he wouldn’t be so worried.
Finally, Malfoy whispers, “I want what money can’t buy. I want a legacy.”
“A—a legacy?” she pants, hips desperately seeking more.
“I want a baby, Granger. With you.”
She freezes.
Oh, God.
He brings both hands up to cradle her jaw. “Who am I going to give my fortune to someday, hm? Who would be more worthy of my time?”
He’s searching her face for some hint of how she feels, glancing down at her lips in hopes they’ll move, but she’s rudderless, adrift in a sea of emotion, lost in the grey of his eyes.
“Granger, I’m—I’m so sorry if this is ruining everything—”
“It’s not,” she says, overcoming her initial stunned reaction. “I would love that.”
Malfoy’s mouth goes slack with shock. “What?”
She can hardly contain the fizz of joy bubbling up inside her. A baby. With Malfoy. Malfoy wants a baby with her.
“I’ve always wanted to be a mum.”
“You’d be the best at it,” he says, and she can tell his nimble mind is reeling, agog that a longheld fantasy is somehow within reach. She can tell because hers is doing the same thing.
There’s a temptation, at least on her end, to press pause on current proceedings and hammer out the details. But her need for him outweighs any common sense.
She snakes a hand between them and finds his erection straining against his pants. “Take these off.”
“Ladies first,” Malfoy counteroffers, and she realises she may never be able to refuse him anything.
“Careful, it’s my best dress.”
He flashes her a grin. “I know.”
Malfoy is surprisingly gentle, guiding her up to a sitting position and lifting her arms so he can slide the dress up and over her head. Her breasts bounce free, and he is utterly and gratifyingly transfixed. He cups them with his warm hands, massaging them before lowering his mouth to tease each nipple, sucking them into taut buds.
“So pretty.” He can’t seem to stop praising her. “Been dying to get my mouth on these lush tits of yours, Granger.”
Is he picturing them the way she’s picturing them right now? In the future, when they’ll be heavier, rounder, preparing to swell with milk for their baby in her belly?
She feels a trickle of wetness slip from her centre, heat burgeoning underneath her skin. She wants to come, badly, and she’s more than halfway there just from his devious tongue swiping and sucking at her nipples.
“Oh, you like that, do you?”
She arches her back. “How—how do you know?”
“I can practically hear you thinking, angel. And I can feel the way you respond to this.” Malfoy sucks harder, and she widens her legs, wishing he would touch her there, swirl his finger around her clit and make her see stars. “You’re imagining what they’ll look like when you’re a few months along.”
“Fuck, I am,” she moans.
“I’m going to worship these. Worship you. As much as you want.” He switches breasts again, admiring the way it spills over his palm before he takes as much as he can in his mouth, laving at her tender nipple.
He’s talking like it’s inevitable, and it feels inevitable, and she wants the inevitable right now.
But this is their first time together. Surely they’ll enjoy each other like this a few times before—
Hermione’s thoughts cease as he plants greedy kisses in a serpentine, eager trail down her stomach, as if he’s loath to miss the chance to revere even one inch of her bare skin. Her participation is much less civilised, limited to writhing as he drags her underneath him.
“I’m going to take such good care of you. Both of you. Fuck, all of you if there’s more than one. Spoil you. The best of everything.”
Malfoy is killing her with his thoroughness, both in word and deed. His teeth scrape the soft spot where the lacy edge of her knickers begins, and he stops.
“Please, I need you to touch me,” she whines.
He sucks in air through his teeth as his finger curls around the scrap of silk. “What, pray tell, are these?”
“Knickers,” she stammers weakly.
“‘Knickers,’ she says. Granger, if these are knickers, then their other ninety-five percent is with Houdini, who may I remind you is still missing.”
She can’t help it. She giggles.
With one broad hand, he grabs her by the hip and drags her closer, tugging at the g-string. “And red? Did you expect this would happen? Fuck me, have you made a deal with the devil, angel? Forced to wear the colour of sin in exchange for my soul?” He still doesn’t touch her where she needs him most, but the feel of his fingertips so close to her clit gets her even more wet.
