*Deserving Of Love*

A/N: Sorry I haven't updated in a ridiculously long time... but I broke my hand about a month ago and I couldn't really type. That and my computer cord died on me, so no lap equals no story!

But have no fear, my hand is on the mend and my laptop is doing fine now, so I shouldn't take so long for the next chapter. This one is probably the longest chapter, and I'm still not completely happy with it, but I figured I'd post it and go back to edit if I want later.

Please read and review! And enjoy!

OH... and to my reader Lien - You read my mind... they do indeed need a fight... and they will have one... it's leading up to one, don't worry.


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Remus leaned back in his chair as he swallowed the remainder of his third glass of wine. He was positively full and couldn’t even fathom taking another bite of the amazing amount of food still spread out before him, and he looked up as Tonks let out a loud sigh and leaned back as well. She was holding her wine glass very unsteadily by the stem, the red liquid dangerously close to spilling over as she swirled it absent-mindedly in her glass. She was watching him silently with a sultry smile playing on her red lips, and he crossed his arms over his chest and gazed back at her intently. The candlelight flickered across her face, giving her pink cheeks a warm glow, and down, creating tantalizing areas of light and dark down her neck onto her chest. His eyes moved down her body and he got lost for a moment in the shadowed valley of her chest, his mind wandering to thoughts of running his tongue over the soft skin between her breasts. He wrenched his eyes away from the swell of her chest and moved his gaze back to her face, smiling when his grey eyes met her vibrant blue ones.

Tonks swallowed the last bit of her wine and stood carefully, tossing her napkin onto her empty plate before reaching out for Remus’ large hand.

“C’mon darling… dessert time…”

Remus chuckled and stood, allowing Tonks to lead him by the hand into the living room. His free hand found her waist and pulled her against him tightly and he began attacking her neck with kisses, one hand moving up to gently cup a breast as his other remained clasped with hers. Tonks sighed and turned in his arms when they had reached the sofa, wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down into a slow kiss. She broke the kiss suddenly and shoved him backwards onto the sofa, laughing at the surprised look on his face. Remus grinned mischievously and reached for her, intending to pull her into his lap and groaned as she stepped quickly away.

“Not yet sir… I’ve got a few presents for you first.”

Tonks walked over and picked the gold-wrapped packages off of the floor, winking at him as she returned to join him on the sofa. Remus leaned forward and grabbed his own gifts off of the coffee table, blushing when he realized that his packages were fewer and much smaller than hers.

“Ok… you first… no arguing. Open… this one.”

Tonks held out a rather large box and shook it slightly before setting it in Remus’s arms. He shook it as well and turned it over in his hands a few times, studying it for a moment before being distracted by a very excited witch next to him. He glanced at Tonks and smiled; she was bouncing slightly in her seat, biting her lip gently as she waited for him to open the gift, a look of complete happiness upon her flushed face. Tonks glanced up and winked at him before brushing a lock of hair off of his forehead and giving him a pleading look. Remus decided to end her suffering and tear into the package, and he opened the revealed box eagerly.

“Nymphadora… this is fantastic…”

He smiled broadly as he pulled a rather smart charcoal grey cable-knit cardigan out of the box and shook it out before pulling it eagerly on. Tonks reached over and zipped it, smoothing it out over his chest before folding the collar down for him.

“Who knew a cardigan could be so sexy. I actually almost got you a robe instead, but you look so damn good in my red one I couldn’t bring myself to do it… But if you don’t like it I can always tak-”

Remus leaned in and cut off her rambling words with a gentle kiss then broke away to rest his forehead against hers. Her eyes held his nervously, and she chewed her lip lightly in worry.

“I love it… It’s absolutely perfect. Sirius’s is always so damn drafty; this is exactly what I need. Thank you love…”

“Are you sure? Because I can take it back if you hate it… I mean, it’s March so you probably won’t get to really wear it until fall, and I wasn’t really sure if it was something that you would like or…”

“I love it. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” Remus reached up and smoothed her hair back as Tonks let out a loud sigh of relief. He gave her another quick kiss before picking one of the small boxes off of his lap and placing it in her hand.

“Your turn…”

Remus watched in amusement as Tonks smiled brightly and wasted absolutely no time at all ripping the paper off of the rectangular box. She was like a child on Christmas morning, her face all lit up with excitement, her hands shaking slightly as the paper wrapping was torn from the package and discarded onto the floor.

Actually, that was exactly how she really was on Christmas morning – she had gotten him up at five thirty in the morning on that day and pouted until he crawled out of bed to go open presents. He thought she was going to have an outright temper tantrum when he went to make a pot of tea, and she sat beneath the tree shaking each present, even the ones she purchased him, for several minutes with excited predictions until he had finally joined her. She had spilled the tea he brought her all over him and the carpet twice before he had the chance to place a non-spill charm over both of their steaming mugs.

