Chapter Text
Hermione found the bar by accident. Club. Whatever it was Malfoy called it. Exclusive, he always said.
It had been storming that day, so when she randomly saw the green lacquered, unmarked door, she’d slipped inside to banish the water from her clothes. She had been happy with her luck as she spotted a well-stocked bar inside. She could use a drink after the day she’d had at work.
But when she tried to brush past the host’s stand, she’d been stopped. “You need a membership to enter.”
Now, Hermione wasn’t a vain woman. She had never used her name in order to get her way. But at that moment, she was dying for some gin and had simply had it with the week.
“Do you know who I am?” she’d asked rather petulantly as she stored her wand back in her outer robes. “I’m Hermione Granger.”
“Circe herself would need a membership to go any further inside. Owner’s rules.”
Hermione refused to back down, just like when she’d almost argued herself hoarse earlier in the day with the stuffy and obtuse Wizengamot.
“I’ll purchase one then.”
The man had smiled at her as if she were dimwitted. “There is a waitlist as tall as a giant. Not to mention the price.” He pointedly looked down at her wrinkled and bedraggled form.
Her eyes narrowed. “Well, you go tell the owner that Hermione Granger wants a drink.”
Looking back on it, half a year later, the host had been far too willing to do as she asked, and now, knowing exactly who owned the place, she could see why he was happy to pass on the message.
“And then he wanted to cut the date short!” Hermione said, stirring her gin and tonic in its glass.
Draco Malfoy made a humming sound beside her, not looking away from the ledger he was scribbling in.
“He didn’t understand why the goat was there!”
“How daft of him,” Draco murmured.
Hermione frowned and then kicked his stool so he was forced to face her. “Oy! You’re not listening.”
He humored her and grabbed her drink, took a big swig. “I am listening. I just don’t care, Granger.”
Hermione snorted and leaned across the polished bar to grab a cherry from its little jar. “You’re an ass.”
Draco rubbed at the bridge of his nose and then removed the thin-framed glasses he wore nowadays. He dropped them onto the bar. “Alright, fine.”
Now that she had his full attention, she was remiss to continue her story of yet another failed date. Hook up. Lay. She wasn’t even sure what she was doing anymore.
After Draco had appeared before her that rainy day months ago, claiming he was the proprietor of this ridiculously posh establishment, she started coming in once a week.
Once a week turned into an almost daily routine after work.
She never brought anyone, coworkers or friends. For whatever reason, she liked having a little secret. She liked having him as a secret. Not that they were … anything. She was nervous to even admit to herself that they might be friends.
The clientele of Draco’s exclusive establishment were the affluent and connected of Wizarding society; politicians, moguls, businessmen and women from all over the world who were visiting London …
Hermione’s membership was on the house.
She flipped the cherry around on its stem. “Never mind.”
Draco was quiet a moment, watching her scrutinize the spinning cherry. “You know what your problem is?”
“According to you, a great many things,” she drawled.
“You’re too narrow-sighted.”
She spun on her stool, her knees knocking into his. “I am not! I am very … open-sighted, thank you very much.”
He looked unimpressed. “You come in here, rack up a tab you never pay—”
“Fin won’t let me!” she argued, aghast.
He glanced over his shoulder at the young bartender restocking bottles a few meters away. “Because he’s afraid of you.”
Hermione gave him a feline smile. “Liar. You told him I drink for free.”
Draco began to irritably roll up the sleeves of his crisp dress shirt. She couldn’t help but watch as inch upon inch of taught, muscled forearms were revealed. Couldn’t help but let her eyes trace the swirls of black ink tattooed all over his skin.
“Your problem is: you don’t know what you want,” he told her. “Almost every night, you come in here, you browse the night’s selection of men, maybe you take one home—but you invariably end up grousing to me the next day. No matter who, you aren’t satisfied. And that’s because no one gives you what you need—and you don’t even know what that is.”
She wrinkled her nose at him and grabbed her drink back, swallowing the rest in one gulp. She had been thinking along those same lines earlier, but damn him for saying it so plainly.
“I do too know.”
He rubbed a hand over the blond scruff along his jaw. “Now who’s lying?”
She had to try really hard to keep up the act of being indignant because when Draco was like this, sleeves rolled up, relaxed, five o’clock scruff, shadows from the dim lighting of the masculine club casting his aristocratic features in sharp contrast … well, she would start to get distracted. Start to have silly thoughts, such as wondering how that scruff would feel on her throat or between her thighs.
She swiveled forward and forced herself to focus on the cherry again. “I need an equal. I want someone who’s fun and also good in bed. Someone smart and sensitive and—”
“Sensitive?” Draco drawled, disbelieving. “You yourself are about as sensitive as a rock, Granger.”
