The Radiant

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Lucius woke up and sensed immediately that she was not in the bed with him. Sitting up, he looked around the room, running fingers through his snarled morning hair.

“I’m over here.”

Her voice was sateen and smiling, and Lucius eased off his search for a moment, turning his head in her direction. She was—where was she?

“Behind the curtains.” Ginny seemed to sense his confusion and the heavy brocade curtains that cloaked his bedroom window rippled as she spoke.

Lucius blinked for a moment. “What are you doing behind there?”

A soft laugh sounded from behind the fabric. “Didn’t you ever do this as a child? Stand behind the curtains and press your face to the glass? You can pretend the whole world is nonexistent when you stand here. The curtains are behind you and the outside is in front of you, and you are shrouded.” Her head popped out from behind the drape and he saw that she was standing on the windowseat. “Also, I can’t sit today.” She was smiling slightly and he found himself smiling back. She was most definitely still sore from the striping he had given her yesterday.

“How is your bottom?”

She hopped down and sidled out from behind the curtain, turning around to face away from him. In a swift movement she pulled her nightgown up around her hips, showing Lucius his handiwork.

He had done well. The belt’s heft had left wide, blushing streaks across her buttocks and upper thighs. Most of the hits were lined up parallel to each other, with the tiniest amount of white skin in between. A few stripes were layered on top of each other, criss-crossed in an obscenely arousing pattern.

“Looks good.” His voice was rough.

She dropped the skirt and turned around, climbing onto the bed and pushing her way to sit behind him, her long, white legs on either side of his body.

Lucius frowned. “You seem rather happy today.”

“Are you frowning right now? I saw your ears move.” She smoothed her fingers over his brow from behind him, and then laughed. “So suspicious, Lucius.”

“You know that I am naturally suspicious.” He sighed and leaned back against her. “My former career, unfortunately, made me that way.” Her body didn’t stiffen behind him as he had anticipated it would at the mention of his darker past. Instead, she kept up the soothing rhythm of her fingertips across his forehead.

“I know you’re suspicious. I feel better today. I feel sad but I also feel lightened. I know that telling my family was best, and I’m scared about the consequences, and I’m scared that they will hate me forever, but I also feel like I did the right thing telling them. I feel like my chest isn’t so constricted anymore.” She kissed his temple, and Lucius raised his eyebrows at her display of affection. “You’re making a face again—I know it. Stop that. You’re so cynical!”

Lucius smiled, then, and rested his hands on her thighs, using her as a sort of armchair. “Do you mind if I read the paper?” Ginny shook her head, and he reached to the bedside table, grabbing the Prophet and unfolding it, settling back into her as she absent-mindedly ran her fingers through his hair, pressing lightly at his scalp and feathering her fingertips over the skin of his neck and temples.

As he was reading, Ginny read, too, over his shoulder, softly commenting on affairs and articles that she found interesting or disturbing. Lucius would answer her distractedly, but would engage in conversation until the page was turned and a fresh wave of news was brought forth onto them. Ginny relished the weight of his body against hers—it had taken her so long to get to this point, to be able to coax him into relaxing around her, to stop being so formal and so icy. She had had to be exceptionally understanding and exceptionally resilient.

“It’s a good thing we have,” she murmured, and he agreed immediately.

“Yes.” He set the paper down and tilted back to look at her. “I care for you very much.”

“Same here.”

“Your eloquence is charming, as per usual.” He opened the paper back up, but Ginny could see the lift of his ears and knew that he was probably smiling.

“I wanted to ask you—”

“Yes?” He set the paper down again.

“Can we go out?”

Lucius turned his torso far enough around so that he was able to see her face to face. “Out?”

“There’s a ministry ball coming up, actually. For Samhain.”

“I forgot that it was All Hallow’s eve so soon. What with the warm weather lately.”

“Me too.” She was quiet for a moment, resting her chin in her hands and looking at him. “I want to go with you. I know you’ve been invited. I got an invitation, too. It was forwarded from my flat the other day. We’ve been mainly alone and I like it very much, but I don’t want people to think that I’m hiding you away somewhere because I’m ashamed in any way.” Her voice became quieter and she looked down for a moment before meeting his eyes again. “I’m not ashamed of you, but now that we’ve told people, it will start leaching out into the wizarding world, and the rumours are going to be amazingly vitriolic. Amazingly. They are going to say awful, awful things, Lucius. But I want to have that trial by fire—”

He nodded.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I think we should go together. I had saved the invitation.” She raised her eyebrows at him and a slight flush bloomed over the sharp edge of his cheekbones. “Well, I was going to ask you, actually, but then the whole situation with your family and—you were so upset—I wasn’t sure—what?”

“Do you want to come dress shopping with me?” Ginny had a cheeky grin on her face and laughed silently as Lucius pulled a face.