When they had finished at her place and finally made it over to Grimmauld Place she immediately ran into Sirius’s bedroom with the intention of dragging him out of bed into the sitting room, but left his room almost as soon as she had entered it with a shriek after finding out the hard way that her cousin slept naked. Remus laughed heartily as she voiced her surprise at this news, and she scolded him for a full ten minutes for not telling her before she forced him into the room himself after his friend while she woke the rest of the house. Luckily Sirius had woken up from her screaming and clothed himself, however scantily, so Remus didn’t get the full-Monty treatment as Tonks had. She couldn’t look Sirius in the face for the rest of the morning and seemed to be in quite a grateful mood for the distraction of the Weasley’s, Hermione and Harry’s presence in the house. Sirius of course had spent the entire morning tormenting her about it until she was so keen on escaping that she left for her parent’s house an hour earlier than planned just to escape his goading. Remus had remained behind at Grimmauld Place, both he and Tonks agreeing that it was better for him to meet her parent’s at another time so as to not arouse suspicion about their relationship from the random Order members who popped in during the day.

He smiled at the memory of their first Christmas together and chuckled as he watched Tonks nearly drop the package in her hands out of pure excitement. She had made a mess out of the paper; suddenly glad that the present itself was protected in a box underneath that paper, for he was positive that it would have been demolished otherwise.

Tonks pulled the top off of the plain white box hidden beneath the plain white wrapping and shrieked when she realized what was inside.

“REMUS! Weird Sister tickets?! You are the best boyfriend ever!”

Tonks flung herself onto his lap, smothering his words of welcome with a heated kiss, then pulled away to admire the tickets still held in her trembling hand.

“I’m glad you like them love…”

“LIKE them? I love them!” She squealed as she wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, bouncing lightly in his lap in her excitement.
“I’ve-only-ever-seen-them-once-before-in-concert-and-that-was-ages-ago-and-I-had-to-leave-really-early-because-I-was-sixteen-and-I-had-to-sneak-out-in-the-first-place-because-my-dad-said-I-couldn’t-go-so-I-had-to-be-home-by-eleven-and-he-found-out-a-week-later-and-I-was-grounded-for-the-rest-of-the-summer-holidays-“

She broke off suddenly and released his neck, allowing him to intake a very short but much needed breath before tackling his lips again. He suddenly felt like a much younger man, snogging his girlfriend silly as she clutched a pair of concert tickets in her hand. He had only been to one concert before, when he was nineteen, and he had gone with a girl he dated briefly as an attempt to get over Lily. Sirius had gone as well, with a friend of Remus’s date, and Remus spent the night trying to hold awkward conversation over the loud music much to his dates chagrin. Sirius had ditched his date early on in the evening for a much more scantily-clad blonde, leaving his date in a right state, and Remus had spent the majority of the night apologizing to both girls for Sirius’s actions.

He didn’t hear from the girl again, and didn’t see Sirius for a week until he showed up on Remus’s doorstep late one night, naked save for a sheet, looking utterly exhausted, and begging for a place to crash. Apparently the blonde was a little too much for Sirius to handle and he had finally escaped by transforming into his animagus self and crawling through an unguarded doggy door. Lily and James were over at the time and Lily lectured Sirius for a half an hour on ‘loose women’ and exposing himself as an animagus before letting him get some much needed sleep.

His attention snapped back to the woman in his lap as she trailed the kiss to his neck and started sucking on the sensitive spot below his ear.

“You are getting so lucky tonight…”

Remus chuckled then groaned as she traced the shell of his ear with her tongue, pulling back from her abruptly when she turned to capture his lips again.

“I can see that... so we better hurry this up, because I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a craving for dessert. Something… chocolately…”

Remus nodded in the direction of the bowl of melted chocolate that still sat in front of the fireplace and Tonks blushed profusely as she realized what he was thinking about. She smiled mischievously and turned to pick up another package from the coffee table, a smaller one than the last, and pressed it gently to Remus’s chest when he reached for it.

He tore the gold wrapping away carefully to reveal a very antique-looking brown book with faded gilded pages. He turned the book over is his hands carefully, his face suddenly growing serious as he realized exactly what it was. He looked up at Tonks for a second, then back at the book, stroking the cover carefully with a shaking hand.

“Nymphadora… where did you find this? I thought this had been lost ages ago…”

Remus gently opened the book and smiled at the site that greeted him. Staring up at him from the pages of the dusty book, were three boys, their arms slung around each other, and such a look of absolute bliss on their young faces that Remus winced slightly as he looked at them.

