Needfire

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.

they are
alone
he beckons, she rises she
stands
a moment
in the passion of the fifty
pillars
listening

while the queens of all the
earth writhe upon deep rugs

--from stanza 3,\" the emperor\"


-- e.e.cummings


Chapter 14 - Aftermath


\"Say something? After that churlish and vile performance you want me to say something, you want me to admit you\'re correct in your assessment of me! You\'ve been disrespectful, snide, physically violent --\" he broke off, gritting his teeth, suddenly realizing he\'d been no better than she. Who is the adult here, Snape? Who had her pinned to the wall when you knew already her reaction might be extreme? Who wanted that reaction to flare? Who hoped to push her to that?

Her stare was mutinous and chilling, and Merlin help him, he wanted her again, she was right about that. He couldn\'t deny his arousal; he\'d been very stimulated by her physicality. He wanted this furious little Amazon that was straddling his hips and holding him down. Every cell in him demanded that he touch her fiercely, not with violence but with all the force of the rising and urgent need in him, but would he be able to make that difference clear to her?

Not only that, but of course the question remained: Should he?

Conscience Minerva was firm about that, in a way she had never been before. Walk away now. Now. There is no other choice. You\'ve already crossed the line; do not stay there. Send this woman-child to her room and never touch her again. Never look at her again. Never examine at close range each eyelash, each small frown line as she scowls at you, waiting for your response. The rite is over; you have no more rights to this girl. You never did to begin with, rite or no rite; religion or no religion; no goddess, and certainly no god.

Angharad, I have coveted, and I have taken what was not mine to take. And I took it gladly, with lusting pleasure. I have abused my knowledge and my position to gain what I wanted. And Merlin help me, I want to do it again.

His chest heaved on an indrawn breath, a long breath, and somewhere inside him a bubble arose, a quote from years past. Martin Luther, speaking clearly, and out of context, and Snape echoed the words aloud as he took rough hold of this girl, lifting his body, taking her swiftly beneath him and settling himself between her thighs, doing as he\'d imagined himself doing for weeks, rocking his erection against the seam of her jeans, dropping his mouth to kiss her hard, pulling her hands away from him and taking the wrists in the fingers of one long hand, to imprison them over her head against the cold floor. She would have the answer she wanted, not verbally, but clearly from his body.

\"Sin boldly,\" he muttered against her mouth. Conscience Minerva: get thee behind me.

\"Martin Luther,\" she muttered back, biting his lower lip, and releasing him only to draw his tongue into her mouth.

\"Damn you, is there nothing you haven\'t read?\" He was pushing up her jumper to expose her tender flesh to his hands, his mouth, his greedy eyes.

\"Nietzsche. He was boring and supercilious. And this floor is fucking cold. Treat me with respect, take me somewhere warm, Snape, and admit that I was right: you want me, and you think you should not.\"

\"Yes, fine, I want you, ritual or not, Needfire or not, Samhain or not. Now shut your mouth. Or rather, open it, but don\'t speak.\"

Her hands pressed upwards against his chest. \"No. I told you, someplace warm.\"

Snape muttered a warming spell, and suddenly she began to laugh beneath him. \"And someplace softer,\" she said.

\"All these bloody conditions!\" He was close to yelling, but he struggled to his feet and hauled her up after him. \"Gather up your things.\"

\"Where are we going?\"

Snape stared at her. \"Where do you think?\" He vanished into his office, to put away his own robe and the cloak, the sickle, flask, and water bowl. When he returned to the classroom, she was standing with her robes bundled into her arms. Her schoolbag hung from her left shoulder. She looked flushed, her hair mussed, but her eyes were alert and bright. She hadn\'t taken the opportunity to sneak out of the classroom while he was busy in his office. \"Come with me.\" Snape led her quickly through the corridors to his quarters and ushered her inside, warding the door afresh. No one had been about, for which he was profoundly glad. Doing the wrong thing, here, Snape.

Inside, he took her robes and placed them over the back of a chair near the fireplace. He held out his hand for her schoolbag and set it next to the chair. Hermione looked around herself with interest, and for a moment he saw his dark and tidy rooms through her eyes; he thought they would pass inspection. He held out his hand to her. She looked at it suspiciously.

\"What?\" she said.

His brow arched; was she chickening out? \"Some place warm, and softer,\" he said. His erection had begun to flag in the intervening minutes since the struggle in the dungeon, but he felt sure that could be remedied. There was a long moment in which she considered the pale palm of his upturned and outstretched hand. She has changed her mind, he thought. But then he remembered the girl in the Circle, so much not his apprentice after that first blinding, whirling, astonishing sex experienced inside the actual flow of energy within the ring of Stones, and did not think she would back down from anything, much less this. Her eyes lifted; she met his gaze.

