Guilty Pleasure

Part II

Narcissa Malfoy watched her husband. They were seated several yards apart at the formal dining table in their ostentatious yet cold home. The meal was excellent. Lucius, however, couldn’t know.

“You’re not eating?” Narcissa asked, trying her best to sound wifely and concerned. In truth she wished she could hurl her steak knife at him.

Lucius raised his eyes from his untouched plate and glared down the length of the table through the candelabra to his wife. “Not particularly,” he said snarled, taking no such care to sound anything but annoyed. He held her in his sights for a moment more, daring any other comments, and when she shrugged and stood up, he sighed and averted his attention to the window. The moon was splendid.

“I’m going to bed,” Narcissa announced. She then walked from the room with hollow footsteps and not so much as another glance at her husband.

Lucius felt the immediate relief he always experienced when his bothersome wife finally left him in peace. With the boy in school now, she was positively incorrigible at times. Theirs had never been a close marriage, and Lucius had never given her reason to hope that it might someday be. Narcissa had done her job – given him a son. For that he would keep her, protect her, and tolerate her presence.

But love her? Lucius rolled his eyes at the thought. She had asked him for that once, when he had lost his temper with her constant fawning and simpering pleas for attention. She had said she just wanted him to love her. She had said it with tears in her eyes.

And he had said the words that had ended her pleas, torn the innocent light from her eyes and forever left her in a permanent shadow of sorrow. He had told her flatly that his love was the one thing he could never give her. A cruel thing to say, but the truth often is.

That had been shortly after Draco’s birth, and they had scarcely touched since. He sometimes wondered if she would deny him should he try to bed her. It was only a fleeting thought, for in truth he normally hadn’t the slightest desire.

But that pretty little muggle from the shop was tormenting his thoughts still. He grinned slightly thinking of her and how soft and welcoming she would have been. His eyes focused on the flickering candlelight as he imagined what might have been, especially if the sweet thing had been suddenly frightened. That always proved to be pleasurable; subduing a frightened one, sometimes quite forcefully if they were really scared.

It wasn’t rape. He had decided that long ago. Rape was for cowards and weaklings. The women Lucius took were more than willing, even if their instincts did manage to tell them at the last moment that something was horribly wrong. Fear and arousal often intertwine and get confused in their poor little heads. But Lucius refused to completely remove fear from the equation. They trembled because he both pleasured them and frightened them.

The thoughts were enough to make him grow tight against the seam of his trousers. He’d need release, and it was far too late to go out looking.

So he stood slowly, fully aware of the pulsing need between his legs that was in control of his usually unfettered mind, and went in search of his wife. She would do her duty tonight, whether she liked it or not.