Chapter 2: Phantom Lover, Forgotten Eyes
Hermione did not dream that night. She lay rigid on her back, staring at the ceiling, her mind a battlefield where logic skirmished with a creeping, primal fear. The lead-lined box sat on her kitchen table, a silent accusation. She’d checked it after work. Just fragments of silvered glass, cold to the touch, humming with a faint, discordant magic that made her teeth ache.
Sleep, when it finally ambushed her just before dawn, was not a respite. It was an invasion.
It began not with hands, but with a presence. A weight settling on the edge of her mattress. The scent of sandalwood and cool night air cutting through the lavender in her room. She couldn’t move. Sleep paralysis, her brain supplied, even as her heart thundered.
A shape resolved from the shadows beside her bed. Tall, lean. Platinum hair catching the faint moonlight from the window. He didn’t look at her face. His gaze was a physical thing, trailing down the line of her throat, over the thin cotton of her nightshirt, to the V of her thighs beneath the duvet.
“You’re not here,” she tried to say, but her voice was gone, trapped inside her skull.
“Aren’t I?” His voice was the same low drawl from her office, but stripped of its polished edge. It was raw, intimate. He leaned over her, one hand pressing into the mattress by her head. “You brought me here, Granger. All that delicious, furious energy. It’s a beacon.”
His other hand came up, and the back of his knuckles brushed her cheek. The touch was shockingly real, shockingly cool. She whimpered, a strangled sound.
“Shhh.” His thumb brushed her lower lip. “Don’t fight. It only makes the hunger sharper.”
Then his mouth was on hers. It wasn’t a kiss of seduction; it was a claim. Hard, consuming. She tasted something dark and subtle on his tongue, like spiced wine. A heat, wholly different from the terror freezing her limbs, coiled low in her belly. Her back arched off the bed, a silent plea.
He broke the kiss, his breath cool against her wet lips. “See? You don’t want me to stop.”
His hand slid down her neck, over her collarbone, and cupped her breast through the cotton. His thumb circled her nipple, which tightened instantly, painfully. A bolt of pure, undiluted lust shot through her, burning away the last of the paralysis. She moaned.
“That’s it,” he murmured, his voice a dark caress. He hooked a finger in the neckline of her nightshirt and pulled, the fabric tearing with a soft sigh. The night air hit her skin, and then his mouth was there, hot and wet, sucking her nipple deep. She cried out, her hands flying up to tangle in his hair. It was softer than she’d imagined.
He lavished attention on one breast, then the other, with a devastating, focused cruelty. His teeth grazed the peak, making her gasp, before his tongue soothed the sting. All the while, his hand traveled south, over the flutter of her stomach, to the waistband of her knickers.
He paused, his face buried between her breasts, breathing her in. “You’re soaking,” he growled against her skin. “I can smell it. Sweet and sharp. All for me.”
His fingers dipped beneath the elastic, through the coarse curls, and found her slit. She was drenched. He groaned, a sound of genuine hunger. “Fuck, Hermione.”
The use of her first name, here, in this vile, beautiful dream, shattered something. She was floating, anchored only by his touch.
He pushed her thighs apart with his own, settling between them. The hard line of his erection pressed against her through his trousers and her damp cotton. He rubbed himself against her, a slow, maddening grind. She was bucking against him, seeking friction, mindless.
“Please,” she begged, not knowing what she was asking for.
He yanked her knickers down her legs, the cotton dragging. Then his hands were on her knees, pushing them wider, exposing her completely. The cool air hit her wet folds. She was obscenely open.
Draco Malfoy looked down at her, his silver eyes burning with a feverish light. There was no smirk now. His face was a mask of stark, predatory need.
“Look at you,” he breathed. “All that brilliant mind, undone. For this.”
He didn’t bother with foreplay. He freed his cock from his trousers—thick, flushed, veined—and notched the head at her entrance. He held her gaze.
“This is what you’re dreaming of,” he stated, and drove into her in one brutal, searing stroke.
She screamed. It was a full, ragged sound of pleasure-pain, of being filled beyond capacity. He was everywhere, stretching her, burning her. He didn’t move for a long moment, letting her feel every inch of him lodged inside her. His eyes were locked on hers, watching her pupils blow wide with shock and sensation.
Then he withdrew, almost all the way, and slammed back in.
“Oh god,” she sobbed, her nails digging into his shoulders.
“No god here,” he panted, setting a relentless, deep rhythm. “Just you. And me. And this.”
Each thrust was a punctuation mark, nailing her to the bed. He fucked her with a single-minded intensity that felt less like passion and more like a ritual. He was feeding, she realized distantly. He was taking something. But the sensation—the raw, animal friction, the way his pelvis ground against her clit with every pound—was building a pressure inside her that threatened to crack the world.
His pace grew ragged. He bent his head, his lips at her ear. His words were guttural, filthy. “You take my cock so well, you perfect cunt. So tight and wet for me. Going to milk me dry? Going to come all over my fucking shaft?”
She was babbling, nonsense, yes, please, more, don’t stop. Her climax gathered, a tidal wave swelling in the dark pit of her belly.
He changed his angle, and it was like a switch flipped. Pleasure, white-hot and blinding, erupted from her core. She convulsed around him, a silent scream tearing from her throat as wave after wave shattered her.
Her spasms triggered his own. With a ragged curse, he buried himself to the hilt, his body seizing. She felt the hot, intimate pulse of his release filling her. He collapsed onto her, his weight solid and real, his face buried in her neck. They were both slick with sweat, breathing in shattered gasps.
Slowly, the world seeped back in. The feel of the damp sheets. The late-night silence of her flat. The steady tick of the clock.
He pushed himself up on his elbows, looking down at her. The feverish light in his eyes had dimmed, replaced by a hollow, pained regret. He withdrew from her body, a sudden, awful emptiness. He gently disentangled himself and stood, fastening his trousers with unsteady hands.
Hermione could only watch, limp, boneless, violated and worshipped.
“The dreams will get worse,” he said, his voice now flat, drained. “The line is blurring. I can’t… I can’t stay away from you anymore.”
He turned and walked toward her bedroom door, which was still closed. He didn’t open it. He simply faded into the deeper shadow beside it, and was gone.
Hermione jolted upright in bed, a scream clawing its way up her throat.
She was alone. The room was painted in the pale, innocent light of early morning. Her nightshirt was intact. Her knickers were on.
She scrambled from the bed, her legs giving way, sending her crashing to her knees on the hardwood. She crawled to the door, touched the solid wood. Closed. Locked from the inside.
A trembling hand moved between her legs. She was dry. Untouched.
But as she clutched her chest, trying to still her galloping heart, she felt them. Two tender, aching bruises on her breasts, hidden beneath the cotton. And when she dragged herself back to the tousled bed, she saw it. A single, faint stain on the sheets. Not the usual phantom sweat.
This stain was pearlescent, slick, and it smelled distinctly, unmistakably, of sandalwood and sex.