Prisoners of Love - A Mystery - COMPLETE

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Updated 8-2-07


First off, I am awed by the magnificent reviews you've been writing. Your thoughtful responses make my Muse absolutely sing. Thank you so much for the time you take to give me such amazing feedback. I love your generosity.

To iterate for everyone, if the prison environment is bothering you, hang in there. Azkaban isn't the only scenario for this fic, although several of you have kindly volunteered to keep Lucius company...I commend your selflessness.

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Chapter Eight

An Offer

“Hermione, can you move onto your cot so I have room for my exercises?” Lucius carefully folded his top and put it on his cot. He didn’t wait for her compliance before going to the end of his cot, just as he had the night before, and starting his pushups, using his arm muscles to lever his body up and down and slowly providing Hermione with an unrestricted view of heavy biceps and shoulder muscles moving smoothly under his exquisite, tawny skin. As the pushups progressed, Lucius’ body developed a slight, slick sheen of sweat, which Hermione found oddly exciting although she was at a loss to know why as it was nothing more than wet skin.

When he finished with his pushups Hermione clapped enthusiastically for his performance; she’d shrewdly recognized that was what she was getting and she was suitably impressed with his prowess. “What are you going to do next? This is better than the Triwizard Tournament.” She smiled saucily at him and rested her chin in her hand expectantly.

Lucius frowned at first, but then he got into the spirit of things and bowed. He went to the side of his cot and faced away from her, squatting down and lifting the side edge of the cot up and down, over and over, to work his back muscles, displaying the symmetry of his broad shoulder muscles as they flowed down to his narrow, taut waist and that beautiful, hard butt.

Hermione was having trouble controlling her breathing as Lucius finished exercising his back muscles and stood up, pinning her with his arctic eyes, bowing once again with a wicked smile, before lying down on his cot and doing sit-ups with his hands behind his head. A delicious view of washboard abdominals topped by the vault of his chest sporting carved, masculine pectorals made her hands itch to smooth her palms down his body and find out just what the rest of him looked like under those striped pants, which currently hid a most intriguing bulge.

She was too focused on his torso to clap this time. “Your body is amazing, Lucius. Do you do this every night? You must do or you would have lost some of your tone by now. I guess your perfectionism works well for you with your exercises.

“Thank you for the compliment – I think,” the blond wizard acknowledged quizzically, “I’m pretty sure there was one in there somewhere. In the meantime, I’ll have to ask you to turn your back so I can clean up. I don’t like to go to bed sweaty.” Lucius started to fool around with the string of his pants in preparation for taking them off.

Hermione wondered how she could catch a glimpse of the rest of him without him knowing. She wished she had a mirror. She turned her back to Lucius and faced the wall, gazing at the dark orb, willing it to show their cell. When it came clear to her she drew in an involuntary gasp. He was turned away from her bending over the wash bucket but Sweet Hell on a broomstick, that man was defined all over. His bum muscles alone deserved an ode. She was completely disconcerted to realize she wanted nothing more than to take a bite out of one of his butt cheeks and she flushed a bright red with her lascivious thought.

“Hermione, if you want to watch, just ask. I don’t mind you getting an education. After all, I’ve been spying on you since you got here.” Lucius’ sly smile spilled onto his cynical face.

Hermione sucked in her breath, frantically trying to remember if she had shown any skin while his back was turned. He’d been watching her while she finished her private business? And when she’d checked for her spots? Her temper boiled over in outrage and without thinking she lunged for him, raking her nails along his back before he could stop her. “You vicious, conniving, sleaze. I hate you. You’re pretty on the outside, but you’re rotten inside. You -”

Before she could continue, Lucius twisted and caught her wrists in his hands holding her wriggling form against his nude body. “Temper, temper, my sweet, please do try to remember that you were happily doing the same to me just now. Does that make you a vicious, conniving sleaze, too? I’ll magnanimously take a more charitable view and understand your natural curiosity about the male body, especially since I went to the trouble to whet your appetite with the exercises which, by the way, I actually do every night, usually naked. And I readily admit to being rotten on the inside, according to your standards which we both know are nowhere near mine. I didn’t think that was ever in question, was it?”

Lucius petted her captured wrists along her pulse points with his thumbs as he said graciously, “I do appreciate the ‘pretty on the outside’ compliment, though. I’ve had several compliments from you today, mixed in with the slurs and name-calling. I almost feel a blush coming on. Nothing to match yours however.” Her apple cheeks stood out on her pale face.

