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Part 36 - The Close Pressure That Makes Me Or Any Man Drunk, Fainting With Excess
Ohhh yessss .... yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes ... ohhhhhh ... oh yes. She was never going to get this body back; not when it could feel like this ...
Snape was never quite sure whether he had actually passed out; certainly, by the time he was fully aware of where he was, he was half-asleep and drowsing in a mutual embrace with Hermione. She, in the time-honoured manner of men everywhere, had fallen asleep. He wasn't particularly surprised - she had managed to hold on rather longer than he thought he would have done, in her position.
It had been a tumble of an evening, from one emotion to another and headlong into passion. From the door of his - her - rooms to the bed had been a waltz of feeling, of touch and daring and absorption and very little thought. Thought was decidedly overrated; he had barely had enough presence of mind before they were lost completely in each other to mumble one of a range of charms that were certainly not covered in the standard syllabus.
He rather thought that Hermione would not appreciate the return of her body with a developing internal accessory.
The steady rise and fall of her chest under his head, and the thudding beat of her heart, gave an echoing rhythm to the thoughts that fell through his mind; newly-formed memories relived brought a subtle smile to his face. The warmth of Hermione against him, under him, was an arousing comfort and Snape wondered when she would awake. How she would awake. For a moment the thought that she might regret this stilled his smile but then he remembered her determination and more than full participation. He thought regrets would be unlikely.
She had been involved to the point that he had held back - memory, albeit incomplete, had given him a fairly good idea just how close to the edge she had been when he had walked into the room; and that arousal had only grown. Snape had given into curiosity only just enough to touch, to taste, her nipples - the sensitivity of his current body had made him wonder just what he had been missing with his own in his rather cursory dealings with his body.
Regardless of experience, or lack thereof, Snape had been all too well aware just exactly how focussed his hormones would make Hermione. To have touched her - given in to his own curiosity - would, he thought, have sent her flying solo and he was too selfish to allow that, at least the first time. Not long after that, though, he had been beyond all thought.
It had been an odd sensation - detachment and involvement and all the while the coursing arousal fired by Hermione's determined exploration of their situation. It had been astonishing, to be the recipient of all that concentration and experimentation. He had wanted - still wanted - to return that same exploration; curiosity alone demanded that but, beyond curiosity, he wanted to see Hermione react and know that he had done that for her.
He looked at Hermione now, sleeping and relaxed, sprawled almost boneless across the mattress with the sheets tangled in her legs. Black hair spread across the pillow, and her left arm was flung across Snape, holding him to her. He eased back, just enough to study her for a moment before he gave into the warmth again and returned to the embrace.
For a moment, one single solitary moment, he realised that - perhaps - he wasn't quite as dreadful a prospect as he had always thought himself. Perhaps Alice Lacock wasn't entirely deluded. All the same, he didn't believe he would ever consider himself attractive. It was, nonetheless, very strange to be aroused more by the figure he saw in the mirror than by the figure he held in bed. Snape thought for a moment, wondering whether anyone else had ever felt that way. Then he laughed.
Only one. Gilderoy Lockhart.
"What's amusing you?" asked a sleepy voice, still thickened with the remnants of arousal. Snape felt the gravelled tones as a visceral shock down his spine, winced, and abruptly remembered just how inexperienced this body had been until half an hour ago. Hermione had awoken - more or less - and was looking at him quizzically. Snape regarded her for a moment but saw no sighs of regret or remorse. He smiled.
"I was just thinking how odd it was to find my reflection in a mirror more interesting than ..." his voice trailed off as he tried to think of a way to finish the sentence that wouldn't sound insulting to Hermione. He was more tired than he had thought, if he had allowed himself to begin a sentence to which he hadn't calculated the ending. "Anyway," he finished, eventually, "it occurred to me that there was probably only one other person - other than ourselves - who would think that way."
"Lockhart!" Hermione pronounced with glee. "No wonder you laughed. I probably ought to be insulted, if you're thinking of another man whilst you're in bed with me."
Snape spluttered, recovered, and then winced again before he could reply. His still drowsy body was protesting an increasing soreness.
"Oh!" Hermione had obviously worked out the reason for his wince. She leant over the side of the bed and picked up her discarded shirt, dampened a corner in the water glass on the bedside table and turned to him. Discomfort or no discomfort, Snape raised an eyebrow.
"Don't look at me like that; you have to be sore, sorely? And this will wash out - I haven't yet seen a stain that the house elves can't deal with."
