Consumed, fresh off the keyboard
All right. This was mostly written yesterday but somewhat written today. It sort of took off in a direction I didn't expect, but these things happen!
You’re not his type.
Bollocks, Pansy thought poisonously as she tried to concentrate on the work in front of her. Absolute bollocks.
She’d called things to a halt for his good, she insisted to herself, throwing powder into the FlooCom just to watch the flames flare up in sync with her annoyance. She hadn’t done it because they’d been ill-suited. Ron Weasley may not have known how to handle a woman like her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t his type.
He’d enjoyed himself, hadn’t he? He’d wanted her plenty, and like any good enticer, she had left him wanting. Better to end it wanting than to wait until boredom set in, right?
And besides, she thought, breaking off pieces of her quill and throwing them into the flame for the satisfaction of petty destruction, they’d already been careening toward boredom, hadn’t they? That last night had been so slow, so-
She caught herself sighing and sacrificed her whole quill to the tiny pyre with a decisive curse.
He wanted her. She knew that.
And if he had forgotten that, she would remind him. Just for old times’ sake.
And to prove a point.
Pansy Parkinson defied a “type”. She refused to be rejected by dint of generalization.
~~~
As far as sleeping arrangements went, he’d had far worse. The Burrow, for all its merits, had all the privacy and space of a common loo, and the dormitories had been… well, dormitories. A lot of boys, a lot of egos, a lot of haphazard spells and young men trying to get comfortable in their own skin.
So the tent, internally expanded into a modest flat by magic, was more than suitable, and Ron thought he was doing a smashing job catching up on the rest he’d missed during…
Well, during his sister’s honeymoon.
Though away from his flat at home, he dreamed as he always had, the sometimes disbelieving wizard with the vivid-and sometimes mind-boggling-imaginings. There were dreams of Quidditch, the war, his best mates, his family.
And on a few nights, there had been dreams of her. Both figments of his imagination and memories, intermingled so closely he could not tell upon waking what had been fact and what had been fantasy.
She’d been a mistake. Certainly it had taken a week and some distance to let him come to that conclusion, but she had been a mistake. The only right thing had been her calling it off. A woman like her was a danger, the kind Ron neither understood nor needed. Though he’d spent nearly his entire life being steered by women-his mother, his sister, Hermione-Pansy was something altogether different. Pansy didn’t steer, she simply overwhelmed. She didn’t need to tell a man what to do, she had only to get under his skin and he became a different person.
He wondered if there had been other men-and women-so taken with her and overtaken by her, and he winced at the strange ache that thought produced.
Annoyance, he thought, rolling onto his stomach and closing his eyes. That’s all it was. Disgust at her amorality.
Certainly that was all it was. He had almost convinced himself of that when he finally succumbed to sleep.
~~~
“You’re not even awake and you want me.”
Long fingers slid over his hips just under the waistband of his pajama pants-the only thing he wore-and something hot and wet pressed to the base of his spine.
Pansy knelt, prowled on all fours, her hair tickling the smooth, freckled skin of his back as she kissed the spot right above his waistband, the dip at the small of his back. He’d been so easy to find, and was too trusting to ward his tent.
She didn’t allow herself to think he’d been expecting someone.
When she’d looked down at him, sound asleep, shirtless, long body spread out, fingers wound into the sheets, she’d resisted the urge to simply crawl in with him and join him in sleep.
Silly, she thought. She might have been tired, but she wasn’t that tired. . Whatever else Ron had, he had a first-rate body, and she wasn’t here to use that body as a pillow.
At her words and kiss, he stirred a bit, then jerked, one hand moving with a speed she’d not expected of him, long fingers closing over one of her wrists. The swift, instinctive movement had heat pooling at her center and she ducked her head, giving him only the briefest of glances as he craned his neck to look at her.
“It’s okay, love,” she said, voice husky. “I don’t need my hands.” So saying, she closed her teeth over one tight buttock, teeth set into flannel and flesh.
Ron moaned, a choked, strangled sound, and though he knew his dreams were vivid, they were never this vivid. The shape of her tongue against his skin had been enough to make him wake, and the set of her teeth in his flesh was enough to make him want.
The sound he made-rough, ready, needy-gave Pansy a grim feeling of triumph, but it was far less satisfactory than she’d hoped. He wanted her still.
She didn’t care to examine why that didn’t feel like enough.
Pansy raised her head, licked her lips, and settled back, giving him enough room to turn over. He did so quickly, and she purred a bit, taking in his chest and stomach. Damn it all, she’d missed his body, or at least the things she could do to it. There wasn’t nearly enough time or room for him to try to sit up, because before he could, she was upon him again. She braced her hands on his chest, careful not to press, and slid her fingers over his flat nipples.
“Miss me?” she asked, arching her back and sliding over his body, her skirt stretching and sliding higher on her thighs as she settled lower on his body. He knew by the feel of her pressed against him through his pants-searing hot, sopping wet-that she’d gone knickerless, and he reached for her, unable to keep from touching her.
He didn’t want her, damn it, didn’t want her and her trouble, her and her past, but she’d not played fair. He’d been asleep, defenses down.
Ron nearly settled long fingers on her smooth thighs, but Pansy slapped his hands away, suddenly annoyed with him. How dare he want to touch her? The last time he’d touched her, he’d made it about something else, made it sweet and soft, and she didn’t want that.
“What in the hell are you doing, Pansy?” He tried to edge backward on the bed, found himself sliding beneath her, the beginnings of an erection moving sinuously against her heat. Fuck, he thought. Trapped.
