Part 2

"What would you like?" she whispered, raising her lips to his ear. "How do you want me?"

He lifted the bedclothes back and sat up. Slide down to the floor by the side of the bed... and then on your knees, my dear, he said.

She obeyed without question and with eagerness, sliding to her knees, listening to the rustle of sheets as he came closer and bent over her. Her right hand found first one knee then the other, and then she tasted silky flesh presented to her lips. "May I... ask something first?" she quavered.

"Yes, of course, what is it?" His fingertips stroked her cheek.

"I've... never done this before, and I want it to be so good, for you. Would you... teach me how you like it?" she asked in the coyest, most breathless voice she could, doing her best to incite him further. She had no idea where all these wanton courtesan's wiles were coming from, but here, they felt natural, thrilling and taboo. She put up her hand, lightly stroked the cock offered to her mouth, then softly and experimentally drew her tongue over its cloven tip, and felt a long shiver go through him. Then she rounded her lips, took him deeper into her mouth; his breath caught in a long, husky sigh.

He brought her hand up to clasp the base of his cock, and his hand closed around hers, showing her the way he wanted her to grip it, tighter than she would have thought. His trembling hand curved around the back of her neck – To start... just keep... doing that for awhile, start lightly, then more strongly... yes... oh yes, just keep doing... that...

She heard his nails curling against the bed sheets, his breath coming in shallow gasps. There really didn't seem as though there was too much of an art to pleasing him in this manner, other than keeping her hand tight around the base of his cock, taking as much of it as she could in the in-stroke, and keeping her lips snug in the outslide. The feel of sucking him into her mouth was making her shiver in other places too, her nipples hardening and clit stiffening in sympathy.

You're really enjoying this, aren't you, he whispered, with a subtle thrill in his voice at the very idea, and she could only moan around him in answer, which provoked another deep sigh. Then I want you to touch yourself, with your other hand...

Had there been even the dimmest light in that room, or had this man even the slightest inkling of her name or anything of her real life, she would have been humiliated and ashamed beyond belief in such a situation, but here, with him, she could do anything, and enjoy anything. She sighed with relief as her fingers slid into the heat between her thighs, her fingertips massaging her clit as she continued to draw him rhythmically into her mouth. The pleasure only added to her excitement, her arousal feeding his, as the closer she came to orgasm, the more voraciously she drew on him and the harder he became. Finally, the tension crested, her hips jerking in the air with climax, and with a low moan of release muffled by her mouthful of his flesh.

Once the spasms began to subside, she wrapped her other hand, still slick with her own fluids, around the base of his cock – All right, darling, your turn – her jaw had begun to ache slightly, but she didn't care, didn't want to stop, was enjoying this too much, his trembling and ragged moans – it all felt so filthy and animalistic and so damn damn good. She was his slave, but he was at her mercy.

You... had best stop now, he gasped. Letting her know what was imminent if she continued, and too much of a gentleman to presume she wished to go that far – but she only groaned, fastened on him tighter, quickening her pace. No, she wanted him, all of him –

His breath seemed to hush for a second as his muscles tensed, and then he let out a long, heartfelt moan as she brought him to orgasm, heat filling the back of her throat. She clung to him to the last spasm, the last drop, until his spent organ slipped from her hands and lips and they both gasped, exhausted.

You... shameless, beautiful, luscious... he breathed. His voice trailed off; apparently he could think of no word superlative enough to describe her at that moment. He was shaking; his hand trembling on her hair. "Nothing can be this good – I have to have dreamed you into existence, there's no other explanation for it."

She laughed softly, laid her hand over his and brought it to her lips, then put an open-mouthed kiss on his palm. "And the night's not over yet," she said wickedly and licked his knee. "Master."

"So it isn't." He stood, whisked her back up into bed and into his arms. "Come to bed, slave girl. Master hasn't even begun to force his depraved desires upon you."

Oh, good, she breathed.

He sprawled her on her back with a single deft movement – On your back, wench. Reach up and take hold of the headboard, he commanded. Stay like that... don't move. Now, spread your legs, he whispered.

She did, lying back and opening herself to the darkness. He kissed his way down her belly and nuzzled between her thighs, and then she nearly passed out when he got his tongue where he wanted it. That was the first time she had ever had a man go down on her, and the first time she had ever moaned aloud involuntarily. She might have been self-conscious with anyone else, but now she was completely frozen on his tongue, couldn't have even begun to think of anything other than what he was doing. An article that she had recently edited had stated that the female clitoris has the highest concentration of nerve endings anywhere in the human body – and it seemed as though that velvety tongue was finding every one of them. Her body was a thrumming circuit between voice and clit, every stroke of his tongue drawing little cries from her. One particularly eloquent circling caress drew a sharp, high-pitched gasp out of her, so loud that she grabbed a pillow and bit down into it, lest they be overheard.

No, I want to hear you, he said, reaching up and pulling the pillow away from her. Scream for me.

Yes, my love, she sighed. Oh please, please don't stop...

He groaned, and fell to devouring her again – he seemed to thoroughly enjoy this, almost as much as she did. She felt his fingertips delicately penetrating her, the smallest flickering caress just inside the opening, and then each shock of pleasure came faster, one overlapping the other, until they all coalesced, and she nearly tore the sheets from the bed. She didn't have to remember to scream for him; the credit for all the wild maenad's shrieking going on in that room went entirely to him.

Then she was being gathered up into his arms, shaking and boneless, and she could taste herself on his mouth when he kissed her. Was that nice? he asked. She could only huddle against him and whimper in answer.

