Choice's Curse

“What-oh,” I sighed as Draco’s hot breath fanned across my hips. 

His fingers curled up, hitting that spot that made my head spin and my breath catch in my lungs as he worked in and out of me. And then, fuck, and then his tongue swirled around my clit, making me jump at the new feeling. 

“Pretty little desperate thing, aren’t you?” Draco murmured against me, his fingers still moving. 

My eyes fluttered as he flattened his tongue, licking a long, slow stroke that made my hips buck against his face. With his free hand, Draco pressed down on my hip, pinning me against the bed. 

“Stay still,” he threatened. “Or I’ll stop right now.”

But he didn’t; his pace sped up, his fingers hitting that spot over and over and I could feel slick wetness dripping out of me as he worked. I was panting, whining, already, because I had been so close to the edge before and I was racing back towards that peak again. Draco’s tongue was moving in a way that had me sure I’d never feel that damn good ever again, and I knew that he knew it. 

He had promised to ruin me after all, and Draco wasn’t one to make empty threats. 

I felt my release building up as Draco continued to fuck me with his his long fingers, with his sinful mouth. My hands were threading through his hair, unabashedly pulling his face even closer, and just as I was telling him through broken moans that I was close, that I was about to hurdle over that edge--

Draco stopped. He fucking stopped. 

A pathetic sound left my mouth as I felt his fingers still, as he lifted his mouth away from me, and I clamped my lips shut, humiliation filling me. Draco, being the smug asshole he always was, had the audacity to smirk at me, to let out a soft noise of amusement. 

“What, Elaine? Did you need something?”

I gritted my teeth, letting go of his hair and refusing to look at him. “Asshole.”

Draco snorted. “You’re feisty when you don’t get what you want.”

“Shut up.”

Curling his fingers once, slowly, Draco said, “You think, after how stubborn and difficult and mouthy you are, I’d let you come so easily? That I’d let this,” -another crook of his fingers made my hips press into his touch- “be over so soon? No, Elaine,” Draco told me. “I’m going to make you fucking break, because I want to.”

“And,” he continued, a hand creeping up my torso to wrap roughly around my neck, making me look at him. “Because I know you want me to. I know you want me to make you come apart until you can’t handle it, even though you’re going to hate yourself for it later.”

“I, fuck, won’t,” I rasped, my voice weak from his hand closing off my airway. “You-you want me to hate myself for this. But-but christ, Draco,” I panted, the way his fingers moved inside of me making my brain foggy. “Ho-how many damn times do I have to tell you, I-”

A crack followed by a stinging burn across my cheek cut my words off. I gasped, the pain making my back arch as it settled into my skin. 

“Can’t you ever fucking shut up?” Draco growled. “What, did I not fuck you good enough?”

“N-no,” I admitted, because fuck, it had been good, but I wanted- no, needed- more of him. More of all of him. 

Once more his fingers stilled, and I felt panic well up in me, because maybe I had offended him, or-

“What did you say?” 

“N-no?” I repeated shakily. “I mean-”

“Flip over,” was all Draco said as he slipped his fingers free. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or upset at me, so all I did was turn onto my stomach, the scent of Draco’s cologne wafting faintly from his sheets. 

With rough, unforgiving hands, Draco grabbed my hips, hauling me to my knees so that my arse was in the air. I turned to look at him, but a quick hand pressed my face into the bed, stopping me. Suddenly, I felt Draco’s cock dragging against me, hard once more. I nearly whined at it, at the prospect of him fucking me again, but Draco didn’t push into me. 

“If you’re going to be so damn needy, then you’re going to fucking beg until I think you’ve earned it,” Draco told me, a harsh tone in his voice. “Are you going to let me fuck you, let me make you feel good again, or are you going to be stubborn like always?”

I really didn’t want to beg. I didn’t want to face that humiliation, give Draco the satisfaction of knowing just how much I needed more of him. 

But I really, really needed him. 

Softly, almostly inaudibly, I whispered, “Please.”

A sharp slap landed on my arse, making me suck in a shocked breath at the pain. “I can’t hear you.”

“I hate you,” I mumbled, but Draco either didn’t hear or chose not to acknowledge it. “Just...please, Draco, okay?” I said impatiently, a bit louder this time. 

Draco’s hand grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking roughly and pulling my head back, making me rest my weight on my forearms to try and ease the ache. “I’m getting real fucking close to just leaving you a dripping, whining mess, Elaine. C’mon, I know you can do better than that.”

He bent down, his mouth next to my ear as he whispered, “I’ve heard you beg better than that.”

My face flushed, Draco’s erection pressing against me as I considered which I cared about more in this particular moment: my dignity, or the burning ache in my hips that was beginning to drive me insane. 

