Title: Relief
Author: florahart
Characters: Asteria Greengrass (Malfoy)/Unnamed male(s), peripherally Asteria/Draco
Rating: NC17
Warnings: reference to past underage dubcon; not-especially-safe play, infidelity (not particularly betrayal)
Themes/kinks chosen: Oxygen restriction/breathplay
Word Count: ~2350
Summary: Asteria likes things a certain way, and finding that is rare.
Author's notes: I somehow totally failed to post in July, which I didn't realize until much later--oops! Thanks for miss_bowtruckle for the read-through. Also, pretty much everything Asteria likes to do here is probably a really bad idea, heh.

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Relief

Choosing the right man is the first step, when Asteria wants to meet this craving, and it's not as easy as it might seem. Many men are ruled out, by virtue of being far too willing to give her something along the lines of what she needs, or by being the sort of man who, once all is said and done, would make some sort of misguided effort to get her help.

She knows where she got this need (or rather, how she knew of it; she doesn't suppose it was actually born of the circumstance), and knows it's one that no respectable man will fill (possibly ever), but she accepts that what one needs and what one is offered are not always congruent, and she makes do.

It started with something which is now only a somewhat vague and probably disturbing (only the part that's disturbing is also what's so appealing; she knows this is a paradox but is unwilling to resolve it)--a vague and disturbing recollection of a time at a party, Daphne's party. She was younger, fifteen, or no, the party was delayed by the circumstance of war, so perhaps she was sixteen. Either way. Her partner was a man grown, an angry man with dark thick features who talked her into a room alone (not difficult; Asteria could feel the danger in him thrumming between her legs and the worst that would happen in her own parents' house was probably nothing to worry about, right?), and ripped off her dress with furious hard hands.

She remembers little else, except that with his fingers clenched around her throat too tight, her chest burning and desperate, her cunt full and heavily hot, she came--it was the first time she had, with someone other than her own fingers and wand--and came hard. And then, later, she woke to find him fucking her again, on the floor of her father's study behind the desk, her position cramped and awkward, her partner muttering words of relief because she wasn't dead. Angry relief; she'd almost put him in the position of defending his life, again, after all.

A week's soreness (and a hasty hunt through Madame Coulier's book of charms for the lady, for something to cover the green and black bruising that reached up to her jaw and down all the way past her collarbones) was worth the rush of feeling as she became aware he ...owed her, in a way, and wanted her. She's never been able to put it into words, but she feels powerful when she frightens a man so badly that he loses control, when she can induce him, then, to wildly and needily fuck into her in ecstatic celebration that he hasn't killed her.

It initially doesn't matter to her in the least that her drive to repeat this experience--to repeat the shattering gasping orgasm and the subsequent incautious pounding, the shaking hands as he repaired her dress and told her to stay away from him even as he implored her not to set her father on him, the delicious feeling of come running down her legs from her battered cunt--endangers her. What does she care? She is not only a second child, but a second daughter, useless, and no one ever notices her more than he did, in that few moments; surely any price is worth that.

However, the reality is, it's hard to garner a repetition. She's learned, in the intervening years, that there exists a breed of man who revels in fucking the still-warm body of a woman he's just crushed (or cut) the life out of, and she understands that this is the sort to be avoided, because that isn't noticing or valuing; it's rather the opposite.

She's also learned that this desire and this act has a name, that others share it, not that she congregates with such people, but learning they existed was something of a relief. But they all seem to want to arrange a set of rules under which she, even as she gasps her way toward spasming oblivion, is supposed to tell the man whose fat cock and squeezing thumbs are taking her there to stop, if she's unable to go on.

She's never unable to go on. She wants to go on. Wants to go until her body stops, shuddering and fogged and her lips turning blue until he realizes, checks that she's okay, feels the rush of relief that she can use.

She doesn't want to be expected to stop short of the goal, and she doesn't want him to stop her short of it, either.

Getting someone to agree to her terms proves more difficult than she would have imagined; she's always known men--not least her father--are easily led with sex and with the promise of forbidden orgasm, and she's imagined, initially, that she could use that.

It turns out, she can, but generally not more than a couple of times with the same man because if he knows what she's up to, the passion doesn't work, so that means memory charms, and too many of those (which she's not exceptionally skilled at) tend to bring about enough damage that a man's wife or regular lover would take him to St Mungo's for a cure.

And her own husband--forget it. He's entirely unable to give her what she needs even once.

Intellectually, she understands his dilemma; he's had no easy time, given who his father was, and the notion of failing to realize her situation and having to explain how he's killed his own wife terrifies him, and not because he fears losing her. He doesn't care about her; theirs has always been a marriage designed to get him an heir and her out of her father's house. So, she understands and doesn't ask it of him, instead lying beneath him dutifully, accepting the way his gaze is far away as he works himself into an erection and slides it into her quickly, as though if he doesn't do it just so it will flee.

For all she knows, it will. As soon as he comes, he rolls off her, and it's only accidental, if she manages to make herself come while he's inside her. It seems to freak him out a little when she does. It was just as well (because now they can more or less stop) when he finally got her pregnant, even though that meant many months of being careful with her body, only just recently once again hers to play with.

