Chapter Text
Part 6: Drop and Catch
“Having second thoughts?”
Did she really look that nervous?
“No, are you?”
He’d only unzipped his fly, she saw, but left his trousers on. Hermione realised this was to goad her into changing her mind early, while he moved on to less nerve wracking preparations.
She’d pulled her skirt back down by now. All she could do was watch and wait for whatever was about to happen next. Despite his taunting, this did not include changing her mind.
Next to be removed was his tie. He didn’t just loosen the knot enough to slip it over his head, he untied it completely. The sound of silk sliding through the stiff cotton of his shirt collar was almost obscenely loud in the quiet room. He tossed the tie over his jacket and then unfastened the top two buttons of his white shirt.
The arsehole looked like he was undressing for a shower, such was his demeanour. Hermione wondered if she, too, could cultivate this level of Not Giving A Fuck? Was this something that one honed with age?
“Still with me?” he asked.
To her chagrin, Hermione realised she must have missed a question, causing him to repeat himself.
Thankfull for the darkness that probably covered some of her blushing, Hermione rolled her eyes. “I’m still here, aren’t I?” She made a show of tapping at the front of her wrist. “Tick-tock, M’sier. Time’s a-wastin’.”
That wrung a smile from him, though it wasn’t a reassuring smile. Her earlier assessment regarding who was predator and who was prey in this equation was undergoing a drastic re-evaluation.
Bulletproof didn’t drop his smile or his gaze and he unfastened his cufflinks and then attempted to give her an aneurysm when he rolled up his sleeves.
Pale, firm, muscled forearms were revealed, along with… mon dieu .
Tattoos.
He was inked all the way from an inch or so above each wrist to where the cuffs of his shirtsleeves were folded just under his elbows.
At this point, Hermione realised how seriously she’d fucked up. Her error wasn't that she was here alone with a man she didn’t know. It was that she was alone with this man. Neverfucking mind that every aspect of his body seemed designed to set off horny Klaxon alarms in her brain. No employee of the syndicate’s executive, and this included their staff, was permitted to have highly visible, distinguishing body modifications.
Tattoos were not uncommon in the criminal underground, but they were less common in the Order, and downright rare in the upper echelons, where eighty-percent of their member organisations’ enterprises were legitimate and law-abiding. This rule had nothing to do with a conservative mindset and everything to do with giving the authorities an advantage when it came to identifying members of their Order’s respective organisations.
Top on the list of prohibitions were tattoos, body piercings and hair dyed in colours that could not pass off as natural. While ‘bad decision’ tattoos featuring your lover’s name inside a flaming, bleeding, broken heart (Cocksure had something like this on his bicep) could be overlooked, there was no way two full sleeves could pass HR’s stringent checks.
Bulletproof’s left arm bore the most extensive set, based on what Hermione could see. And dear God, she wanted to see more ; wanted to unwrap him like a gifted work of art.
It was too dark to make out the finer details, but the main design on his left arm was a skull with a snake emerging from its mouth. The snake’s body was twisted into and through what looked like an infinity symbol. The rest of his arm was taken up by an assortment of designs, some intricate and fine, some in bold, geometric blackwork.
There was an eldritch looking tree with a bent, twisted trunk, like something from a children’s classic fairy tale anthology. Gnarled, bare branches emerged from the top of the tree, and roots from the bottom. The limbs wrapped around his arm several times, some of them meeting and intertwining. When he flexed his forearms, it looked like the tree limbs were alive, as they undulated and writhed. There was a symbol in the middle of the trunk, looking vaguely familiar. It was a circle encased within a bisected triangle.
If his left arm was an assortment, then his right arm was a dedication .
There was a single, intricate, boldly-coloured dragon wrapped around the arm, its tail ending a few inches above his left wrist. This probably meant that the dragon’s head began on his shoulder or back. What was alarming was that this looked like an excellent example of Irezumi , a style typically seen on Yakuza.
Of course, any Jack or Jill on the street could request the style and the end result might be pretty, but it would have no greater significance apart from its aesthetic value. For this to be seen on a non-Japanese gangster was…well it was bold. Provocative. Potentially offensive, even.
Who the hell are you, Bulletproof?
He was watching her watch him. It might be her imagination but Hermione thought he looked just a tad relieved. Because why? Because she hadn’t run away screeching? Pfft.