Now, since you've been well lessoned on how a slave pleasures her lover with her mouth... His fingers curved around the back of her neck, pushed her head downward, slotted his stiffening sex back into her mouth, so that she was crouching on all fours beside him, naked and compliant. A second later, she gasped as she felt his hand impact with her arse cheek, a light, but stinging spank printing heat on her skin. His hand tensed in her hair, holding her head firmly in place. Don't you dare stop, he warned.

But now she couldn't have stopped if she tried. The swats came regularly after that, thickly covering her flesh with heat that seemed to drive directly between her legs like fire. She drew on him more and more ravenously as the arousal built within her, something primal and atavistic set loose – she was a submissive creature appeasing the dominant male with a show of eager sexual receptivity, and it felt profane, delicious, natural.

Her supplications met with his approval; the spanking faltered, distracted by the pleasure her mouth was affording him. Then he simply threw her down on her back and sheathed himself deep in her shuddering body an instant later, pounding her mercilessly into the bed. All the sensations seemed to coalesce at once – his lips devouring her neck while grinding himself into her painfully aroused body and sore clit, the friction of the velvet comforter on her warm, spanked arse, the suspense and delicious fear at abandoning herself to this harsh, but infinitely trustworthy master – so that by the time he couldn't hold back any longer from just taking her, she was so primed for him that he drove her to orgasm with a few hard strokes. For a few seconds, she was obliterated – and then it was subsiding, warmth spilling from his body into hers, his body collapsing heavily over her. She had been so caught up that she hadn't noticed the spasms of her own release had brought his on as well. He was breathing hard, spent, his lips brushing over her temple – and she could only whimper in return.

His damp cheek nestled against hers. I've died, and been judged worthy of heaven, he whispered.

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That Monday, she received an owl from her lover –

My Dear Nubile Slave Girl ~

Next Saturday, I hereby order you to meet me at the same place at the same time, and then proceed to have as many orgasms as I can afford you until we both keel over from exhaustion.

Yours,

The Master

She laughed deliciously – oh, he was adorable, just charming. She had no idea why any woman would ever have stood this man up for a date. And by all the gods, he was amazing in bed, and such a wit as well. She smiled dreamily, drawing his letter over her lips.

However, that Wednesday, she received another owl, this one from her sister. After some nine months and ten days of pregnancy, her sister's doctors had finally decided to induce labour – and she had promised to be present at the birth with her brother-in-law.

Birth was supposed to be beautiful, wonderful, a gift from the gods – instead her sister thrashed, moaned, and sweated for seven hours, as they waited for her cervix to dilate sufficiently to deliver the child. Finally, as the contractions grew stronger and her sister's moaning turned into agonised shrieks of pain, the doctors told her she was not dilating fast enough, and that vaginal childbirth was no longer an option. An emergency Caesarean section had to be performed. An epidural was swiftly administered and incisions were made as her sister clung to her husband's hands. Then, from behind the white curtains, there came a tearing sound – exactly like heavy cloth violently ripping. Not long after came the cry of a newborn baby.

As the purplish, bloody child was laid in the arms of the new parents, she staggered toward one of the medical waste containers in a corner of the room and quietly voided the contents of her stomach into it, so demurely that no one ever heard her in the upheaval following the birth. She shamefacedly took one of the nurses aside and told her about the mess sometime later.

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Her sister brought her new baby daughter home that Saturday morning. Their entire family and several close family friends were present for the joyous homecoming, a party celebrated with much feasting and revelry.

She was expected to help with the cooking and look after her sister's two-year-old son while the grandparents and new father spent the evening hovering over the recovering mother and tiny, fragile, downy-cheeked new addition to the family. As evening came on with no end to the party in sight, she reluctantly opened her notebook and penned a letter:

My Dear One

Elysium Hotel

Room 511

Sixth Floor Window

Diagon Alley

London

Darling –

I'm sorry, I can't make it this weekend. I would have sent this sooner but I don't have an address for you.

My sister gave birth on Thursday and brought the baby home this morning, so my whole family is here making a tremendous fuss, and I just can't get away. If I had my way though, I'd be after you like the brazenest of hussies (or best-trained of slave girls) right now. I'll miss you terribly this weekend.

Please see me next Saturday? Please, I beg of you?

~ Yours,

She Who Dearly Hopes She Is Still Dear To You

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She got to work that Monday in an agony of nervousness, but the moment she came into her office, she heard the welcome sound of a little post owl scratching at her window:

Dear She Who Is Of Course Still Dear to Me,

I wouldn't expect to take priority over a new birth in the family. My best wishes to your sister and new niece or nephew.

In the future, you can send correspondence for me to:

Post Office Box 9µ7Ž

Hogsmeade Village

Scotland

I check my mail a few times a week, so that will reach me more quickly.

I do hope we're on for next week though, same time, same place?

Yours,

One Who Missed His Dear One This Week

Oh yes, he understood. My best wishes to your sister and new niece or nephew – what a darling. She sighed, pressing his letter to her heart, and quickly penned a reply.

Dear One Who Won't Be Disappointed Again,

Thanks for understanding, and I can't wait for this Saturday, love. I missed you too this week, probably rather excessively – I promise I'll show you how much next time.

~ Your Dear

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She was so eager to see him the next week that she nearly ran through the hotel lobby toward the safety of their room. As usual, the desk clerk was so deeply absorbed in his newspaper that he never looked up at all.