Just as she’d always had him.
“I’m making things right,” Pansy said, digging her nails in just a little and closing her eyes. She just needed to catch her breath, needed to get things straight in her mind. “This is how it should have been,” she said, her voice strained as she rolled her hips, hissing as she ground against him. Right there.
All the proof she needed was in the way the muscles in his abdomen fluttered, the way he groaned and shifted underneath her, hard and trying to reach her even through the flannel of his pajamas.
Ron shook his head, trying to clear it. She’d slapped him, the little bitch, left a line of welts from her nails across his hand. What the bloody hell was she trying to do? He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe with her surrounding him like that, with her perched over him, and her mouth-
Her name came off his lips in a choked gasp as she fastened her mouth over a cinnamon-colored nipple, scraping teeth over it none too gently as though to remind him who was in control. Moisture-his or hers? He couldn’t tell-darkened the front of his pants and the moan she let out was dark and frightening and music to his ears.
“What’s the matter?” Ron finally asked, his head pressed back into the pillow, his neck bent painfully, throat exposed as she mapped out his torso with lips and tongue and teeth. A hiss, a gulp of air, and he continued. “Couldn’t get off with one of your girlfriends?”
He couldn’t help it, closed his eyes even as he said it, hating himself and hating her for bringing it forth in him.
Under his skin, she made him a different person.
She faltered, paused, but only for a moment. In that moment, mercifully short and horribly weak, she wanted to drop her forehead to his chest and just… stop.
She was so tired.
But she skimmed her tongue up the line running the center of his stomach, sucking blood to the surface and reddening the fair flesh between his nipples before she answered him, her voice a study in flippancy, in nonchalance.
“Keep your jealousy to yourself, Weasley. Green doesn’t suit you.” And neither do I, apparently.
She didn’t care what the ruddy bastard said, because she would do this as she saw fit, and she would walk away believing they’d left on good terms, because she didn’t do otherwise. Pansy Parkinson didn’t make enemies of ex-lovers, and she didn’t let lovers make their own transitions into exes.
She called the shots.
She drew back on her knees, kneeling upright, her head dipped down, hair hanging in her eyes, breath coming fast despite her need for control. Ron saw something in her eyes come and go, the cobalt uncharacteristically dark, expressionless, and then it was gone, the twisted mouth returned, the arched eyebrow.
I’m sorry! He didn’t know what made him want to say it suddenly, only knew he couldn’t get the words out because her hands were on him, under his pants and cupping his hardness, coaxing nothing from him but moans and wetness and desperation, and he knew he was lost-he couldn’t have stopped her even if she wanted to, she’d simply consume him without his consent-and knew his apology, too, was lost.
He’d had just a moment to offer it, and that moment was past.
She didn’t bother sheathing her claws as she raked down his pants and left them around his knees, effectively shackling him, rendering him useless as she guided him into herself and started to move.
Pansy closed her eyes and flexed the long muscles in her thighs, setting the rhythm in a hard, driving pace that she felt suited the moment. None of this languid lovemaking bollocks for them-this was it, she thought.
She felt nothing.
Annoyance, anger, shame, uncertainty, need-
A frustrated cry left her lips at the string of emotions and she bore down, trying to reach something else, reach less of that, less of what her mind was rocketing toward, and more of what she thought she should be feeling. There was no rush, no heat, no anticipation. It had fled the moment she’d made her last move, and though he was hard and hot and filling her, hitting every spot and looking beautiful beneath her, there was…
Nothing.
Too fast, Ron thought-it was almost habitual, her movements over him, and he could see her fight for it, control versus pleasure, and he reached up to touch again, found he could not touch her as he wanted to, to gather her against him or hold her hands in his, or slow her down.
It was the first time he’d seen Pansy Parkinson do something without bringing herself some sort of pleasure, and it made him mourn.
“Pansy-”
“No,” she answered firmly, hearing the tone of his voice. “Just shut up, Ron.”
How dare he?
How dare he have left? And how dare he make her notice he was gone?
She hadn’t missed him. She didn’t miss anyone, ever.
How had this whole fucking thing started, anyway? How had she gotten on her way to being here?
As though to divert his thoughts, Pansy paused and tightened around him, her muscles squeezing him as she sank down once more, the pace excruciatingly slowed. A growl rose in his throat, as much in protest of her unfair tactics as in loss of control; his back arched, his fingers curled into fists, and as he came inside her, he knew she hadn’t found the same completion.
Please-
Another word he wouldn’t get to utter, he thought as he reached for her, wanting-needing-to reciprocate, to do things right.
She slid off and away from him, her expression both bleak and knowing. “There now, love,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically colorless. “That’s the way it should have been.”
Pansy stood for a moment at the foot of the bed, knowing even if he tried to rise, his pants would hinder him. She needed a moment, just a second-her knees were shaking and she felt more than a bit sick. That’s what you get for coming back when the good times have already passed. She just needed to steady herself.
She had always known the right time, the right way, to end things. Why did he have to go and bugger it all up?
“Don’t bother seeing me out,” she said, backing away from the bed and finally managing to turn smoothly.
Ron tried to rise, heard the rip of paper, and when he finally got his pants to rights and sat up on his bed, he could see that she was gone, and he could see she’d left only one bit of evidence as to her visit.
Evgenia’s picture, tacked by the door of his tent in a silly, thoughtless gesture, hung in five perfect shreds, rent by fingernails.