Chapter Four

A/N: Everything is JKR's. Chocolates to my beta, Shellsnapeluver.

His words took some time to filter through her consciousness. She lay across his bed without a thought for her nakedness, or the oddness of being in Snape's bedchamber, or for Snape himself, his head impossibly pillowed on her thigh. Her mind was deliciously empty as her body finished pulsing and contracting. For a moment, it had seemed that she'd understood some very fine point, or had run faster than anyone had ever run before. Now, she lay in the aftermath and tried to remember to breathe.

But slowly his words began to register. "Are you ready to proceed, Miss Granger?"

Proceed. There would be more? She knew they hadn't bound the marriage yet, but it seemed impossible that there could be more pleasure in the world than he had just given her.

Her voice felt rusty with disuse, but she managed to gasp out, "Yes."

Yes.

Snape removed himself from between her legs and eased up beside her. As he leaned in to kiss her, she could smell the scent of herself drying on his face. It was a sweet, rich smell, much more pleasant than she would have thought. That's what glory smells like, she thought nonsensically as he captured her mouth in his, parting her lips with his tongue.

She ran her hands over the length of his body, noticing that his shirt was gone, shed, she supposed, sometime during those lost 15 minutes during which she registered nothing but his hands and tongue and breath. His skin was softer than she had imagined, more supple and warm. Greedily, she took in the facts of him with her hands: the downy hairs of his chest, the sharp point of a shoulder, the gentle curve of his arse.

"Touch me," he whispered.

She froze. She had no idea how to touch him. No idea how to do what he had done to her, to reduce him to some shuddering limbic core, barely human, all raw nerve endings strung together with heat. And she would have to do it without magic, just some skill of her hands or mouth that she had not yet learned. She couldn't bear to disappoint him, but neither could she deny him.

She looked at him, wide-eyed and frightened, and he tipped his face away from her. The look in his eyes was... resigned? Did he think she didn't want to, that she wouldn't try? She dug her fingers into his skin, pressing herself against him as fully as possible. She nudged his head up and brushed her lips over his.

"Show me," she breathed into his mouth.

His kiss turned fierce and wanting, and his lips ground into hers as he felt his way down her arm for her hand. Once he had it, he guided it to the erection that was pressing insistently into her hip, curling her fingers around his shaft. He wrapped her fingers in his, squeezing slightly to indicate the pressure. Slowly, he began to move her hand up and down his length, squeezing on the down stroke, swirling on the up. When he released her hand, she couldn't help but explore him, mapping out the texture of his balls, the thicker skin at the base of him and the velvety soft flesh of his head. She watched his face as she touched him, his eyes squeezed shut, and his lips pursed. She'd have thought he was in pain if she couldn't feel the quiver of his response in her hands. When she resumed stroking him, he let out a ragged sigh, and she marveled at the effect she was having on him. Professor Snape at her mercy. For she could see that he was defenseless now, open to her touch, allowing her to control his senses. It was a heady thought.

Tentatively, she scooted down the bed. He looked at her sharply, and she looked back with a mixture of fear and determination. When her face was level with his cock, she glanced up at him and whispered, "You'll have to help me," and he nodded.

She dragged her lips over the impossibly soft skin of his head, slipping her tongue out to taste him, and he groaned. She smiled as she licked him, learning the musky, salty taste of skin there. Moving down, her tongue flickered over the tight seam between his balls and stroked up his shaft once more.

"Could you... in your mouth...?" he gasped.

Her hand continued the motion he had taught her as she took his head between her lips. The muscles of his thighs clenched as she tentatively began to suck. Slowly, she began to move, guided by instinct alone and the jagged sound of his breathing. She took him into her mouth as fully as she could without gagging. The feeling of him striking the back of her throat was not entirely pleasant, but the sight of him suddenly silent and rigid, was enough encouragement to continue. She swirled her tongue around his shaft as she retreated and sucked again at his swollen head. As she worked, she took in the smell of him, something wonderful and unfamiliar and thoroughly male. It was trapped and released by the thick patch of wiry, black curls surrounding his cock, and she used her free hand to rub them, immersing herself in the thick scent of his arousal.

