was now sending her into a rising spiral of panic.
With her arm still locked behind her, he pushed her face first onto the bed, and tossed the hem of the bathrobe over her head. Her indignant shrieks were muffled by the mattress. It wasn't until she felt his warm fingers on her hip did she cease her struggles. He was cursing rapidly in at least three languages.
Draco was momentarily speechless.
There was a dragon tattooed into her hip. Not a western dragon, but a sleek, serpentine Oriental done in bright, silver ink. Enchanted of course, given that it sparkled like diamond dust on her skin. It was not a small or insignificant marking either. The dragon's elegant, tapered head began just below her right hipbone, its scaly body and long tail wrapping around her upper thigh and disappearing into the crease where her upper torso ended and her legs began.
The tattoo gave the impression that the creature was making a slow slither up her body.
It was a fucking marriage tattoo, was what it was. A rare practice from old times, but still carried out by couples that sought more than just an exchanging of vows to mark their union. He could feel the faint static buzz of the enchantment as soon as she had revealed it to him; felt it in his nerve endings, travelling along his spine, tingling at the skin on his back.
It was also quite remarkable. The small, childlike part of him that never failed to be routinely surprised by magic and was sitting up and paying attention.
Of all the things they could have done while drunk and out on the town, they had gone into a seedy back alley tavern cum tattoo parlour, and endured the short marriage ceremony and much longer inking of skin.
Watching from a cloud somewhere, Draco was certain that a deity was laughing uproariously at them.
The blasted charm was going to take a bit of clever magic to undo. Granted he was no expert on Incredibly Stupid Spells, but from what he knew, marriage tattoos constituted blood magic and as such were notoriously difficult to remove.
Not unlike the Dark Mark, Draco thought, with a sigh. Only two Death Eaters had ever attempted to remove said Mark and currently, only one was alive to tell the tale.
They would have the marriage annulled as soon as practicable, of course, and no one would be the wiser. No heads would roll. No one would need to be strategically shoved out of a tall window to keep from talking. Money would ease the situation, of course. Even the largest blunders could be remedied with a lot of money and bit of thuggery. Beneath him, meanwhile, Granger was taking advantage of his distraction and was attempting to elbow him in the balls.
"Oh no, you don't," he chided softly, watching as her back arched to reduce the pressure on her tendons. He realized he was probably hurting her and loosened his grip.
Miraculously, despite the severity of the situation, Draco felt himself getting hard. He continued his inspection of her tattoo, but this time, with more curiosity than dread. His fingers traced the pattern along her smooth skin, running lightly over and under her upper thigh. With her backside up the air like it was, he had an unobstructed view of parts of her she would never see so clearly without the aid of a hand mirror. It was a purely aesthetic appreciation, he supposed. Granger was pink, clean and slightly damp from her shower. She also had quite possibly the nicest bits he had seen on a girl. A pretty cunt, in his authoritative opinion. He grasped a buttock lightly and ran his thumb just outside the crease, all the way down to her inner thigh. There was a nasty bruise there, right beside the point where the dragon's spiked tail came to an end.
Draco settled his thumb over the spot. It was a perfect fit. It didn't surprise him that sex with Granger had been so volatile. There was nothing calm and pleasant about their relationship, either in bed or out of it. It wasn't until he brushed his knuckles against the curls between her legs did she flinch and turn her head to glare at him. Her white thighs were flushed, and as gently as he was touching her, his fingers till left a faint, red trail.
For a moment, he was mesmerised.
"Are you quite finished?" The sentence could have chilled butterbeer at fifteen paces.