\"Lead on,\" she said, but did not put her hand in his. Snape turned and walked into his bedroom, where his bed, his bed, his bed awaited them, its green hangings dim in the lowlight. He heard her following him quietly.

He pointed his wand at the fireplace and the logs there caught fire. When he turned back she was already half undressed, shoes kicked off, jeans over a chair, one foot in her hand as she struggled to drag off a snug sock.

\"No,\" he said. \"Stop. Not so fast.\"

She froze, and he surprised a moment\'s uncertainty and discomfort on her features. \"What do you mean, Professor? Aren\'t we here to --\"

He leaned his head down, so he could whisper directly into her ear, his breath stirring her curls, and spoke silkily. \"Absolutely. But on my terms this time. Not a mindless fuck, Hermione. My rooms, my rules.\" Looking down at her one bare foot, Snape could see that her toes had curled. Good, very good. But when he lifted his head and looked at her face, she still had that discomfited expression. He continued, more coldly: \"If you want just a shagging, then leave now; go find Weasley and relieve any stress you may be feeling.\"

\"I already told you...messing around...it doesn\'t turn me on...or arouse me.\"

\"It will,\" he whispered. \"Oh, it will, before I\'m through with you.\" He thought he saw a small shudder ripple over her skin. He took her by the shoulders and steered her towards his bed. \"Sit. Allow me.\"

She sat on the edge, facing him, staring at him as he knelt in front of her and took her sock foot in one hand, and slowly peeled back the anklet, looking up into her eyes. \"We start with the small things. Far away from...let\'s just say, the major battlefield.\"

\"Battlefield.\" She snorted at him.

\"Mmm, yes. The theater of operations, if you prefer. Your foot is cold.\" He took it between his hands and whispered the smallest of warming spells to his palms and fingers. His skin would warm hers. He began to massage her foot, working the ball of the foot with his thumbs strongly. Her eyebrow rose as he looked at her. Without speaking she brought her other foot up and placed it against his shirt front. He attended to it as well. She had strong feet, with high arches and tender, slightly ticklish soles. When they were warmer, he began attending to her toes, each individually, rolling each toe pad between his thumb and forefinger.

\"This is doing nothing for me,\" she announced, \"although my feet are warmer.\"

\"I don\'t believe I asked you,\" he retorted. \"Who is doing the seducing here? Is it you?\"

\"I just don\'t feel...very seduced,\" she replied.

\"Patience...\"

\"...is a virtue, so I\'ve heard, but I -- oh!\"

Snape had run his tongue from the heel of her left foot, along the sole, up into the sensitive curve of her arch, and then along the base of her toes. Her toes curled sharply, and he nipped at those tender pads. She tried to flinch away, but he held on tightly to her foot and calf. When he took her toes into his mouth she half opened her lips, but it was to exhale a little raggedly.

\"Equal treatment,\" he murmured, repeating the actions with her other foot. She smelled of soap, and the rope and leather of the sandals she had worn for the ritual, and crushed grass, earth, and something else that was simply Hermione.

\"This is...strange,\" she told him, but he could see that her pupils had enlarged, and he knew she was maintaining a bravado that was most likely draining away.

\"But you like it,\" he murmured, sucking on the toes of her right foot. He felt them curling against his tongue, and bit down gently while he tickled the arch of her foot. She kept making small twitching movements, but was no longer trying to pull away.

\"I don\'t know if I like it or not,\" she said.

\"But you don\'t dislike it.\" Snape began slowly kissing his way up the outside of her left leg.

\"I suppose not, but this that you\'re doing now -- it\'s just foolish.\"

\"Weasley never attended to this little place just here,\" he murmured, lifting her foot to his shoulder so he could kiss and stroke the back of her knee, the tender flesh in that hollow, and nibble along the two tendons there. \"Now did he.\"

Snape had his answer at her gasp. He rose and his hands went to the tail of her shirt, to unbutton it slowly, so slowly, from the bottom, separating the two sides as he worked. Shortly he was able to pull the shirt down her arms and toss it away. She sat on the side of his bed in her little scraps of pink silk. \"I think we can dispense with these now, as well,\" he murmured. He motioned for her to turn her back to him so he could reach the hooks of the brassiere. He was careful only to touch the cloth of the bra, and not her skin. Hermione\'s shoulders pivoted forward to let the bra slide down her arms as he released the catch. She turned back to look at him.

\"Lovely,\" he said, stepping back, looking at her. \"Lovely.\"

\"Your turn,\" she said, lifting her hands to the buttons of his shirt. He stepped further back.

\"No.\"

\"Why not?\"

\"Must I repeat myself?\"

Her eyes narrowed at him, and for a second he saw himself staring back at him. She was beginning to pick up his habits, most likely to mock him.