“Why do you do that?” Hermione went still and looked at him almost clinically, making him squirm a little in his ‘rotten’ insides, “Why do you make me happy with you and then ruin my good opinion? Are you scared that my good opinion will fade in any case, so you might as well bring it out sooner?” Hermione wrested her wrists from Lucius’ grasp and he let her go. She conspicuously ignored his naked body, never looking down, marched back over to her cot and slipped under her bedclothes to face the wall, allowing him his privacy to complete his ablutions.

When Lucius finished cleaning himself up to his satisfaction, he sat on his cot, for once in a mood to contemplate his own actions analytically. Was there even a smidgen of validity to what she’d flung at him or was it all sour grapes at being caught peeping? He tried to dismiss her tirade but that small niggling grain of truth started chafing his adaptable Slytherin conscience, like a single grain of sand in an oyster, only he didn’t think any great pearls of wisdom were going to be created. Instead, thanks to her, try as he would, that pesky grain of truth steadfastly refused to be silenced.

Who did she think she was, playing Stir the Pensieve with his ego? He had always been ruthlessly in control of that part of his mind before and the disruption to his control made him angry at little Miss Prissy Knickers, so he rolled up in his blanket and turned toward his own wall as the twilight died into the stygian gloom of another night. He didn’t care if she got cold.

It wasn’t an hour later that he was rudely shoved and instructed imperatively to move over so Miss Prissy Knickers could get warm. Lucius turned in outrage to tell her what she could do with her cold feet only to get a face full of fluffy, dishevelled brown curls and a shivering little feminine body wrapped in her blanket burrowing under him, making him move with alacrity to avoid an assault on his dangling privates. He heard a muffled voice near his collarbone intone irritably, “Cover me up, Lucius, I’m cold.” Totally bemused at her gall, he covered them both with his blanket and found he was actually relaxing both in mind and spirit having her tucked up against him. Lucius mentally gave up and secured her more firmly beneath him, then abruptly fell asleep. Neither of them consciously noticed that Lucius had retired to bed naked.


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Well? Is she dead yet?” the first voice asked.

“According to my source, not yet. She’s apparently developed some kind of skin ailment that looks rather nasty – open running sores and the like. I imagine Malfoy doesn’t want to touch her, so him strangling her is probably out for now. We could kill her ourselves and blame it on Malfoy. That might work.”

“Let’s wait a bit longer and see if he will do our job for us. If we try to blame him, he’ll know something is very wrong and could blab to that Hogwarts Headmaster Snape he’s so tight with. Charging him with murder is much more difficult to prove in the Magic Council. We were able to control framing him for the covert spying. Murder in Azkaban might draw too much attention. And leave us open to blackmail from our ‘colleagues’.”

“All right. I’ll wait a few days.”

The two malefactors parted after ascertaining that no one had seen them together down in the shadowy bowels of the Ministry.

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Lucius woke first the next morning and realized he was going to be clouted on the head again if he didn’t get his uniform on before the little cot jumper woke. If she got even a glimpse of his perfectly normal morning erection he’d probably be castigated as a slavering brute. He carefully slithered out from behind the sleeping witch, quickly donned his stripes and even managed to visit the loo before she rose, rubbing her eyes and balefully staring at the disgusting bucket.

“I need to use the loo, so I want you to face your own wall while I go.” Hermione didn’t want any repeats of him using the dark orb to see her in her compromising position. “Just sit on your cot and stare at your wall.”

Lucius merely sighed and did as she asked, using the time to comb his hair. As he sat facing the wall, he said ironically in a fake squeaky voice, “Thank you, Lucius for letting me sleep with you. I appreciate you keeping me warm all night.”

Hermione felt a bit guilty at his unsubtle reminder of manners so she said, “I’m sorry, Lucius, you’re right and I do thank you. We need to think of some way for me to survive the cold nights, though. I guess you probably don’t like me taking up room on your small cot. Can you ask that guard to hurry with another blanket?” She finished using the bucket, washed up her hands and went to sit on her own cot, wrapped again in her worn, threadbare coverlet.

Lucius turned around and merely said, “I’ve already seen we need more for you.” He had to smile though at her idiotically naïve assumption that she was ‘taking up room’ by fitting her feminine little butt up against his cock all night.

Later that morning, Hermione watched Warden le Fay on the orb while Lucius transfigured the fishing pole, but when Otto came to make the trade for the items Lucius had asked for, Otto had some bad news. Apparently Jax had peered into their cell earlier before they had woken and seen Hermione sleeping with Lucius. He had decided to brave the sores and come for Hermione this evening. Lucius gave the fishing pole to Otto and asked him to return to their cell in an hour.

“If I go after Jax with magic I’ll wind up in stasis, although I may save you from him permanently, depending on what magic I use against him,” explained Lucius to his frightened cellmate, “but that doesn’t mean another guard wouldn’t be right there to take his place. Ben isn’t much better – he’s the guard who helped Jax drag you to the broom closet – and I can’t protect you from them all.” Hermione had come to his bed so Lucius didn’t feel too guilty for putting her into the predicament, but he didn’t want anyone else touching her either.