Once in their room, she ecstatically threw herself into bed and his arms. "Oh, there you are. I missed you so much, and I'm really sorry about last week," she said, kissing him fervently. "My whole family was there and they expected me to stay and help out. She's already got a two-year-old boy and the birth was a really difficult one, so I was minding my nephew while everyone else looked after my sister and the newborn – "

"Please, don't apologise," he said, kissing her back. "Do you have a new niece, or nephew?"

"A niece this time. My sister and brother-in-law wanted a boy and a girl, so the family's very happy."

"Good, good," he said softly. "How is the child? Healthy, I hope?"

"The picture of health, the doctor said. She weighed nine pounds, already had a full head of hair."

"Excellent. But I do hope you'll forgive me if I don't send the usual note of congratulations." His tone was so droll that she fell against his shoulder laughing.

"My goodness, I can only imagine such a note arriving – Dear Sister, My best wishes on your new arrival. You don't know me, but I am the bloke who seduced your sister six weeks ago, and we have been having a marvellous time since – "

"I seduced you?" he interjected incredulously. "Oh come, my dear, you were the seducer that night. I merely complied with your wishes – "

"Oh, come off it! I only said I was going outside to get some air – "

"That may have been what you said, but your tone and attitude said, Come outside and give me the ravishing of a lifetime."

She laughed again, harder. Oh, he was such a wit, this fellow. "You make me sound like some sort of scarlet woman," she scoffed.

"I've got news for you, my dear, nothing you've done of late contradicts that description. But don't worry, I'll never tell anyone."

"Thanks, you're most kind," she said, kissing him. The unsettling nausea of the birth seemed very far away as she held him, was held by him. "She asked me to be present at the birth, but now I wish I'd found some way to get out of it. It was awful. Don't ever get pregnant, darling, it looks like a very unpleasant business."

He laughed softly. "I'll try not to," he replied. "How bad was it?"

"Horrible," she replied fervently. "It looked like the most painful thing I've ever seen, I was crying and aching just watching her going through it. Seriously, I was sick in a wastebasket, I'm not kidding."

"That bad, really?" he asked, sounding concerned.

"Well, it was a C-section... just... uhhh." She gave an almighty shudder recalling it. "I've no idea why women do that, other than they have to. I'm really not looking forward to when I have to do it. I think I'll put it off till I'm a hundred or so."

"To when you have to do it?" he asked, mimicking the seriousness of her tone. "Someone is forcing you to have his children? Is that legal?"

"No, of course not, silly. I just, you know. One day I'll have to get married and have children." She shrugged.

"Why?" he asked.

"I don't know. Everyone I've met plans on getting married and having children eventually," she said.

He coughed delicately. "Er... not everyone you know. I'm forty-four and I've done neither."

"You've never been married?" she asked, surprised. "Really?"

"What, you assumed I'm meeting you like this because I'm in a dysfunctional marriage of some sort?" he asked wryly.

"No, no, not at all, I just thought... I thought you must be having this affair because, well, something had ended, and circumstances made you a bit reckless afterward. There's no shame in having a relationship that didn't work out," she assured him quickly. "I just... everyone I know in their forties who isn't married is divorced, is all, and recently divorced men will sometimes go a little wild, and... "

"And do things like have wild lusty affairs with younger women?" His hand stroked down her thigh.

"Well... you know." She was blushing horribly – that was exactly what she had assumed he was doing. "I'm... just going to shut up now before I put my foot in my mouth again. Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you."

"No, I'm not recently divorced," he said softly. "I've never been married."

"Well, you know, I thought you might have just broken up with someone who hurt you," she murmured. "You just seemed... "

"Angry?" he asked.

"Lonesome, I was going to say." She put her arms fondly around his neck, brushed her lips over his cheek. "And very, very randy."

"Well... I'd not been with a woman for rather a long time," he said, relaxing into her embrace. "And I'd missed it. I don't think I realised quite how much I'd missed it until a certain little minx in satin knickers decided to kiss me."

"I don't think I realised how randy I've ever been until you first kissed me." Her hands went to the buttons of his shirt.

He only sighed in answer.

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"So you'd never gone down on a man before the other night," he said, when they had both put their clothes aside and were lying naked in each other's arms, the preliminary for what they both knew would come next. "Did you like it?"

"Yes, it was nice. Very sensual. And I really liked how much you liked it."

"I'm... " He sighed again. "... partial to that, I have to admit."

"Most men probably are," she said, chuckling.

"After the day I'd had at work, you can't imagine how good that felt. My work can be a bit stressful, so to then go from a tremendously frustrating situation to a dark bedroom, with a young lady whispering I want to be your slave into my ear was... exhilarating." He stretched luxuriously. She could almost see his shameless smirk in the darkness.

"Would you like to do that again sometime?" she asked saucily, then bent down and licked his shoulder.

He shivered. As often as you like, my sweet, came the silken reply.

"What was the problem at work?" she asked. She slid around behind him, brushed his hair away from his neck, and began massaging his shoulders. He leaned back into her hands.

"I have more than twenty years' experience as a wrangler of stupid people," he said, absolutely deadpan. "I have taken as my life's work the unenviable task of keeping a mob of lumpen imbeciles from killing themselves with their own ignorance – which is often a task even Sisyphus would find daunting. Really, sometimes I think I'd rather endlessly push a rock up a hill in Hell than face another day of my chosen vocation."

She laughed and laughed. "You poor dear," she said, leaning forward to kiss his cheek. "I'm so glad I made your day better. So what's going on with the frustrating situation? The lumpen imbeciles are rioting?" His shoulders were so tight – the work tension must be driving him half-mad. Ah well, he seemed to really be enjoying the massage.

