It's a fine line between pleasure and pain
I am a marked man, he thought, and it was the only coherent thought he could muster as his witch –his witch, his, how could he utter such a thing and the heavens stay still–, dragged her hand down his body.
The battered, broken body that never managed to inspire love to anyone.
He was literally covered in scars: painful reminders that there was no love in the cards for him. No matter what he did, how long he had strived since he was just a child, the tenderness lessened, and the scars multiplied. Burns, scratches, cuts that deep much deeper than his surface. Marks from all the people who never loved him.
Disfigurement inside and out.
So, Severus could only watch in disbelief as the most alluring woman he had laid eyes on –his witch, heavens, his witch– used that clever tongue of hers to lavish her feelings upon him. A soft lap of her tongue on his right thigh, dangerously close to his cock: to the spot where his skin showed the way he had been beaten repeatedly with a belt, when he was a kid and unable to defend himself. A gentle kiss on his stomach, where there was a deep cut, courtesy of yet another Marauders prank –oh Lily, laughing along with those bastards, not realising that I was bleeding–. A teasing bite just above his nipple, on a very prominent scar made by Voldemort himself, a night that things didn’t go according to his fancy. Then, her tongue, lapping softly at the intricate network of scars on his neck, Nagini’s venom being his parting gift.
And his witch was worshipping each and every one of those scars. If he wasn’t who he was –the mighty wizard, the man who fooled everyone, Severus Snape himself– would have cried at the sheer bliss of being touched. Something so mundane for others, but he hadn’t known how to be touched without feeling pain.
I don’t know how kindness feels to one’s skin, he had admitted one late, drunken night, when he and Hermione –the Headmaster and the new Head of the Gryffindor House– had shared a bottle of Firewhiskey. They had ended up naked and on the floor soon afterwards, only for the smart woman to find out quickly that he shied away from every touch that felt overly soft.
He was accustomed to pain; and to pain he submitted.
Any witch with her wits about her would have abandoned the man who feared to be touched tenderly, who instead got aroused only when slight pain was involved. But not her, not this stubborn woman.
“Does this feel good, Sev?” she asked quietly, tilting her head to the side of his neck that was unmarred by misery, starting to nip at his skin there. And he almost wailed in response, his cock stirring between her legs as she was straddling him.
“I’ll take this as a yes,” she purred. “You love this, Sev–I can feel it.”
I love you, he almost blurted as a response. But it wasn’t time for this yet. His hands lifted up to her hair and gripped at the unruly mane, bringing her to him –lips to his lips, so close he could kiss her–.
“If you can feel it, you should fuck it,” he drawled, and the kiss he claimed as a response was hard, demanding.
Hermione wasn’t like him: he was cut out of a rough material, she was all velvet and silk and comforting warmth. And the last thing her enormous heart wanted to do, was cause him more pain. In the end, they settled: she was giving him both the slight bite of pain that reminded him that he was alive, and through it, the tenderness she craved to truly show him. She was feeding him love and kindness in the only way he could take it.
Clever, alluring, wonderful witch–
Severus bit back a moan as Hermione, his brave lioness, repositioned herself so she could lower herself over him, his cock slipping into her warmth. With great effort, he looked up at her; then at her hands, seeking to find balance by pressing down on his chest as she took him into her.
Her nails were lacquered, he noticed. Bright red; like her House, like her love.
She crawled under my skin and carved her name into my heart with sensibly manicured nails. I am a marked man, he thought. His hands gripped hers as she started moving atop him, and when she moaned his name, Severus knew he was hers.