“Your… soul?”
Malfoy looks away, curses under his breath. He lifts his arm, where the red string circles his wrist.
“The grouse didn’t do this.”
“Thunderbird. Not a grouse,” she corrects, wiggling in an attempt to draw his attention further south again.
He turns serious. “Have you ever heard of the red string of fate?”
Hermione shakes her head. “No.”
And as much as relentless academic curiosity has guided the direction of her life, right now she could not care less about whatever lesson he’s about to embark on.
“Right. You didn’t take advanced Divination. According to the myth, Merlin pulls a red thread from his robes and ties it around the wrists of two people destined to marry. He does it the very first time they meet. At first, it’s invisible. The string might stretch, tangle, or knot over time, but it never breaks, no matter how far apart the two people are or how complicated the journey becomes. Eventually, fate will pull them together. And when the time is right, the thread reveals itself.”
“When the time is right for what?” She props herself up on her elbows as he pulls away, taking his searing touch with him. “Malfoy?”
“When it’s time for them to be together. It’s a soulmate bond.” He mumbles the words like an admission of guilt. “I saw a glimpse of it, that night in Paris. I was following it—that’s why I ran into you like that. I thought it couldn’t be right.”
“Because it was me?”
“No, never that, angel. I thought I was imagining it because I wanted it to be you on the other end. I wanted it so very badly.”
She loses the ability to speak, stares at the red thread, but he keeps talking.
“Every time I’m with you, I look for a flash of red, hoping. But I haven’t seen it since. And then today, my wish came true. Half of me wanted this to happen. It’s why I haven’t been with anyone else. The other half wanted it to be your choice.”
Her mind races. “So when I asked you if you had someone, and you said it was complicated—”
Malfoy tentatively reaches out; drags one finger down her cheek with a look of awe. “It’s you, angel. You’ve always been my angel. It’s always been you.”
How she’s longed to hear these words from him. Yearned to know his innermost thoughts. But something still bothers her, and she can’t let it go until she has the whole truth.
“But then why did you let me try to break the thread?”
“I would never force your hand. I thought if I explained—”
She springs into action, throwing her arms around his neck and pulling him down to lie atop her once more.
Fighting tears, she says roughly, “Well, you thought wrong.”
He slants his mouth over hers, and within seconds they’re devouring each other again.
Soulmates. They’re soulmates. She’s heard of them, of course, but never dared think such a concept was real. But it explains everything, doesn’t it? The way they’ve longed for each other all these years. She was never alone in it.
She’s always been his angel.
Malfoy lavishes praise on her as he kneels, divests her of her g-string, and slides his arms underneath her to bring her soaking wet cunt to his lips. He strokes her with his tongue in long, purposeful passes, and she’s grateful for the way he doesn’t tease. If there’s anything she knows about this man, he gets straight to the bloody point.
Bless him for that. He could be the devil right now if he really wanted, drive her to the brink. But he doesn’t.
When his clever mouth discovers the exact way to suck her clit that makes her cry out, she makes sure it’s his name she’s calling. She tangles her fingers in his hair, bucks up into his face with wild abandon as he tries fruitlessly to keep her contained. She’s lost to pleasure, swept up in the rising tide, desperate to break for him.
He must know it, because he redoubles his efforts, pressing her knees apart with his palms so he can eat her with maximum efficiency. The visual alone—the sheer dedication to her orgasm—makes her come harder than she’s ever come in her life.
Her body quakes. Stars collide behind her eyes. It is fast and ferocious and life-altering. When she catches her breath, she loses it immediately when she looks at Malfoy, still nestled between her thighs, grinding his erection into the sofa, staring up at her with an awed look unveiling infinite hunger. He licks at her with less intensity now, as if he can’t get enough of her taste, and an aftershock hits her, a delicious second orgasm that has her arching into him all over again.