\"Lie on your stomach.\"

\"I don\'t trust you,\" she muttered. \"Turning my back on you doesn\'t seem like the intelligent thing to do.\"

\"You do trust me,\" he said. \"You\'ve demonstrated that amply tonight. Now turn over.\"

With a mutter she did as he asked, looking over her shoulder at him. Snape took hold of the sides of her knickers and slid them down and away. He sat on the bed near her hip. \"Accio sweet almond oil.\" A small blue glass bottle flew into his palm, and he opened it. He warmed some of the oil in his hands, then moved back down to her calves and began a slow massage that gradually, so gradually, moved upwards. She was still looking at him over her shoulder, propped up on her elbows, the heavy mass of her hair spilling over her back. Beautiful, sweet, tender, he thought. Something tender, with sharp teeth. An ermine, or perhaps a feral cat. Stroke it carefully or it will bite.

He bent, so that his lips could precede his fingers up her body. By the time his hands and mouth had reached the middle of her inner thighs, she had closed her eyes. \"That\'s right,\" he murmured to her. \"Relax.\" He smiled, shark-like, when her legs opened ever so slightly. He ignored that small movement, adding more oil, moving over the rounded cheeks of her bottom. \"Lovely here, too,\" he told her. \"Such a sweet curve.\" The tips of his fingers found the sensitive places at each side of her hips, pressing there, watching her try to squirm without seeming to do so. When her teeth sank into her lower lip, Snape knew he had her.

Still, he avoided all the usual places she had claimed to like having touched. He moved on to her back and spine, sweeping her hair to one side. His clever fingers found several knots in the muscles of her back, and pressed hard to work that tension out of her.

\"How is this seduction?\" she wanted to know.

\"How is it not?\" he asked.

\"There\'s no...sex.\"

\"We\'ve already discussed how not all sex involves a cock.\"

\"Hmm.\" She was very nearly purring under his hands, he thought. He increased the pressure of his hands, stroking firmly as they moved upwards along her spine, and then more lightly on the return trip to her hips.

\"But we haven\'t discussed how the best sex involves your brain, more than your body. Think of your favorite class here at Hogwarts. And now, imagine yourself in that classroom, working out a difficult spell or equation or...potion.\" He leaned closer, so he could speak into her ear once again. \"Something demanding, something that takes all your attention.\" His right hand slid carefully down her back, brushed over the sweet crease between her cheeks, and chose the left thigh to stroke down, slip towards the middle, and stroke upwards again, so very slowly. As his hand neared the moist nest between her legs, she gave a small groan and moved her knees apart.

\"Please,\" he heard her whisper.

\"Not yet,\" Snape whispered back. He was as hard as a rock, but there was still much to be done before he could satisfy that longing. \"But you may turn over.\"

\"Equal treatment?\" she mumbled, trying for sarcasm, but she turned to lie supine on his bed. And ah, the delights that waited for him here. Not that her back side wasn\'t absorbing to him; it was. But here...breasts, nipples, the cup of her navel, the hollow of her throat, the struts of her collarbones, her neck, her ears. Her lips. All would require visits from his fingers and mouth before he would even consider approaching that dark triangle at the apex of her thighs.

\"Hmm,\" he murmured, pouring more oil into his hands. He began again far from the more interesting places, at her feet, and worked his way up as before. \"Are you in that class, Hermione?\" Snape wanted to know which class it was she was thinking about, but decided not to ask. It was probably Arithmancy, that precise and clockwork class taught by Professor Vector. It would be like Hermione to prefer a science to an art such as Transfiguration or Potions, where creativity counted for as much as the method. In Arithmancy, method was everything, unvarying, reliable. Safe.

Her eyes opened and she looked directly at him. \"I am there,\" she said. \"Cutting up those bat wings.\" She swallowed hard. \"And you\'re behind me in class, taking all my attention.\"

Snape froze. He hadn\'t expected that she would begin to talk out a fantasy with him. His brow moved slowly up his forehead, and he bent to explore the quivering cup of her navel with his mouth, as much to conceal his expression from her as to give her pleasure. \"Am I,\" he murmured against her skin. \"Tell me more.\" With the lightest of touches, and a slight change of plans, he skimmed a finger down through the curly hairs at the top of her thighs and slipped over the edge, just briefly. Her body arched upwards beneath his mouth.

\"You are,\" she breathed.

\"What am I doing to you, in that class.\"

\"You\'re just...watching.\"

\"Hmm. From behind.\" His mouth slid slowly towards her breasts, followed by his hand, but he found himself distracted by her ribcage and began to nibble along it towards her sternum. He was in range of her hands, now, and he felt them tangle in his hair, though she did not try to move him along faster; she simply held on.

