Sycamore was tired, and he wondered if I was too. Perhaps I was – for I well should be - somewhere under that damned agitation that rattled my bones and disquieted my mind. The long journey to Lumiose was in fact exhausting, cooking too was known to be a tiresome task, and one Sycamore performed alone tonight. It had made him hot, sweaty and tired, he said. But maybe he was none of those things – maybe he just spoke of exhaustion as a subtle transition, a smooth way of expressing he wished to retire to his bed, simultaneously telling me it was my time to follow him. I was rather thankful for that attempt – thankful for the unspoken words, which would only mortify me. Thankful enough that, when he announced he would be taking a shower, and that I should take one too – in his suite, separate bathrooms, luckily!! – I did not linger idiotically about, waiting for him to declare his true intentions. I only nodded obediently, with the strange feeling of being mercifully spared an embarrassment I couldn't deal with otherwise.
And how quiet the house became, once he entered the bathroom in the corridor that separated living room from his suite. How dark the hue dispersed by those grey walls, how empty and cold the spaces around the scanty furniture… Far, far stranger than being alone in a hotel room was to be there, in Sycamore's house, when the night was so very late! It made me as scared as a misplaced child!
My steps were extra shy as they moved me towards the corridor, where the comforting sound of the showerhead grew. The door was open, hence why the noise escaped… And though I should not steal a peek inside, not in my state, not when knowing I'd only aggravate it, I couldn't help but do so – my eyes were pulled in as if caught by a magnet: hot steam all over the place, his pale, large back blurred behind a frosted glass divider… the embarrassment it brought me was strangely paradoxical, as it imbued in me both discomfort and thrill: his naked body so close to me, the intimacy he implied as he chose to leave the door open, imagination projecting different scenarios... All of it intimidated me even from my safe distance! My heart beat loose inside my chest, violently… it ached with commotion as I saw him about to turn around. Too much for me to handle, too much at once! I scurried away, and by the end of that impulsive little adventure I had landed in his bedroom!
It followed what I now considered to be his decorative pattern: simplistic and elegant, but ultimately cold! A sleek canopied bed rose in the middle, metal-framed. Right by it was a single nightstand with nothing on top, and two small versions of the same rug in the living-room draped both sides of the bed. A navy blue sideboard rested right under a window to the outside world – one so thick and so utterly dark it seemed to serve decorative purposes only. I could not see through the glass, because apparently another sheet – of black – blocked the view from the outside. Thick and dark curtains were installed on that wall, too, in case further privacy was needed. This place was a prison, if Sycamore so intended! I wondered if anyone would hear me, if I happened to need saving… Stupid, careless thought: it only agitated me further!!
Finally, on the farthest wall, a door slightly ajar led into a dark little room – the second bathroom – and that was it! No paintings, pictures or weird décor to steal my attention and distract me from the white pillows, the grey sheets, my bag waiting on what had probably been previously established as the side of his bed I would be occupying. Such confidence taunted me, and served its purpose: I knew very well there would be no escaping, not this time!
Something else waited there on the bed as I approached towards the bathroom: it was a small article of clothing – a sort of short silk robe with blended colors of white and baby pink. It smelled new. It waited on the pillow next to my bag. I sighed my haggard breath, accepting my fate at once and making peace with the panic that ensued. I could wear it: that small pink robe. It wasn't degrading… It didn't reveal parts of my body I was too shy to show, and it didn't imply something about me that wasn't true. If he expected me to wear it, then I'd do so at once – it would at least save me the embarrassment of undressing in front of the Professor, should he insist I put it on. I picked the delicate thing up and carried it with me to the bathroom.
***
"My, my..." I heard him chuckle.
He was there when I walked out from the shower. His arms were crossed over his chest as he leaned on the bed post, as if he had been waiting for me. I examined him for a careless second: his body was only half-dry from the shower. The chest that had always insinuated itself to me through an open shirt now breathed freely. The thin, yet toned muscles stretched his fresh wet skin - still steaming, still dripping here and there, drops that ran down his abdomen and died against a very low-positioned towel tied around his waist. I could see where his groin started, assuming a slightly darker tone as the thin hairs trailing down his bellybutton spread there. My face burned and I quickly looked away!