Suddenly, he half rose and touched her shoulder. Her eyes darted to his face.

"Stop."

"Stop?" She answered uncertainly. She had thought that she was doing well. His breathing--

"Well done, Miss Granger," he said, after taking several shuddering breaths, and she relaxed. "But it's time for the final lesson."

A thrill ran through her at the thought. There was still terror, but it was buried underneath layers of pleasure; right now she longed to feel his warm skin rubbing against hers, to feel his cock filling her, to gaze into his bottomless, black eyes and know that the desire she saw there was for her. She rose, sitting back on her heels, half embarrassed to be so wantonly exposed, half enjoying the way he was staring at her body with the fierce look of a predator who had found his prey.

"Come here," he said. She was reminded of his teaching voice and commands she was powerless to disobey.

She crawled up beside him, nesting her head in the crook of his shoulder. How odd that she seemed to fit there, how impossible that he was using that ridiculous nose to nudge her face into position so that he could find her mouth with his, how unthinkable that the pressure of his lips seemed to wake an insatiable hunger in her. She slipped her hand over his neck to the base of his scalp, digging her fingers in, holding his mouth to hers, silently begging him to move on to the next lesson.

He turned as he kissed her, rising up on one hip, looming over her slightly, and she was afraid. But it was good, too, to see the sconce light playing across his chest; to see his face, mindlessly hungry, curtained by his long black hair; and his erection, jutting toward her proudly. She reached up and took his shoulder, pulling him over her and parting her legs to make room for him between them. He settled onto his hands and knees above her, and she looked into his eyes, trying to reason out the impossible. She was trembling, but it was as much from anticipation as fear.

He balanced on one hand, and the other disappeared for a moment. Then she could feel him positioning his swollen cock at her core, the pressure that screamed, right here.

"Are you ready?" he whispered, and she nodded.

As he pushed his head inside, his face contorted, and he breathed the words, "Oh, yes--oh, fuck," without seeming to know he had spoken. There was pain, quite a lot--she felt as if he were tearing her open--but the words were a balm that eased the hurt, and she played them again in her mind, "Oh, yes--oh, fuck." And in her memory, she could see the sweet grimace on his face, and she knew that she had finally pleased him beyond measure. This was power; this was triumph. And if there was not yet pleasure, there was a kind of mental ecstasy in the fact that he was inside her, moving slowly now, and she arched her hips to let him occupy her more fully. He sucked in a breath as he filled her, and she smiled fiercely and thought that she finally knew what all the fuss was about. To reduce a man like Snape to gasps and whimpers, what greater magic could there be?

He rocked his hips against hers in a rhythm that she could feel in her very cells. Gradually, the friction between them grew until it surpassed the pain, and she gave in and followed him to that place between their minds where the only thing that existed was the aching pleasure of their bodies joined. She closed her eyes and raised her knees, hooking her calves over his back, driving him deeper inside her with her heels. He slipped his arms beneath hers and took hold of her shoulders, pulling against her push, and the grinding of his pelvis into hers was bringing back the heat that she had lost to the pain.

He lowered his face, and their cheeks pressed together. Sweat ran slick between them, and his skin felt feverish and tight against hers. His hair had made its way into her mouth; she could taste the spicy fragrance of it. She ran her hands down his back, over scars that she could feel but had never seen, and memorized the contours of his spine.

He rose up on his hands again as their rhythm faltered, and she opened her eyes. His lips were moist and parted, his eyes squeezed shut, his breath coming in shallow gasps.

"Hermione!" he cried, and her heart exploded.

There was no wave of pleasure, not like before, but she could feel that he had found it, for he shuddered above her, wracked by something she could not see. And the feel of him undone in her arms and the sound of her name had brought her a different kind of satisfaction. She had made this; she had done it, and it was better than magic, better than victory, better than anything.

She watched with sorrow as he came back to himself and rolled off of her. His face was blank now, but not with the kind of single-minded blankness he had worn as they coupled, but the studied blankness she had always known from him. She shut her eyes again and pressed against his side, determined to draw out the sweetness for as long as she could. He tucked an arm around her, and she lay quietly, afraid that if she made a sound he would remember, as she was beginning to, how they had ended up there and would insist she leave.