“I’d rather not. But I’m sure you’ll look lovely no matter what.” He turned back to the paper.

Ginny hummed against his ear. “You say the nicest things. But you don’t even realize you’re saying them. You just let them slip.”

Lucius murmured an assent, again wrapped up in the news, and Ginny kneaded absentmindedly at his shoulders, thinking.

---

The thing of it was—it had been truly difficult to pick out a dress that wouldn’t be inflammatory in any way. Ginny had originally veered toward the green colour scale because of the contrast with her hair, but had shied away from that when she realized that she would essentially be dressing in Lucius’ colours. The two of them coming out together to a huge ministry event was going to be provocative enough without her dressing as a Slytherin.

She had then wanted to wear red because of her love for the colour, but had also veered away from that, nervous that she would upset Lucius with her Gryffindor display. She wanted to support him, not alienate him.

Therefore, she had also ruled out silver and gold. Blue was an option, but wasn’t her personal favourite. Yellow was a definite no. Purple looked interesting on her because of her hair, but she couldn’t find a hue that suited her properly. Black was boring, and orange was useless. Grey and brown were awful, and anything flesh-toned made her look naked, which, while it might have been appreciated by her escort, would definitely not be appreciated by any of the ministry officials, least of all any of her family who would see the pictures from the night.

Eventually she had settled on white, originally scared of the colour because she was afraid that Lucius would see it as another attempt to steer him toward an altar. But the dress she found was so sublime, so elegant, that she quite simply had to have it.

Dressing for the ball had been a nervous affair, too. Lucius had wanted to know the colour of the dress so that he could match her, but Ginny hadn’t wanted to let him know before he saw it, which made him tetchy and then made her flustered. Eventually, she had just told him that “black and white would fucking cut it”, and he had clicked off to his closet in a temper. She had had to rely on the house elves to help her get ready, which had been amusing since Balius was old and male and was clearly not really used to helping a young woman slither into a clingy dress and then help her with the myriad of fastenings and drapings. Lucius had stayed in his room for the entire remainder of her dressing, and she hadn’t heard hide nor hair of him—not while she slicked her lips with colour, not while she combed her hair back and while Balius helped her twist it into a tight pull, not while she slid on her silver stiletto heels, not while she stood in front of the full-length mirror, sucking on a barley sugar sweet and feeling it click around her teeth and mouth as she surveyed her appearance.

---

“Ginevra?”

Lucius was outside the door. Ginny could just picture him, one hip slightly cocked, rapping on the wood with one knuckle and looking impatient and haughty. She had put him into a fit of pique with her earlier yelling, and had regretted it immediately but hadn’t apologized. Both of them were extremely tense about the upcoming party, and both were coping in different ways. Ginny had been raising her voice throughout the entire day. Lucius, alternatively, had been speaking less and less, showing his anger through heavy boot-steps and flaring nostrils.

“One moment. One moment!” Her voice sounded shrill even to her own ears, and Ginny winced. She cleared her throat and spoke again, lower and smoother. “I just need to put one last pin in my hair.”

She could almost hear him exhale on the other side of the door, standing silently. She was sure he was impatient, was taut with nerves and residual anger, and all of a sudden she felt the absolute urge to look perfect—she had to look perfect for tonight, for him, for the duress they were about to endure. Looking at her reflection, she wiped her sweaty palms on her dressing gown and willed her fingers to stop shaking, to still and not betray her frayed, electric nerves.

“Okay. Okay. Come in.”

When she heard the door click open, she turned to face him.

Lucius froze mid-step, and his torso pulled back as he stared at her.

Ginny had her hair pulled back into a tight, coiled bun, everything slicked down, the sparseness of her hairstyle showing every hard line, every striking feature of her face, the pale height of her forehead, the sheer delicacy of her ears, the road of her jaw.

She was wearing a floor-length white dress, the top gathered over one shoulder, edged in silver, the waist pulled from across one side of the ribcage down to the other hip, diagonally, still outlined in silver. The material followed the curve of her buttocks and her thighs, only loosening and dropping to the floor in loose pleats at around her knee. As she shifted from foot to foot, he could see the slit that traveled up the front of the dress, ending at her lower thigh.

“I didn’t want to wear evening gloves. Is that alright?”

He watched her lips move but didn’t really hear her, noting the fine blush across her cheeks, the spare make-up, the defined eyebrows moving as she spoke, the length of her bare white arms against the crepe of the dress. As she moved, the light hit the silver accents and she seemed illuminated.

“I know it’s white. I’m sorry if it’s too much like a wedding dress, but nothing else really—”

“It’s fine.”

Ginny blinked at his abrupt tone. Lucius coloured and cleared his throat.

“I mean—what I mean is that you look—you look perfect, actually.” She gave him a shaky smile. “I’ve never seen you dressed like this. I’m sorry for my lack of speech. You look like an Amazon. Hippolyta.”

