Chapter 17: The Reluctant Hand
The grey light before dawn found him still awake. Hermione slept, a deep, exhausted stillness that left her vulnerable. The scent of her dream-climax had faded, replaced by the creeping, sweet tang of a heat building anew. It was a slow poison in the air, in his blood.
He slid from the bed, the floor cold under his feet. He couldn’t lie there another second with that smell, with her warmth so close, with the memory of her silent convulsion playing behind his eyes. He paced to the window, staring at the mist-cloaked hills. His cock was a hard, aching weight against his thigh, had been since he’d smelled her dream. A relentless, physical echo of her need.
Control. It was all about control. He’d proven he had it. He’d lain beside her all night and not touched her.
But the edge was fraying.
He walked back to the bed, not looking at her. He sat on the very edge, his back to her sleeping form. The room was quiet save for her soft breaths. The heat-musk was thicker now, swirling from the sheets, from her skin. It sank into his lungs, coiled around his spine.
A low groan escaped him. He couldn’t think with it. Couldn’t breathe.
His hand moved of its own accord, shoving the waistband of his sleep trousers down. His cock sprang free, fully erect, the head flushed and slick with pre-come. He wrapped his fist around it, a hiss of relief and torment between his teeth.
The sound was obscenely loud in the quiet room. The wet, rhythmic slide of skin on skin. He worked himself slowly at first, trying to be quiet, trying to focus on the physical sensation alone. But his mind supplied the rest. The memory of her slick coating his fingers yesterday. The way her cunt had fluttered around them. The fantasy from her dream—knotting her, filling her, feeling her come apart around him.
His pace quickened. His grip tightened. Pre-come beaded freely, smoothing the brutal strokes. His breath came in ragged gasps he couldn’t fully silence. He was close, so close, chasing a release that would do nothing but mock him. A poor substitute. A coward’s outlet.
He didn’t hear her move.
He only felt the dip in the mattress behind him, a new warmth at his back. Then her smaller hand was there, her fingers tentative, wrapping over his own where they gripped his cock.
He froze. Every muscle locked.
Her breath hitched against his shoulder blade. Her touch was fever-hot.
“Let me,” she whispered, her voice sleep-roughened and raw.
It wasn’t a request. It was a surrender. A fracture in the endless war between them.
He couldn’t speak. He loosened his fist, letting her peel his fingers away one by one. Her hand replaced his, sliding down the length of him, gathering the slickness he’d made. Her touch was exploratory, unsure at first, then gaining confidence.
“Fuck,” he choked out, his head dropping forward.
She leaned into his back, her cheek pressed between his shoulder blades. Her other hand came around his hip, fingers splaying across his lower abdomen, holding him steady. Her strokes were slower than his had been, more deliberate. She learned him—the thick vein on the underside, the sensitive ridge of the head, the way his balls tightened as she worked.
“You’re so hard,” she murmured, her lips moving against his skin. The words vibrated through him. “So thick. I felt it… in my dream.”
He shuddered violently. “Don’t.”
“Why?” Her hand pumped him, a smooth, twisting motion that made his vision blur. “It’s true. I dreamed you were fucking me. I dreamed you knotted me. I woke up coming.”
A raw, animal sound was torn from his throat. He thrust up into her fist, helpless.
“Tell me,” she whispered, her voice gaining a dark, needy edge. “Tell me what you’d do. If you weren’t being so fucking noble.”
He was unraveling. The last thread of his control snapped.
“I’d bend you over this bed,” he snarled, the words guttural and low. “I’d spread your cheeks and eat your cunt until you screamed. I’d make you come on my tongue until you forgot your own name. Then I’d fuck you so deep you’d taste me in your throat. I wouldn’t stop. Not when you came. Not when you begged. I’d keep going, I’d fuck another orgasm out of you, and then I’d knot you. I’d swell up inside that tight little omega cunt and lock you on me, and I’d pump you so full of my come it would leak out of you for days. You’d smell like me. You’d fucking be mine.”
Her hand stuttered, then moved faster, matching the frantic pace of his words. She was panting against his back, her own hips making small, involuntary circles against the mattress.
“Yes,” she breathed. “God, yes. Do it. Please, Draco.”
“You want my come?” he ground out, his hips pistoning into her slick fist. He was right on the edge, the pressure coiling unbearable at the base of his spine.
“I want it. Give it to me.”
“Where?” he demanded, brutal and final.
“On me,” she gasped, her words tumbling out in a hot rush. “Mark me. Paint me with it. I want to see it.”
That was all it took. With a ragged shout that was more roar than voice, he came. Thick, white ropes of semen shot from him, striping across his abdomen, her hand, the dark sheets. It seemed endless, each pulse wrenched from him by her clever, demanding fingers. He shook with the force of it, his head thrown back, eyes blind to everything but the catastrophic release.
When it was over, he was hollowed out. Spent.
He slumped forward, bracing his hands on his knees, breathing like he’d run for miles. The room swam back into focus. The smell of sex and salt and her heat was overpowering.
Slowly, he became aware of her. She had pulled her hand back, was staring at his come glistening on her fingers and palm. Her eyes were wide, dark with a stunned hunger. She brought her hand to her face, inhaling deeply, a flutter of her lashes. Then, holding his gaze, she slowly, deliberately, licked a stripe from her palm to her middle finger.
His spent cock gave a painful twitch.
The raw, filthy act shattered the last pretense. The sun broke over the hills, flooding the room with uncompromising light, illuminating the evidence of his loss of control on her skin, on the sheets, between them.
Hermione looked from her clean hand to his face. Her expression wasn’t triumphant. It was something else—awed, terrified, and fiercely, hopelessly aware.
The heat in the room spiked, a palpable wave rolling off her. Her next breath was a shaky inhalation. The cycle was turning, climbing toward its peak. The respite was over.
They were out of time.