Ice

Chapter 12: "Nothing stands between us here, and I won't be denied."-- Sarah McLachlan, Possession

"Excuse me, Master, but there be a Mr. Lucius Malfoy here to see you."

Narcissa's head snapped up sharply from her perusal of the Daily Prophet as she heard the high-pitched squeak of the house-elf. She was rather certain she knew why Lucius was here and was torn between annoyance -- he could have asked her to marry him before he approached her father -- and a bit of relief. It was not that she thought him merely toying with her affections, but he was certainly capable of such a devious act. It was perhaps a bit twisted of her that it was part of his appeal. Intrigued by the thought, she finished her tea.

"Mr. Malfoy, eh?" said Orion Black, giving his daughter a speculative look. "Do you suppose, Daughter, that Mr. Malfoy is here to ask me for permission to marry you?" Narcissa kept her voice even as she replied politely, "I would not presume to speak of Mr. Malfoy's intentions, Father. Perhaps you should ask him?" She met his eyes and watched as he searched her face for some sign that her words were meant to mock him. Narcissa was too well-versed in this game to give anything away this easily, and the look she gave him was one of pure innocence.

Orion stood, smoothing his hands down his robes and straightening his shoulders. "Very well, Bitsy. You may inform Mr. Malfoy that I shall attend to him in the library. Cissa," he said, turning to his youngest daughter, "I shall have Bitsy summon you after Mr. Malfoy and I have discussed the particulars of your engagement."

Narcissa felt a hot surge of anger at her father's casual dismissal. He would never have done this to Bellatrix, she thought spitefully and schooled her features once more to appear calm and rational. Just because I do not throw a fit does not mean I do not deserve to be included. "I would prefer to attend this meeting, Father. After all, I believe that I have conducted myself with enough decorum to be allowed to participate in this particular discussion," she said sweetly, smiling up at him. Predictably, his gaze softened, and he smiled at her.

"No doubt you are correct, dearest. After all, I hardly think you will be quite as theatrical as Bella when she and young Rodolphus had this same meeting," he said with a chuckle. "Why, I recall having to replace several vases and even one painting, I recall, all before we had all sat down."

"Indeed," Narcissa said, standing up. You have always been to quick to dismiss Bellatrix as "spirited," and that is no doubt why her madness has taken hold so quickly. She did not share this thought but critically examined her reflection in the cheval glass mirror hanging on the wall adjacent the sideboard. She was pleased at her reflection. Robes of a pale blue deepened her midnight-blue eyes, and her ash-blonde hair was in an elegant chignon on the back of her neck. The only hint of her nerves being slightly overset was a slight tenseness around her mouth and a splash of color on her fair cheeks. 'Tis such a curse, being so fair, she thought in annoyance.

She followed her father with shoulders squared and hands folded in front of her as they walked through the hallway. Her father patted her on the shoulder as they approached the double oak doors leading into the library. "Cissa, if you do not wish to marry Mr. Malfoy, please know that your mother and I will not force you to do so," he said kindly. Narcissa smiled at him sweetly.

"I shall be pleased to marry Mr. Malfoy, Father, if that is indeed what he is here to discuss," she said demurely. That newly awoken sense of danger inside of her seemed to balk at her submissive tone, but she ruthlessly suppressed it. Now was not the time for her father to suspect she was anything other than his dutiful youngest daughter. He smiled at her, patted her on the back once more and pushed the doors open.

Lucius stood in the library. He seemed at home in the room with its rich mahogany furniture and book-lined shelves. He had been looking out of the window at the Ravensden grounds when they entered the room, and he turned to greet them as they stepped into the room.

"Mr. Black," Lucius intoned smoothly, shaking hands with her father. Narcissa noted he was as impeccable as usual; every strand of his white-blonde hair was neatly in place. His smile was polite but not forced, his eyes unreadable.

"Please, Mr. Malfoy, call me Orion," her father said, smiling jovially.

"Thank you, Orion. Please, call me Lucius." With such trivial banalities out of the way, Lucius turned his crystalline gaze to Narcissa and reached out his leather-sheathed hand for hers. "Miss Black," he said in his deep, smooth voice, bowing slightly over her hand. His eyes raised to meet hers, and she struggled to keep the flush on her face from growing.

