LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Chapter Thirty-One

At first, Hermione was too surprised to react.

"Was I in love with you?" she'd asked -- "were you in love with me?" -- but for all her boldness, she'd never in a million years expected a straightforward answer from him, oblique sarcastic creature that he was. What a surprise it had been to see him shaken, to see the seemingly-impregnable mask that he maintained so fastidiously crack at last into a wicked, genuine smile. Almost frightening, seeing the flash of teeth behind those perpetually-tight lips; why, he's not so scary after all, whispered her subconscious, making her blush.

Then she'd blushed anyway, but for other reasons.

He had her yanked hard against the front of the desk, and under normal circumstances she'd have said it was damned uncomfortable -- hard wooden edge, pelvis tilted at an awkward angle, calf muscles straining to tiptoe and hands fluttering at her sides like tame birds uncaged: free to fly, but unsure of where they wanted to go. His own hands weren't so indecisive. One was tangled in the curls at the side of her head; the other had her by the upper arm, probably hard enough to leave a mark.

For the first few seconds of the kiss -- brief, but clarion -- she was aware of all this, not only the physical indignity but also the sheer incredulousness of the situation in general; what the bloody hell was she doing, kissing this moody mercurial stranger of a man who up until now hadn't seemed even to like her very much, and who, when taken apart feature by feature, wasn't all that attractive to begin with?

And then, she remembered him.

It was odd. Certainly she hadn't any more information in her brain than usual, regarding him; she'd still have been hard-pressed to recall a single one of his lectures, and from all accounts she'd sat through those twice a week for six years. Probably she'd also picked up other, more personal knowledge of him along the way, in the course of their acquaintance, and she didn't have that at her disposal now, either.

What she did have was a visceral, physical pull, hot and liquid, shooting up from cervix to brain stem in the space of one single volcanic heartbeat: Relax, her body was telling her, I know him, even if you don't. And though, in the bits of her memory still remaining to her, there wasn't a single recollection of her ever having had sex, with anyone, somehow the rest of her was managing to function admirably all the same. Hermione fought her way through a jumbled collection of sensory input as her body recalibrated itself -- loosening, tightening, shivering, swelling, oh Jesus, oh Christ, oh bloody, bloody hell -- and barely managed to keep herself on her feet.

If this was standard pre-coital arousal, it was pretty damn frightening.

He broke away from the kiss to mutter something incoherent, then grasped her by the shoulders and hoisted her bodily onto the desk. His Brewer's Journal came loose from its cover; papers went flying; an entire bell jar full of freshly-sharpened quills crashed to the floor ... and he didn't so much as flinch, merely slid her toward him until her legs dangled off his side of the desk, stepped into the cradle of her body, and with a satisfied sound in his throat -- half-hum, half-growl -- bent to kiss her again.

("Did you hear something?" Neville asked from two rooms over, poised on the brink of what was a rather similar pursuit.)

("No," Joséphine said.)

("Oh. All right then.")

Neither Severus nor Hermione noticed the small, faintly metallic rattle of platinum against wood laminate, in the ensuing fracas. As her hands finally travelled up those lean black-clothed sides to lock around his neck (ah yes, sighed her body, that's the ticket, all right), a plain silver band housing an extraordinarily brilliant stone chittered away across the polished floor, where it eventually came to rest beneath a cabinet of glassware in the room's remotest corner.

They didn't even look up.

**

For a second, she'd stood uncomprehending in his embrace -- not protesting, exactly, but hardly an active participant either. Then, something had changed.

She'd made some small exhalation of a noise -- ah, maybe, or oh. And then -- not that there were words for it, exactly -- she'd sort of ... melted into him, that whole brittle, tightly-held little body of hers going suddenly slack and willing, her mouth opening, greedy under his, as if to prove that old chestnut: there were more kinds of hunger than just the one.

If he'd been in his right mind, he might have wondered what caused the abrupt shift in her demeanor. But he wasn't, and so he didn't -- just took her by the first bit of her he could reach and hauled her up and across, heedless of the mayhem he was causing to his carefully-organised desk. When he finally had her where he wanted her -- fingers clasped behind his neck, ankles sliding shyly up the backs of his thighs to twine together at the small of his back -- he hesitated scarcely a second before diving right back in.

She was everything he'd been dreaming about since the night he'd finally walked away from her all those years ago, back in Cairo: heated, shuddering, pliant, the Right Woman in the Right Place in the Right Frame Of Mind. Her eyes were shut, her breath fast and high. When he paused to shift position, she moaned and tugged at him until he guided her mouth back to his. She was trembling like a fever patient.

