The Mystery Wife

Forbear, dark night, my joys now bud again,
Lately grown dead, while cold aspects did chill
The root at heart, and my chief hope quite kill,
And thunders struck me in my pleasures' wane.

Then, I alas with bitter sobs and pain
Privately groan'd, my Fortune's present ill;
All light of comfort dimm'd, woes in pride's fill,
With strange increase of grief, I griev'd in vain.

And most, when as a memory too good
Molested me, which still as witness stood,
Of those best days, in former time I knew:

Late gone as wonders past, like the great snow,
Melted and wasted, with what, change must know:
Now back the life comes where as once it grew.

-Mary Wroth

The journey back to Paris was a blur, a tangle of limbs, hair, hands, fused mouths through cool green fire and into tasteful taupe and celadon livingroom, the little reminders of old life new breathed, their old home of years gone without a backward glance of farewell.

A basket of fruit on a pale wood table, under a preserving spell; a silk pillow on a leather sofa, a linen curtain; they registered between fevered kisses as portions of a life, as home. Theirs. Their own, theirs together.

Draco forced himself to go slowly, slowly as they moved to Sevanna's bedroom, undressing her with all the reverence of the first time even if it wasn't, covering her throat and shoulders with kisses, hot, openmouthed, wanton, tracing with his tongue the faint dark imprints left by straps and cinsures as he peeled her bra away.

Her breasts, rose-tipped, impertinent, bared to the warm June air, demanded his mouth, warmed in his hands, the nipples tightening deliciously as he traced and teased them. Every hitch in her breathing thrilled him; he drank them in like sweet wine, crisp and slightly acid on the tongue, delectable.

He wanted to inundate her with slow and killing pleasure, to brand her his alone, trailing kisses of pure fire over every inch of her skin, from temples to toes, a votive offering to burn away all other lovers from her mind. To hold her in his eyes for a moment, naked, languid and caught.

Beautiful, as she eased back on the bed, as her hair fanned out across the pillow, as she pulled him into a searing kiss and spelled away his clothing, impatient, hot, hungry, arching underneath him. Demanding in this as in everything, and passionate, so passionate she stole his breath.

Skin to skin, now, warm, silk softness and heat and he was aching to bury himself inside her. Slowly. He forced himself to go slowly. Tasting her. Light flicks of tongue tracing her folds, salt and sweet, her essence, haunting. Spreading her open like a dark flower, fingers tracing around and in, silk wetness and warmth while his tongue sought and worked her, reveling in her gasps and soft cries, her arousal, her exquisitely slow unfolding. His Veela ancestry surged to the fore, his instincts guiding him surely where actual experience failed him.

She shattered beneath him, finally, hands fisting in the sheets, her sharp cry of completion a balm in Gilead.

Draco raised himself, slowly, tasting the salt of her arousal on his own lips, unable quite to prevent himself from smiling, thrilling as she shoved him onto his back and tasted him in turn. She memorized his skin with her mouth as he had done to her, tracing hardness, softness. The fold of a hip, a tiny dark mole on his stomach, the line from navel to sternum, the leaking, exquisitely sensitive tip of his cock, the vein beneath, a map of forbidden lands, wine dark seas, terra incognita, dragons in the margins.

Her forefinger, tiny, delicate, wet, tracing his entrance and pressing shockingly, tantalizingly inside as she drew him into her mouth with a long, tongue-feathering suck. Utterly perfect, blindingly intense. Tender and deliciously wicked at once. Her finger brushed something inside him, a nub that made his toes curl and the world haze before his eyes, and he shouted, sharp, hoarse, nearly helpless with the sheer pleasure of it and in very real danger of fainting.

"No," he rasped, his head, his body thrashing in wild arousal and a little protest. "No, inside you, I need--"

"I know," she smiled, cheshire cat confident, lazily challenging.

He broke free of her and rolled her over, pinning her to the mattress, his kiss a brand of fire. He felt her answering smile against his mouth.

She wrapped herself around him in the encroaching darkness, her limbs, the spice of her hair winding around him and into his senses. Madness, it was madness to want like this, he burned with the desire to make her his, his wife in truth.

"Mine," he growled softly against her mouth as he slid home inside her, sheathing himself to the hilt in her welcoming heat. They both cried out at the final joining.

"Mine," she purred in return, nipping softly at his lower lip.

They moved together, slowly at first, then harder, faster, gasping out half-coherent words of desire and claiming as their bodies strained for release, whispering love into hair and skin and open mouths like an incantation, fierce and wild. It was the oldest magic.

When their climaxes finally overtook them -- Draco's teeth scoring Sevanna's shoulder, Sevanna's nails raking Draco's back, both of them crying out, ecstatic, incoherent, shuddering -- he buried one last kiss in the sweat-damp hollow of her throat and rolled off her, tugging her on top of him insistently and wrapping his arms around her for good measure.

"You'll stay," he said. It wasn't a question. Not quite. "As my wife. We'll make this work."

"I'll stay," she agreed.

He smiled, stupidly, unable to help himself, planting a kiss in her hair.

"What next?" he wondered after a moment. "Do I come out as Draco Malfoy, and try to explain to the neighbors why I lied to them about being Draven Szarkany?"

"Do as you will," she shrugged, her skin rippling against his. "Either way, you are my Apprentice. We continue with that. It would admittedly be easier, now that our marriage has gone quite so public, if you were to return to being Draco. If you don't, I'm going to have a job explaining to the Wizarding world why I'm cheating on my husband with my Apprentice."

"No doubt." Draco ran teasing fingertips down the curve of her spine, his impish smirk buried in her hair. "Hmm, I don't know, though... Would I be entitled to twice as much time spent like this, if I kept both identities?"

"Everyone would think we were living in a ménage à trois," she murmured against his the skin just beneath his ear, her breath warm, teasing the small wisps of his hair. "Do you suppose you'll ever forgive your parents for marrying you off to me?"

Draco's arms tightened around her, irrationally afraid that she'd run off. Or perhaps not so irrationally, all things considered.

"Well, it'd be pretty bloody hypocritical of me not to," he replied with a smothered laugh. "Of course, it does rather depend on whether you're ever going to forgive them for it."

"I'd say I just did," she smiled, nipping softly at his earlobe. "I wonder what The Boy Who Lived, But Didn't Appear to Have Much of a Life will find to do with himself, now that the two of us aren't around to plague him or look after him anymore."

Draco snorted in amusement. "Get a life, hopefully get a clue, and marry Ginny Weasley-- who will both plague him and look after him, I don't doubt. So we're covered."

"Nearly. We have a ton of owls to send out, you realize, and much explaining to do. I need to visit Hogwarts again and pay my respects, at least, after our rather hasty departure. We need to visit Richard and tell him the good news. You need to write your friends and fellow Slytherins, and let them know I haven't murdered you in a jealous rage. And we will have to let Narcissa throw us a proper wedding, I suppose, with a boring society ball afterward."

"Oh, I don't think it'll be boring," Draco teased, winding a lock of her hair around his fingers. "I'll get to dance with you all I want. And someone will start that glass-tapping thing and make us kiss. Oh, how bloody awful. No, no, don't make me snog my wife, please..."

She smiled, languid and sexy. "Get used to it," she said, kissing him again, and all plans, past and future, were forgotten for a while.