Orion gestured for them all to sit, and Narcissa sat straight-backed in the chair across from her father's desk with her ankles crossed. She gave Lucius a shy smile, entirely for her father's benefit. Inside, her stomach was churning with nerves and with excitement. She struggled not to bite the inside of her lip and tried to ignore the slightly wicked gleam in Lucius' eyes before he shuttered his gaze and focused once more on her father.

"I suspect you know why I might have called on you today, Orion," Lucius said, and then added "although I am slightly surprised to see you here, Miss Black."

Narcissa hid a grin, looking down coyly. She had unnerved him by her presence; he was obviously not expecting her to be present for this discussion. Narcisssa knew the subtle nuances of his voice well -- and although her father might not have caught it, she heard the irritation implicit in his words. She rather found she enjoyed the sensation of outwitting him, although she was certain she would pay for it in the near future. The thought caused a pleasurable shiver to course down her spine. Still, it serves him right, she thought. He hasn't even asked me to marry him - not properly anyway.

"Yes, I imagine I do," Orion said with a smile. "And Narcissa -- I am sure there is nothing we have to discuss here that she cannot be trusted to hear. She's always been a good girl."

Narcissa kept her eyes firmly averted from Lucius' face at her father's words. She had hardly been "a good girl" several nights ago and fought to keep the telltale warmth from her face at the memory of their wild, untamed passion.

"I am aware that Narcissa is the soul of discretion," Lucius responded easily, his voice warming as he shot her a small smile. "It is one of the reasons I wish to marry her."

Their eyes met, and Narcissa had a vivid flashback of him braced above her with his hair lose and wild around his face. She remembered his eyes burning with frantic lust as he took her roughly on the ground. The look he gave her was an outwardly affectionate glance, but she saw a similar lustful look in his gray eyes that made her catch her breath. She looked away, aware he'd won that round by forcing her to remember that night in the grove. This was one area in which he held the upper hand as her sexual experience was limited to that one encounter. Narcissa fully intended to rectify that small disparity between them as soon as possible. With this thought, she met his gaze again and smiled a tad wickedly.

Their gazes clashed a moment longer, the challenge implicit in each of their stares. Even when Lucius turned his attention to her father and offered perfunctory answers to her father's questions, she felt the tension between them thick in air. She did not think her father noticed; he would never assume such things of his youngest daughter.

Orion's pointed questions amused her ("Will you be able to keep Narcissa comfortable?" he'd asked, a polite way of inquiring of the state of the Malfoy family fortune), and Lucius' ability to easily answer his questions impressed her. She knew when Orion smiled at her and extended his hand again to Lucius that her fiancé had impressed him, and that any misgivings Orion had about the young Malfoy were smoothed over by Lucius' impressive display of gentlemanly behavior.

As she was a woman who prided herself on being able to outwardly project an image that differed so drastically from the person she was inside, Narcissa knew the effort it was costing Malfoy to come across as so ... benign. She had felt the danger beneath his polished surface the moment she had met him, and it took an incredible amount of energy to bank that danger and present himself as nothing more than a proper pureblood wizard come to ask for her hand in marriage. She was impressed at his ability and wondered how often he was required to hide the person he truly was ... We are so alike, she thought, and not for the reasons everyone will assume when we announce our engagement.

"I must say, Lucius, that Ariana and I shall be most pleased to welcome such a distinguished young man into our family. I know your father, and Aurelius is a fine, respectable gentleman." Orion beamed at his daughter and his future son-in-law proudly.

Which you could not say to Rodolphus, Narcissa thought wryly, as what was it Lucius said? Oh yes, he spent his money on "gambling and whores." It was true that the senior Lestrange had manage to deplete most of the family coffers; Bellatrix had not delivered their father a wealthy son-in-law when she'd married Rodolphus. Love matches were not at all the thing in their circles; marriages were for wealth and dynastic alliances. In that instance, Bellatrix had failed spectacularly to deliver. Narcissa smiled at her father and allowed him to think it was his approval that warmed her features. In reality, her victory in this arena over both her sisters was a thing to be cherished indeed.

"Well," Orion said, moving around his desk towards the door, "I know that Ariana will wish to congratulate you both, and no doubt you two would like a moment alone. I believe Ariana is shopping. I shall go to London at once and find her. She would be furious with me if I did not tell her of this happy occasion immediately. She had an appointment at Madam Malkin's, that is most likely where she is."

He smiled at them both and closed the doors firmly behind him.

Narcissa turned to Lucius, who was leaning insolently against her father's desk and smirking at her. He looked much more like himself. "I am much more familiar with this Malfoy than with the faultlessly polite young man who inhabited this room a moment ago," she teased him, walking up to stand in front of him.

