The Gilded Cage

anncee- Snapey? Yes, he makes an appearance.
Danie- I can tell you that it has been my intention from the start for SS to be free. I’d rather not say what chapter so I don’t spoil the surprise.
Gertie- As far as helpful fantasy creatures go, the elves rock. I’d really like on myself just to help out around the house. Smut you say?
Phoenix- Awww!
nmos- Yes, she expects him to leave by being found innocence, but her conflict is regarding what that’ll mean for her and her own self interest given Marriage Law requirements. Ch 23 sums it up.
Voracious- The elves might be manageable. Can you imagine the re-education, “Repeat after me, ‘Muggleborns are your friends.’”
Hermione Snape- My V-day wasn’t particularly romantic, but we went out and had some fun.
Elisheva- I try my best to update 3x/week. Woot indeed!
trippingEYES- Fantastic. More/Merrier.
Carlieisastreetmonster- Do you mean HG’s plans for springing him free and having his children? Now there’s a question.
doodle- I think it’s the lack of things to do here that creates the need for escape. Though NOLA doesn’t suffer that problem.
War lioness- Thank you for those thorough and thoughtful reviews. Obviously, I think the process of building a relationship is integral to the plot, so yes, it had to move slowly. Thanks for the word on Apocalyptica I’ll have to check it out.
pytonyk- Welcome back. Peter Pan is a fav of mine, and it worked well for bonding with those miscreants, the elves. I have a soft spot for them.
Heidi191976- Thank you, I hope you continue to enjoy it.
T Stevenson- Oh yes, that could be a conflict if he didn’t feel the same way.
VisionsofParadise- Yes, it might have actually killed me. I’ll try harder in the future not to suck so much.
neelix- That’s what I’m told about the movie. It sounds like a winner. When is SS not being NAUGHTY? Me likes.

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Chapter 38 - A Bene Placito


There were certain things that Severus Snape knew to the foundation of his being, as surely as he knew the magical current that flowed through his veins and arteries, as confidently as he commanded the art and science of potionry.


He knew Albus Dumbledore’s eyes had twinkled. He wasn’t exactly sure how ‘twinkled' qualified as a verb. It was a rubbish verb. And it was irrationally absurd of the wizard to twinkle so, but then that was Albus.


He knew to tie a missive to an owl’s leg first. Then to offer it a treat. To attempt the reverse left one without a treat, without an owl, and still holding the missive. Bloody owls.


He knew if he valued his life or his precious bits not to ever anger a pregnant witch. Ever.


He knew it was a sin to hex a squib. To do so would bring the hex back on one’s head at three times the original strength, and curse your progeny with the non-magical affliction.


He knew sexual relations with house-elves were not only verboten, but it was the most disgusting thing he could ever imagine, short of Argus rutting with his mangy beast.


And he knew to the depth of his bones that Hermione Granger thought about him while she touched herself. Nothing else could possibly explain how prettily she blushed around him. How when she Apparated home after seeing him, he could almost feel her heart pounding before she sought her own release. And if he was a very lucky boy, in the throes of passion she called out his name.


And didn’t that make life a bit more interesting?


It was so easy to see her in his mind’s eye. Her pale thin fingers pushing past her plump little cunt lips to stroke her dripping pink pussy. Of course it was his fingers she envisioned touching her there, making her come. She moaned and writhed at the contact, her face glowing with the beginning sheen of perspiration as she tried to scratch the itch without the aid of his cock. Her back then arched up from the sheets, as she pumped into her tight channel faster and faster. Shrieking and grinding her hips into her fingers, Hermione would milk the last traces of her explosion as she panted softly, the words “Severus… oh Severus. Yes… oh thank you, Severus! Thank you,” rumbling from her chest.


“Uh… Professor? Sir?”


Ye Gods, the Mulciber boy was at his door! Couldn’t he see he was busy? Severus was tempted to throw him out again.


Ever since the boy had begun courting the female of the Weasley species, Billy had been at his door two and three times a day. The boy was his own personal albatross.


With a long suffering sigh Severus closed his eyes and counted backwards from ten in German. “What is it this time, Billy?”


Fortunately the boy had the good sense to look profoundly apologetic. “I, uh…”


“What!” Severus snapped impatiently. “Spit it out, boy. I know I may be trapped here all day, but I swear I’ll choke you if you don’t get to the fucking point real fucking soon.”


“Oh… uh. Never mind.”