The decision wasn’t as hard as it should’ve been. 

“Please, Draco, fuck me. I-I need you-”

Draco pushed into me, bottoming out on the very first stroke. A high-pitched moan came from me as he filled me up so much I tried to pull away. Draco smacked my arse again, letting go of my hair as both hands came to grab my hips in an unyielding grip. 

“Good girl,” Draco said through gritted teeth as he began slamming into me. “You feel so good. Shit, how do you feel so fucking good?”

His strokes were powerful, hard, like he was taking even more of his frustration out on me, but god, I didn’t care. I didn’t care a single bit because it felt so fucking good, I wasn’t entirely sure I was still alive because anything that felt this overwhelmingly perfect had to be heaven. 

As he fucked me, a hand slipped down between my hips, granting friction to my clit and making me nearly sob with how intense everything felt. Draco’s pace was bruising, unforgiving, and I was soaring towards the edge once more. 

I wasn’t even sure what kind of sounds were leaving my mouth, but I was sure that they were likely whining and pitchy and pathetic as Draco slammed into me over and over and over again. His grunts and moans that came from behind me made my head spin, because he was enjoying this just as much as I was, and that thought had me nearly melting under his touch. 

My grip on his sheets was tight enough that my hands were cramping, but I needed something to hold onto as Draco practically fucked me senseless. The heat in my hips was starting to reach that point, the point where I knew I was about to come, so I managed to say between pants and breathy moans, “Draco, I-”

“Not fucking yet,” Draco replied, his words choppy due to his labored breathing. 

“But-”

Another hit, this one hard, had me yelping in pain as Draco’s hand collided with my ass. “I’m not done fucking you yet. This is what you wanted, remember?”

A half whine, half sob came out of my mouth as he kept me hovering at that precipice, making sure white-hot pleasure was coursing through me but never enough to send me over. Every thrust of his hips punched a moan or a whine or some sort of begging cry out of me and all I could think about was the way he fucked me like he had been waiting forever to do so. 

Maybe he had. God, I fucking hoped he had. 

Draco kept circling my clit until I was close, then would draw his hand away right before I came. Each time, it came faster, and each time, I nearly sobbed when I felt his touch leave me. My thighs were quaking as they held me up, and my shoulders were burning as I tried to keep myself steady while Draco fucked me like there was no tomorrow. 

A hand carded through my hair again, tugging harshly. Draco drew me up, pressing my back against his chest as he continued to pound his hips into me. The new angle had my eyes squeezing shut at the intense, almost overwhelming sensation of Draco being able to bury himself so much deeper into me. 

His arm curled around my throat, holding me to him as his forearm pressed into my windpipe. My hands came up to scratch at it as I choked out, “Draco, please I-please-”

His hand dropped down to my clit once more, providing that final piece of sensation that had my orgasm barreling closer. “Come for me, Elaine,” Draco grunted, his thrusts keeping a steady, soul-shattering rhythm. “I want to see you fucking fall apart.”

Pleasure, hotter and more intense than I’d ever felt, ripped through me as I let out a high, loud moan. My orgasm shattered me, made my breath stick in my lungs, as I repeated Draco’s name like a fucking prayer while it electrified me. Draco fucked me through my orgasm, pulling out just as he reached his, his come spilling across my reddened arse and back. 

Draco let go of his grip around my throat, sitting back on his haunches and I dropped to my stomach, my legs and arms shaking with effort and the aftershocks of my orgasm. For a moment, all I could do was shake as my body recovered, my breaths shallow and quick as I came down. Draco was panting behind me, surely even more wrecked than I was after coming not once, but twice in less than as many hours. 

Grabbing his wand, Draco muttered softly, and the warm, wet sensation on my back vanished. I whispered a quiet thank you, not quite having enough energy back to even speak at a normal level. 

I felt the bed shift and his bare feet hit the floor, then heard him pad to the bathroom and the door shut behind him. My hips, my legs, my arms, everything burned and ached and groaned in protest as I sat myself up. 

Fuck, I thought. That was...shit, that was…

Beautiful, perfect, just like Draco. 

As I was slowly redressing myself, Draco emerged from the bathroom, his blonde hair wet and slightly slicked back, as if he had gotten his hands wet and ran them through his hair. He was shirtless still, but he was wearing a pair of grey sweatpants that somehow still looked incredibly expensive. In his hands were two cups of water, and I accepted one as he held it out to me. 

Gulping down the water to soothe my parched throat, I felt a strange sort of nervous energy settle on the room. Strange, because, well...Draco and I had just had sex, and yet it felt like we had nothing to say. 

Or, really, like I had everything to say but couldn’t figure out where to start. 