“Come here.” His voice didn’t even register as human speech to Hermione at this point. It sounded like a low purr. Or maybe her hearing was affected by all the blood rushing to her face.
She went to him. Jesus . Was she so pent up that her body seemed to have a mind of its own, overruling all the red flags?
Now standing between his legs, Bulletproof cupped her face, thumb stroking over her cheekbone. His gaze dropped down to her lips and for a moment, she thought he would kiss her, but he didn’t. Hermione felt dazed, spellbound, pinned in place like a butterfly on a board.
“All good?” he asked, still stroking her cheek.
“Yes,” she said.
“Down you go, then.”
She felt her slapping hand twinge. Unfortunately, kneeling before a standing man was not her style. Besides, there was a perfectly serviceable chair in the corner. On the occasions Hermione gave head, it was always in a reclining position or across the backseat of a spacious limo.
So she just stood there, impatient and keyed-up, torn between desire and compromise.
Hermione could be forgiven for assuming he was almost bored, if it wasn't for the full, thick cock he pulled out from the opening in his trousers. It felt like all the oxygen in the room had been steadily diminishing, and the effects were only noticeable now.
Bulletproof was…not small. He might even be the largest she’d handled. The bottom of his shirt covered his abdomen and Hermione wanted to lift it up and see him, to place her hands on there and feel what she suspected was impressive muscle definition.
“This is what you came here for, isn’t it?” he said, as he languidly stroked his cock.
The arrogant son of a bitch didn't even phrase that as a question, so she didn’t reply. Also, she was distracted thinking about how he would feel in her hands and mouth.
Thick, warm, tactile velvet, with just the right amount of give…
“You make such beautiful sounds for me, but I’m going to need your words as well.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice high and thin. “I mean, yes, that’s why I’m here.”
“Good.”
Oh God, what the hell was this tone of voice now? It was completely different to the previous, condescending one. Now he sounded indulgent. He wasn’t looking bored any more, either.
“So then get on your knees for me and I’ll give you what you want.”
Hermione obeyed. There was no other better word for it. She folded like a deck chair. As she got into position, she caught sight of the tail end of a tattoo that crept into the crease at the top of this thigh, just under the left side of his v-line. It was a tail, or rather tail feathers . There was a hint of a raptor’s clawed foot behind his hip. Clearly, his tattoos were not confined to his arms.
The urge to see him, all of him, was overwhelming.
But first, she was going to taste him.
She was just about to reach for his cock, when he slipped his free hand under her jaw, stroking under her chin as if she was a cat. Then he turned his hand over and slid two fingers into her mouth.
Hermione’s initial surprise turned into bone-melting arousal when he pushed his fingers down on her tongue.
“Mm. You should see yourself right now.” His head was tilted to the side, an almost reverent smile on his face as he pressed down on the tongue. “Uh-uh, no. Don’t suck. Keep that mouth loose and open for me…that’s it.”
Hermione let her lower jaw fall slack. His fingers slid back and forth along her tongue, gradually going in deeper until his knuckles grazed her nose. Her eyes were watering; mascara undoubtedly smudged. The hand fisting his cock began to pick up speed.
He released the pressure from the top of her tongue, now twisted his fingers in her mouth until they were facing upwards and caressing her palate. The moan that escaped her felt and sounded like it came from someone else. Hermione didn’t recognise her own body at this point. Not in her wildest imaginings did she ever consider the roof of her mouth to be anything other than ticklish.
His hand moved again. This time, his fingers slid down to catch her bottom lip, his top knuckles grazing her gums and the base of her teeth as he squeezed and rubbed at her lip between his thumb and index finger. He startled the hell out of her by suddenly bending down and pulling her captured lip into his mouth. He was there and gone before she realised. Not really a kiss, but rather, a quick, bruising suck.
“Mmph.” Hermione soothed her abused lip with her tongue.
Bulletproof groaned and then momentarily closed his eyes, providing Hermione with some respite from his glacial stare. “I did say I wasn’t going to fuck you, didn’t I? I like to keep my promises, brat, but you’re making this so damn difficult.”
This was much better, Hermione thought, pleased. Finally, some feedback!
Holding her by the chin, he rubbed the shiny head of his cock against her lips and Hermione was helpless to contain the desperate sound she made as she darted her head forward to taste him. Only her mouth never reached him. His hand on her jaw kept her head firmly in place. This left her face a mere inch away from his leaking cock, her lips parted and slick.