\"Yes. Snape...\"

\"What do you want me to do to you, in that class.\" Ah--here, a little sweet spot, beneath her left breast, where he could feel her heartbeat throbbing rapidly, a pulse. When his tongue swept lightly upwards to circle a nipple, he felt her flesh pebble against his lips and bit down gently. He used his teeth to caress her, and heard her indrawn breath, and then, finally, a moan of desire. A moment later his hand followed, oily, smooth, to continue that touch with the lightest of pressures.

\"Please...\"

\"Please what...\" He attended to the other breast similarly, which caused her to squirm beneath him, and then began the trek to another ultimate goal, the hollow of her throat, and finally her mouth. \"Tell me.\" Snape hovered over her mouth, meeting her eyes, which were dark and heavy-lidded. \"Don\'t be afraid of what I might think. We\'ve gone past that now. Tell me what you want, in that classroom of mine.\"

Her chin tilted up as she tried to bring her lips into contact with his. He lifted his head to stay just out of range. His hand skimmed downwards, finally seeking that nub, which by now was engorged and slick with her arousal. He chuckled darkly. \"I thought that messing about did nothing for you. Thought it didn\'t arouse you.\"

She said nothing in response because there was no point in denying her condition, but now her hands did seek to control his movements, and she used them to drag his mouth down to hers. It was electric, once again, to feel her kiss, her warm wet tongue, and the quickened rushing bellows of her breath. When she was more certain that his mouth would stay, tending to her own with fierce care, she slid her hands down to the cambric of his shirt and began to open buttons. Snape allowed her. His own hand was busy making excruciatingly slow circuits, up, down, in, around, her wet folds. Her hips thrashed, not wildly, but certainly in barely controlled movements, each time he completed a circuit and returned to dwell at that nub.

When his shirt was unbuttoned, her hand proceeded to the fly of his trousers, and was even quicker there. Things had begun to proceed at an increasingly rapid pace, and Snape felt desperate to be inside her. His eyes closed when her fingers linked around the base of his rigid cock, inside his boxers, and pulled upward strongly, sliding all the way up to the throbbing, drooling head. He could not suppress a sharp grunt.

Finally she dragged her mouth away and spoke into his ear, hotly, raggedly, breathlessly. \"When you\'re behind me in that classroom, it\'s because you\'re fucking me, up against that lab table. Time for you to be naked, Snape. Get these trousers off. You\'ve seduced me, I hope you\'re happy.\"

He was overwhelmingly aroused by her fantasy, which played itself with dark, illicit excitement in his brain. He muttered a charm to rid himself of his clothing; he could not wait for her small warm hands to finish undressing him. Naked against her again at last, he settled his hips between her thighs. Her legs opened to admit him, and wrapped around him; he could feel her heels interlocking with the bend of his knees as he pushed forward, sliding into her.

There was, as always, that incredible moment of the first sheathing of himself in a woman\'s body: hot, wet, tight, pulsing; and then there was nothing but a red haze of desire that spiraled up, up, as he pounded into her and she met his motions stroke for stroke, her legs twined around his thighs. He felt her sore red hands clutching his arse. Her face was taut and pink; the pupils of her eyes tremendous and velvet black as she stared up at him. She came within a mere minute, so very aroused; and after all the foreplay he was not far behind her, dropping his head to her shoulder, pressing his heated face into her neck to stifle his loud cries of release.

He lay heavily upon her afterwards, because she would not let him slide to the side nor remove his slowly deflating cock from her body. He was exhausted, and felt ridiculously weak.

After several minutes she spoke. \"Well.\"

\"Well what.\"

\"This was definitely a warmer and softer place, but it\'s not enough.\"

\"Damnation, woman, what more do you want? I have nothing left in me this night.\" He did not lift his head; instead, he bit down on her trapezius muscle, running from her neck to her shoulder.

\"You should eat, that\'s all. You\'ve probably been stupid and fasted for days. I need food, as well.\"

Snape thought he could hear amusement in her voice. He muttered a curse and levered himself away from her, ignoring her clutching hands. \"I should deduct points for your rudeness. The bath is through there,\" he said, gesturing. \"Why don\'t you go and tidy yourself, and be out of sight while I summon the house elves to bring us something to eat. I\'ll call you when it arrives.\" He lifted his robe from the hook where it hung on one of the four posts of the bed. He tossed it at her. \"Wrap up; the bath can be cold.\"

\"I expect you like it that way,\" she said, sitting up.

He couldn\'t help looking at her as she moved towards the edge of the bed. He had marked her with his passion, faint bruises the shape of his fingers on her thighs, love bites on her neck and collarbone, and the almond oil gleamed on her skin. He moved close again, lifting the robe from the bed and putting it round her himself. It enabled him to pull her against him by its belt, and bend his head for more heart-stopping kisses. \"You are miserably desirable, you warm wench,\" he muttered. \"Go and bathe.\" He still wanted her, though he knew his body could not cooperate, not again so soon. Obsession, Conscience Minerva whispered to him, darkly.