*Deserving Of Love*

This chapter is a bit longer than the previous ones. It includes a poem from e.e. cummings, one of my favorite authors.

Reviews are welcome!


At eleven thirty sharp, a small knock was heard on Remus’s door. He had been pacing for the past half-hour in absolute impatience; he had given up trying to read an hour ago when he realized that he had been going over the same incoherent sentence repeatedly.

He sat in complete silence without moving for awhile until he felt like he was jumping out of his skin with anticipation at every creak he heard down the hall, and decided that the only way he would get through the thirty minutes that separated him from her was to keep active. He paced back and forth across his small room then stopped suddenly, knowing she was approaching.

He could smell and hear her even before she was standing outside of his door; he could tell that she was being extra careful as she walked down the hall towards his room. He walked to the door calmly when he heard the small soft raps against it and opened the door to smile at the beautiful woman in front of him.

Her hair was still red and long, and a tiny thought of Lily flickered in his mind. He shook the woman of his past out of his thoughts and brought his attention to the woman standing in front of him. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a form-fitting deep brown jumper that brought out tiny flecks of gold in her sparkling grey eyes. She was standing barefoot in his doorway, and had her arms behind her back, presumably holding the parcel he saw her with earlier.

“Good evening…” she whispered as he stood aside to welcome her into his room. She stood on tip toe and kissed him gently before she entered the room, and he could already feel his control slipping. He closed the door gently behind them and turned to face her.

She had moved over near the fireplace, and he stood and watched the flickers of light dance across her face. She could feel him watching her and she looked up at him, smiling brightly. She sat down on the rug in front of the fire and set down the objects she had been hiding behind her back. One was the parcel he had seen earlier, and the other was a bottle of red wine.

“Well are you going to just stand there and stare at me all night or are you going to give me a chance to get you drunk so I can take advantage of you?”

Remus laughed quietly and joined her on the rug, leaning against the footboard of the bed, and pulled out his wand to produce two wine glasses. He gave the bottle a quick tap and the cork disappeared, and he poured them both a generous amount of the wine before he spoke.

“Nymphadora, I’m sorry that we did not get a chance to talk about anything today. I just wanted to apolo-“

“Shhhhh. Let’s not kill this by talking it to death. Let me just say one thing: I have no regrets about what happened today, except for the fact that it ended so abruptly. With that said however, I do believe that we should wait before… finishing what we started…” she blushed and took a small sip of her wine before continuing. “At least until the house is a little quieter. I do not want to worry about us getting caught, or worse – interrupted.”

Remus let out a sigh of relief. Even though he wanted nothing more than to make love to this woman, he would much rather wait until they had the house mostly to themselves. He hated the thought that if they made love tonight they would only have a few precious hours. That could never be enough; he wanted days.
“I think we should wait too.”

“Good. But that doesn’t guarantee that I’ll be able to keep my hands completely off of you.” Tonks winked at him and leaned into his smiling face for a kiss. Her lips were like fire as they pressed against his, and as her tongue swept into his mouth to intertwine with his, he realized that it was going to be a very long couple of days.

After a few moments they broke the kiss and he pulled her tightly against his side, placing several tender kisses on her head as she silently watched the flames. She sat up abruptly and reached for the brown paper wrapped package, and turned to face him, holding the bundle close against her chest.

“I found this at a Muggle bookshop a couple of months ago. I was looking into a rumor that some Dark Magic books were sold to the shop after an estate sale, but all I came across was a small collection of American Poetry. As soon as I saw this I knew I had to get it for you. It is nothing major – just a little something…”
She trailed off and handed it to him gingerly; scooting so that she was kneeling directly in front of him.

He was usually embarrassed when he was given gifts and usually declined them as politely as possible, he could not afford to reciprocate. But the look on her face told him to accept her gift without argument – she looked like she was going to burst with excitement as Remus ran his hand over the simple white string that held the paper shut.