He nodded, reluctantly, then hissed softly as Hermione settled herself beside him and gently pushed one of his knees aside. The damp cloth was cool and welcome, though, as she stroked carefully. Snape let himself fall back onto the pillow and closed his eyes. The sensation was changing as Hermione worked, moving from slight soreness to an electric arousal at her touch. He bit his lower lip, trying not to moan. At this point, he wasn't prepared to take anything for granted and was simply grateful that she hadn't fled the room on waking. To suggest that he might perhaps - definitely - be interested in a repeat performance might just prompt that flight and he wasn't prepared to take the risk.
Hermione paused, and Snape wondered whether he had made a noise after all. He lifted his head a little, to look at her. She was looking back at him contemplatively, with a glint in his eyes that made him both afraid and even more aroused.
Then she smiled, and the remnants of fear fled before a spiking desire. "That's cleaned things up, but I think a more traditional remedy is still needed - do you want me to kiss it better?"
Snape swallowed and almost choked as her voice dropped still further on that last question, skittering along his spine again and sending every last nerve ending into high alert.
The question was obviously rhetorical, for Hermione bent over him without waiting for an answer, and Snape fell back on the pillow once more at the touch of her mouth upon him. Oh yessss ... and he'd thought fingers were good? He thanked any deity that cared to listen for Hermione's uninhibited exploration of her own body.
That thanks inspired another round of thoughts, befuddled and mildly incoherent as most of his senses concentrated on Hermione's inspired attentions, but he started to wonder ...
Hermione wasn't the only one in the room who was curious - and he definitely wasn't the only one in the room who was aroused; he bit his lip again, staring at her erection. All it would take would be a subtle shift in position ...
All that held him back was history; it had been more than a decade since he had last been Imperio'd for someone else's pleasure but the humiliation and disgust still lingered. And yet ... and yet he had his own measure of curiosity. He also thought Hermione unlikely to hold his head and force herself into his mouth if he chose to explore.
And, damnit it all, this was his body. Even it was temporarily and involuntarily on loan to Hermione for the duration.
Ohhhhh ...
He shuddered at a particularly effective move on Hermione's part, then smiled at the look of glee on her face as she glanced up at him; she was enjoying this entirely too much. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps all she was enjoying was herself, but that rather dampening thought was laid to rest with her next words, slightly muffled as she returned to her self-appointed task.
"I thought you'd like that, Severus ..."
The touch of her lips, her tongue, caressing and licking and sucking and ... what the hell had he been thinking about? Thought was - ohhhh - overrated. Very overrated. He arched and twisted, pushing up against her mouth in a desperation for more - more - just more ... and then more was all there was and he was caught up in the ecstasy of the moment, his hands clenched in the sheets as he became pure reaction.
When the world reformed itself into comprehension in his mind once more Snape found Hermione lying next to him, watching as he gradually focussed on her.
"Alright?" she asked, gently. "I didn't ... push you too far?" She sounded worried, and Snape wondered whether she was expecting him to bolt in the same way that he had thought she might.
"Feel free to push me as far as you like," he reassured her drily. Hermione's reaction to that was a smirk that should have worried him but, instead, drew lazy sparks across his body. The old remedies were obviously the best; all suggestion of soreness was gone. Well, it was gone for now. He had few illusions as to the likelihood of waking so comfortably tomorrow morning. Or later this morning. He had lost track of time and wasn't inclined to to worry about it. One of the advantages of being Head Girl; no-one would miss him in Gryffindor Tower tonight, and there were no lessons to wake for on the morning after a Ball.
Snape let his gaze linger over Hermione again. They had time ... plenty of time. His earlier thoughts came back again and this time he acted before second thoughts emerged from the shadows of the first. He trailed his fingers over the soft warm skin of her erection, letting it drag over the hard shaft that had to be almost painful - he looked up and caught an expression of mingled ecstasy and agony over her face as he drew his thumbnail gently over the groove in the tip.
"Oh god. Oh!"
Snape smiled again at the sudden exclamation as he shifted on the bed and suddenly engulfed her in his mouth. Salt and sour and ... Hermione. It couldn't possibly be Hermione that he tasted but, all the same, it felt as though he tasted the idea of her as he lapped and played his tongue along the vein that had swelled to prominence as he enjoyed her. It was strange; stranger than simply caressing her had been. He nipped quickly at the opening at the very tip before soothing with his tongue and listened for the expected gasp and shudder. To know - intimately - what would produce such a reaction and almost feel it with her as he continued to lap, soothe, suck, and nuzzle. Each touch of his mouth on her skin echoed in decades of memories of his hands on the same skin.
It took little more for Hermione's gasps and shudders to be almost continuous as he drew her in, sucking hard as his hands caressed where his mouth couldn't reach. The sheer pleasure of listening to her reaction, to the hissing of his name as she came hard in his mouth, rewrote every old memory, every unwelcome recollection.
"Alright?" he asked as she opened her eyes at last, unclenching her fists from the sheets. "I didn't push you too far?" He couldn't quite put the same inflection on that question as she had, but he came close and, from the lazy smile that lit up her eyes, Hermione found it close enough.
"Umm ... let me think ... oh yes ... feel free to push me as far as you like," she replied, pushing herself up on one elbow and leaning over to kiss him. It was an unhurried kiss, deep and drawing them both in again, tasting themselves and the other in each other.
"Have you done that before?" she asked as they parted, and Snape had to laugh at the look of horror on her face as she realised what she had asked. "I mean ... you just ... oh god." She buried her face in her hands, then looked up, smiling ruefully at him. Snape wondered, absently, whether he had ever smiled as much in an evening as she had done tonight.
"I .. you ... it just felt so good. I'm not asking your preferences -"
"I'd say you were entitled to ask, given where we are and what we've been doing," said Snape in as dry a tone as he could muster, knowing she would take it as intended, as humour. "For the record, yes, I have done that before," he added, trying to keep his voice from turning curt and cold, "but it wasn't my choice. Nor would it be under normal circumstances."
Intelligence was a blessing; he needed to make no more explanation. Hermione simply asked "Imperio?" and clearly understood exactly what he hadn't told her. "You didn't have to ..." she added.
"I wanted to - and I would do it again. For you." And only you, was the unspoken qualification.
Silence enveloped the room; in the night outside, snow fell once more in the February landscape, chill and cold as it outlined the trees in the Forbidden Forest and the ramparts of the castle. From the dungeon rooms, the falling flakes drifted across the window, lit golden from the candle-light within. Snape and Hermione lay entwined together, heartbeats slowing as they fell into a near-sleep; Snape wasn't sure which had reached first, only that they had reached for each other - all else was irrelevant. He watched the flakes ease their way down outside, as lazy as he felt. A gentle, apparently absent-minded, stroking of Hermione's fingers at his waist was the only indication that Hermione was not asleep; her eyes were shut, a half-smile on her face. Snape drifted into sleep without noticing.
He awoke some time later to a more deliberate touch as Hermione trailed her fingers over his face, outlining his lips and brushing her thumb against them; her skin - his skin - was slightly calloused and left a trail of sparkling arousal. She seemed to have watched him wake, an intent look on her face.
"You were right," she said, in a hushed whisper. "About Lockhart. It's ... strange. Like making love to two people - myself and you, together and apart. I want to know how I feel, but I want to make you react."
It had stopped snowing; nothing but the black of night was visible outside as Snape nodded slowly. Her fingers had curled around his jaw, her knuckles rubbing gently against the skin there. He was warm, his legs entangled with hers; from the pressure against his thigh, Snape realised Hermione was holding back now. He wondered idly what time it was; it would be profoundly unfair if Hermione had better powers of recuperation in his body than he did - but perhaps it was habit on his part, to go to sleep; he had found that sort of exercise very useful when he was reluctant to take yet more Dreamless Sleep Potions. He raised himself up onto one elbow, looking over to the clock that silently told time in the candlelight.
3am. Life wasn't entirely unfair, thankfully. He was about to sink back on bed when Hermione took advantage of his position and pulled him on top of her. He lay on her chest, resting his head on his arms and looked up at her. The pressure that had pushed against his thigh was now nudging more insistently between them.
"Are you still sore?" she asked. The ulterior motive to the question hung in the air between them, almost tangible, and Snape could do nothing more than smile as he was caught up in a renewed arousal; the hope and desire written on Hermione's face was intoxicating.
"Oh, I'll survive," he drawled, "but what about you? I know you're not accustomed ..." His voice trailed off as he raised an eyebrow wickedly. "Unless you've been entertaining yourself at my expense?"
Hermione blushed and Snape bit back a laugh; he hadn't realised his body was still capable of that response - he thought he had outgrown it with the onset of puberty. The blush didn't last long, though, and Hermione bit back.
"I would hope you haven't missed the opportunity to do the same - it is rather fun." She was still a little pink as she spoke the words and Snape was sure he could scent bravado behind them; he suddenly found her utterly adorable, a mixture of self-knowledge, embarrassment and understanding.
"I doubt I've done anything you wouldn't do in the same position," he answered with a twist to his smile. Hermione simply laughed and lifted herself to kiss him.
"Likewise," she murmured against his mouth. Snape lost himself for a moment in the fleeting touch of her mouth on his and then moaned softly as Hermione's hips bucked slightly against his, pushing her erection against him. He lifted slightly, reaching for her between them, suddenly desperate for the sensation of her inside him once more. Hermione moved faster, her fingers brushing against his wet folds as she eased herself between them. One push from her as he lowered himself onto her and they were together again, caught and held in the moment.
"Ohhhhh ...." was all he could say for a moment as he felt her fill him, hot and hard as she slid into him.
Hermione seemed more in control this time, less carried away on a tide of hormones; she was watching him intently, her own arousal clear but held enough in check for her curiosity to surface again.
"What does it feel like?" she asked, as he opened his eyes and propped himself up, his hands on her chest as he straddled her. He thought for a moment, trying to put the sensation into words.
"Full - just full enough to feel it, feel you - and hot - but necessary. Like a part of me that was missing is suddenly there again."
He had not, perhaps, picked the best phrase - Hermione tried to hold back her amusement at the comment and, he was grateful, avoided the obvious comment and settled instead for a dancing laughter in her eyes as he shrugged in acknowledgement. Then they both laughed and he leaned down to kiss her into silence, shifting subtly as he did so and delighting in the glazed look that came over her face just before his mouth met hers.
When they parted they were both breathing heavily, panting, and the rhythm their mouths had started continued in their bodies as they moved together. Snape tried to hold back, casting around for something to say, something to prolong this ... he remembered Hermione's question.
"What does it feel like?" he asked her. It was more than a delaying tactic; he wanted to know.
"Tight and warm - like being held in a gently insistent fist that's rippling and pushing," said Hermione eventually, slowing to match his rhythm. "Something like that - I can't quite describe it. You know what I'm talking about, though."
Snape shook his head and waited.
A look of dawning realisation spread across her face. "You don't know ... you must have ... oh. You didn't mean bicycling, did you?" she asked.
"No more than you did," replied Snape.
"I'm sorry," stammered Hermione. "I didn't know ... I thought ..."
"Don't apologise," said Snape quickly. "I had no intention of stopping to tell you; it took most of my concentration to check whether you were - whether it was going to ... I didn't want to startle either of us by finding out directly later."
"At least you could concentrate," muttered Hermione ruefully. Snape laughed.
"Barely."
The conversation was in danger of becoming too introspective; no amount of conversation would alter things and he rather thought they would be better off concentrating on what they could do, not on what they had done. He leant down again into a kiss; Hermione met him enthusiastically and he was reassured by the answering groan as he pressed against her.
The kiss, the push, and conversation was over; the room grew warmer, candles guttered and flickered in the darkness as they met, drew apart and met again with a push, punctuated by whispers and moans that grew in intensity if not in volume until Snape choked on Hermione's name as he arched backwards, shuddering. A moment later he felt her swell harder still into him and take up his shuddering into her own, his name on her lips.
Snape let himself fall forwards on Hermione again, careful not to move so much that she slipped from him; he wanted this moment of connection. He felt her hand in his hair and looked up; she cupped the back of his head and lifted her head to kiss him again. This was a slow, soft, meeting of mouths, drowsy with exhaustion and all the sweeter for it.
"Alright?" she asked eventually, leaving one last kiss on his mouth as she let her head drop back onto the pillow.
"Ummm," said Snape sleepily, finding it difficult to muster words. The evening ran through his mind in memories, gold-tinged and precious. "You?" he asked, finally, wondering whether Hermione had fallen asleep.
"Yes," she replied after a pause. "Yes, I will be. No reason not to be."
Snape looked up; her words sounded slightly odd. She was watching him, apparently anticipating his reaction because she put a finger to his lips.
"It's fine - I was just wondering whether this would make any difference in the classroom but it won't," she said emphatically. "This -" and she indicated the two of them, pale skin against pale winter skin tinged gold in the light of the last remaining candle, "- this is an expression, not a definition. It won't be any different - if things were going to change, they would have changed by now. And I won't give a hostage to fortune - not after all these months."
Snape nodded, kissed the finger on his lips, and nodded again.
They slept, at last.