Title: We Didn't Have to be in Love
Author: cedar
Pairing: Lucius/Bellatrix
Rating: R
Word count: ~1600
Kink chosen: Adultery
Summary: Lucius and Bellatrix share a secret, and a little wine.



We Didn't Have to be in Love

I, for one, have never believed that a friendship between a man and a woman can be anything less than complicated. In every one I've witnessed one of them always ends up having feelings beyond friendship for the other. Then there's the constant back and forth of how to handle it, and it always ends in a mess. Someone's always uncomfortable with the other person's feelings. Then they try to either deal with the feelings or put them away, neither of which can end well. That was why Lucius and I had a deal: Our emotions were to remain separate from our physical actions. Oh, we loved each other, that was certain. It was just that we had an understanding that went along with this love. Neither of us wanted to pursue a romantic relationship with the other. We didn't have to be in love. We just had to love the moments we had together and keep them our secret.

I've heard it called "friends with benefits" but that's awfully crass, don't you think? It misses the complexities and the discipline required to maintain the relationship. It misses the fact that you can still love someone else the way I love Rodolphus and yet be emotionally and physically attached to Lucius. Rodolphus doesn't know what Lucius and I have, and he never will. Lucius and I agree: Discretion is the better part of sex. There are times I think the secret might break me open, but I would never do that to Lucius, not when he is able to be so calm and collected about the whole thing.

Summer is my favorite time of the year. The long days, trees thick with leaves, and hot weather always seem to bring such possibility. There is less to fear in the summer than in the winter unless you're the type who prefers to sneak around in the dark. In the summer, the Dark Lord almost always uses the basement of the Malfoy house for our meetings. It is cool there, damp, like the stone walls and floor collect winter's cold and slowly release it through June, July, and August. Lucius sits with Narcissa and pretends that we do not have plans for later tonight. Rodolphus and I have always had places next to each other in the Dark Lord's circle -- it's how we met, in fact -- but we never so much as hold hands or smile at each other in these meetings, not while business is being conducted. Knowing what Lucius and I are planning, bottling that excitement, makes me twitch in my seat. I purposely sit on my hands; I don't trust myself to handle my wand right now.

Rodolphus has known Lucius almost as many years as I have. The longevity of their friendship leads Rodolphus to always be too trusting of Lucius's intentions. He thinks nothing of leaving the two of us alone to talk after the meeting, to catch up, maybe reminisce.

Perhaps it is an indicator of my own flaws that I admire how well Lucius plays this to his -- to our -- advantage.

In his bedroom, Lucius shuts the door and lights the fire, pouring us both a glass of chilled wine but serving me first after indicating I should make myself comfortable on his bed. Abraxas raised him well. Lucius is always a gentleman, but he makes no pretense over what we're here to do.

"You look beautiful tonight, Bellatrix," he says as he pulls me in for a kiss. Despite his compliment and the warmth of his bedroom, I shiver a little. "I could barely concentrate on our Lord's words, I was so focused on what I wanted to do to you tonight."

"I advise," I say with a hint of teasing, "that you not be so transparent in front of such a talented Legilimens." I reach to comb his hair with my fingers. "Not that I didn't have similar thoughts, though."

Before I'm halfway through my sentence he's set his wine on the night table and is opening my robes. Leaning in to kiss his neck, I can smell his cologne. Despite the summer weather he wears something reminiscent of fall and winter: warm vanilla, amber, patchouli, and something spicy I don't recognize. His scent fills me, wrapping itself around my mind and obscuring the outside world. I want more of his skin, its scent and the tiny freckles that form on his cheeks and arms this time of year. Awkwardly, I reach around his arms so I can open his robes. I almost hate to do it, because I find it rather alluring when he's fully clothed and I am naked, but he is in a rush, nearly a panic, tonight. If either of us is going to undress Lucius, I want it to be me.

Lucius finishes with my robes, pushing them down my shoulders and off the bed in seconds flat. He's still half dressed as he unsnaps my bra and pulls it off. It's true what Violet Parkinson told me when we were teenagers: Men will gaze for hours at page after page in a magazine full of witches in lingerie, but when confronted with an actual witch she could be wearing the finest, laciest bra and knickers money can buy and he won't so much as notice what color they are before he divests her of them. For Lucius, though, I'm willing to forgive.

"Something new tonight," he says, reaching over me for his wineglass. I'm not sure where his robes have gone, not that it matters. Lucius's body isn't perfect but it's perfect to me, and I gaze at the lines of his legs and torso.

"Oh?"

If I wanted to ask him anything else I wouldn't have been able to, because he tilts his wineglass and cold wine drips over my collarbone onto my breasts. The moment I've registered the cold, his tongue is on the river of wine, warm as the summer night. He laps at the wine, murmuring in pleasure. If it were up to him, he told me more than once, he'd spend the entire night just tasting me. I stretch my hands over my head, arching my back so he can have more of me. Wine runs down my side and Lucius catches the drops on his tongue, licking at the skin where he ends their trail. Strands of his hair stick in the wine but he doesn't seem to notice. He's too intent on my breasts, circling his tongue around them, covering each nipple with his lips and sucking them into peaks. For this, I have no words, only small moans.

"I take it you're enjoying this?" Maddeningly, he smiles up at me.

"Stop asking stupid questions."

"Fine." He pretends to be upset but he pours more wine, this time onto my stomach. It forms a small pool in my navel when I gasp at the cold. This seems to be exactly what Lucius wants and he dips his head. It's an odd sensation, the seal of his mouth around my navel, but I want more of it. I push my stomach toward his mouth but he holds me down, drinking the wine at his own altogether too lazy pace.

"A little eager, are we, Bella?"

"And what if I am?"

"If you are, then I suppose you get some of this."

The last contents of the glass spill across my hips and over my clit. The trickling sensation, like Lucius's tongue lapping at it seconds later, makes me twist in place. There are nights when I want Lucius to go slow, to take his time and be gentle, but tonight is not one of them. Tonight I lift my hips so he can slide his tongue inside me and up and around and back in. He knows how to lick me, from side to side, starting light and increasing pressure. As though I have become the wineglass, he drinks from me, savoring the blend of tastes. Within a minute I can feel the heat and pressure building towards my clit, and it only takes moments after Lucius slides his finger into me and crooks it that I come, dripping the last of the wine on his sheets, too sensitive to take any more of his tongue.

Lucius knows that in these few seconds after I come I have nothing but raw sensation, that any physical stimulus will send me into whimpers. That is perhaps one of the best things about our relationship, that I never have to make an excuse for why I might not want him to touch me in a given moment. He slides onto the bed beside me, kissing my neck.

"Do you like the wine? It's a very nice vintage," he says. "I've been saving it for a special occasion."

I say nothing but I sit up and take a sip of my own wine, still cold in its glass.

Holding the wine in my mouth, I grab Lucius around the neck and kiss him. He's taken by surprise and doesn't open his mouth in time, so wine dribbles down our chins and necks. He starts to laugh but I stop him with another kiss, my lips hard enough against his to hurt.

"Are you the type who likes to tell secrets while intoxicated?" I ask. "Because if you are..."

"I'm not."

"Good."

With this, I take another drink and hold the wine in my mouth. This time, he drinks it through our kiss, humming a little in his throat after he swallows.

Then I tilt my wineglass toward his collarbone.