Draco froze when her lips touched his, and she thought he might just shove her away. She felt his hand on her shoulder and braced herself as she deepened the kiss and tightened her grip on his clothes.
He wavered.
It was like something broke inside of him. Like a dam bursting, and suddenly Hermione was drowning in him.
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her savagely.
The heat was like wildfire.
The tension, the waiting. Months of expecting him to move on her. After being told it was why she was sent, a maiden tribute for his services.
But it had been a ruse on his part. Touching her, kissing her, “wanting” her. A feint to conceal his true intentions and motive. Demanding her had been the same form of misdirection that he'd taught her to use in occlumency.
A lie—
Until it suddenly wasn't.
She'd shifted herself in his estimation. Manipulated her way into occupying the very place he'd pretended she held.
She slid her fingers across his shoulders. One of his hands gripped her hair, tugging at the braids, while his other hand reached down and wrenched her shirt open, shoving her bra out of the way. He palmed her breasts hard enough to make her hiss against his mouth.
She kissed him deeply as her fingers slid through his hair and along the tendons of his neck. She dragged her nails across the top of his shoulders.
Despite how cold he acted, his name was apt; he was a dragon. He kept walls of ice around himself, but there was fire in his heart.
They tore each other's clothes off. His shirt lost several buttons as she ripped it open and then bit down on his shoulder. Feeling him, marking him. His body was familiar to her. She had already memorised its contours.
He dragged his hands up her body, along the curves he'd laughed at and dismissed as scrawny. He kissed across her breasts and tangled his fingers in her braids, pulling her hair until she whimpered and tilted her head back.
His mouth was at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, and he kissed and nipped along her collarbone until he reached a point where she moaned gutturally and arched against him.
It was fast. Harsh. It wasn't a romance between them, but the collision of two opposing forces.
He pushed her legs apart and sank into her with a single, hard thrust. Then he paused and kissed her before he started to move.
Hermione bit back a cry of pain and forced herself not to stiffen or pull away.
It hurt.
She had known it might, if not done slowly. But the pain still caught her off guard. The abruptness of it.
Perhaps he'd assumed there had been others before him.
She was glad it hurt. She was whoring herself for the war. She had seduced Draco after he'd made it abundantly clear it was a line he didn't want crossed. She'd manipulated him because she wanted something from him.
It should hurt her physically to do it, the same way it hurt her mentally.
He was so much bigger his frame practically enveloped her. His hands were tangled in her hair so tightly she could barely even twitch her head as he met her eyes and moved inside of her.
His jaw was tensed. His expression shielded the way it almost always was. That hard flat line of his mouth.
But his eyes… the intensity in them as he looked at her was searing. In that expression, she could tell—
He was hers.
The realisation broke her heart somewhat.
She forced herself not to show any signs of discomfort. She moved her hips to meet his movement and clenched around him as she dragged her fingernails across his back. She locked her feet below his hips to drive him further in.
He hissed and dropped his head against her shoulder as he thrust deep inside of her. The angle of his movement, the intensity between them wasn't just his — she whimpered and gasped near his ear.
His pace faltered slightly, and he lifted his head. He slid his hands out of her hair, caught hold of her hands and entwined their fingers. He kissed her. Soul-searing kisses that made her chest hurt as she returned them.
He shifted his pace. Slower. The angle was different, the way their pelvises met as he pushed into her, and Hermione realised with alarm that it was tearing her sense of control away from her. Dragging her upward into fire she didn't know how to escape from or rein in.
Draco was kissing her. Hot. Bruising. Almost punishing kisses, as he gripped her hands and kept driving into her. The pain had dulled to a fainter throb amid the fire of sensation that laced its way through her nerves.
Several more, hard, deep strokes, then Draco's hips jerked, and he gave a deep moan and dropped his head down next to hers. His breath dragged across her skin as he panted near her ear and kissed her shoulder.
Hermione lay still beneath him. She was suddenly aware of the rough floorboards biting into her skin. That the room was cold.
The only thing she could think of was how relieved she was that she hadn't come.