"And here I was thinking it would take a lot of convincing to place you inside that special thing I bought you..." I head him move. He spoke of the small robe I wore – of course he did! I was suddenly ashamed of wearing it!
"A pleasant surprise that you'd willingly do so, however. It tells me you have indeed made up your mind..." he lazily ran his hand through his hair, pulling the wet locks back – it gave him a different look, to see his face unobscured by the wavy locks that often framed his temples. It made his eyes more conspicuous, their penetrating blue light all the more striking, all the more skilled at confusing my senses. I couldn't look at them, I couldn't look anywhere else on his body, either. I turned slightly to the side.
"But…" his muffled chuckle followed, and I heard him shift his weight, stir, begin moving towards me… what to do?! Where to look? His shadow grew over me as he stopped quite near. "...I must admit I have rather entertained myself thinking up ways of convincing you to wear it…" his finger approached me – I felt it play about my hair. I must have closed my eyes cowardly… "of… bribing you into doing as you're told . I came up with quite the interesting ideas…"
His voice was smooth, penetrating… as were his fingers, now finding a spot behind my ear where to place the hairlocks that curtained my view of him. I made an effort not to insult him by shuddering, by pulling away: I knew it was just fear of how he'd soon make me feel that made me want to cowardly retreat. Not that it mattered: he knew very well how to pull me to his cares despite my best efforts!
"Well…" he sighed, feigning tragicality "…it's my loss, but my treat as well. As for my ideas, they don't have to go to waste. No…" he twisted his lips, trying to contain an imaginative smile from stretching too blatantly. His thumb brushed my cheek now, I could feel it brush softly at the corner of my lips, too "I guess I could just start making steeper demands…" I wavered, threatened to move. Both his hands captured me then: they softly brushed my face, framed my jaw, felt the plumpness of my lips as they burned with self-consciousness. "…the night is young. As are you, my delicate fletching…"
He held my chin between his index finger and his thumb, pulled it effortlessly back from the side so I'd face him, pulled it up when I closed my eyes, and waited until I opened them again. I was under his shadow, under his spell, cornered against his night-stand, breathing the same air that escaped his smiling lips, his perfume… the familiar perfume I had always been intoxicated by, only this time it mingled with the unique scent of his exposed skin. Shameless! How could he be so shameless? I crumbled, while he stood there, unmoved, changed only by the slightly redder tint streaked across his cheekbones, but that change I knew had nothing to do with the embarassment of exposing himself to me as he did – the translation of that color could be read in his eyes as they watched me carefully, engaged, at once focused and relaxed as he was both take action and seize what he wanted of me, aware it would be his at last. I would be his, because tonight I was: my friends had left me, even my mother had as much as given me away to him. I myself was too powerless to resist it, too powerless when he pulled me by the chin as he did, positioned my mouth for his to capture, and pressed his lips to mine, pulling the latter apart for his tongue to gain entrance and begin its profane exploration of my mouth. I closed my eyes, felt them roll back in a scary trance, felt my heart beat so fast it seemed it could break through my ribcage, and finally felt like I could fall – luckily, his arm was there, wrapped around my back, securing my balance and submitting it to him as well. At that moment, I could not move away without falling farther into his grip, I could not pull a limb he didn't want me to pull… A sort of ragdoll I was, indeed, as he kissed me softly – hungrily, but composed, teasing himself, as I knew he liked to do. I could not hear him moan, nor did I feel his body shudder as it began losing control… all that told on his composure was his fresh breath: it grew faster. Hotter. Choked, even. As it grew in rhythm, so did the inflexibility of his arm around my back, of his hand holding my jaw in place, and of his lips pressing mine, his mouth opening wider, hungrier, his kiss more invasive, overpowering and intoxicating!
Finally, he pulled himself from me and huffed composedly, his lips pinker from the increasing violence employed, and the top of his cheeks slightly redder, too.