"Something like that," he replied. "Don't worry though – it's just a mountain of bureaucratic nonsense, and I couldn't imagine how it would interest you. It doesn't interest me, and I'm in the thick of it." He stretched under her hands. "You're marvellous at this, by the way."

She laughed. "Thanks. You could tell me about the work situation," she offered. "If you like, if you feel like venting. I don't care if it's sort of tiresome."

"Perhaps later," he replied. "Right now, just the fact that you offered is enough. What I would really like – " he turned toward her, stroked a forefinger over her lower lip, then into her mouth, "is a bit more of your own special way of bettering my day."

As often as you like, my sweet, she crooned, then slithered down his body to put a lingering kiss on his neck, her hand slipping under the blankets to his rapidly stiffening cock.

She had never had oral sex with a man before him, but he made it so enjoyable that she had begun to crave it during their week apart as much as she craved his kisses, the touch of his cock and his mouth – now, it would be a long time before she went away without giving him his weekly dose. It was intoxicating to see this worldly, cynical sensualist reduced to a quivering heap after she drained an orgasm from him. Now, he seemed to enjoy her enthusiasm for it almost as much as he did the pleasure itself – something in her adored this submission, this carnal servility, and she liked to let him know it. Before long, she would discover that she could make his heart rate spike upward simply by drawing his fingertip into her mouth, or putting a little crooning kiss anywhere south of his neck.

"That mouth is becoming a wanton. I'm almost worried by its behaviour," he murmured.

"You just taste good," she whispered, outlining one of his nipples with her tongue, then tracing her way southerly. She bent her head over him, trailing her long hair over his stomach and thighs in that manner she knew he liked, and took his upraised tip into her mouth. He moaned and threw his head back on the pillow. It went on for a long, voluptuous, dreamlike time; the fingers of his hand fanned through her hair, cradling the back of her skull and drawing her lips down onto him in the rhythm he wanted.

She raised her head after a time, stroking him gently with her hand, and whispered: You want to know if I enjoyed the other night? I'll tell you – I loved it. I still can't stop dreaming about it, about you. I want to be your pet, curled up in your lap, rubbing myself against you and purring when you stroke me, with "Property Of" on my collar. I love everything you do to me.

Do you, he whispered, and she could hear the thrill quavering in his voice, his body. She started to lower her head back into his lap, but instead he moved her onto her back, with one lithe movement, and covered her body with his own. Her ministrations had aroused him to a state of rigidity roughly akin to that of a hornbeam wand. They moved smoothly against each other now, each knowing the other's rhythms, what he wanted, what she wanted.

So I was the first man to use your mouth, was I? came the insinuating, silken voice in her ear. Oh, that voice... she could come just from listening to him whisper adoring filth in her ears.

Yes, she confided. You were the first man to go down on me, too...

"I'm not... I'm not your first lover, am I?" he asked, suddenly concerned. "That time in the alley... wasn't your first, was it?"

"No. No, but I wish I'd been a virgin for you," she gasped, surging shamelessly up onto him, as her muscles sealed tight on the cruel, silken instrument of her pleasure. "I wish you had been my first."

I wish I had been too, he groaned. I would have shown you no mercy. And then I would have soothed you with my tongue.

He had no way of knowing how anticlimactic and awkward her first experience of lovemaking had been – she had not experienced any real pleasure from it, largely because the seventeen-year-old boy she had been with had been far from a confident or skilled lover; he had come perhaps a minute after he had penetrated her, just as she had begun to enjoy it. Now she imagined that summer night, on vacation with her family and her then-boyfriend... only instead of her boyfriend, she had met this tall, dark, velvet-voiced stranger in a club... and he took her back to some nameless hotel and took her virginity instead... these deft hands would have undressed her, spread her legs, and then sheathed this cock deep in her achingly hot teenage body, her maidenhead nothing but a momentary obstacle... he would have taken her hard, hungrily, yet so patiently, just like he was now... oh yes... that voracious mouth between her legs next...

The very thought was enough to bring on a gasping, pleading, drowning orgasm; and the sound and feel of her climaxing beneath him drove her lover into his own poignant ecstasies. She moaned hoarsely, grinding herself hard against him.

Bloody hell, what have I done to deserve this, he gasped, and then his tongue was lost in her mouth again.

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They had begun this mad little affair in spring, and in no time at all, it was autumn, leaves falling from the trees. She was surprised one night to hear her sister say that her nephew was thirty months old, when it seemed that he had just turned two yesterday. Her new little niece could now hold her head up by herself and had developed a smile and an impish little laugh.

She herself had had her twenty-fifth birthday in early July, received a favourable work review and a small raise in September. She had been on four or five first dates with potentially suitable boys, and gone to several birthday and anniversary parties and quite a few weddings that summer, where her parents pressed her to make the acquaintance of even more young men, none of whom had ever gotten a second date, or a second kiss.

The trysts with her unknown lover had continued almost every Saturday – and gradually, they began to spend less time making love, and more time holding each other and talking. The sex, however, remained blissfully hot – he may have been twenty years older than she was, but he was magnificent. And what he said was oftentimes as thrilling as the actual lovemaking... like the time he had whispered Oh you – I spend all week longing for you, did you know that? during a long, slow rainy night in bed.

"So does anyone ever ask about where you disappear to on Saturday evenings?" he asked one night in mid-October, while they were lazily coiled around each other after making love.