“I’m blunt, there’s a difference.”
“You don’t need a sensitive man, love.”
“This is my list—”
“You need someone that’s going to tell you no.”
She paused her vexed twirling of the cherry, eyes widening at the tiny fruit.
Draco leaned closer, his cool breath whispering along her cheek. “You need someone that’s going to take control. To call the shots for once.”
She felt hot suddenly but she shivered as if she were cold.
“Aren’t you tired?” he went on. “Don’t you want to beg for some relief, to hand off all that self-imposed responsibility to someone else? Even for just an hour?”
She forced a laugh, hoping her cheeks weren’t red. “You’re ridiculous.” Her voice sounded raw to her ears. “I could never let a man do that.”
Feeling a bit flustered, she moved the cherry to her lips, deciding to eat it to buy herself some time to calm down.
She grabbed the tiny fruit with her teeth and popped it free from its stem.
“Stop.” Draco. Low. Commanding.
Hermione froze, the cherry still caught between her teeth. Her pulse turned frantic.
“Don’t move,” he ordered next, his voice a deep purr that made her stomach flip—made her mind go blank.
She gasped as he reached under the bar, his arm snaking between her legs. Her heart pounded and she felt confused and exhilarated—
He was only grabbing onto her barstool.
He yanked her seat around, turning Hermione to face him again, her knees now caught between his as he pulled her barstool close.
She stared up at him with wide eyes, her chest rising and falling heavily as she waited to see what he would do next.
He watched her, grey eyes dark. His hungry expression made her clench her legs tighter together, catching his arm between her thighs.
Without thinking, she tongued the cherry between her lips, licking at the sweetness.
His eyes caught on the motion and he smiled knowingly. “Do you want it?”
She nodded; she was melting and burning, and, Merlin, she wanted him to touch her.
She’d thought about it before—Draco’s hands on her body, his cock inside of her—but she’d never acted on her salacious thoughts. Never once believed it was anything more than silly fantasies. But here he was, short-circuiting her brain, lighting up her body so fucking easily.
He pulled his arm free of her legs and reached up to swipe his thumb at one corner of her lips. He sucked the little bit of syrup and saliva he’d collected off the pad of his finger, his eyes never leaving hers.
She inched forward on her seat as her hands tentatively slid on top of his firm thighs.
“Go on then,” he said with no small amount of benevolence, and Hermione immediately closed her lips over the cherry.
She was just about to bite down when Draco cupped her jaw, fingers splaying along her throat. “Actually,” he declared, stopping her before she chewed, “I’ve changed my mind.”
He dipped his head and pressed his lips to hers.
Hermione gasped again, opening her mouth against his without any preamble. He made a satisfied, masculine sound at her prompt response and curled his tongue over hers, invading her mouth. It was overwhelming in the best of ways.
The kiss felt filthy, sloppy, delicious.
She whimpered and tipped forward, wanting more, needing it—
His fingers tightened around her jaw as he tilted her head to his liking, giving her dirty open-mouthed kisses, drinking her down like a glass of his finest wine.
Her hands fisted his trousers and she was only a moment away from slipping into his lap—
But then he was gently pushing her back, breaking the kiss, leaving her panting and dazed and so very aroused.
He studied her, his dilated eyes flicking between hers. His fingers slipped down her neck, brushing her décolletage as he pulled his hand away.
“Draco—” she murmured, wanting more, thinking maybe her erotic fantasies of him could actually be reality.
He grinned, revealing the cherry she hadn’t even realized he had deftly stolen from her mouth.
The bold thief.
She watched him chew the fruit, salivating over the desire to taste him again, to swallow down the sweetness of the cherry from his lips. She wanted to consume him in other more explicit ways.
She was losing her grip—and fast. Any moment now she’d be ripping her clothes off right here in front of poor Fin, begging Draco to rail her on the bar. To take her and stretch her, fill her, to make her scream his name as he pounded into her hard and fast. She’d take all of him in her cunt, drop to her knees and force her throat to let him in.
Circe, she was throbbing and soaked in her knickers. Her breasts felt heavy, her nipples tight and sensitive.
Draco, it seemed, was either wholly unaffected by what was happening, or he was simply better at hiding it. Hermione wondered if she were to brazenly cup him, would he be hard? As aroused and needy as she was?
He slid off his stool and said in a perfectly normal tone, “My clientele, while affluent, still have to buy their place under this roof—they are not in your weight class. None of them would ever be able to handle you properly. You’ve been paddling with the fish, Granger. A shark should swim with other sharks.”
She watched him walk away, his stupid ledger under his arm, hands tucked into his pockets as if he hadn’t just snogged her to an inch of her life.
Shark indeed.
If he wanted to play, she’d play.