“Look at you,” he breathed. “Like a green stem bending towards the light.”
Hermione had no idea what expression she was making as she looked up at him, but she saw something shift in his eyes. Even in the darkness, through her bleary, tear-logged vision, she saw his eyes soften.
“Yes,” he said, releasing her jaw, stroking the places where his fingers had squeezed seconds earlier. “Yes…I can work with this.” It sounded like he was talking to himself. He sat back against the table, resting his hands on the surface, on either side of his hips.
A look passed between them and Hermione knew she had permission to proceed.
With a hungry groan, she grasped him in both hands and was rewarded with a twitch from his cock. He smelled more strongly of himself here. Of musk and the underlying scent of soap or body wash or whatever it was he’d used in a recent shower. It was annoying having to work on him through the gap in his fly, but beggars could not be choosers.
She nuzzled at his hot, tight flesh, rubbing her cheek against him as her hands stroked and squeezed, learning her way around his length. It felt terribly scandalous to be doing this to someone whose name she hadn’t even asked for and didn’t care to know.
But it was also incredibly liberating. This was safe, stress relief. A disposable encounter.
Though not as vocal as Hermione, he made the most delicious sound when she ran her thumb over his slit, smearing the slippery sheen gathered there. Her intention was to toy with him as he had with her; to eke back some control. She prodded at his slit with the tip of her tongue, just for a taste, but once she got that taste her resolve evaporated.
Hermione wrapped her mouth around the head and then promptly lost all sense of reason and time. He might as well have been a disembodied cock.
She was salivating like crazy. No doubt his earlier manhandling of her mouth was a contributing factor. After lavishing attention on the head, she licked him all around, bathing him with her tongue from tip to base. She couldn't see his face–didn’t think it was safe to look at him, not yet –but she could see his hands. They were white-knuckling the edge of the table.
A bit of trial and error was required to work out how much of him Hermione could comfortably fit in her mouth. Once that was determined, she detoured to the underside of his cock, lifting him so she could suck at the looser skin around the base, while she reached inside his pants to cup him. On her way back up to the top, she traced a tight vein with the tip of her tongue.
Another sound escaped him, higher and more desperate. This was a sound that had broken through his control. His hands, which previously remained by his side, now sunk into her hair. He pulled out the pins that kept her bun in place, gently untangling her long brown hair so it tumbled down her shoulders.
“Lovely,” he whispered.
Hermione paused to catch her breath. She looked up at him now, as he gathered some of her hair in his hands. His eyes were dark and hooded.
“You’re doing so well–”
The simple praise shot straight to her core.
“—but I think you can take more.”
Tightening the grip on her hair, he tilted her head up and slightly to the left. This was followed by an adjustment to the angle of his hips. Although the change seemed minimal, the effect was undeniable. Somehow, more of him slipped past her lips, sinking further into her mouth, grazing the back of her throat.
She was going to gag…she was–
“Flatten your tongue,” he hissed. “Yes. Yes, that’s it.” His fingers massaged her scalp. “Breathe through your nose.” He began alternating between short, stabbing thrusts and the occasional long, deep slide.
Hemione did her best to maintain a tight suction-seal with her lips. When he went in deep, he was quick to pull out just before she gagged. She wasn’t the only one learning patterns. Bulletproof found her limits and then he tested them.
One particularly brutal thrust had her scowling up at him.
“That’s better. Keep your eyes on me.” He looked utterly debauched, eyes smouldering, arms extended in front of him as he held her head and fucked into it. “Swallow as I bottom out,” he instructed, through gritted teeth. “Ah, yes. Like that.. Fuck…”
Hemione’s head was spinning. All thoughts of the terrible day, her father’s betrayal, her cousin’s nonchalance, faded away. Life was simpler like this. There was only his voice, the surety of him , his scent, his taste, his hands.
The hinges of her jaw were protesting in earnest. Her hands fisted her hands in the front of his shirt.
“You don’t actually want it easy, though, do you? No. Not a girl like you. Easy is boring…”
Her lips felt swollen and raw, drool was running down the sides of her mouth and down her chin. Hermione could feel the building tension in his body.
“Stop at any time.”
Really? How novel. No, she would not stop. He would be the one to finish first, even if it bloody killed her. Hermione had ceded enough ground already. She glared up at him, mouth stretched wide around his cock as he fucked into her pliant throat. His hands gripped her hair, hard .