"No, I have my own apartment near work and no one monitors what I do that closely, but now and then my parents want me to go to some party with them on Saturday nights and I have to find a way to beg off. I told my mother I'm taking a class and don't want to miss the sessions. I even had a little bit of a tiff with my mother over my refusal to compromise my Saturdays the other night," she said, with a little laugh.

"Oh, another family obligation?"

"Sort of, just a boy my parents wanted me to meet," she said, shaking her head.

"A boy your parents wanted you to meet?" he asked curiously.

"Well... in Indian families, some people still arrange marriages, or more often here in England, they actively try to help people get into marriages. Families and friends play matchmaker a lot of the time. It's great when someone makes a love match, you know, just goes out and finds someone suitable without any help, but that's not the only way to go about things for us. I mean, it's not the way it used to be with royalty in the Middle Ages here in England, where you don't get any input at all and don't know who you're marrying until a few days beforehand – it's more like, the girl asks her parents to help arrange matters for her and introduce her to suitable boys. Or at least it is with the families I know."

Her lover gave a brief, somewhat disbelieving laugh. "Do forgive me, but the idea of arranging a marriage in this day and age is a bit old-fashioned even for me."

"Oh come on – it's not as strange as all that. Your employer set you up on that blind date, and you went to it," she protested. "Can't you try to understand it?"

"Well... " he sighed. "That came about for several different reasons. He told me that the young lady in question was quite beautiful and intelligent, which was intriguing, because most women I know are either one or the other, or neither. Present company excepted, of course," he added, with a little kiss on the side of her face. "My employer has also always been fond of me, for some insane reason I'll never fathom, and I respected the idea that this was his way of trying to look after me. In addition, he has some excellent blackmail material on me as well, so I'm more inclined to humour these little notions of his than not."

She laughed. "Excellent blackmail material on you? What, did you rob Gringotts in your wild youth?"

He laughed a bit, too. "Don't trouble yourself about it, it's all ancient history. So the reasoning followed that I might get a pleasant conversation, and a look at an attractive woman, and make my employer feel virtuous, so I went along with it. Somehow to refuse would have been... unsporting."

"And then you ended up with me," she teased. "Sorry if I'm not exactly despondent that she didn't turn up."

"Oh believe me, neither am I," he replied, kissing her indulgently.

"Well, my date of that evening didn't go much better than yours did – I was there with a boy my parents thought was suitable marriage material, but I didn't like him at all. I'm quite behind the curve as far as getting them a son-in-law and grandchildren," she said ruefully.

"At all of twenty-four? That's absurd. And it's so odd to me, the way you keep saying you have to get married and have children, even though you seem about as enthusiastic about it as I would be for a meal of dirt," he said drolly, making her laugh.

"Well, you know, it's one of those things one does," she replied.

"Why?" he asked.

"Well... " She thought about it. "There's my family to be considered. My parents want me to get married. And... children are important, to my community. They're considered to be a blessing."

"Do you consider them a blessing?"

The question caught her off guard – did she? Truthfully, she had always assumed that she would have children – so much so that it had never occurred to her to examine what her attitudes were about them at all.

"And I do hope your community is doing something for you that justifies this sort of totally selfless devotion," he muttered.

"Well... you know, there aren't a whole lot of Indian witches and wizards in England."

He coughed tactfully. "Ah... do forgive me, but the whole notion of having a child just to give the world one more face in the same hue as your own doesn't strike me as an overly compelling one. Perhaps I'm being a bit callous, seeing as how I am in fact a member of the predominant race in England, but to make such a personal decision based on what's best for a community just doesn't sit right with me somehow. Is your community going to come and sit with the child if he or she has croup?"

"My mother might do something like that," she protested.

"Of course – but then, she might not." The pillow rustled as he propped himself up on one elbow. "Honestly, do you want a husband and child? Do you lie awake at night dreaming of holding a child to your breast and hearing an infant voice calling you Mother? If you do, I'll say no more about it."

"Well... " The truth was – she didn't and never had, and now her face flushed hotly. "I doubt if every woman who's now being called Mother ends up there because she dreamed all her life of being a mother. Sometimes things like that just happen, and the parents make the best of it."

He gave a short, curt laugh. "Oh come – you strike me very much as a woman who knows what she wants and how to get it, if the way you behave with me is any indication. How can you just happen into a wedding and a child?"

She was silent, embarrassed; feeling very much like a little girl who has been caught unprepared in class. "As always, you have a gift for leaving me speechless," she said, a little tartly.

Her lover kissed her forehead, and she softened. "To be honest, the reason I'm so doggedly playing devil's advocate on this issue, my dear, is because I know quite intimately what it is to be the child of people who reproduced because it was expected of married couples in their community, and who didn't have much idea as to what to do with their son once he arrived," he said quietly. "Believe me, it is a lonely existence."

Her arms tightened tenderly around him. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

He shrugged. "It was a long time ago, and I've had decades to get over it. But I would hope, for the sake of your potential child, that you would give birth to him or her because you desperately wanted a child to love and raise and care for, not because you're expected to fulfil some community status quo that has little, if any, meaning to you. I know from bitter experience what it is to wake up one morning, and find myself in an intolerable situation, with very little idea of how I ever got there in the first place – and I wouldn't wish that kind of thing on my last surviving enemy." He breathed a deep sigh and held her closer, as though to remind himself that she was at that moment safe and well.

She lowered her head onto his shoulder. "I see what you mean."