I drained the cup, as Draco grabbed it from me, I noticed a mark on the inside of his wrist, like he’d been burnt. Without thinking, I grabbed his wrist, twisting it to get a better look at it. 

“What are you-”

“Christ, is this a burn?” I asked, shocked. 

There was a twisted sort of circle burnt into his wrist about the size of a Knut. It reminded me almost of an ouroboros with the way two lines overlapped and wrapped around each other.  The skin was red, raised, as if it were fresh. I instantly knew when, where, he had gotten it. My stomach sunk as I looked at the wound. 

He hadn’t had it before he went home, I was sure of that. I was familiar enough with burns that I knew how they healed, and I could tell this one had been inflicted in the past week at the very least. 

Not the Dark Mark, not what Harry had accused him of having in the bathroom that horrific night. But not anything good judging by the way my chest tightened with anxiety. 

Draco snatched his arm away, turning to set the empty cups on his nightstand. “It’s nothing.”

I raised my eyebrows at him as he tugged a black long sleeved shirt on, covering his porcelain torso that was corded with muscle. “That looks new. It looks like it hurts, Draco. Have you-”

“Elaine,” Draco interrupted me, looking at me with those piercing silver eyes of his. “Please. Just drop it.”

“Why?” 

“Why?” Draco shook his head. “Don’t play stupid, not right now. You know,” Draco sighed, sitting down on the bed next to me. “And you know I’m not going to tell you even if you bother me about it, which I’m sure that you will.”

I tamped down on the frustration beginning to rise in my chest. It wasn’t a time to be angry or upset at Draco, not when I knew that would just push him away further. “Okay,” I said. 

“Okay?” He repeated, blinking in surprise. 

I nodded, chewing on the inside of my lip. “You don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. Can I at least help you? It looks painful.”

It wasn’t fine, and I wanted to press him about it, but I didn’t want to make him angry. And maybe it was selfish, but I wanted to make sure I could remember this night and not feel upset or regretful. I wanted to hear him say what I was beginning to suspect, but this thing between us was still so fucking frgaile; I couldn’t risk shattering it so soon. 

I couldn’t risk losing him so soon after I’d gotten him. 

Draco seemed to think for a moment, then said, “Fine.”

This...this was familiar territory for me. Healing Draco was something I knew how to do, and it helped steady my concerns as I grabbed my wand. Draco pushed up his sleeve, presenting the burn to me. I cradled his hand in mine and cast a cooling charm over the burn. Draco let out a soft sigh as the cold settled over his skin, but didn’t remove his hand from mine. 

“Thank you,” he breathed, so softly I had to strain to hear it. 

“You should probably get some salve for that, too,” I said. “It’s going to get infected if you don’t.”

“Yeah. Sure,” Draco said flatly, and I knew there was no way he was going to do anything to heal or cover the burned skin. 

Nodding, I stood up, figuring now was as good a time as any to leave. Draco likely didn’t want me to stay, and I didn’t feel terribly inclined to embarrass myself by asking him if I could, so I grabbed my shoes that had been discarded by the foot of his bed. 

I slid my feet into them, then my wand into my waistband. Truthfully, I wanted Draco to say something, at the very least. Maybe a… “I had a fun time,” or “See you around,” but he didn’t. He didn’t say anything, just watched as I tried to make sure my hair didn’t look too indicative of my recent activities. 

It...kind of opened a hole in my chest that grew wider every second that passed with silence. I wanted to talk about tonight, about what we’d done together, but I’d bet every penny I had that Draco would rather burn himself again than do that. My head was still spinning slightly at the fact that I had just been fucked by Draco Malfoy, and I was certain I’d have a bit of an episode about it in the near future. Not a breakdown, at least I didn’t think so. But I definitely was not feeling as casual about the whole thing as I was appearing to be. 

As I walked to the door, accepting that he wasn’t going to say a damn thing, he said, “Wait.”

My heart skipped more than a few beats as I turned to look at him, hoping he would say-

“I want to teach you Occlumency.”

Well, it was safe to say that was the last damn thing I’d thought he was about to say. “Pardon?’

Draco rolled his eyes, standing up and walking towards me. “Occlumency, Elaine. Surely you pay at least a bit of attention in Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

“I know what it is,” I shot back, narrowing my eyes at him. “Excuse me if I’m surprised you’re bringing it up right now.”

The corner of Draco’s mouth curled into the smallest smile. “Sorry it’s not a confession of my undying love. I thought I’d save that when I really want to catch you off guard. Seems like it does the job rather well.” 

“Shut it,” I said, but his joke- was that his version of joking?- made my chest flutter. 

“So?”

“So what?”

Draco groaned. “Merlin’s fucking beard. Occlumency, Elaine. I’m going to teach you.”