Severus grabbed his hair and violently tugged counting backwards from ten in Polish. Really, why Albus ever suggested it as a relaxing technique was beyond him. “No. No. No. You’re here. Speak, so you can leave my presence once again. What is it this time? Agonizing over the flowers you sent her? Worried they’ll make her sneeze? The chocolates make her break out? Are you still afraid she won’t like the sonnet because it doesn’t rhyme? How many times do I have to tell you, poetry doesn’t have to rhyme!”


The ham-fisted youth shrugged, mindless to how annoying Severus found that particular gesture, and shifted from side to side. “No. Um. Well. Uh.” He paused briefly to chew on a fingertip, though his eyes were trained on the pulsing blue vein on his former Head of House’s temple. Billy had seen that vein many times before, and those incidents had never ended well.


Severus was in the midst of recalling what little Hungarian he knew when Billy finally articulated himself.


“Sir, it’s just that, uh, I know we agreed that taking Ginevra to a nice seafood restaurant was a good third date idea, and uh, I know you said the Hook and Eel was very good.”


“But?” Severus prompted.


“Uh. I just don’t think Ginevra has liked any of the fancy restaurants I’ve taken her to.”


“So don’t take her to a fancy restaurant.” Severus swore his first act as soon as the boy left was to write an irate letter to the Hogwarts' Board.


“But… but…” he sputtered.


“But what?” Severus gingerly massaged the sinus points between his eyebrows. All contemplation of Hermione’s milky thighs straddling various parts of his anatomy had been dashed for the day. And really, that was the only thing of note he had on the calendar.


“Well, she’s a girl. She’s supposed to like nice restaurants, Sir.”


Delicately. Severus had to breathe naturally and find his center - another coping technique that didn’t work, courtesy of Albus. If the Mulciber boy kept this up Severus was going to start his primal scream therapy.


Delicately. He had to piece his thoughts together omitting the arsenal of choice words he had for the boy. Breathing in, Severus reminded himself the boy had grown up in a poor country pure-blood family with very narrow minded ideas about how witches ought to act. And at Hogwarts he’d been oblivious to the fairer sex. And painfully awkward. And he didn’t really know any better. He was just another socially-stunted inbred lackwit.


“Billy, do you like eating at fancy restaurants?”


“Uh, not particularly.”


“Are you comfortable in fancy restaurants?”


Billy squirmed, obviously conflicted about revealing to another Slytherin his weakness. Especially for a Mulciber. “No,” he whispered.


“Then why do you expect the same from Miss Weasley? No, Billy, ‘because she is a witch,’ is not an acceptable answer. Now I suggest you think on this some more. If you’re not comfortable somewhere, it’s going to show. You won’t impress her with your worldliness while you’re scratching your head to puzzle out what the finger bowl is used for. Incidentally, it’s to clean your fingers, not to sip. However, that’s irrelevant. Rather, I suspect if you’re not comfortable, the pair of you probably haven’t actually enjoyed your dates. Time to change tactics. Understood?”


“Yes Sir!”


“Right. Now, where’s your absolute favorite place to eat?”


“That’s easy, O’Shea’s.”


“Grand. Take her there.”


“But Sir! It’s a dirty pub. And it’s Muggle, Sir!”


Severus didn’t answer. He just turned his eyes on the boy.


Fortunately Billy had the good sense to leave quickly. He’d seen that look before.


*****


Hermione shuffled through the latest stack of invoices on her desk, her teeth set together and roughly grinding the enamel away. Her parents would have had a fucking cow. They would have outfitted her immediately with an uncomfortable mouth guard or implemented some equally barbaric regimen, ignoring her usual protests that a few galleons and an hour with a Ministry-certified Denti-wizard would set her to rights. But then, they weren't around to demonstrate their love through patronizing dental care. She ignored the kick to the gut that she'd abandoned them to Australia. Was everyone she loved in a penal colony? Wait. Hermione backed up that train of thought; she wasn't in love with Severus Snape.


She was in goddamned frustrated lust with him.


The stack she was surfing through didn't have the document she was looking for. She slapped the folder down on the desk with a loud wincing smack, and Hermione realized she couldn't quite remember what it was she was searching for. Giving up working through lunch as a bad job, Hermione stalked out of her office muttering, "See you later," to Jake, who was chatting up one of her best line workers. 'Well,' she thought miserably. 'Maybe someone around here will get lucky.'


She Apparated upstairs into the Manor home and nearly tripped over Crookshanks, who appeared to be on the prowl for something. Not house-elves, she hoped, but as she wandered through the house banging doors in her wake she couldn't be arsed to find out. If he ever managed to get his paws around one of them he was in for a nasty surprise. Those self-deprecating creatures were not defenseless.