Where had this completely uncharacteristic sense of chivalry come from? It rather spooked Lucius because of the strength of his possessive streak toward the tiny witch. If this was part of their mind bond he was going to be seriously inconvenienced left and right. He hoped his possessiveness was merely a side effect of the mental connection, but he feared it had its roots in something even worse. “I asked Otto to return in an hour so you and I could talk.”

Hermione shivered, “I don’t want to be raped. But what else is there for me? If you get rid of Jax and Ben, there will just be another one after you get sent to stasis. I can see that as clearly as you. Whatever do we have to talk about, then?” The little Muggleborn glumly sat on Lucius’ cot, but instead of watching the orb any more she stared at Lucius with frightened eyes sparked with a glimmer of hope.

Lucius sucked in a fortifying breath, something very like fear sending his heartbeat into overdrive, but he said resolutely, “You’re not going to like it, I’m afraid. Come to that, it’s not my favorite idea either. But it will save you indefinitely. I can ask Otto to send for Warden le Fay.”

“What will that do? He can’t watch those Grendels all the time. If I complain after the fact, then it will be my word against theirs and they could get even with me later anyway.” Hermione was scared of what she’d never experienced with any man and angry that her first time was likely to be with a rapist – or two. “What is your ‘not favorite’ idea?”

Lucius stared fixedly at the high window for several moments gathering his chaotic and warring feelings together, then nodded to himself and took the plunge, “As a Ministry official, le Fay could marry us. I would then have the right, even the duty to protect my wife from any action the guards tried to take against you. I don’t think they would try anything knowing I was legally able to protect you. You wouldn’t have to go anywhere alone with anyone and I wouldn’t be put into stasis for protecting my own wife.” Lucius sat outwardly relaxed on his cot waiting for the explosion.

“WHAT?” Hermione’s shock bloomed all over her face as she goggled at her cellmate. “Marriage? You don’t want to marry me – a Muggleborn. And I don’t want to marry anyone yet. Isn’t there anything else we can do?”

“Sorry, but it gets worse, my dear.” Lucius decided to cast caution to the wind, “If you marry me, I’m not willing to have a marriage of convenience. You would have to be my wife in all ways. I hope you understand what I’m saying to you?” He winced internally as her face theatrically scrunched up hearing his added condition.

“So I either sleep with Jax or I sleep with you? That’s not much of a choice.” Hermione successfully squelched her giggle at Lucius’ irritated raised eyebrow and wondered if her nose was growing, but she was well aware that appearing too thrilled at being his wife was marital suicide if he was serious. Lion taming wasn’t a job for the weak.

Lucius said, “You haven’t thought it through, and I don’t blame you for being sidetracked by the thought of having a strange, violent man forcing you.”

“Ah, so would that be Jax you’re referring to, or you?” Hermione twisted her plush, pink lips, cocking her head quizzically at this man who was offering her her heart’s desire.

“Amusing, tidbit,” Lucius sniped sarcastically, frowning in anything but amusement. “If we marry, I merely want something besides a cold cot at night for offering my name, my fortune and my future to you. I have over four and a half years to go, but I won’t be here forever and although it seems like it, neither will you be here forever.

"For the present I can offer a gentle sexual initiation and I can guarantee you’ll enjoy lovemaking with me. That will never happen with the guards. It’s your choice, of course, but Otto will be back soon, so you’ll need to make a decision.”

Lucius tried to look both sexy and avuncular at the same time so she would think he was attractive yet harmless. After that kiss though, she’d have to be stupider than a Blast-Ended Skrewt to underestimate his physical intentions. Lucius sincerely hoped his potential mate didn’t have the nasty temper of one of those bean-brained bugs to match.

“Come here!” Hermione pointed to the space beside her. She waited fierce-faced for Lucius to move over onto his cot where she was currently sitting, which he did with a graceful economy of movement.

“And now what, tidbit?” asked Lucius, amused at the tiny witch’s imperious command.

“This!” Hermione grabbed his hair on both sides of his head and pulled his lips to hers, simultaneously lying back supine on the cot and dragging Lucius on top of her. “Show me why I should want you,” she murmured provocatively against his lips.

“My Galleons aren’t enough inducement?” Lucius stalled the kiss, leaning back long enough to ask. Kissing her always seemed to get him into trouble.

“Yuck! Absolutely not. I would never marry you for your money. There aren’t enough Galleons in the world for that.”

“Then why -?” Lucius was ruthlessly pulled down onto the little witch again.