“Brat…” he breathed out. The pace of his thrusts increased. “If I keep this up…I’m going to finish.”
Hermione’s unfaltering stare spelled out her response.
“If you make me come like this…” He paused for a moment, hissing as his hips broke rhythm, “...you’re going to take whatever I give you. All of it. Every drop. If you can’t do that, then stop now.”
And then almost as if he didn’t trust himself to allow her the choice, he released her head and returned his hands to the table.
She had free reign to do as she wanted.
What Hermione wanted to do was win so she didn’t let up for a second.
“I–” he said, gasping. This was her first warning. The stuttering of his hips was the second.
His eyelids fell shut. He dropped his head back and released the sexiest, softest whimper as he spilled down her throat in tight, shuddering spasms. When he bit his bottom lip, Hermione’s brain temporarily stopped working. Nevertheless, she tried her best to commit the entire scene to memory, so she could take it out and examine it in detail over and over again.
The taste of him was hot and bitter. She took it all, as directed, and then pumped his cock once, twice, three times, to summon every last drop of spend. Only when he hissed from oversensitivity, did she sit back on her heels and wait for him to look at her.
His eyes blinked open, chest rising and falling as he stared down at her, transfixed. Hermione was pretty sure she was wearing a similar expression. Knowing this made her feel a funny sort of way.
“Fuck,” he said, again.
Hermione thought they’d have a minute to catch her breath, but maybe he was mindful of their limited time together, because he picked her up and brought her over to the window. She wished he’d stopped carrying her around like a bloody department store mannequin.
Bulletproof placed her in front of him as they looked out at the Parisian skyline. Against her back, Hermione felt his heart thrumming in his chest. The rate was fast, but gradually slowed down in time with his breathing. He’d already refastened his pants.
His chin rested on her head and one arm held her around her middle. She looked at his reflection in the window and saw that he was watching her with needling intensity. She knew this look. This was a problem-solving look.
Hermione was suddenly very glad they weren't in a bedroom. That would have been too intimate.
He broke their shared gaze first, rubbing his nose in her hair. She felt him tense for a moment before turning his head away to sneeze.
Good lord. Was it possible to find a sneeze cute ?
“I don’t think I’ve heard anyone actually say ‘ah-choo’ when they sneeze.” Hermione’s voice was hoarse. It was a good thing she wasn’t expected to deliver any speeches later that night.
“I can’t help the way I sneeze,” he replied, wriggling his nose.
Speaking of speeches… Hermione grabbed his wrist to read the time on his watch.
“I have to be back at the party in eighteen minutes.”
“Noted,” said Bulletproof, against her hair. One hand began hiking up her dress until it was bunched up around her hips. “I can do a lot in eighteen minutes.”
The sentence wasn’t even finished before he dropped to his knees, turning Hermione around until her back was pressed against the window. The glass felt smooth and cool on her feverish, clammy skin. He tugged her knickers down and Hermione’s horny autopilot kicked in as she stepped out of them.
For some reason, intrusive thoughts picked this precise moment to plague her.
Hermione thought about her father and the news that she was not selected to lead the Gryffindor Group simply because she was a woman. She recalled Narcissa Black’s depressing advice about the reality of trying to lead in their respective organisations, as women. She wondered if she was really so feeble, so invisible? What more did she need to do to prove herself? The buzz from the champagne and the earlier surge of adrenaline was probably wearing off, too.
Bulletproof was drawing circles over her hip bones with his thumbs. He dropped a kiss under her belly button, sucking at the soft curve of flesh there.
She looked down at him, feeling something akin to grief. It made her angry. There was more than enough in front of her to keep her anchored to the moment. He was more than enough.
Hermione closed her eyes and sought a more tactile tether by sinking her fingers into his hair, eager to know if it was as soft as it looked. It wasn’t, but this was because he’d applied some product to it. It was longer in the front, short at the back, with a very slight cowlick.
She wondered what it would be like to put her hands in his freshly washed and dried hair. Would it be fluffy? What did he look like when his bangs hung down over his bright eyes? What did he look like under the Sun? She pictured him sleeping, his face relaxed. And in the privacy of her mind, she saw her own hand entering that scene, tucking his bright hair behind his ear.
The image unsettled her so much that she shoved at it with her mind. The spell was broken and Hermione was once again confronted with the reality that awaited her outside the current bubble.