"Oh…" he moaned, clicking his tongue as he caressed my face. "What a mess you have made of things, Anne, dear…" I could tell he used the time to recompose his self-control. He held back – but not because of me… He did it for himself. A masochistic thrill for him, or a sadistic one: to prolong the expectations that tortured me into madness! "I could have been but your tactful Professor, and you, nothing but my doting pupil - an appetizing little thing in its own right, but as unprocurable as it was tempting…" he ran his hand through my back, down my arm, it stopped at my wrist, holding it in his grip and pulling it sideways and down… I knew where to: hesitation was there, but it couldn't last against his decisive motion. "But you had to go and make mad, you wicked thing…"
I gasped as he sat me on the bed, then pushed me back against the pillow, sitting by my side and bending over me. To be thus handled felt like being pulled under water, fearful of drowning but failing to fight the hands that controlled the depth I entered. Sycamore smiled at my reactions – he watched them carefully, taking them in, savoring them, no doubt!
"You had to go to me that evening, at such a lonely hour, when I was so vulnerable to that lustful lull of the night… You had to enter the dark privacy of my office, all pretty and innocent, and so utterly alone, like a little offering I'd have to be too lenient to forgive. Only a saint could, and I am far from one, dear: Though I have to say, I have already paid my share of penance for how you've teased me that day, and then denied me the relief I so deserved!" I felt his weight around me as he slowly climbed onto the bed, crawling on top of me. "It's made me no better, however: now that I finally have you, I will gladly sin anew!"
He relieved his weight on top of me and I gasped, his lips covered mine again and resumed his hungry, unrestrained kisses. His hands moved me… his arm squeezed itself between my back and the mattress – once it had, it pulled my body against his. I felt his legs around mine – long and heavy, they secured me in place. His hand held my face as we kissed, it pulled my hair from my eyes when he jolted me around, pulled my hair from my neck when he kissed me, nibbled – bit into me. I thought I cried, or moaned, or produced some sort of confusing grunt as he handled me as he did, giving me no time to breathe, to process what he did or to distinguish the different sensations he pressed into my body. Eventually his rocking and moving secured him a place between my legs, and that's when I felt the troublesome hardness of the knot of the towel he had around his waist, as it pressed mercilessly down against me. I planned to say it was hurtful, to ask him to stop and pull it to the side, or not overpower me under himself as he did, but the words never came – my voice had disappeared somewhere else in that confusing haze of fear and thrill. Then the thought occurred to me – the steadfast realization that it was not in fact the knot of his towel which pinned me down, consisting of such a hard, large volume. I experienced the humiliation of my naiveite from thinking otherwise, and imagined how he'd mock me if I had voiced my blunder. But mostly, I was made terrified of what I had just felt, of the size of it when considering what I was expected to do with it. Panic-imbued, I pushed Sycamore off, pushing his chest from me. He sat up on the bed and I heaved, recovering my stolen breath.
"Ah…" he huffed again, holding back a choked laugh "My smart little kitten, provoking me blind again, then running in fear…" and there came his laugh: haggard and mocking.
"I should expect no less from you, but then again… I could use a break myself!" and he ran a finger across the corner of his lip, wiping the moisture gathered there from all his kissing. "We move too fast: you're letting me devour you so, that I nearly forgot…" And standing on his knees on the bottom of the bed - his stretched, toned torso, the long abdomen moving up and down with a labored breath, his eyes changing, losing the soft patience they possessed shortly ago – he surprised me by suddenly grabbing my ankles and pulling me to him by the legs. "I nearly forgot the promise of how pleasant it will be…" he pinned my arms next, holding them before I could try to push myself away again. " …to get to unwrap you for the first time as you wear this beautiful thing."
He ran his finger through the silk, then held me by the back of my neck, pulled me to him, wrapped his arms around me and sat back on the bed, my agitation effortlessly contained.
"You are so charming, my fretful thing… So absent-minded, too: You've forgotten to remove the price tag!"