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He was a brooder, she knew that, but the rains of autumn brought out a melancholy in him. More and more often, as October drew to a close, he just wanted to be held, to lie in her arms, and listen to the rain outside. Hallowe'en fell on the last Saturday of October that year, and she had declined an invitation to a Hallowe'en party so that she could be with him. Somehow, she would rather hold him than do just about anything.

He sighed deeply when she slid into bed and wrapped herself around him; something in his attitude let her know that he had felt a great deal of strain that week, and the only solace he had from it was to be with her.

"You're sad again," she said, resting her cheek on the back of his neck. "You've been brooding about something all this month. What is it? What's troubling you, love? Work giving you a hard time again?"

"No, not really. It's just... a great deal of unfinished business with various dead people," he said, with a bitter little laugh. "Nothing you need to worry about."

"It's all right if you want to talk about it," she whispered, stroking his shoulder. "I love when you talk to me."

His hand slid into hers, fingers interlacing. "Well... something happened, some time ago," he said softly. "Have you ever read Anna Karenina?"

"Yes, the summer before my seventh year at Hogwarts," she said.

He paused a long moment before continuing. "Do you recall the chapter where Anna gets incredibly sick with fever, and nearly dies?"

"Yes, I do," she said. "That was the first time a book had ever made me cry."

"So while Anna is lying in bed and everyone thinks she's dying, she has peacefully accepted her fate. She reconciles with her abandoned husband, and helps him to forgive Vronsky, her lover. All sins are forgiven. But then Anna regains her strength, and gets well, only to throw herself under a train later, when she thinks Vronsky no longer loves her. Tolstoy says that in the end, it might have been a great deal better for everyone involved if she had died during that fever.

"I've begun to feel the same way about myself. It would have been better if I had died, really, back when things were worst, found some spectacular way to give my life for the good of the others. It would have been easier for everyone around me to remember me as an all-sacrificing hero, rather than a living person who still isn't any fonder of his compatriots in that conflict than he was before. Everyone wants soldiers to come out on the other side of the crucible of war perfect, virtuous, all human frailty purged away, souls white and cleansed as a child's. I could never do that. I could never be that. Now, I'm a walking reminder that a great conflict takes more from some people than they can ever regain. Everyone is happy that the war is over, but no one wants to see the stump of a veteran's amputated leg, the handicap that he will have to live with forever, after the parades are over and the stars have stopped shooting from the sky. I came through it with my body more or less intact, but I think it was my heart that was amputated."

"No," she said, holding him closer. "No, stop it. It wouldn't be at all better if you had died."

He laughed bitterly. "There's no one who would miss me. I was supposed to redeem my wretched existence with an operatic death scene – that's what everyone expected. It would have made such a wonderful story. Really, it was inconsiderate of me to cheat everyone of the opportunity to tell it."

"I would miss you," she whispered. "I would miss you horribly." Her voice hoarsened and broke.

"Oh, you." He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. "You precious and original creature. You can't know what you're saying."

"I would," she said, her hand curving tenderly around his cheek. He laid his hand over hers, seeming to sigh gratefully into that touch. She pulled him very gently and insistently into her arms, and finally he let himself be enfolded.

I'm so glad you're here, she said, and kissed him tenderly.

He finally relaxed into her embrace, clinging tightly to her, and she held him very close for a long time.

"Please," she whispered, embracing him protectively, her cheek against his. "Please let me turn on one of the lamps. I want to see you."

He flinched away, shuddering in horror. "No. Don't," he said. "I shall instantly leave if you do."

"All right, all right," she said, caressing him soothingly. "I won't, I promise."

At last he allowed himself to be coaxed back into her arms, but she was struck by the vehemence of his reaction – it was the most flustered and unnerved she had ever seen him. "Really, let's keep things how they are," he said. "I've become very comfortable with this. I would now find it hard to imagine us any other way."

"The war that you fought in... were you an Auror, back during You-Know-Who's time?" she asked timidly. If he needed the darkness to feel secure in this intimacy, she would let him have it, but that didn't stop her from wanting to comfort him, to be closer to him.

"Something like that," he said. His head fell wearily onto her shoulder.

She lay in bed just holding him that night, letting him hold her. He finally got up around two a.m., silently dressed, kissed her very tenderly, then made his good-byes. It was the first time they had spent an evening together without having sex, but somehow it felt like their most intimate night together yet.

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"So, miss, what do you do for a living?"

Saturday night, a month later. She had sacrificed a Saturday evening to her parents' insistent demands and had gone out to dinner with them and another couple they knew, the Choudhurys, and their son, Anil, who was visiting from India. Her parents liked the other couple very much, and liked the young man as well – they would have been ecstatic if their children had suddenly fallen in love and into happy matrimony as if struck by a bolt from above.

Unfortunately, she knew within the first five minutes that the boy was nothing special, no one interesting; he let his parents do most of the talking for him. Cheeks a little too well-fed, bad complexion, eyes too complacent, no snap, no spark. No sense of being fully engaged by her – he wasted not one breath of wit or challenge in their conversation. There was just... nothing. She couldn't help comparing every suitable boy presented by her parents to her unknown lover now, and next to his whipcrack wit and cynical humour, the obsessive lust and incredible intimacy like a flash of fire between them, this demure, doughy-faced boy was a very poor second choice indeed.

The whole dinner felt like a very, very sugary job interview, for a position she didn't know if she wanted in the first place. But she could not be a maiden aunt, no, that was no kind of life at all.

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She left the restaurant and went straight to their hotel. For a long moment, she stood outside, unable to move forward, or to leave. She checked her watch – 9:15 p.m.