Hermione reached the Master's chambers she had allotted for herself, against the protestations of the elves who had never heard of progressive witches or the feminist movement. They had moved her personal items into the more seemly and less masculine Lady's chamber every morning, until they had reached a mutual understanding. That involved threatening them with knitting needles and the very real promise of socks. Hermione liked the darkly masculine Master's chambers. They appealed to her sense of drama, aside from which, the bedroom featured a bed large enough for the Master to have a good romp with four of his mistresses.


She wrenched the heavy paneled door open and shut it with a satisfactory 'bang.' There was something to be said about storming through a house with so many doors. She flicked her wand, locking it and sealing it from any overly helpful elves. They had the most ghastly habit of standing by her bedside at all hours, twisting on their ears in giddy anticipation of being of assistance. She most definitely did not want their help.


A slight shudder raced across her shoulder blades as she groped in the bottom of her armoire, looking for the box clearly marked for large curious elven eyes, 'Do not touch!' She wanted to add '...upon the threat of painful death,' but given the grizzly history of the Homestead they might take the threat literally. Hermione closed her eyes blotting out images of her knee-high companions. She most certainly did not want to think of them at the moment.


Box in hand, Hermione shucked her work robes, and tried to throw off the Muggle clothing she wore underneath as quickly as humanly possible. She hopped around the room on one foot as she tried to yank her jeans off while her shoes were still on her feet. With all the anger and pent-up frustration of a witch who hadn't had a decent fuck in at least three years, and even then, that sorely lackluster experience was less than enjoyable for all parties concerned, Hermione howled before violently peeling off all of her clothing. Once naked, she fell into the bed sheets in a bone-weary thump.


She closed her eyes and took a moment to breathe deeply, shutting away the stack of blue folders that sat on her desk, the horde of concerned elves who had no doubt gathered at her door, Harry's lack of response to her last letter, Ron's constant ear-to-ear grin that loudly screamed 'I just got laid!' (good for bloody him), and just stared vacantly at the ornate plaster and paneled ceiling. It was gaudy in that Elizabethan style that the entire house reeked of, not that she minded the great hall's hammer-beam trusses, but there was something about the repetitive quality of the trefoil design that calmed her. It was fussy and busy, but perfectly balanced, and balance was something that she needed. Desperately. She was losing her mind. Through the nose and out the mouth she breathed, until the need to pitch a fit passed.


Turning her attention to the box, Hermione extracted the purple dildo with sparkling glitter, and frowned. She hated 'marital aids' that were shaped and colored to look like real cocks. There was something uniquely wrong about a toy that looked real, especially the packaging that said, 'modeled after a real penis!' Fantastic, but whose penis? Toys were toys, and ought to look like toys. It was impossible to mistake a plastic dildo for a real cock with a pulse and a man attached. Regardless, they were all poor substitutes when there wasn't a man attached. She preferred toys that rotated and vibrated with all the bells and whistles, that made her twitch and scream, but since moving to the heavily warded Homestead those overheated within a moment of starting up. The egg-thingy had even smoked. And she was not going to put a sparking battery-operated device anywhere near her most sensitive parts. But damn if she didn't want a vibrator. It was another perfectly good reason to strangle her husband.


Her husband. Damn that man. Did she need another reason to strangle him? Hermione imagined wrapping her fingers around his neck. Pressing her thumbs into his jugular, that long thin neck with the still slightly pink scaring from that hideously overgrown snake, his stubble prickling the skin under her fingers, she imagined saying something witty and condescending as she choked him for trapping her in a sexless marriage with house-elves and take-away food. She knew full damn well that she had proposed it, but that wasn't nearly as satisfying as blaming him. The Severus of her fantasy did not struggle against her, he just raised an incredulous eye brow that made her feel moist and squirmy under its intensity. She had no idea how the fuck he was able to make her feel so damned weak and pliant, but she wanted to just violently throw him to the mattress and impale herself on him.


Her fingers ran over the tops of her nipples tweaking them before she cupped the full weight of her breasts, tickling the undersides and imagining those bottomless bedroom eyes watching her. One hand grasping the substitute cock, she ran it over her naked skin. It left trails of goosebumps in its wake. The ghost of Severus' tapered pale fingers played with her body, feeling out the fleshy curves of her thighs, circling her areoles, watching them pinch up in response. She could almost feel his breath chuffing in her ear, and she shivered in the warm room. There had been a hot fog between them on her recent visits, one that clouded around her and pressed into her skin. Her body sensed the pheromones that hung in the air, it left her breathing heavily and swallowing thickly for want of him.


