Azael's Chains

Comfort

The yielding firmament beneath her dipped at her side and Hermione frowned, a keen vertigo swimming over her as she tried to orient herself. She was not, as she found upon opening her eyes, hanging upright. Rather, she was lying on a bed. It was the most comfortable bed she'd ever laid on, better than the magical mattress at Hogwarts or her parents' bed at home. It was Heaven to her aching limbs.

"She wakes." Coarse fingers skimmed through her hair and dark curls framed the shadowed face above her. "Goodmorning, kitten. Are you finally with me?" He brushed his lips over her forehead. "You are not as ill as you were when I rescued you. In moments you were close enough to consciousness to swallow some potions for me." At the alarm sparked behind amber eyes, he smiled. "A nutritional potion and a healing potion, sweet girl, nothing nefarious." He stroked down her arm. "I also rubbed your poor, abused muscles. Malfoy should not have kept you in such conditions so long, punishment from the Dark Lord or no." She didn't know what to say, so allowed him to keep petting her. "Hung up and bleeding like a piece of meat." Dolohov's flat palm laid over her womb. "I am sorry I was not there for you, kitten. I would have eased your pain whatever way I could."

The stream of her thoughts began to strengthen and she quipped back almost as the words finished forming in her head, "A hot bath, chocolate, and being alone in bed with a good book are all I need, thank you."

His thick lips twitched as he gazed at her with pupils swallowing up the light on her face. "Do you not get cramps?"

"I do," Hermione conceded.

"There are many ways to ease such pain, particularly with a partner." His red tongue darted out, eyes heavy lidded. "Let me teach you."

Meaning came with the flush of blood through her cheeks. "But there's blood; it's all messy."

Fingertips trailed down to the curls between her legs and she slapped a hand over his forearm to tug it away. Amusement shone, a spark among the heat, and his corded muscles slid easily under her hand, clever fingers ghostlin at the join of her lips. "Do you think I am disgusted by a little blood? By your blood?"

"I am a muggleborn," she countered.

"You are mine." Dolohov lowered his mouth to brush the words against her lips. "And there is nothing that delights me more than that which I can compel from you."

At the last, he covered her mouth with his own, lips smoother than she remembered, but hard in how they ate at her, His tongue swept into her mouth, lapping away her breath like it would give him life, and those clever fingers plucked prurience into her core until the heat at both ends threatened to burn her up between them.

He parted from drinking her little whimpers to pant into her hair. "So sweet, kitten. Yes, there's my good girl." His mouth burned down her throat, raising bites of fire across her skin. His free hand shuffled, metal clinking, then the press of his length against her thrummed fear down her spine. "All for you, my beautiful Hermione."

Her palms volleyed against his still-covered shoulders as he pressed into the slickness he'd provoked from her unwilling body and she cried out, turning her head from his attentions. As his hips snapped once, twice, finally sheathed fully in her, she began to release quiet tears.

Incomprehensible nothings spilled against the press at her throat and he kissed his way to her cheeks, turning her face toward him in the rough vice of his hand. Wet, velvet muscle laved at her tears until he was drawn once more to her trembling lips. And there he drank her cries, bitter glass from her throat turned spun glass on his tongue. He stroked the little bundle of nerves where they joined, spinning out unwilling pleasure to wind her tightly around him.

Distantly she wondered how this would have been with another. With Ron, with Viktor, with Harry even, best and trusted friend with whom her safety and comfort would be foremost. Had he experienced this with Ginny, had the chance at romance and pleasure before his death?

She sobbed into the darkness surrounding her, the man moaning as he eagerly tasted her grief, pace speeding both himself and her toward the edge. He ripped his mouth away to watch her beautiful distress; when she curled brokenly against his chest, pulling at the thick cloth of his shirt to bury her tears, he became frantic, stabbing until he jerked her hips firmly to his own and spilled into her.

" Lyubimaya ..." A stream of perplexing syllables drained into her hair as she found herself rolled over to sprawl across his chest. Dolohov was whispering sweet, low, intimate gibberish and petting her, holding her like she was a favored doll.

Hermione had had a stuffed elephant growing up, and her mother had begun buying her lions after she was Sorted into Gryffindor. The elephant was pink and named Oscar, and Hermione had stopped sleeping with him tucked beside her the night she left for Hogwarts, worried she would seem immature to the witches with whom she roomed. She needn't have worried; not only did she spy an orange frog (Parvati's) and a lavender bear, but her mother soon sent her a Godric, a handsome, velvetine lion that fit perfectly in her arms and would roar when she squeezed him.

Godric was in her bag, though she hadn't dragged him out for a time. Some time after Ron had left, she and Harry had started cuddling in one bed. It was purely comfort borne of long friendship and the situation. She'd be crying and he would slip beside her and stroke her back until she slept, or he'd cry out in his sleep and she would do the same to calm him to restfulness. After a while they started sleeping in the same bed at the start of the night rather than when something inevitably woke them. And they would fall asleep in warmth, whispering all the hopes and fears they couldn't say face-to-face in the light of day.

"Is that Russian?" she queried, hovering between memory and the parallel moment of the present.

His breath stirred her hair. "Mm. My mother spoke little English. I learned Russian at her breast. My father prefered English, but he'd brought her from the old country. She had me hardly a year from their marriage, and she had little chance to learn much of the country before she was locked away from society."

"Why?"

"My father was a possessive man and old fashioned in his way; he did not want his young, pregnant wife out playing the socialite. British Purebloods may play that way, but he was particular." His voice was dreamy, fond as he worked his fingers through her wild hair. "She then had to care for me, and she was pregnant again soon after."

Hermione eased her head from the warm drum of his chest, tipping up to look at him. "You have siblings?"

His eyes were grey wells of darkness, lips quirked with satisfaction. "No. My mother miscarried several times, but I was the only child she birthed." He smoothed a thumb over her furrowed brows. "She was devoted to me, as all mothers should be to their sons, and she was an accommodating wife."

Uncomfortable at the yearning warmth of his words, Hermione lowered his cheek once more to his chest. "My parents loved each other, and me. Well, I suppose they do still love each other."

"Yes, I was told what you did to your parents, katyonak . Such a strong girl." Dolohov murmured with a kiss to her forehead. "You will have a family of your own to love someday."

The lost possibility ached like her heart had frozen in her chest. "Not in this world." He hummed and stroked her hair and she was lulled back asleep.