It never occurred to him that at least part of that trembling was due to fear. He was too lost himself.

("Why don't you just find another woman?" Sal had asked him once. "Prime of your life, and you're holed away up here like Saint bloody Augustine. What gives?")

("Don't know.")

But he did, he did know, and that was the sad part, the pathetic level of misery to which he'd sunk, just before their dance had begun: with Hermione had come the Illuminata, and with the Illuminata an unforgettable moment of complete and perfect happiness that he'd never known either before or since; even now sometimes, alone in the dark, he punched his pillow restlessly and drifted back to that night on the chilly stone floor, swimming through warm lemon-scented steam while she wrapped herself around him and made him forget everything he'd ever wished he couldn't remember.

At the time, he'd attributed his momentary happiness to the potion, not the girl. Now, nearly ten years later, he wasn't so sure.

He broke the kiss and trailed his mouth down her jawline to her throat before she could protest. Kisses were all very well, but now that he'd actually gone and snatched his coveted cupcake, he was determined to do more than lick off her icing. Backing up a pace, his hands wrapped snugly around her denim-clad backside, he sank back into his chair, grateful for once for its lack of arms, and pulled her astride him.

It had been like this the first time, or nearly -- he on his knees on the floor, she pulling up her robes with frantic hands to clear the way between them. This was better, though: more comfortable, more convenient.

More ... possibilities.

He palmed his wand -- miraculously still in its holster on his belt -- and muttered a Cushioning Charm, then eased her back so her shoulders were supported by the edge of the desk. She murmured a vague protest, then sighed in surrender as his hands found her breasts, and let her head loll back into the illusion of a pillow.

Once, he'd subjected both of them to slow, pleasurable torture by peeling off her clothes by hand. Tonight, he couldn't wait that long to see her naked. He threw a Locking Spell at the laboratory door -- rash of him not to have done that in the first place -- then muttered "Divestio!" before laying his wand aside.

She lay straddling his lap, head thrown back against the desk so that all he could see of her face was that proud little chin, crowning an upthrust curve of throat. Her arms were thrown to either side of her; as he bent his head to nuzzle her breasts, she gasped and clutched at the sides of the desk. He latched onto one, drew hard, and watched her head snap sharply up.

"Oh, God," she said at the sight of his mouth on her. "Oh, God."

"Good?" He set his teeth in, just a little, just enough to make her whimper. "Better?"

"Oh, God."

She couldn't seem to find any other words. Must've been the ten years she spent in the C of E, before she came to Hogwarts, Severus thought, amused, then brought himself up short at the look in those wild brown eyes. Her body was one thing -- to be perfectly frank, her body was squirming slow circles in his lap like the Welcome Wagon made flesh. But her face? Riding the fine blind edge of panic.

Wait a minute.

"Hermione," he said, and clamped his hands on either side of her hips, to still that slow, maddening grind of softness against him. "Are you sure you're all right?"

She bucked against the restraint of his hands. "Oh, God."

"Hermione?" He gave her a shake. "If you're not all right, you've got to tell me now -- while I can still stop. Do you hear me?"

"Don't stop. I'm okay." She sounded as if she'd been running, breathless and a bit disoriented. Her eyes were still closed. "I don't want you to stop -- you can't, I think I'll die if you do. It's just --"

"Yes?" He couldn't hold her back any more, had to let her resume that slow tight-circling rub that seemed to be keeping her sane at the same time it drove him mad. "It's just what?"

"It's just --"

Her hips jerked up, then back; with every subsequent pass, they were getting farther and farther away from Dress Rehearsal, and near and nearer to Opening Night. A good shove, a better angle, Severus knew, and he'd be in, he'd be at home plate, he'd be kissing angels and hearing harps. From the look of her, Hermione knew this too -- and it was scaring the hell out of her.

"It's just," she gasped, "that I can't remember ever doing this before."

Severus froze.

**

A tense, still moment passed in which neither of them moved, neither of them spoke. Then:

"I don't want you to stop," she said again. She was leaning up on her elbows now so she could look him directly in the eyes; Severus took in that unflinching gaze above those high pale breasts, and thought automatically of Manet's Olympia. "I want ... oh, God, I want all sorts of things. How could I have forgotten this?"

She was breathing more easily now that she'd made her admission -- looking more intrigued, less panicked. Body got ahead of her brain, Severus hypothesized, and sent his thumbs grazing in a slow experimental half-circle along the satiny surface of each inner thigh. Her breath caught in her throat.