He doesn't attempt to restrict who else she sees, who else she fucks (he's never asked, and she knows he's seen thumbprint bruises on her hips, if not her neck), so here she is, in a pub that's just this side of seedy, just that side of proper, with a drink in her hand and a carefully-designed corset under her clothes. The charms in it are her own, and she's never told anyone what they do.

She surveys her choices carefully. Finding someone new is always a challenge, because there are limits, and there are stumbling blocks. Some--the Flint brothers, James Avery--are poor choices. She knows that if she stops breathing with them, they'll become angry, and yes, they'll see to it she doesn't die, because they have as much past history to live with as Draco does, but the passion that comes of that anger will channel into their fists. She likes to be passionately, uncontrolledly fucked, not beaten and threatened. She likes a man's relief, not his outrage.

Some others, the Harry Potters of the world--and it amuses her a bit that Potter himself appears to be out trawling tonight; Perhaps he and the Weasley girl have had a row, or perhaps he's just here egging on a friend. Or perhaps he's not such an upstanding sort as everyone thinks; it certainly wouldn’t be the first such case. No matter, because his type, regardless, is out of the question. She might possibly get him into bed, because everyone knows Slytherins and their families are unfaithful, so no one worries about ethics, but as soon as she started struggling against the tightening corset, he'd pull out of her and start trying to help, would probably cuddle her or something and try to undo the work of the charms. He'd have to have the biggest cock in the world to be worth that, and rumor has it, he doesn't.

Today's choices, therefore, are an older man, forty at least and tired, but as she watches him eat, his fingers are agile and he's pleasantly burly; or, the man at the corner table, who's glancing in her direction and turning his cup in circles on the table.

She considers him for a long moment; he seems familiar and there's a good chance she knew him in school. She doesn't know his name, though, and she generally doesn't want to.

She glances at the older man again, and concludes that he may yet be here for half an hour; she can always speak to the man in the corner, try to get an idea about his suitability and come back if he's not what she's looking for.

She slides off her stool and goes back along the wall, easing into the booth across from the man.

Their conversation is short, but the spark in his eyes at her lewd suggestion--just that she likes to be fucked hard in her corset with no exchange of names, and is he interested; she doesn't give specifics--is quite satisfactory.

In five minutes, she's hired a room and unfastened her robe and his to find a gorgeous thick cock, fat enough she's going to feel the strain; in ten she's on her back murmuring encouraging words that both spur him on and start the corset tightening. In just another moment, her breath catches, and he pauses to ask if she's all right.

She's very all right; the blood is starting to thrum in her ears and in the walls of her cunt; her ankles are flexing and pulling him in. She nods and puts her arms around him, pulling him down so he can't see her. She doesn't have air to tell him to fuck her harder, faster, to knock her scalp against the headboard and make her see stars, but it doesn't matter. She's wet and slick, and she's coming in sharp hard waves that hurt like tiny shocks and leave her wide-eyed and limp as the room grays out and fades.

The moment she regains awareness is always a tricky one, because in that half-conscious state who knows what she might say? But the charms have released somewhat in response to her orgasm, and the secondary set kicked in; they prod her to reassure, to promise, to offer. She smiles, at his concerned eyes and shakes her head, tells him how fucking good it was, finds a way to bring him around to channeling all that relief and fear into his cock in her mouth. Once he's that far along, it's easy to lie back and urge him back into her and then it's just a matter of not letting him treat her too gently.

And that can be accomplished with another charm of her own devising--it's nothing like Imperius, because that makes a person do what he doesn't want. This is just subtle encouragement, driving him into her faster, harder, making him feel like this is the best way to make it up to her. She feels the sharp shock as his so-thick cock tears her--just a little, nothing to be concerned about--and watches him approach orgasm. He's babbling words of praise, of relief, of protectiveness, and when he comes at last, pushed so tight into her that it feels like her hip-joint is being pushed out of alignment, she's a little surprised to be right on the edge again, herself. She groans and rocks, trying to get that last little bit she needs, but he's holding her hips still, taking exactly what he wants, forcing a slight rotation that aches and throbs and she knows is making her bleed.

She approves.

When he pulls out, she reaches for her wand; she never knows how much or exactly what she's going to need to erase, but she likes to be ready. He catches her hand and shakes his head, tells her he'll get it.

And then he's between her thighs, catching the swollen skin surrounding her clit between his teeth and pressing his stubbled chin against her. He moves, just a little, just enough that the stubble catches and scrapes on skin that's already hot and abused, and fuck, tears well in her eyes as her whole body clenches in an orgasm that nearly blacks her out again without the assistance of a restricted airway.

She lies there, completely wrung out, until he comes up next to her and pulls her against his shoulder, asks her if that was what she had in mind. There's zero possibility of lying; she doesn't think she could fool a puppy in this moment, so she nods, head pounding now from all that activity and not enough air.

His fingers thread through her hair slowly, and the next thing she knows, she wakes alone in the bed at dawn, sticky, sore, bruised, and naked.

The corset is laid out on the table, with a note pinned to it. Might have just said, but maybe that's not what you need. Either way, same room, same time, same day next month? I have ideas you might like to hear. --Anon

She isn't sure what to do with that, because she's never shared any of this, but the thought intrigues her. She folds the note inside the corset before getting dressed (and seeing to it no marks are showing, even if she wants to keep the soreness for a while), then makes a point of paying attention to the room number on her way out.