Her splayed hand traveled down her stomach, where Severus would sigh his approval of her slightly rounded abdomen, and caress the curve of her waist that widened into lush hips. He'd find her perfect. Her porcelain white skin a mark of classical beauty instead of a distinct lack of sunshine. Hermione's fingertips swirled in the curled short hair of her pubis, wondering if Severus would ask her to shave. She might. For him, she might.


The purple shaft rubbed up and down her breastbone making a lazy circuit along her body, occasionally stopping to swirl a nipple. A finger slid into her cleft and Hermione gasped. 'Yes, Severus,' she encouraged, 'touch me there.' She was already so damn wet and near panting, and she could feel the moisture beginning to leak onto her thighs. She could only imagine that Severus could make whole rivers run from her. Her fingers brushed against her clit. The touch was electric. Hermione ground her teeth and splayed her legs, opening for more. Her digits stroked up and down the silkened skin to touch all the parts of her vulva, from her taut opening to the hood of her clit.


The Severus of her imagination was gifted, knowing exactly how to tease then press firmly on her little button. Hermione's toes curled and the toy traveled to her thighs. She could see Severus' broad shoulders above her, his hips sliding between her thighs. The purple substitute circled her opening, prodding for entrance. His cockhead entered her and Hermione squeezed herself around him, holding him there, enjoying the first thrust that opened her to the fullest.


Her tongue darted out to swipe the perspiration gathering on her upper lip. Her neck was already beading with sweat. She guided him in slowly, imagining Severus' look of groaning bliss. Fuck, she wanted to see that face. Hermione pinched her clit between her thumb and fingers as she eased the dildo completely into her pink sex, clenching her muscles in appreciation of the fullness. Slowly, in rhythm with her breathing she fucked herself on it, angling it to tease her g-spot and move in tandem with the toying of her clit. Her brow furrowed as she dragged the cock in and out of her body. Her body lurched upwards as she hit that particularly wonderful spot that made the stars bloom in the space behind her eyes.


'Yes!' she silently exclaimed, 'Fuck me, Severus! Right there!'


Having found just the right spot, Hermione abandoned her teasing and pulled her knees up. With scrambling hands that flew between pinching her nipples and rolling her clit she fucked herself frantically at a fevered pace, and writhed under the assault. The image of Severus' strong features came sharply to her mind, his jaw set in determination, his lank dark hair swinging along his jawline as he held her knees back.


Hermione shrieked and clenched the hard cock, her body shuddering around it as her muscles tightened and her body released. The blissful juxtaposition of tension and relief as she exploded.


Her hands dropped to her sides as she panted, heaving great lungfuls of air while she unwound. She lay there, clenching the plastic dildo in search of one more peak, but there were none to be had. Hermione closed her eyes for a long moment, before opening to focus on the ostentatious ceiling. It was a cruel reminder that she was nowhere near Azkaban. She pulled the toy out and stared at it. Disgusting hateful thing. She hated that it could make her come. Hated that she needed it to come. Hated that it didn't have a pulse or a man attached.


"Fucking toy," she hissed at the offending purple object. Which, literally she supposed it was in fact a fucking toy, and that thought did nothing at all for her ire. Hermione threw it into the pile of bedsheets, not giving a damn what the elf who attended to making her bed would think.


She couldn't take much more of this. Something had to give. More than likely it would be her pride. She had told him not even a year ago she would 'never, ever touch him'. Hermione knew she might have to eat those words.


Across the seas Severus' labored breathing slowed down as he fumbled for something to wipe himself off with.


He couldn't take much more of this.


A/N:
Chapter Title: A Bene Placito - At One's Pleasure (rather fitting for some self-gratification action)

A word of thanks to Christev20 for beta'ing this mess for me. You rock, we all know it, but it bears repeating.

Thanks for reading lovelies! Ya'll rock too. FYI - the pre-written portion of this fic has ended. From here on out I am posting what I've got as I have it. I am going to try to continue on the M/W/F posting schedule, and I think that's do-able, but I warn you in advance I may have a gap or two as this fic winds up. It's mostly finished. Your reviews and encouragement keeps me on track and enthused to write more. This will never be an abandoned fic, that's not what I'm getting at, but I'm not promising that I'll maintain the crazy-mad 3x/week posting schedule.

Schmootches, AV