The experiment with the darkness and nameless anonymity had gone so far now. She had been seeing him... no, not seeing him, holding him, listening to him, making love with him in the dark – for almost six months now.

The curiosity had started months ago, but now it was absolutely punishing. Why was he so reticent to let her look at him? Was he disfigured in some way? She couldn't feel anything infirm about his body, he felt nobly proportioned, healthy and robust to her. Was he blind in one eye, or did he possess a harelip, a hideous birthmark, some other flaw that left him with no hope of attracting a woman? Was he just very unattractive, but otherwise healthy?

Or was it his age? She knew he was twenty years older than she was, but that didn't matter to her in the slightest. Witches and Wizards lived longer than Muggles; when he was one hundred and she was eighty, twenty years age difference would seem insignificant.

Did he seek the darkness because he thought himself to be unattractive? Had someone made him believe that no woman would ever love him for who he was, so he now felt the need to hide his identity, so as to become someone else, someone who was worthy of the affection and intimacy he needed?

Her own parents had always told her and her sister that they were both beautiful, sweet, and lovable, and she had grown up believing it. They cuddled her and dandled her on their knees when she was little; now, as an adult, they hugged her and kissed her at greeting and parting, and when she wanted to be comforted. Her parents' affection was like a charm, a shield, always with her even when she went off to school and was parted from them for nine months at a time. From what he had told her, there had been no such affection from parents, or family, or close friends in his life. So perhaps now it was only in unknown darkness that he could allow himself to admit he needed, craved, and cared for someone else.

The hands of her watch had crept to 9:25. He was waiting for her, but she lingered outside, frightening herself with her imaginings. What if she waited till he fell asleep and lit a lamp, what would she see lying beside her? A monster? The god of love, Kama himself? Was it Kama who intuited what she had needed that night, as she gazed longingly upon an artwork glorifying him, and come to her in the form of this dark, passionate, lonely stranger? Or if she looked upon her lover's face, would she see perhaps the winged Cupid, Kama's Roman counterpart, who would then be destroyed by her distrust and curiosity? Or worst of all, would she find just an ordinary man, no one special, not attractive or in any way distinguished, and thus, would the insane, precious intensity of these couplings then be lost forever?

Worse yet, was he married? Committed to someone else? Was he famous, a public figure, who was keeping his identity and their relationship secret, lest his life be destroyed by scandal? Somehow she couldn't believe that, though – there was a loneliness to him that made her believe him when he said he was a bachelor, and when he said that he had no family. The only people he ever talked about were the man he worked for, and other people who worked at the same place he did. He seemed to reserve some measure of respect and affection for his employer and the occasional co-worker, but her impression was that he led a life of emotional isolation.

She didn't even know what he really looked like, beyond tall, thin, white, and dark-haired – but she knew his body very intimately by feel, scent, and taste. He was a head taller than she was, able to kiss the top of her head by inclining his a fraction toward her. Thin, spare of flesh, but hard-muscled. He had long black hair past his shoulders, halfway down his back. Smooth, fine skin, sharp cheekbones, well-defined jawline, sensual lips. Nose on the beaky side, but she didn't mind that, so was her father's, and her own nose could not be described as a button, for that matter, and she was considered quite a beauty in some quarters. Her lover had an almost hairless chest and back, long fluid muscles in his arms. And a deep, sultry, almost preternaturally expressive voice... why was it that when the boys her parents introduced to her kissed her, she felt nothing, but she could bring herself to orgasm just by a few strokes of her fingers, and remembering the devastated sound of his breath catching while he made love to her.

Whatever happened tonight, the fact remained that while she had no idea who he was, or what he looked like, he made her feel more loved and desired than she ever had in her life.

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He was sleeping when she finally came in, some time later – she sat for awhile beside him, just listening to his soft, regular breathing, aching to turn on a lamp, to conjure a silent Lumos spell... but did not. He roused quietly while she undressed and slipped into bed with him, her head coming to rest on his shoulder.

"How was it?" he asked, his arms enfolding her.

"Boring," she whispered back. "I didn't like him. I don't like any of them. I wish they'd stop setting me up to go to these things."

He was silent, just holding her. His lips brushed gently over her forehead.

"I missed you while I was there," she said, after a long pause of gathering her courage. "You said that I couldn't know what I'm saying, but it's true."

"I've no idea what I've ever done to inspire such devotion," he said softly.

"Stop it – you're wonderful to me," she protested.

"It's very easy to be kind to one's very, very accommodating young lover," he replied wryly. "Surely you realise that. I have my unmitigated way with you every time we're together. Perhaps I wouldn't be so wonderful if you were to stop that."

"But it's not like that," she said. "I'm doing exactly what I want with you. To me this feels more like I have my unmitigated way with you every time."

"Well. It's been said that the best business deals come out of situations in which both parties think that they have gotten the better of each other."

"I miss you every moment I'm not with you," she said finally.

They were lying on one pillow, his forehead resting against hers, her hand feelingly caressing his cheek. Had there been even one ray of light, she would have been gazing into the eyes of the man she loved.

"It's useless trying to find some boy to marry, when I can't stop thinking about you, every moment of every day," she whispered. "I love you. I love you so much."

The pillow rustled, and he averted his face from hers. I know you believe that now, at this moment, but later, you're going to realise that you really don't, he said, his breath catching in his throat. But... thank you.

"Don't you care about me at all?" she pleaded, her voice breaking.

His hand curved around her cheek. Yes, he said finally. Very much. I miss you dreadfully as well, when you're not with me.