He slowly pulled the bow open and looked up at her as her hands reached out to touch him. She was sitting on her knees, leaning forward slightly with her hands on his legs, and she was biting her lip with anticipation. He was enjoying the feel of her hands on him and the close proximity of her face and almost completely forgot about the gift he was holding, until she looked up into his eyes. He saw worry in those clear grey eyes of hers, worry that he wouldn’t like what she had given him, and he ended her seeming agony by fully removing the brown paper and holding a book in his hands.

It was an anthology of poetry by the modern American poet e.e. cummings. He was introduced to his work by Lily; she said that he was the only poet who could truly capture the chaos of the lovelorn. She had given him a paperback edition of a selection of his poems years before, and he committed all of her favorites to memory.

He destroyed that copy when Lily and James got married – it was the only thing she had ever given to him and he burned it; an exorcism by fire, so to speak.

And now here he was, being given another copy of the book by a different woman; a woman who had no idea what memories this stirred.

It was an older copy of the book, a collection of his poems along with personal letters and notes. He turned the book over in his hands, and then opened it to find an autograph across the title page. It must have cost her a fair amount; even if it wasn’t an old collection of poetry, it was an autographed copy of a famous poets work.

“How did you…” Remus was in complete shock, and at a loss for words, looked up into Tonk’s beaming face.

“We were talking about poetry one night, and I said something about Shakespeare being the reigning king of love poetry. You argued, and said that a modern poet, and an American modern poet at that, was better at describing love than of all of the other poets in the world. I thought you were just pissed from one to many Firewhiskeys, and I challenged you and you recited one of his poems. I later went snooping, forgive me, to see if you owned any of his works, and you did not have a single one. So when I saw this it was too good to let pass by. What do you think?”

Remus ran his hand over the smooth leather binding with the slightly fading gold letters, and looked up at her again. “I think that this is the best gift I have ever received. Thank you Nymphadora.”

She leaned in and kissed him gently, obviously pleased with herself for leaving him almost speechless with her present. He pulled her so that she was sitting fully between his legs; his back supported by the footboard, and wrapped his arms around her tightly.

“Read to me?” She asked in a small voice against his chest. She sat up and brought their wine closer to them then settled her back against his strong chest.
He wasn’t a big man by any means, tall but on the thin side, but Nymphadora looked like a small child when pressed up against him. Her small frame fit perfectly against his chest, her head on his right shoulder, her legs following the curve of his bent knee. She rested one hand on his bent knee, and held her wine glass with the other.

Remus opened the book carefully and turned through the pages to find the poem he had recited to her that night months ago.
He looked over the familiar words, and hundreds of memories flooded into his mind; memories of Lily.

She was haunting him today, and he felt a sudden sharp pang of guilt at holding one woman in his arms – a caring, beautiful, adoring woman – while thinking about another. He had long since laid the ghost of Lily Evans to rest, fully accepting the fact that he had let her go and she had married James, and that they were gone forever; but she still haunted him.

This summer had been especially hard because having Harry around was a constant reminder of both James and Lily – James was apparent at first sight of the boy; from his shaggy dark hair to his ever-curious adventurous personality.

Harry did lack the arrogance that James had at his age, and he was compassionate of others, both traits that he took from his mother. Along with the most startling, and to Remus, unsettling, of his features – his blazing green eyes. Every time he looked at Harry he saw Lily staring back at him.
At first it made him happy to see that Harry was such a mixture of both of his parents, he was a lovely reminder of long lost friends; but with all of the uncertainty that surrounded the boy’s future, it was now beginning to be troublesome. As danger lurked closer to Harry it was almost as if Remus was facing the possibility of losing two people he loved very much all over again.

And he wasn’t sure that he had the strength in him to deal with that possibility.

Remus was snapped back to reality when Tonks reached up and pressed her small hand against his face.