Bulletproof was in the process of lifting one of her legs and draping it over his right shoulder. He placed a dry, chaste kiss on the inside of her knee, and then a slightly less chaste kiss on the inside of her thigh, sucking at a sensitive spot until Hermione was sure he left a mark.
For the first time since she entered that room, she actually felt genuinely uncertain.
“Um,” Hermione said, hands tensing against the window ledge. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to bring her focus back to the moment.
He was in his own world. And hadn’t she been much the same earlier, when it’d been her turn to kneel before him?
“I can’t stop looking at you,” he whispered, staring at her most intimate place. “All this…and no one has had you yet.” He blew lightly over her sodden, exposed core, causing Hermione to flinch.
She tried to inject some levity into the heavy moment, even though her mind was a swirling mess of worries about tomorrow, the next week, the next month, her future.
“Who has the time? Or the bother?”
“If you were mine, I’d be bothered to make the time,” he said, and then he gave her a little kitten lick.
The glass against Hermione’s back wasn’t so pleasant any more. It was cold and hard. Anxiety began to sour her arousal. Hermione wanted to put her legs back together again. She wanted his warm, secure hold from before.
“Wait…” It was times like these when it was helpful to know a person’s name. “Can we not do it here?” In front of the window. In full view of the street and anyone who happened to be looking out from the opposite building.
“Why not here? I want all of Paris to see how beautiful you are.” He looked up at her, a smirk on his lips, but it was immediately replaced with a frown when he saw her face.
God help her, if he asked her if she was alright, she might actually cry .
For a moment, it seemed like he was going to continue, but then he stood, and as per his annoying habit, picked her up again. Hermione found she didn’t mind so much at the moment.
“What are you doing?” she protested, weakly swatting at his shoulder “We only have–”
He set her down on the table and covered her mouth, dropping his forehead against hers. “Please don’t tell me how much time we have left. I feel like I’m being billed in six-minute increments…”
This almost wrung a laugh out of her. That number seemed overly specific.
He slipped off his shoes and Hermione watched as he hopped up on the table, sat cross-legged in the middle of it and patted his lap.
“Climb up.”
She gave him a look.
“I’m not sitting on the floor with you. Climb up and we can at least enjoy the view through the window.”
Hermione hesitated for a moment, but then crawled up onto the table and settled in his lap. Her arms wrapped around her knees, tight and tense. She noticed he wasn’t embracing her yet, and thought he might be providing her with some space for the moment, while still affording her the security of his lap.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
She nodded.
“You didn’t want me to touch you just now?” He played with the ends of her hair, tugging at the springier curls.
Hermione almost apologised, before she remembered she had nothing to be sorry about. It was a bad habit she tried to stamp out among her female employees. “I was a little overwhelmed. It hasn’t been a good day.”
“Why, what happened?”
She turned to look up at him, which was a mistake because his mouth was…right there. And the soft way he was looking at her made her feel warm, and as a consequence, wary. “Do you actually care to know?”
A shrug. “You’re right, I don’t care because I don’t know you well enough to care. But I’m interested.”
Of course, what he meant to say was that he was interested in her bad day , not interested in her . The man was blunt to a fault. She liked that.
“Something I’ve been working towards for a very long time was taken away from me.”
“Unfairly?”
Her smile was small and sharp. “Does it matter?”
“Given what we do? Not really. But a bit of righteous indignation can be an effective motivating factor.” His right hand rested on her kneecap, warm fingers stroking for a minute or so, and when she didn’t protest, he slipped them between her closed knees and gently tipped her legs open.
“Motivating factor to…” Hermiones’s breath caught as she felt his hand on her inner thigh. Fingers making light, wispy passes against her skin. “..to do what?”
“To take it back.”
He pushed the heavy curtain of her hair aside to expose her neck, which he kissed, and then pressed his lips into the dip under her ear. A chill ran through Hermione, a prickling that started at her scalp and rushing down to her toes.
“You’re the…ngh…second person to tell me, that ah …today.” He was sucking on her neck now.
Her poor dress was back up around her waist. Hermione suspected it was wrecked beyond salvaging. No amount of expert dry cleaning was going to be enough. It probably needed museum grade restoration.
“Sounds like good advice to me.”
His hand was inside her knickers. There wasn’t time for teasing, light, barely-there touches any more. He went straight for her clit. As if invisible strings were cut, Hermione gasped and flopped back against him.
“Oh.. oh.”