She listened to the sound of his breathing and thought about what they had done. She was his now. There was no way to take it back. She waited, expecting to feel the panic return, but it did not. All she felt was a kind of mental and physical exhaustion that precluded thought. It is done, she thought, and then, briefly, she slept.

***

When she woke, she saw that he was lying exactly as he had been, staring... angrily?... at the ceiling. She looked at him curiously. His black hair was pooled on the pillow; his long, pale body fully extended; his wilted cock resting against the fur of his thigh. Who is this man that I have married? Where does he go and what does he love? she thought, and felt, to her amazement, desire bubbling up again, warm and effervescent in her limbs.

"Welcome back, Miss Granger," he said evenly, and then she panicked. How would they speak to each other now?

"Sir," she said.

"Are you all right?"

Was she all right? She had no idea. "Yes."

"Do you think you will need a healing potion?"

"Sir?"

"Are you in pain? Do you feel... bruised? I can hardly send you back to Gryffindor Tower covered in welts."

Send her back to Gryffindor Tower. The words stung her, but that was senseless, for where else was she to go? Of course she was going back to Gryffindor Tower. This was not a marriage; this was a plan, and they'd completed the first step of it without killing one another, thank God.

"I'm fine, sir. But perhaps I should take some with me, in case anything arises?"

He nodded and rose, and she was grateful for his leaving so that she would not have to dress in front of him. She buttoned her shirt, stepped into her knickers and entered the sitting room, where she found her skirt and school robes folded neatly on the couch. She was just fixing the clasp of her robes when he returned, mercifully dressed himself. He handed her two phials.

"Drink the first one now. It is a contraceptive potion," he said. "The other is a general healing potion."

She nodded and uncorked the phial, tipping the contents down her throat. It was viscous and unpleasant. She turned and tucked the other phial into her schoolbag, which was sitting beside her like a relic of some former life.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"Eleven o'clock," he said crisply. "I'm sure Potter and Weasley are frothing at the mouth by now. You'll have to Floo back to your dormitory. A Prefect shouldn't be seen wandering the dungeons after hours."

So his quarters were in the dungeons. She had always thought so, but these rooms hadn't felt as chilly and dank, as forbidding, as she had expected.

"But how could I Floo?" she said, "The network doesn't--"

"Our vows, Miss Granger. Or weren't you paying attention? You pledged your home to me. Your rooms are now but an extension of mine. The Floo will take you there."

"Yes, sir," she said. It seemed unreal how quickly they had returned to their former selves--and oh, God, Harry and Ron! How on earth was she going to explain where she'd been? And class! Tomorrow was Defense Against the Dark Arts. How could she sit beside Harry and look at Snape without...

"Professor?"

"Yes?"

"Could I... that is, would it be all right if I missed Defense tomorrow?"

"I hardly think that Prefects should be skipping classes. And you don't seem the type."

Was he being deliberately obtuse? She needed time to let this become a memory, to absorb it and move on before she could return to class and to her former role as his terrified student. "I know sir, but under the circumstances--"

"Under the circumstances, there is more need for you to be in class than ever. You said yourself that you must learn to walk the line between the Light and the Dark. The Dark Lord has risen and--"

"Oh, come off it!" she exclaimed. "No one knows that better than I, and though you'd never admit it, I could hex everyone in that room six ways to Sunday. There's nothing you'll cover in that goddamned class tomorrow that I haven't already learned and you know it."

"50 points from Gryffindor for use of inappropriate language," Snape purred. "I am still your professor, Miss Granger."

That was rich. That was truly rich, given everything they'd--

"That's right, you are," she snapped as she grabbed the jar of Floo powder on his mantle and wrenched the lid off. "And I've very much appreciated your lessons in fucking, Professor Snape."

"Has it not yet dawned on what passes for your mind that you must learn to hide your feelings? The rest of our lives will be predicated on this charade, and you must cope. Starting with Defense Against the Dark Arts tomorrow--"

She tossed the powder into the flames and watched as they flared green. The last thing she heard as she stepped through was Snape's smirking tone as he said, "50 more points--and I rather thought I'd given you lessons in making love."