“Remus? Wherever you are, come back…” she joked as she ran her hand up to his hair.
Remus jumped slightly at her touch, dropping the book into her lap.
“Hey… thought I lost you for a minute. Are you ok?”

“Yes, fine thanks. Just remembering when I first heard this poem…” he paused for a minute before he looked down at Tonks, a curious expression lingering on her sweet face. “That, however, is a story for another time.”

He reached down and plucked the book from her lap and quickly flipped through it, finding the page almost immediately.


“it may not always be so;and i say
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another's,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be,i say if this should be-
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.”


He read it well – his deep melodic voice carried the poem. It was clear that he had it read it many times before; each rise and fall of his voice was well recited, yet did not sound scripted.

Tonks could tell that this poem was very personal to him, and had a strange feeling that she had inadvertently stirred up a small part of his dark past. She watched as he ran his long fingers over the page, and she was torn between desperately wanting to know what was in his past, but not wanting to pry into his personal life.

“Did she love you back?”

Tonks bit her lip and held her breath as she awaited his answer. She suddenly realized that she knew very little about the man wrapped around her. She knew the facts; where he had grown up, about his family, his days at Hogwarts. These things they talked about with ease, mostly over a few drinks with Sirius leading the conversations.

She heard all about their ‘Marauder’ days, with Remus being on the fringe of the adventures with Sirius and James leading the way. She knew that he was shy, intelligent, warm, and incredibly patient; she could tell that by the way he interacted with the children on a daily basis.

But when it came to his personal life, she was very far removed. She did not know anything about when he was bitten as a child by Fenrir Greyback, he would not speak of it in detail.

And she especially did not know about his past loves.

She told him and Sirius about her past relationships, Sirius and her laughing at the various ridiculous ways that men had broken up with her. Sirius had also shared his stories, and even though he had spent a great deal of his adult life in prison, he had many conquests under his belt. But Remus kept quiet on this subject, only telling half-tales about a few women in his past. Most of what she did know about Remus’s love life had been from Sirius. She had seized the opportunity during the last full moon to question the best friend of the man she was quickly falling for. Sirius played along, watching her fall over her words and turn three shades of pink before she finally began to ask questions. Sirius told her about the girls of Remus’s past; the short-lived relationships at school, the brief flings in his adult life with women who did not understand him or who he tried to use as a replacement for the woman he lost.

He did not tell her about Lily, but she knew that he had to have been hurt in the past; it was written all over him.

Remus let out a small sigh and closed the book slowly. Tonks shifted and looked up into a very melancholy face.

“Yes. I believe that she did. We never had a romantic relationship, see. We were friends, and as much as we both wanted it to be more, there were just too many things that got in the way. One of my best friends, for instance. I’m not saying that he stole her from me. I realized that he was better for her; he would be able to provide her with a more stable life, he did not have to worry about losing control and hurting her.
And we were so young... So I distanced myself from her, and she married my best friend. And now their orphaned son is sleeping in the room down the hall.” He made this statement simply, letting her know that he was not angry that she had asked him about it, as well as making it clear that he did not want to discuss it at length.

Tonks stared up at him with sadness in her eyes; sadness that he believed that he was inferior because of his lycanthropy, sadness because he had lost the woman he loved, twice, and sadness that she had forced such a bold reminder of that woman on him tonight.

He had loved Lily Potter, and now he was forced to help protect her and James’s orphaned child. His life was the defined by the saying ‘Life is not fair.’

She quickly changed her hair from red to a vibrant shade of blue, deciding that it was not a good time to resemble his long lost love, and sat up suddenly to straddle him. His head was down, his eyes closed tightly, and she lifted his chin with cool fingers until his face was level with hers.
His eyes fluttered open at her touch, and she noticed that he looked older now - the firelight playing on the worry line between his eyes and his down-turned mouth. She leaned up and placed a gentle kiss on his forehead, followed by one on the bridge of his nose, the tip of his nose, and finally on his lips. He smiled into the kiss, glad that she had not wanted to discuss the issue further, and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly to him. She ran her fingers into his hair and nibbled his bottom lip lightly before running her tongue over it. He parted his lips and moaned deep in his throat as her tongue met his.