She was already so worked up that when he slipped a long finger inside her, she squirmed in protest, grabbed his hand and placed it back where she needed him to touch her.
He smiled against her cheek.
“Please…”
“I know. I’ll take care of you.”
“Ah…oh God …”
“You only let me inside for a second, brat, but bloody hell…you are so hot, so tight.” The sound of his fingers as he rubbed her was lewd. “So wet.”
He varied his strokes, but once he learned what she liked, he didn’t deviate. It was precise, unrelenting and so beautifully consistent that Hermione could probably count down to her inevitable orgasm.
“Oh fuck, ” she groaned out, head lolling back. He peppered kisses all over her cheek and temple.
“Oh, I’d love to fuck you, princess.” He was hard again. She could feel him. “You’re a pretty little thing, but you’d look even more beautiful crying on my cock.”
Every syllable he uttered felt like it was working in tandem with his fingers.
“You have no idea how close I am to throwing you over this table, flipping up that cockteasing dress and fucking you so well you won’t be walking back to that party tonight.” He sucked on her earlobe for a bit and then said into her ear. “You know what the best part would be? I’d be doing it raw. Because I don’t have a condom on me. Hadn’t a clue I’d run into something like you. Almost didn’t come to this damn party…”
Hermione was shaking. Her thighs were quivering . She didn’t think she’d ever quivered in her life. That was something that only happened to jellies and excitable, bodice ripper heroines. Her feet were trying to bend into impossible, ninety-degree arches on either side of his lap.
“Is the drop in sight?” he whispered. “Are you nearly there?”
She was going to die. Even his phrasing was sexy.
“Uhuh,” Hermione gasped out, running headlong into total loss of control. This whole time, she thought she wanted to inflict this feeling on someone else, when all along, what she really wanted was to feel it for herself.
“Then take it. Take what you need.” The sincere urgency in his voice raised her intimacy hackles again. “No shame, no guilt, no regrets. That’s what you came here to do, isn’t it? That’s why you picked me? To make you come so hard, you forget everything else.”
He called it a ‘drop’. And it was exactly that.
When she was nine, Hermione rode a rollercoaster at Tokyo Disneyland. The memory seemed somewhat relevant now because Cormac had been with her that summer when they shared the same nanny. Although they were the same age, he was shorter than Hermione and almost too little for the ride. She told him to stand on her foot in order to add a couple of extra inches. It worked.
There was a photo from that day, in an album, in a box somewhere, in either the Granger or the McLaggen household. It showed Hermione staring directly at the stationed camera, wearing a with a challenging, gleeful expression as the ride tipped over a peak. Cormac, meanwhile, was screaming, crying and clutching at her. Hermione had her arms wrapped tightly around him. That day was proof that it was possible for the two of them to get along, if only in the most extreme of circumstances.
An article Hermione once read said that the most thrilling part of a rollercoaster ride, (according to a study) was not the drop, or the loop-de-loops, as most people assumed. It was actually the moment you sat down, strapped in and started the ride.
It was the ascent, the buildup and anticipation.
Her brief time with this man was the most thrilling ascent of her life. So it followed that when the drop came, it wrecked her. Her orgasm was shattering, rippling through her body, doubling back again to repeat in waves, until she was a floppy, unintelligible mess.
She wanted to tell him he could stop touching her, because his hand was still moving, albeit very gently. She’d inadvertently trapped him against her when her legs clamped shut. Even as her breathing slowed, the pace and pressure of his stroking fingers increased.
“Wha…nosokaystop,” she mumbled, demonstrating her masterful command of the English language.
“One more.”
Was he mad? Was he trying to kill her? Was he the world’s most unorthodox assassin?
“I can’t…”
“Yes, you can. Come on, princess.” He kissed her on her sweaty forehead, where baby hairs curled flat under her hairline. “Give me another.”
It might have been due to his gentle, relentless touching, but Hermione felt like her first climax wasn’t actually over, that another peak could be coaxed from the current trough.
Too much. It was too much. Too…scary.
His arm tightened around her. “Feel this? I’m here. I’ll catch you .”
Hermione tasted salt. Her eyes were burning. Her throat was raw. Her fingernails were digging into his forearms.
“Pr-promise?” she sobbed.
“I promise,” he whispered, against her cheek.
This time, the drop was at terminal velocity, but that was OK because he said he’d catch her and she believed him.