"Then let me see you," she whispered. "I want to see your face."

Everyone is a beauty in the dark, dearest. Please don't ask this of me.

"Then tell me your name," she said. "Or give me a false one, I don't care."

I'm sure you've imagined a far better name than the one I've unfortunately been dowered with.

"I want to know who you are," she pleaded.

You already know me better than anyone else alive. Don't deprive yourself of your dreams, my dear – just let yourself be with the man you're imagining, he said, in her ear, in her head. He loves you more than anything in the world.

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But she couldn't be contented, not now. She pleaded with him, till she wept with it. I love you, I need you. You couldn't help but be beautiful to me.

"Please don't cry," he whispered, his voice hoarsening. "I hate that I've made you cry like this."

You love me too, she said brokenly. Don't try to deny it. I can feel it every time you touch me.

"Then why must you do this to me?" he raged at her, exploding with a vehemence that took her breath away. "I already know I'll never have any place in your life – you're so bloody tangled up in your parents' apron strings you're even allowing them to choose potential husbands for you. You go from sleeping with me to interviewing fathers for children you don't even want. You should hear yourself – you talk about marriage and childbearing like some painful and odious duty, not anything you would take any sort of joy in – "

That will all stop now, she said. If you want it to. There's a place for you in my life if only you'll come and take it.

"Why do you have to take away the only relationship I've actually enjoyed in decades? Isn't what I've already done good enough, haven't I always treated you well?" He turned hard away from her, with what might have been a stifled sob. "Why do you want to throw everything we've been to each other away, just so you can be disappointed by the sight of a deucedly undistinguished and unattractive middle-aged man?"

I need to see you. She was begging him now. He kept his face stubbornly averted from her, but she brought his hand to her lips and kissed it. Just for the time it takes one match to burn. Please.

"Fine," he spat. "Fine. Strike your bloody match, you little idiot – I knew this was temporary. Just too damned good to last. Don't say I didn't warn you."

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She fumbled for the box of long-burning matches in the nightstand ashtray, finally extracted one, and managed to light it. She turned toward the silhouette of the man beside her, terrified, but still longing to see her beloved's face.

They faced each other, blinking, eyes adjusting to the light, both holding the bedclothes around their nudity almost modestly, and saw each other's faces for the first time.

To her endless surprise, she realised that she already knew those eyes, that profile. The black hair, the pale complexion... his eyes were pure black, too, she remembered. She had seen those skilled, graceful hands before, seen him in black professorial robes, bent over a cauldron...

"Professor Snape?" she whispered, thunderstruck.

Yes, she recognised him instantly, even after seven years. Severus Snape... the toughest, least forgiving professor she had ever had. Her sister Parvati had hated him, had complained endlessly about his cruelty, his sarcasm, the way he unfairly persecuted the Gryffindors. She herself hadn't had any real conflicts with him, as the studious Ravenclaws tended not to incur his wrath as much as other Houses, except for the one time she had fallen asleep in his class after a long night studying, and he hadn't let her forget it for weeks, just raking the flesh off her bones with satire. Parvati had once said to her during their seventh year that Snape had to be as much of a bastard as he was because he was compensating for a deficiency "in the manhood department." It occurred to her with a shock that she knew quite certainly that this was not the case at all.

"Miss Patil?" her lover whispered back.

A sudden feeling of self-consciousness washed over her, despite the fact that she had been this man's lover for months, that she had done nearly everything sexually possible with him, had confided everything to him, slept peacefully in his arms. Had been entirely faithful to him, as well.

Her teacher. She was lying in bed with her least favourite teacher. And he was the best lover – and this the most intimate relationship – she'd ever had in her life. He openly referred to all of his students as dunderheads, but when she kissed him, touched him, and licked him, he quivered.

For the space of several heartbeats, they stared at each other. The match's tiny flame trembled between them.

So dignified, so pantherish, she thought, lying in bed beside her, with his hair rumpled, in nothing but a white sheet. She thought about what her friends would say if she walked down the street holding Professor Snape's hand... then realised the impossibility of ever wanting to go anywhere holding any man's hand, if not his.

"Somehow I knew you would turn out to be a former student," he said softly. "Are you disappointed? Shocked?"

Silently, she shook her head No, her eyes never leaving his.

He came closer, bent over her. "You've grown up... very prettily," he murmured, tracing his fingers lightly down her cheek. "Padma."

"We're identical. How did you know?" she whispered.

"Parvati has a shrill, grating laugh – you do not. And your sister was a Gryffindor, and Gryffindors are so...conventionally virtuous," he replied, with an eloquent little grimace.

For a long moment, she could only stare at him, all that she felt for him naked in her eyes. He bent down and kissed her, almost shyly; it might have been another couple's first.

"May I call you Severus?" she asked. She liked saying his name – it tasted good in her mouth, like the rest of him. "It sounds like a name I'd like to scream in bed."

The black eyes glinted. Please, he said, with longing in his voice.

"I mean it," she whispered. "I love you."

"And I love you," he said. "We'll have to lie about how we met, you know."

Padma laughed – laughed really good and hard at that. Severus smiled back at her in amusement – the first time she could ever recall having seen this man smile.

She blew out the match, and fell back into his arms.

---

Author's Notes:

The couplet Padma quotes when she encounters Snape in the club is by Dorothy Parker, an early 20th-century poet and writer.

"... we're all mad here" is a slightly paraphrased line from Alice's conversation with the Cheshire Cat, from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll.