Just You Wait

Chapter 3 - The Parlour

Overture

Severus strode up behind Hermione, grabbed her arm and hissed, not quietly, in her ear, "I need to see you. Now. In private." Without waiting for an answer, he scowled at his wife's companions and marched towards the other side of the Manor, half-dragging and half-driving her along beside him.

The room he escorted her to was, coincidentally, the same room where he had first laid eyes on her as the wife of the Minister of Magic (and fallen in love with her, between him and the wall). Then, she had been a sad woman escaping the celebration whose merriment emphasised the huge gap that had grown between her and her old life. A gap that she felt she could not cross. The few minutes they had spent together, talking awkwardly, had changed both their lives. Later, they spoke often of their shared fondness for the room... Now, he planned to give her a completely new memory. As they passed through the door he closed and quietly spelled it against intrusion.

In the privacy of the parlour, holding her firmly by her upper arms, Snape took a moment to regard the woman he married. Hermione. So beautiful. Piqued, flushed, smouldering with passion, looking ready to kick him, actually. As she started to squirm in his grasp and make sputtering noises of irritation, he disarmed her by snaking his arms around her waist and holding her tight to him. "I missed you, Spikes. So much," he murmured into her hair. He felt her instantly relax against him. "Oh, Severus, I missed you too," she whispered into his ear as he lifted her off her feet and closer into his arms. Oh, the heaven of her soft, sweet body, her hair. He nuzzled her throat, taking in her scent, then pressed his forehead against hers before kissing her deeply.

After an age, she drew away. Some of the softness disappeared and Snape saw a hint of exasperation. "Is that what you wanted? To kiss me and tell me you missed me? I don't suppose you could have just asked me to meet you here?! Thanks to your display of tetchy testosterone, the whole room now thinks that I'm under your thumb!! Or worse, that you beat me." His bossy bride leaned back on her heels and crossed her arms over her chest with a sulky toss of her head, her direct gaze stubbornly challenging. She still looked adorable, though, and Severus had to steel himself to keep up the charade.

He drew back as well, and his eyes narrowed. "Actually, although I spent most of the last three days thinking about you, I didn't bring you in here just to tell you that I missed you. There was a far more important reason, but I wouldn't want you to take time away to hear it, not if it is going to deprive you of the attention of your fans." His tone and manner conveyed all the sarcasm and coldness that he could muster from his days teaching Potions, and was amused at how well it worked.

Looking a little deflated, Hermione seemed to shrink into herself. In a small voice, she said "Well, of course I want to know, I just don't see why you had to drag me away like that." Seeing the look in his eyes, she took a step back.

Snape drew himself up and regarded her with a Weasley-strength glower. "Let me tell you, my dear, or...perhaps I should show you." He took a step towards her and crossed his own arms. Hermione took another step back, and kept moving away as he continued to advance towards her. Suddenly he grabbed her and spun her around, so that her back was pressed up against his body. He twined his long fingers firmly around her wrists, and whispered in his most silky, dangerous voice, "Did it ever occur to you that I can't stand to be apart from you? Do you have any idea what you do to me, Hermione?" Held firmly to him as she was, the answer was obvious, and she said as much. "And just what, exactly, do you think should be done about it? Perhaps I should show you my solution." Snape's voice, already so soft and menacing, dropped to a threatening rumble at his last words, communicating his ire through his ribcage to hers.

As he was speaking, Snape manoeuvred Hermione towards the sofa at the back of the room, and, taking both her wrists in his left hand, wove a silencing spell around the room to compliment the locked and warded door.

After only a few days apart from her husband, just the sight of him across the ballroom had been enough to shallow her breathing and tighten her womb with desire. In spite of his high-handed attitude escorting her out of the Ballroom, his proximity to her heightened her sensual awareness of her own skin; the erotically confining sensations of the corset that bound her torso, the whispersoft silk lining of her velvet dress, the trailing curls that tickled her throat and teased perfume from her heat.

Now, as he guided her, not gently, towards the back of the parlour; the feeling of his hard body against her back, his strong arms imprisoning her, left her almost beside herself with arousal. She felt the familiar symptoms: a warm tingling that started in her upper thighs and wended its way down to her knees, traitorously weakening them; a high-voltage circuit connecting her nipples, her belly-button and her clit, whose trigger was the sensation of his breath on her neck; and his voice, a threat and a promise, which had, over the last year, instilled in her the Pavlovian response of aching to be filled by him whenever she heard that particular timbre. Early in their relationship she had vowed to herself never to reveal to him the effect his voice had on her - she feared that it would give him too much of an advantage. Regretfully, she suspected that he already knew.

`Yes, he must know', she thought ruefully as she squirmed against his chest. Standing in front of the settee, its cream silk damask beautiful against her red velvet gown, Severus continued to murmur into her hair as his hands began to roam over her helpless form.

"My darling, you know that you didn't marry a nice man," he said as he slid his left hand across her breasts, using his other hand to caress her belly through her skirts. Slowly, his fingertips inched downward, stopping short of where Hermione wanted them, veering instead towards her right hip. Leaning weakly against him, she made no move to pull away. Instead, she arched into his hands, silently urging him on.

"You have told me often that you think me a selfless and generous lover." Snape's hand circled her hip and buttock, and moved to rest provocatively at the juncture of her thighs and pelvis. "Yet I wonder if you will find me so tonight." His left hand moved from her breasts to her solar plexus, and she let out a small sigh as he stooped to gather the front of her skirt into his hand. "I have a score to settle with you, Hermione, and while I promise that you will enjoy paying my penalty, I suspect that you may not like it." Snape bore down on her shoulders and she sank to her knees at the front of the sofa, too weak to offer any resistance.

Snape joined her on the floor, straddling her knees with his and holding her close against his spare but powerful body. In her kneeling position, Hermione felt his erection pressing against her derrière, and she moaned as he reached up to touch her breasts, and began to kiss the exposed flesh of her neck and shoulders.

I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face

"Oh Severus, please..." she moaned as he began to slide her the skirt of her gown up around her waist, simultaneously pushing her hard against the edge of the sofa. "I'm sorry, my lovely...but I regret that tonight, I will be immune to your pleas. Tonight is for you to please me." He leaned down against her back as he trailed his long fingers up her bare thighs. "You need to be punished, Hermione." He waved her panties away with a spell. "For what you've done to me." His voice was husky with lust and dangerously low. "For making me so accustomed to your body that I had to repeatedly relieve myself of my desire for you while we were apart." He slipped his hand between her thighs and felt the wetness there. "For making me look at the clock five hundred times this afternoon, so impatient was I to come to you." He kneaded her breasts firmly with one hand as he spoke softly into her ear. His fingers stroked her wet folds, teasing her clit with tiny caresses. "For making me want you so much that I couldn't wait even three hours to be inside you." He reached behind her and unfastened his trousers one-handed, smiling as she moaned at the loss of stimulation, and he was gratified to observe the palpable evidence of her arousal. "You need to be punished for being so incredibly beautiful that I couldn't take my eyes off you for a second tonight, and for being so irresistible that every man in this building has had to touch you."

In one movement, he thrust deep inside her, and she gasped at the sudden feeling of being filled. Severus bent her slightly over the sofa and sank his teeth into her shoulder, making her cry out in pain and pleasure.