The dark messy-haired boy in the middle smiled up at him brightly, the mischievous glint in his eye still apparent even after being stuck in the photograph for over twenty years. The other dark haired boy, hopelessly and lazily good-looking, winked at him from the discolored picture before turning to glance at the boys by his side. The other boy, light-haired and freshly scarred, smiled up at him meekly then looked away to watch his best friends, seemingly seeking approval from the two of them.

Remus cleared his throat quietly as he ran his finger over the smooth surface of the page before turning it. He flipped through the book silently, smiling at each picture of his and his friends younger selves. There were all kinds of pictures in here of James, Sirius, Lily and himself, and he chuckled quietly as he watched the four of them age with every passing year of Hogwarts and beyond.

“I found it in Sirius’s attic. I was looking for Kreacher one day and wandered up there, and found a couple of old school trunks there. This was in one of them. I asked Sirius about it and he said that it was yours… so I thought it should be returned to its rightful owner. Of course I added a few new ones as well…”

Remus kissed her on the lips soundly and pulled her back to lean against his chest to look at the book with him. They laughed together at the ridiculous styles of the times and how different Sirius and Remus looked then compared to now, and Remus talked fondly whenever a picture of Lily and James appeared. He paused for a small moment when he turned to a page showing a round bellied Lily, James’s arms wrapped around her and the palm of his hand resting against the bump under her jumper that was an unborn Harry. Remus cleared his throat lightly when he felt it tighten suddenly, and turned the page quickly. There were only a few other pictures of James and Lily after that one, the last one of them with a wiggling one-year-old Harry held between their bodies, then the pictures suddenly jumped ahead fourteen years.

“I love these next ones…” Tonks whispered as she nuzzled his throat, and Remus chuckled as he turned to the page she was talking about. It was a picture of him and Sirius, arms strung around each other, glasses of Firewhiskey held in their free hands, and drunken smiles plastered on their faces. The next one was of Tonks and Sirius, taken the same night as the previous, only with Tonks taking Remus’s place in the photo.

“I remember that night… faintly. I remember waking up the next morning at the top of the stairs with you flung across me. I think I had tried to carry you to bed after you passed out and tripped on the last step, I’m not sure.”

Tonks laughed and buried her head in Remus’s chest in embarrassment, then looked back at the picture fondly.

“I remember finding Sirius half naked asleep on the desk in the drawing room, a bottle of Firewhiskey clamped in one hand and a book of Russian love poetry in the other. Probably the only time he’s ever even picked up a poetry book, come to think of it…”

“You’re probably right…”

Remus chuckled and turned the page and a picture of him and Tonks clinging to each other greeted him. He had taken that picture himself, Tonks sitting on his lap, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck and her cheek pressed to his as they huddled so they would both be in the frame. Every once in a while they would turn from the camera and look at each other, getting lost for a second in each other before kissing and returning to face the lens again. It was the last picture in the book and they both stared at it a long time before he gently closed the album.

“Thank you Nymphadora… that’s the best present I’ve ever received… I can’t believe you found it after all of these years. I gave up looking for it ages ago.”

Tonks sat up and kissed him gently before pulling back and running her fingers through his hair.

“You’re welcome. Now it’s my turn, and it better be good… it’s going to be hard to top that last gift.”

Remus chuckled and nodded in agreement before reaching for a small rectangular box wrapped in delicate-looking pink paper.

“I’m not sure if this will top the last one, but it’s a bit more personal than concert tickets…”

Tonks took the box carefully from his hands and unwrapped it eagerly, her hands trembling slightly as she lifted off the top. Inside the box was an ornate bracelet, antique-looking, with a large goldish-pink stone in the middle of a band of woven filigree silver. Tonks took it carefully from its nest of rose velvet and held it up to the light, mesmerized by the different colors playing through the center stone.

“Remus this is beautiful… I love it… where did you…” she whispered as she laid it carefully across her wrist, holding it out for him to fasten it for her.

“It was my mother’s…” Remus whispered as he carefully hooked the delicate clasp and ran his thumb gently across the stone for a second. “My father gave it to her and she wore it nearly everyday of her life…” he trailed off and pressed a gentle kiss on the back of Tonks’s hand before looking back to her face.

Tonks was smiling faintly, tears swimming in her clear grey eyes as she silently leaned in and placed a gentle kiss against Remus’s lips. She pulled back and looked down at the bracelet, her mouth opening a few times before she smiled up at him and leaned in to wrap her arms tightly around his neck.

“I love you Nymphadora…”

Tonks sighed and nuzzled tighter against his neck, and heard her whisper her response into his skin. He held her like that for a long time, one hand in her hair and the other resting against her lower back, until she finally pulled away and placed a soft kiss against his lips.