“You’ve seen me in formal wear before.”

“That gold dress was nothing like this.”

Ginny blushed. “You remembered what I was wearing that night you asked me to dance with you?”

Lucius moved closer. “Of course. I remember. I remember wanting to pull down the bodice of that piece of gold frippery you were wearing and layer my teeth marks across that fine, pale chest. I remember wanting to rub you up against me on the dance floor so that you could feel how hard I was. I remember—” and here he moved behind her, laying his hands on his shoulders, marveling silently at how soft she felt, how she shook slightly as his fingers spanned out “—I remember wanting to bend you over the formal dining table and take you in front of everyone.” Her eyes had slipped closed—he saw it in the mirror, and he lowered his hands, brushing the backs of his fingers over her hardened nipples.

Ginny inhaled harshly and arched back against him.

“You look perfect, too.” She murmured her words against the side of his neck, gasping and placing soft, hot kisses along the pulse-jumping skin there. And he did look perfect—he had opted for a three-piece set, wearing a single button black satin peak lapel with a soft grey vest and an ascot to match, his hair pulled back tightly. “Apollonian. Like we are a set of gods. We look good.” She watched him in the mirror as he began to tease her nipples with short, brusque pulls of his fingertips. “Oh no, we can’t.”

“I want you.” His voice was low and gravelly, and she could feel him pressing into her buttocks, hard and hot. “And you’ve been such a fucking shrew all day long that I’m going to take what I want.” One of his large hands slid down from her chest and spanned her stomach, pulling her back into him. His fingers pressed into the flesh of her, and he stared for a moment in the mirror, suddenly struck by the image of his child perhaps carried where his hand was, her body becoming lush and sweet in the softened curves of pregnancy, a new brand of blood child created from the two of them—strawberry hair, angular, pointed faces, grey-eyed and discerning. Lucius became harder at the thought of Ginny as a vessel for his child, and abruptly started to pull up her skirts with his lower hand.

“You’ll mess up my dress.” They both knew that the argument was weak, especially when Lucius got his hand under the material and she automatically spread her legs for him as his fingers slipped inside of her. He was blanketing her neck with scorching kisses and Ginny knew that if they didn’t fuck—if he wasn’t inside her soon—they would burn up, and she would be ash and bone, useless. “I’m sorry about today.” Her voice was a whisper as she bent slightly forward and acquiesced, murmuring her pleasure.

He walked them forward to her dressing table and bent her forward, flipping her skirts up around her waist and along her back, pulling her underpants down to her knees. Before she could remonstrate, he pushed inside her, his hands on her hips, gripping tightly.

Lucius took her quickly, the jagged, sharp thrusts of his hips betraying the anxiety and stress he had felt all day about the upcoming ball. Ginny watched his face in the mirror as he took her, noting the way he looked down between them at the place where his hardness disappeared inside of her, the way his mouth became fuller and more relaxed as he concentrated solely on this one thing. When she hissed and murmured his name, his eyebrows jumped and his jaw clenched.

When he came, he held himself inside of her as deep as he could, burning her, branding her.

He stood behind her, breath heaving. Ginny allowed him to regain his breathing before he slid out of her and she straightened, pulling her underpants back up. As Lucius looked at her, she slid a hand between her legs, and brought her forefinger back out, wet with his come. He watched her, eyes slightly narrowed, as she brought her fingertip to her neck and marked herself, spreading the dampness behind her right ear and along the cord of her neck.

It would dry, soon, and become invisible, but Lucius realized the gravity of the action. She was marking herself as his tonight. No matter who she danced with or who she spoke with, it was his semen that was giving off the pheromones along her skin. It was his come that was setting her as his own. No one else would know, but he would.

He grabbed her hand and brought the same fingertip to his mouth, sucking it between his lips, tasting the mixture of her and himself. It was stronger than he had anticipated, a salty, thick taste. Lucius withdrew her fingers and kissed her palm, closing his eyes for a moment before fixing her with a determined look.

It was time to go.

“I’m scared.” She chewed the insides of her lips.

“I’ll be with you all night.”

“Will you?”

“I’ll try,” he replied, tracking a thumb over the skin of her hands, tracing her slight bones. “I’ll try to be by your side for the majority of the night.” Lucius looked at her for a moment. “I was going to ask you to wear the Malfoy diamonds tonight, but I don’t think you need them. You look perfect as you are.”

Ginny breathed deeply. “We should go. Get ready for the shutter flashes from the photographers at the gate.”

“I know.” Lucius looped an arm around her waist, spanning her ribs with his fingers, slotting himself into her. Leaning over, he nosed her neck, around her ear, where she had marked herself, and inhaled, finally placing a kiss against her jaw.

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on an aside - this is the dress that i was picturing when i dressed her:

http://sedirea.org/laceandtea/atelier%2807%29_large.jpg