"Was it always like this?" she wanted to know. Flattered, he felt his mouth twist up in a quick, cocky half-smile.

"I don't know about always." He let one thumb trace its way up her mons, enjoying her reflexive shudder. "We've never kept it going long enough for there to be an always. Right now, there's only a so far."

"That's just ... that's just semantics." He'd found what he was looking for with that questing thumb; she squeaked, then let her head collapse abruptly back onto the desk. "Jesus fucking Christ," she said to the ceiling. "I don't know my own body."

"You always were a quick learner, thought," he murmured. "Ready for Lesson Two?"

Almost before she'd finished nodding, he was sliding into her.

**

Who knew, Hermione thought fuzzily, that the age-old game of Train and Tunnel would feel so damn good?

She had her breath back a bit now -- thank God he'd noticed something amiss, during that scary roller-coaster ride up and over the desk, and brought her back to the ground, because she hadn't had the will or the inclination to hit the brakes herself. still, this was better -- and even more mind-blowing in a way: one hand riding the swell of her hip, the other still involved with a procedure which would henceforth be referred to as That Thing With His Thumb, her insides expanding under his gentle intrusion like silk elastic. Magic, the way that happened. And such small movements, everything so slow and measured that her body couldn't have run away with her again, even if she'd wanted it to.

Of course, at this point she thought she rather wouldn't mind if it did.

She propped herself up as best she could against the side of the desk -- much more comfortable, incidentally, than it should have been; what was that about? -- and watched him ease her up and onto him again. His eyes were intent, his cheekbones stained with twin pinpoints of bright pink flush, his hair an unholy mess around his face. His teeth were dug savagely into his lower lip, reddening and swelling it from its usual pale line; all in all, Hermione couldn't help but think the transformations an improvement. Sex becomes you, she wanted to say -- did you know that? -- and almost laughed out loud at her own presumption, before he changed the angle of that stroking thumb and turned her giggle into a gasp.

"Severus," she choked out, and he turned those glittering black eyes from the spectacle of their joined bodies to her face.

"Yes?"

"Not to complain ..."

The eyes grew wary. "What?"

" ... but could we possibly go any faster than this?"

The wariness cleared, and he laughed -- actually laughed! -- before deliberately sliding her off his lap and holding her just out of reach, so she could feel the tip of him just barely nudging at her. "Impatient, are we?"

"Very," she agreed fervently, not seeing any reason to dissemble. He laughed again.

"How impatient?" Wicked, wicked look in his eyes, my God, Hermione thought, how could I ever have thought him hard to read? "Why don't you show me?"

Obligingly she squirmed against him, huffing a little in frustration when the angle and his hard-clamped hands didn't let her get anywhere. "Tease," she complained, and for a moment he grew solemn again.

"My apologies. It's been so long--" here, he shrugged self-deprecatingly -- "that I'd thought to draw it out a bit."

"No complaints," she assured him, breathless -- and a bit stricken as well, that her careless comment had wiped that pleased, self-satisfied look from his face. "But ... there's always next time, right?"

She'd intended for him to smile at that, but he didn't. "This is the next time," he said. "And I've waited eight years for it."

"Oh."

For a moment, she stopped squirming -- there was something awful and brutal about the simplicity of that statement that transcended laughter, transcended even sex itself. It seemed crucial that she acknowledge it, before they went any farther.

"So Bill was right, then," she said, and brought up both hands to push the tousled black hair off his face, so she could look him in the eyes. "You do love me, don't you?"

**

The question knocked the breath from him.

The first time she'd asked it, twenty minutes ago, it had been a challenge. Now, it was a shy certainty; he'd laid down one card too many, and now she knew his hand.

What was to be gained by further evasion? He paused, thinking of all the emotional detours he could construct, then simply nodded wearily instead.

"Yes."

She studied him for a long moment, then leaned up to brush his mouth with hers.

"I want my memory back."

He goggled at her. "What?"

"You heard me," she said. "I want to remember."

He was still hard against her thigh; without breaking eye contact, she reached down casually to grasp him and slide him back into the tight clutch of her body. Caught helplessly between fresh confusion and renewed arousal, he frowned.

"Why?"

She cocked her head to one side and regarded him quizzically, as if the answer to that should be obvious. "So I can say the same to you," she said. "And know that it's the truth."

He couldn't think of anything to say to that, so he pulled her closer instead and started to move. If he hadn't known better, he'd have thought he smelled Illuminata.

Definitely not the potion, he thought. It must be the girl.

After that, he stopped thinking at all.

**