“Why?” I asked, because it was such an odd request, one that I’d never thought he’d come to me with. 

Draco pressed his lips together, running a hand through his hair. “So many questions,” he mumbled, mostly to himself. “Because after Snape finding out that you have a propensity for being either incredibly nosy or always being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I figured that it might be useful for you to know how to block someone out of your head. Knowing you, you’ll manage to get yourself into shit sooner rather than later, and you know things certain people would be rather interested in. Things about me.”

It made sense, to tell the truth. My fun little interrogation with Snape had been anything but pleasant, and I had been scared he’d just dive into my head and tear apart my memories in search of anything that would make him consider me a threat. From what I’d learned, it was an incredibly difficult skill to learn, let alone perfect. Sometimes, it took witches and wizards years to master it. 

“Are you a Legillimens?” I asked. 

“Yes, since my third year.”

Woah. That was no small feat. Sometimes...sometimes, I forgot that Draco really was smarter than anyone even knew. He might even be smarter than Hermione in some areas. And yes, okay, that did make me fall a little bit harder for him. 

I was genuinely impressed, like I was with most things I’d learned about him over the course of the year. He acted like he hated school, but he did better in his classes than anyone in our year besides Hermione. Draco claimed to not care about anything, and I’d believed him for years. Everyone believed him, really. 

Draco cared, though. And when he cared about something, he cared more intensely than anyone I’d ever met. 

“Have you ever looked through my mind?”

Draco shook his head. “Not that you would be able to tell if I did, but no. Others…” Draco let out a soft snort. “Not you, though.”

“Why not?”

“I think, one of these days, all your questions are going to make me go mad,” Draco told me, and I couldn’t resist the snarky grin that spread across my face. “Because...well, before, you know, I honestly had no interest in seeing inside your head.” 

Rude.

“And then, once...everything, it felt…” he hesitated, scanning my face. “Wrong, I guess.”

Wrong? I narrowed my eyes as I thought. “But you didn’t have any issue with erasing my memory.”

“I told you I felt bad about that, didn’t I?” Draco responded. 

“Oh, see, that kind of got lost in between all the insults you kept throwing at me,” I said, making sure there was enough of a lilt in my voice that he knew I was joking. 

“Shut up.”

“No, I don’t think I-”

Draco grabbed my waist, pulling me towards him and pressing his lips to mine in a short, fiery kiss that seemed to ignite my body. His mouth was warm, making me melt into him a bit before he pulled back. 

“You’re insufferable, you know that? Now will you just listen?” 

I nodded, biting my lip as a blush crept up the back of my neck. I could get used to casual displays of affection from him. 

“I think it’s a good idea for you to know how to guard your mind,” Draco continued, stepping back but keeping his hand lightly on my waist which made it very hard to focus on his words. “I can’t be there to save you every time, especially not with how often you seem to run into trouble.”

“You don’t save me every time-”

“You said you would listen,” Draco huffed. “I’m serious, though. I’d rather not have another situation like the one with Snape. You know too much about me for me to risk that.”

“Is that the only reason? To protect yourself and get rid of the inconvenience of rescuing me?” I might regret asking once I heard the answer, but I had to know. Was this him truly looking out only for himself, or was this some roundabout way of protecting me? 

Draco took a breath, as if considering if he should tell me. 

Please say no. Please say no.

Draco’s eyes darted away from mine as he said, “No, it isn’t.” The words seemed to stick in his mouth, like he was having a hard time getting them out. 

We were quite a pair when it came to confessing feelings, weren’t we?

“Then…”

Draco sighed again, a noise I was becoming incredibly accustomed to. “Do you really not know already? You’re not that daft.”

I glared at him. “I’m not daft at all, you dickhead.”

“Apparently you are, if you can’t guess what other reason I could possibly have for wanting to teach you Occlumency.” 

I’d forgotten in his absence, somehow, what an entirely stubborn person Draco was. Crossing my arms in front of my chest, I stepped out of his touch, his hand falling to his side. Two could play at that damn game. “And apparently you can’t just fucking tell me why you want to teach me. What, are words really that hard for you?”

Draco walked towards me, backing me up until after two short steps, my back collided with the door again. An annoyed rage simmered in his eyes, making me shiver as he studied me. “You’re really going to make me fucking say it?”

I nodded, because I wanted to hear him say why. I knew why, or at least I was hoping I knew why. But I wanted him to say it. 

“Bloody fucking hell,” Draco muttered, shaking his head. “I can’t even begin to understand why I put up with you,” he said, but his hand came up to my face, his thumb brushing my lower lip as he said, in a quiet, almost secretive, voice:

“Because, Elaine, I am fucking terrified of losing you.”