She felt a driving need to show him that he was worthy of being loved and desired; she deepened the kiss, turning possessive as she leaned harder against him, pushing his head further against the bed.
He let her lead, giving into the feel of the determined woman sitting atop him; her thighs clamped firmly on either side of his legs, her lips and tongue forcefully playing over his mouth. She sat down harder onto his lap, teasing him with the light rocking of her hips against his growing arousal. After a few minutes of this gentle teasing, he grabbed her hips and forced her harder against him.
She gasped as he suddenly broke the kiss and moved to her neck to lick a line from the base of her throat to her left ear. He bit the lobe gently and quickly rocked forward, and she was surprised to feel the hard floor against her back. He was suddenly on top of her, reversing the roles on her as he pressed his hardness into her core forcefully. His warm breath was coming in gasps and pants across her ear now, and the sensation caused the already hard peaks of her breasts to harden even more.
Her breasts positively ached for him to touch them, to feel his warm wet mouth tugging at them, his large hands cupping her. She let out a long low moan as he began kissing down her neck, sucking and biting as he made his way to her heaving chest. His head was swimming with the scent of her arousal; it was growing stronger as she pressed against him, and he was losing all sense of his control.

He wanted to rip her clothes off of her writhing body and shag her senseless right then and there to ease the desire that had been growing in him for months now. She arched her back as she felt his hand move up under her sweater, and she reached down to help him pull it from her trembling frame. He suddenly pulled his hand away from her and buried his face in her chest in an effort to regain his senses.

“Nymphadora…” he sighed slowly, turning his head so his cheek was resting on her. She reached up and cradled his head tighter against her still pounding chest, then placed a gentle kiss on the top of his head.

They laid there for a few minutes in silence, both realizing that if they had not have stopped when they did, there would be no stopping tonight.

When she finally spoke her voice was raspy as her breath still came in pants.
“You better get plenty of rest tomorrow night because as soon as the kids leave for King’s Cross the next morning, I swear you are not leaving your bed for at LEAST two days…”

He chuckled lightly and raised his head to look into her grey eyes before placing a quick kiss against her smiling lips.
“Neither are you…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wand, amazed that it was still intact after the ridiculous amount of wrestling that took place just moments before. He flicked it and two pillows from the bed landed next to them. Remus begrudgingly pulled himself from between legs to lie next to Tonks as she shifted so her back was against his chest, and faced the dwindling flames of the fire place. She laid her still hazy head on one of the pillows, and smiling as his arm made its way across her, his open palm pulling her possessively against him.

“Thank you for the book. I am shocked that you even remember when we talked about that poem, it was months ago.”

“Of course I remember. We stayed up all night and talked, just the two of us. I think it was the first time we actually had a conversation that did not involve Sirius leading us into spilling perverse and embarrassing adolescent tales. This would explain why he retired to his room with a bottle of Firewhiskey, leaving us alone. Finally. I had been trying to get you alone for weeks before that…” She giggled and reached up the grasp the hand resting on her belly, entwining her small smooth fingers with his large rough ones.

“So you have had this planned out for a while now, you little minx. I am very glad you finally succeeded.”

“Well almost… I will consider you conquered once I have you moaning out my name while lying underneath me… until then there is still a chance you might run away.”
Tonks turned and smiled over her shoulder at him playfully; he blushed at her brazen words, and he leaned down to capture her lips in a heated kiss. He pulled away much sooner than they both would have liked, realizing that he had better before they got carried away again.

“I’m not running away…” Remus reassured her in a sleepy voice, and kissed her temple before lying back down. They watched the flickering flames in silence and slowly drifted to sleep, each enjoying the feel of having someone pressed against them.