Hermione was so anxious about the fall, when what she really needed to worry about was the fucking landing . She didn’t just shed a few, pretty tears. She bawled .
After a few mortifying minutes of this, during which she kept her wet, red face buried in his chest as he gently stroked her back, Hermione felt human again. Truth be told, she was starting to feel a little sorry for Bulletproof. He’d probably expected a hassle-free romp but ended up with an emotional basket case.
In the commotion, one of his bangs had dislodged from the rest of his hair. Too wobbly to suppress her instincts, Hermione reached up to tuck it back in place and was startled when he flinched. In fact, he looked…angry?
She blinked up at him. “What?” she asked, in a hoarse voice.
“What the hell are you doing wandering around the hotel by yourself looking for someone to fuck?”
His reprimanding tone confused her. “That was kind of the point.”
“You could have fallen into the wrong hands.”
“But I fell into the right hands, didn’t I?”
Bulletproof did not appreciate her attempt at humour. Hermione climbed off his lap before any further awkwardness occurred. ”I’m making a mess of your trousers,” she muttered.
It was true. He’d have to clean up before returning to the staff party. The image of him crouching under a hand dryer in the restroom, to dry the front of his trousers was very amusing. He’d be out of luck if it was one of those Dyson AirBlades.
They were silent as they did their best to clean up and put their clothing back to rights again. It was unpleasant when she slipped her knickers back on, but she’d have to endure it or try and slip away to her suite to fetch a fresh pair. She didn’t bother trying to scour the carpet for her hairpins.
When he was done with his sleeves and tie, he put his shoes on, but not his jacket. Hermione sat in a chair, trying to tie her shoe ribbons around her ankles. Her fingers were clumsier than usual. The silk was slippery and the black colour melted into the darkness, making it hard to see what she was doing.
After three unsuccessful attempts, Bulletproof crouched down beside her.
“Let me.”
Every swipe of his fingers against her skin sparked little tingles of awareness. It was another odd, unnecessarily intimate moment. Or perhaps it was just her skewed perception of what constituted intimacy?
In any case, he worked quickly and when he was done, produced two, perfect, plump bows.
“Wow. Those look even better than when I tied them,” Hermione praised.
It occurred to her that she felt OK. Better. Good , even. The shite, heavy, bitter feeling she’d carried here was gone. There was a hollowness, but it wasn’t as all consuming as it’d been at the start of the night.
And it looked like the night wasn’t done with its surprises yet.
At some point between tying ribbons and overthinking, she was pretty sure Bulletproof had decided he was going to kiss her.
He was taking forever, though, and every second their mouths weren’t touching was torture, Of course, Hermione could take the initiative and bridge the gap between them first, but if he wanted to break his no-kissing policy, he’d have to do it himself.
Despite the anticipation, the kiss ended up being surprisingly tender. This might have been because they were post-nut, or maybe he actually kissed like this? Hermione didn’t know which explanation she preferred.
At first, it was delicate, plucking kisses over her lips. He mapped her mouth first, before attempting more creative approaches. One of his hands held her cheek while the other hand grasped the armrest of her chair. His tongue systematically explored every ridge, edge, bump and corner, tasting as he went, and humming his appreciation when he found something he liked. She grabbed his face with both hands, feeling the slight stubble along his cheek and jaw.
The kiss progressed in intensity, becoming more and more heated and desperate until it plateaued at wet and filthy.
Hermione was shaking, her hands clawing at the material of his shirt over his chest and biceps. She whimpered into his mouth. He groaned in response. The sound seemed to jar him and he pulled away first, panting. He stared at her, his lips red and shiny, his expression unreadable.
“Don’t do this any more,” he growled. “Don’t walk around propositioning men.”
She was equally out of breath, her hands still gripping his shirt like she was worried one of them might float away if she didn’t hold on. But this didn’t stop her from raising an eyebrow.
“I think you’ll find that I’ll do what I want, when I want.”
His eyes narrowed.
Oops. That was actually the GG executive speaking, not some anonymous party guest. He’d eventually find who she was, but she found herself wishing she could postpone the inevitable.
His hands covered hers, over where she held his shirt, and then he detached her from him. Hermione swallowed, hating that this simple movement made something cold and heavy settle at the bottom of her stomach.
Bulletproof was on his feet, somehow managing to look every bit as aloof and businesslike as she just was trying her best to be.
“Come on, brat. Let’s get you back.”