Chapter 8: The Breaking Point
The silence was a living thing, thick and humid. Harry lay perfectly still, the rough weave of his borrowed blanket scratching against his knuckles. His eyes were fixed on the slice of pale, freckled skin revealed by Ginny’s twisted vest. The curve there was maddening, a promise of the whole shape he craved to see. With every slow breath she took, that fabric shifted a millimeter, the shadow beneath it deepening.
From the other bed, Hermione’s gaze was a physical weight on the side of his face. He could feel her watching him watch Ginny. His own arousal was a tight, insistent ache, pressed uncomfortably against the fly of his jeans. The denim felt like sandpaper. The more he tried to ignore it, to think of anything else—Quidditch plays, wand movements, Molly’s disapproving frown—the more potent the throbbing became. It was centered there, but it flooded his whole body with a restless, humming heat.
A bead of sweat traced a path from his temple into his hairline. He was burning up.
His hand, almost of its own volition, slid from his stomach down to the button of his jeans. The movement was infinitesimally slow, a test. He flicked his eyes to Ginny. Her chest rose and fell, steady. To Hermione. She hadn’t moved, but her breathing seemed quicker, shallow. He undid the button. The sound was catastrophically loud in the quiet room.
He held his breath. Neither girl stirred.
Emboldened by the pounding of his own heart, he eased the zipper down. The relief was immediate and slight. He slipped his hand inside, under the waistband of his boxers. His own skin was fever-hot. He wrapped his fingers around himself, a jolt of pure sensation shooting through him. He bit the inside of his cheek, hard.
He began to move, his thumb sliding over the slick tip. His eyes, glazed, drifted back to Ginny. The vest. That fucking vest. In his mind, he pulled the twisted fabric down, baring the small, perfect orb of her breast, finally revealing the taut, pink nipple he had imagined a thousand times. His strokes grew more deliberate, a slow, hidden rhythm under the blanket.
A floorboard creaked.
He froze, his hand stilling. Hermione had shifted. She’d turned fully onto her side now, facing him, the sheet pooled at her waist. Her arms were folded under her head, a pose that pushed her breasts together within the white bra. The soft, heavy fullness swelled over the top of the cups, the skin there looking like cream in the dim light. Her eyes were dark pools, fixed unblinkingly on the faint, telltale motion of his blanket.
She knew. She saw. And she didn’t look away.
A choked sound escaped him. He couldn’t stop. Her silent observation, the scholarly intensity of her gaze, poured fuel on the fire. He resumed, his pace quickening, his breath coming in short, silent huffs through his nose. He looked from Hermione’s knowing, heavy-lidded eyes to Ginny’s deceptive sleep.
Ginny sighed, a long, languid sound. She stretched her arms above her head, back arching off the bed. The hem of her vest rode up, exposing the smooth plane of her stomach. Then, as she settled back, she made a show of adjusting the twisted fabric. But her adjustment was all wrong. Instead of fixing it, she tugged the neckline lower, pulling it to the very edge of her left breast.
Harry’s hand stuttered.
He could see the entire, perfect curve now. The small, pert mound was fully exposed from the side, the skin flawless and dotted with faint freckles. And there, at the very apex, just visible where the curve began to tighten, was the faint, darker shadow of her areola. Not the nipple itself, but its territory. The outskirts of the promised land.
“So hot,” Ginny murmured, her voice thick with false sleep. Her eyes were still closed. One hand came up and fanned her chest, her fingers brushing perilously close to the exposed skin. “Can’t stand it.”
Her other hand drifted to the bottom hem of her vest. She gathered the thin cotton in her fist and pulled it up, over her stomach, over her ribs. Cool air washed over her skin. She pulled it higher, revealing the lower slopes of both breasts, the gentle underside curves.
Harry was pumping himself fiercely now, his hips making tiny, frantic jerks against his hand. The blanket was a tangled mess. He was past caring about silence, about being caught. The world had narrowed to the rising tide in his gut and the strip of pale, freckled flesh Ginny was unveiling.
With a final, slow, theatrical yawn, Ginny opened her eyes. They found Harry’s immediately, glinting with triumph and something darker. She held his gaze, a wicked smile playing on her lips as, with infinite slowness, she drew the vest up and over her breasts.
They were there. Suddenly, completely.
Small, yes, but exquisite. High and perky, with perfectly rounded shapes that defied gravity. And her nipples—finally, her nipples—were a pale, dusty pink, erect and pointed in the cool air, centered in tight, coin-sized areolas.
The sight was a detonation.
A raw, guttural sound was torn from Harry’s throat. His back arched off the pallet as his climax ripped through him, violent and utterly beyond his control. Pleasure, white-hot and shameful, coursed through his veins as he spilled over his own fist, stripes of heat soaking into his shirt and the blanket beneath him. He shuddered, wave after wave, his eyes screwed shut but the image of her bare chest burned onto the back of his eyelids.
The throbbing subsided into a sensitive, trembling aftermath. A deep, sickening shame flooded in behind the ecstasy. He lay there, panting, sticky and exposed, unable to open his eyes.
The room was silent again, but the quality of the silence had changed. It was charged, brittle.
He forced his eyes open.
Ginny was still lying there, vest pooled around her neck, her breasts bare and glorious in the lamplight. She wasn’t smiling anymore. She looked… satisfied. Curious. Her gaze was fixed on the damp spot spreading on his blanket.
Then her eyes lifted to his, and she winked.
From the other bed, there was a sharp, indrawn breath. Hermione had pulled her sheet up to her chin, her face pale, her eyes wide with a mixture of shock, fascination, and something that looked like envy. She stared at Ginny’s naked chest, then at Harry’s wrecked form, before turning abruptly to face the wall.
Ginny slowly, casually, pulled her vest back down. She rolled onto her side, presenting her back to the room, as if nothing of consequence had occurred.
Harry lay in the ruin of his own desire, the cooling stickiness a brutal testament to what had just happened. The scent of sex and salt hung in the air, mingling with lavender. He had seen what he craved. It had destroyed him. And in the quiet, watching the line of Ginny’s shoulder, knowing Hermione was awake and listening just feet away, he understood the game was far from over. It had only just begun.