She stared down at the bracelet when she released him, running her finger over the stone gently, and then traced all the fine details of the woven band carefully, like she was trying to memorize it. Remus ran his hand through her hair and she smiled up at him, a single tear trickling down her pink cheek. He wiped it away with his thumb and smiled back at her, chuckling as a thought popped into his head.

“I never thought I’d render you speechless, but I think I may have finally found something that did…”

Tonks giggled in response and slapped him playfully, rolling her eyes and wiping away the last of her tears.

“Yes, well, just wait until you open your last present… let’s see who is the speechless one then.”

She winked at him and picked up the last present that rested on the coffee table, a medium sized box with a large gold bow stuck to the top of it, and placed it in his outstretched hands. She grinned mischievously as he shook the box gently, and then spun it in his hands before tearing the paper off of it. He opened the box that was revealed slowly, and nearly dropped it when a mass of rich chocolate lace and pale pink bows sat before him. Remus shook his head slightly and lifted the delicate material out of the box, his heart beating faster as the full item was revealed to him.

A rather small article of women’s lingerie dangled from between Remus’s outstretched hands and he stared at it for a second before looking into the box for the rest of the gift. Inside was a pair of satin stockings and a matching chocolate square of silk. Remus looked over at Tonks, who was blushing profusely despite her devilish grin, and held the skimpy negligee to his chest with a mock look of dismay.

“I don’t think it will fit darling...”

Tonks leaned over and plucked the square of silk out of the box and shook it, revealing a pair of chocolate-colored boxers to Remus’s amused eye.

“No… but these will. And these…” she breathed as she gently tugged the chocolate lace teddy off of his fingers and pulled the satin stockings from the box, “are for me… You said you were in the mood for something chocolately…”

Tonks dropped the boxers into his lap and stood as she said this, swaying her hips as she made her way to the bedroom. Remus stared after her hungrily, and as soon as she disappeared into the doorway he started undressing, wanting to be in the matching boxers and lounging suavely when she returned. He tore the cardigan and his shirts from his lean frame quickly, and in his haste he dropped the boxers to the floor. He reached for them, his head buried inside his shirt, and he felt around the floor in search of the silky fabric for a second before his fingers came upon something cold and metallic sticking out from underneath the couch. He lifted the item and sat back up, the thing tinkling in his hands as he tried to free himself from the fabric of his shirts to see what it was.

He blinked for a few seconds as he looked at the found object before it registered that it was a silver key on a gold keychain. He smiled and tossed them on the coffee table, knowing Tonks’s cleaning habits well enough to think that in her haste to clean the apartment Tonks must have shoved some stuff under the sofa. He paused though when the key hit the table and the keychain flipped, revealing not what he previously thought was simply a plain gold trinket, but a piece of metal shaped and painted like the head of a fiery red dragon.

Remus immediately knew exactly who that key belonged to, and all the feelings of jealousy he had felt earlier when he saw the owner of that key step away from Tonks’s front door came flooding back, coupled with an all consuming anger. He picked up the key and tried to crush it in his hand, throwing all of his self-doubt and anger into the effort; but opened his palm and found the dragon in still perfect condition, staring arrogantly up at him with his red scales flashing. He slowly pulled his shirt and cardigan back on and leaned forward on his knees, trying to decide what to do next. Should he just get up and leave while Tonks was still in the bedroom? Would avoiding the confrontation be better than walking straight into it? Or should he confront her about it and find out for once and for all if his insecurities about her and Charlie’s relationship had a foundation after all? Remus decided on the latter; even though by nature he didn’t like emotional confrontations, he knew that this had to come out sooner or later.

He was pulled out of his dark thoughts by a sweet and sexy clearing of the throat and he looked up to see Tonks leaning against the frame of her bedroom door. She had on the chocolate lingerie, its deep sheer fabric stretching perfectly over every curve of her body, her legs shining in the satin stockings that hooked to an almost non-existent garter belt. She was wearing chocolate satin heels that laced up her ankles, their ribbons in the same pale pink hue as the bows on the negligee. She had changed her hair to a deep red hue and it hung in ringlets to her waist, a few curls blocking the view of her nipples through the see-through lace of her teddy. She smiled seductively at him and leaned further into the doorway, beckoning him with one pink-tipped finger.

Remus peeled his eyes away from her and glanced at the key in his hands before turning back to the scantily-clad woman watching him intently. He hesitated for a moment, almost deciding to simply forget about ever finding the key in first place and doing what he was so desperately looking forward to all evening – making love to the woman in front of him – but the idea of not knowing whether or not she had been with Charlie as well tonight pushed him over the edge. He looked back at her and let the key and the dragon key ring slip down to dangle from his finger, watching her hair fade and her face pale as her eyes focused on the swinging metal objects.