Hermione reaches for him, and he gives her one last, long lick before climbing up her body again. She hooks one leg around the back of his, urging him to rock against her swollen clit. She could probably come again just like this.
But she wants that nice big cock of his inside her. Now.
She pushes at his pants, and he gets the idea. They’re on the floor with her g-string in a matter of seconds, and then he’s notching himself at her entrance. He glides in on one firm, smooth stroke, and Malfoy chokes.
“You feel so fucking good.”
“Yes,” she hisses. He twitches inside her. “You’re perfect. So good, Malfoy. God. I’ve never come so hard like that.”
He ghosts a finger across her clit, still holding himself in place. “This okay? Not too sensitive?”
She shakes her head. “No, it’s good, just gentle like that.”
Malfoy’s first thrust inside her is the epitome of tenderness. He may not slow down for the rest of the world, but for Hermione, he does his best. But it would be a superhuman feat to decelerate after years of pent-up mutual longing, and though he is a wizard, Malfoy is just a man, and soon his movements take a turn for the urgent, desperate and erratic.
Panting into her neck, he swears next time he’ll take his time. He’ll go so slow, especially while she’s carrying their child. But as with everything else, he wants it fast.
He pours sweet promises into her ears and they sound like the most beautiful music. She wants to sing, just for him, create a symphony from their exhalations.
“You should tell me to stop,” he says quietly, like it pains him. It probably does, if he’s as close as she thinks he is.
She swallows. “Should I?”
“That depends.” His grip tightens just a fraction, grounding rather than possessive. “On whether you want me to put a baby in you tonight.”
Tonight.
Is that mad?
Her heart thuds. She thinks of the past seven years of almosts and not-quites, of Paris in March, of whisky and sandalwood and the unbearable fact that he knows her too well.
She thinks of the red string, the one that had been there all along, from the very first moment they met.
She doesn’t pull away. Maybe it’s mad, but she’s been playing it safe for ages; she’s owed a little madness.
“Yes,” she says instead, steady despite everything. “I want it. But it might not—”
It might not happen tonight. These things take time.
“It will,” he insists. “I can feel it in my magic, can’t you?”
Hermione reaches out with her magic, testing their connection for the first time. There’s something there, an otherworldly certainty that erases every doubt; every question.
“Make it take,” she whispers. “Make me yours.”
The red string tightens again, then disappears, the magic apparently fulfilled.
They urge each other towards mutual climax without reservation or finesse. There is only what feels good; what feels right. She squeezes around his cock, her words a garbled string of yes and fill me up, I want it and come for me, and with a shout, Malfoy follows her headlong into bliss.
And suddenly she feels everything. Her joy. His ecstasy. The beating of their hearts in perfect synchronicity.
They spend the rest of the night making love like they’re eighth years again; making up for lost time.
Between orgasms, they make a whirlwind of plans. With a stroke of his quill, Malfoy instructs his personal jeweler, his tailor, and the creative director of Dior to arrive at the hotel first thing in the morning; Maria Grazia Chiuri owes him a favour.
“You can quit your job while you’re getting fitted for your wedding gown.”
“No two weeks’ notice? What shall I say?”
Malfoy kisses her stomach. “That you’re busy making my heir.”
Hermione basks in his affection as they make a plan for tomorrow. They’ll marry in the afternoon at the Chapelle expiatoire, inviting only their closest friends and family. They’ll spend their honeymoon night at the Shangri-La, enjoying the view of the Eiffel Tower, then move her into his chateau.
“You decorate the nursery however you like,” he says. “Anything you want or need, it’s yours.”
“You’re a madman,” she says, but she can’t help her pleased giggle.
“Love is madness,” he shrugs, and she kisses him. He practically purrs as she palms his cock, already hard and eager to fill her up again.
She feels it, when it takes. The first spark of life.
Through their bond, she knows her soulmate feels it too.