He moved off the desk to circle around her, his smile wolfish. "I find the proper young master Malfoy routine to be quite tiring," he drawled, his gloved hands resting on her shoulders as he pushed her back until her back hit the desk.

Smiling, Narcissa twined her arms around his neck and tugged his head down towards her. "Playing Master is a stretch for you? Somehow I don't believe that," she purred next to his mouth.

He laughed softly. "Perhaps not," he breathed, "I suppose it is only the proper part that I find so ... tiresome." He lowered his head and kissed her.

Narcissa's body melted into his, and she felt him lift her and set her on her father's desk. "It was especially difficult," he said, pulling her roughly against him, "when my mind was quite happy to remind me of the last time I saw you, Miss Black." His mouth moved down her neck, and she tilted her head and shivered under his caress. He nipped at her neck, and she tightened her arms around him.

His hands were suddenly at her knees, pushing her robes up. "Lucius," she gasped as he pulled her legs around his waist.

"What?" he said silkily in her ear, one hand sliding possessively across her breast and pulling on her nipple. His other hand moved between her legs, and at the feel of his gloved fingers teasing her she moaned into his neck and bit gently.

"You pompous bastard," she said breathlessly as his fingers teased her mercilessly. "You haven't even asked me to marry you," she choked out, clutching at his robes frantically as pleasure spiraled through her. There was no telling when her father might return -- this wild, reckless behavior was liberating and terrifying at the same time.

"Were you planning on refusing me?" he asked, and he removed his hand from between her legs and pulled her closer to him. She felt the bulge in his trousers as he captured her hand and brought it down to him. She rubbed her hand over the hard length of him and smiled deviously at his hiss of pleasure at her caress.

He did not allow her to answer but had her help him undo his trousers and free his manhood. "I am going to take you on this desk, Narcissa," he growled in her ear, "and I don't believe you are going to do a thing to stop me." His arrogance was erotic, and it sheared through her in a sharp twist of pleasure as her body spasmed.

"No," she gasped out as he placed himself at the entrance to her aching womanhood, "I am most certainly not." She braced herself for his possession, but he surprised her by stalling and placing his mouth once more at her ear.

"Narcissa," he said in that sinister, seductively dark voice before thrusting roughly into her, "will you marry me?"

Narcissa was not sure if the "Yes!" she screamed out was from his question or her release, but either way, the sentiment was the same.

When Orion and Ariana arrived back to Ravensden, Lucius and Narcissa were taking tea in the parlor, and both of them were perfectly composed and cleaned up, thanks to a rather handy cleansing charm Lucius knew. Ariana embraced her daughter and favored Lucius with a brief hug before chattering about dresses and weddings in an excited voice, interspersing such phrases as "my baby!" into the conversation and, to Narcissa's horror, ruffling her hair. She'd already needed to fix her chignon once that day and did not wish to do so again.

Ariana appeared a bit taken back when she saw Narcissa's bare ring finger, and Lucius must have correctly interpreted that look because he lifted Narcissa's hand briefly to his lips and said softly, "I shall have a find a ring worthy of you, my dear," causing her mother to smile happily. Narcissa knew her mother was secretly pleased that Bellatrix and Rodolphus were in love, far more so than her father was. If she and Lucius appeared to be in love as well as imminently suitable, far more the better.

"I should very much like to introduce you to my father," Lucius said to her after her parents had bid them farewell and Narcissa was accompanying him to the door. He scowled suddenly. "Or rather, the old man shall hound me to death if I do not introduce the future Mrs. Malfoy to him," he said in a sardonic voice. "Do save me from such torture, Narcissa, and accompany me to dinner tomorrow at the Manor."

Narcissa laughed. "I should be most pleased to meet your father," she said and paused as he reached the door and opened it.

They looked at each other, and he leaned down to kiss her softly on her lips. "Until tomorrow," he said, a slight huskiness in his voice that thrilled her despite herself.

"Tomorrow," she said, ignoring the slight breathless tone of her own voice. It had been quite a morning, she realized, what with becoming officially engaged and being most thoroughly shagged on her father's desk without even locking the door.

Narcissa smiled in pure self-satisfaction as she walked back towards her rooms, feeling the pleasant twinge of soreness in the muscles of her thighs. I rather think I shall enjoy being Mrs. Malfoy.