Slowly, calmly, his grip eased. Having asserted I would not try to run from him, he moved me over his legs, turning me around carefully, until my back was half-turned on him. He ran his hand through my hair, pulling it to the side and letting it fall over my shoulder, away from my neck. I felt a pull, and heard a snap: Sycamore had broken the plastic seal of the tag and now let it fall to the floor. But he wasn't done with me, having exposed the back of my neck as he did. Careful yet decidedly then, so as to not scare me, but aiming to secure me before I could pull away, he passed one arm around it and pressed it firmly over my chest, that hand wrapping delicately around my neck, holding my throat gently, preventing me from flinching as, slowly, his lips approached my nape, kissing me delicately there, brushing lightly, landing soft pecks and sucking gently, too. It made me moan nervously, to be so effectively immobilized and stimulated, but he wouldn't let go. He went on to savoring me, delivering my neck small licks with the cool tip of his tongue and - as my confused, inflamed brain detected - attempting a small bite here and there. His free hand, the one that didn't secure me in so stiff a position, grabbed my waist and occasionally tugged at it, as if trying to move me onto his hips. My body tensed, my arms began shaking and I squeezed my eyes shut when a specific movement sent electricity straight up my spine. My hands automatically seized his fingers around my neck in a subconscious instinct that urged me to try and break free: though gentle, his grasp wouldn't move... not even when I tried to pull them away with all ten fingers... not even when I really put all the strength I had into it! And like struggling a snake, the attempt only stirred him further: His arm pressed against my chest, positioned right over my breasts, pulling me closer to his naked torso - the hand around my neck shifted also, moving upwards, now securing my jaw as well, pushing it upwards, holding me effectively restrained. I gasped, whimpered, let a moan or two escape inconveniently, but Sycamore would show me no lenience. His eyes were closed - he was far from being called back from that frenzy, his kisses grew faster and deeper, changing from wet pecks to sucking and biting his way to my cheek, to my ear... His breathing was heavy like I had never heard it, making me shiver nervously.
When I felt his teeth closing around my ear-lobe, pressing it carefully, threatening to hurt it, goosebumps shook me convulsively – the motion triggered his arms to tighten around me, holding me still in place. He lifted his torso, standing on his knees again and pulling me deeper into the bed with him, closer against his body, too.
"P-Professor..." I moaned weakly, his heat transferring to me, smothering me in that scary, confusing fog.
His fingers tightened around my jaw, almost silencing me. The frenzied kissing went on: tasting my face, my neck, and now moving to my shoulders from where the treacherous silk had begun to slip.
Sycamore's hands migrated eagerly to the sash of the robe, moving it against my belly in an only slightly contained ferocity – but unlike a knot he would have tied himself, mine was extremely tight, forcing him to recover half of his senses in order to undo it. At some point the fury gave out, his hand let go of my jaw and I looked down from my numbness in time to see him hold the two ends of the sash inside tight knuckles – the muscles and veins of his hands growing large and intimidating as he readied himself to tear it apart.
"Please don't…" my voice was weak, but I managed to summon it still. Sycamore was fast at pulling my head to his, kissing my lips, penetrating my eyes with the drunk blue in his before letting me go on. "Please…" he watched, expecting – challenging me to say it. "…don't tear it." Was my shameful plea: Having found a breath of air in which to speak, I asked not for him to let me go… not for him to take it easy, to go slower, to stop altogether as he played me like a doll... "Don't tear the sash on my nightgown" was the only wish I had, and as far as my ambitions went, and that pleased him: his eyes narrowed, the hunger inside them only poked hotter, his lips smiling, smug, aware that he had won.
"You don't want me to destroy it?" He chuckle a long, slow chuckle, then gave me a kiss, as if he could not resist it "A most ill-intentioned gift that my darling has grown to like despite the intent behind it." The sheer pleasure of breaking me down with words now seemed to overwhelm the one of gaining free reign over my body "Naughty girl! Could I ever blame you, though? The colors suit you perfectly, and thrill me to death: I have always visualized you in it for my own pleasure, the thought being greatly responsible for many an evil deed I nearly committed when you were alone in my presence..."
He brushed his mean smile against my cheek, his arms wrapping around me again, his hand holding my neck again, tightening my body against his every time I tried to move.
"What...?" I speculated between short breaths. "…always…?"
"Hm yes. I purchased it shortly after that night you surprised me with your suggestively late visit. But even before that, back when your daring eyes first crumbled with infantile infatuation upon meeting me, I have since nurtured most profane thoughts of meeting that shy interest of yours with a wolf's hunger ... And what would such a naïve, angelic thing wear when it was to waste its purity on me? A befitting silky wrap on which to wait on the consumer's mercy... as you are doing now! One that both tries his patience and quickens his needs…"
And his hands returned to the sash with a smiling cruel expression; I heard only the sound of his skin furiously brushing against the fabric as he moved to secure my protests.
"I promise to buy you another..." he murmured against my ear with a malicious chuckle, followed by the sound of a series of delicate threads easily ripping under his clasp.