“I think - -? Yes, I’m pretty sure it was your butt muscles. I must be a total slut for them because all I wanted to do when I saw them was take a bite.” She wasn’t in the least interested in telling Lucius that he was giving her an exquisite present in agreeing to marry her.

She’d fallen for him with mournful ease but she wasn’t stupid enough to give her self-serving lover any indication that he had a hold over her of such enormous proportions. He certainly wasn’t her beau ideal but tell that to her overthrown and conquered heart. Really, she fumed inwardly, I have no sense at all. “Are you ever going to shut up and kiss me?”

Lucius shut up. It was promising that she apparently wasn’t as affected by the mind bond as he. Possibly he was mistaken about the connection. He settled down over Hermione’s slight form, trying unsuccessfully to keep from pressing down with his weight because she had knocked his elbows out from under him deliberately and wrapped her arms around his slim waist trapping him on top of her.

Lucius was finished with trying to fit the mold of gentleman - it was an extremely mismatched and wearisome role for him anyway and he had totally forgotten why in Hades he had been attempting to enact it for the past two days. His cumbersome and painfully self-inflicted attempts at nobility slid away like a snake’s old skin and Lucius breathed a sigh of relief.

This was what he wanted - this little female sex package lying under him, and he was damned well going to enjoy it. She could bite all she wanted. Four and a half years of solid sex with an intellectual equal tucked inside a perfect, young feminine body was his idea of paradise. He instantly took over control and slid his fingers into her hair anchoring her head for his oral onslaught. Her petticoat insolence he would deal with later.

Lucius let his weight bear her down into the mattress as he cloistered his bulging groin into the notch between her legs. He was over a head taller than she, but he had no trouble bowing his back in order to feed his tongue into her mouth while pressing his heavy staff just where they both would get the most benefit. When she clenched her thighs he groaned his appreciation and began the world’s first rhythm, playing on her sensitive woman’s place by rubbing through the flannel with precise strokes of his engorged rod.

Hermione had lost her grasp of his waist when he had arched his back to kiss her, but she wasn’t complaining. This unique, complex wizard was her choice and feeling him as a solid weight on her was beyond euphoric to the little, strong-willed, independent fighter for the Light. She had unexpectedly found her equal in mind and wanted now to learn his body – his glorious naked body, if she could get those horrid stripes off him.

It made no difference that he had been on the side of the Dark Lord. It made no difference that he had values so at odds with hers. It made less than no difference that he didn’t love her as she loved him. He was her choice and she was going to claim him so thoroughly he wouldn’t remember his own name afterward.

She’d read about sex and had a good enough idea what would make him into a besotted, drooling captive. His Achilles’ heel was obvious and it wasn’t on his foot. She’d waited for years to feel something special for a man and now she had breathtaking, physical perfection squishing her slight body into the mattress. So his personality and ideas didn’t match his body. She didn’t care. She would deal with his arrogant insolence later.

Lucius suddenly pulled back and hesitated a few seconds holding his lips just above hers, searching her eyes for he knew not what, like a nervous forest animal who senses danger but can’t locate it. Lucius’ sense of personal preservation was hammering out a warning tattoo in his serpentine mind, but true to his self-indulgent Slytherin personality, which had got him into trouble more times than a witch had spells, he brushed the vague warning aside and wholeheartedly embraced his luck, grabbing what he wanted with both hands.

Lucius hadn’t had a woman for well over four months and he was balanced precariously on the edge of his wildly gyrating libido. He attempted to slow down his hunger as he burrowed his questing tongue between Hermione’s warm, lush lips, dancing with her own agile tongue as he ground his aching tool more firmly into her stimulating woman’s valley, sliding the flannel over her tender clit.

Hermione was digging her fingers into his butt to get him to press harder, when they both heard the lock slowly being opened for the door to their cell. She froze listening, then whispered, “Lucius, get up. Up!” She started pushing at his shoulders and he reluctantly levered himself up and off his little conquest.

“Remember where I was,” he grated, “because I’m going to take up exactly where I left off.” Lucius couldn’t find a smile for her, he was hurting too much, so his words came out more like a threat, but Hermione was busy checking her nightgown and hair and wouldn’t have cared if it were.

“Mr. Malfoy?” Otto was outside the cell.

tbc...
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I know, I know, a cliffhanger. But the flow of the story really had to break here. (Riiiight, like anyone's going to accept that reason, although, it's true. I guess those truffles and chocolates that ccrawley gave me on July 30 are going to be yanked back, huh?) In my defense, I'll say Chapter 9 coming up will have our characters in a lot of hot water.

So, reviews, anyone? (Please, please, please don't be mad about the cliffie.) *hopeful smile here* And don't forget the rating scale if you feel too bashful about leaving a review. See it down below?
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