Pas De Deux

“Ah. Bella.” The voice of her master is cold, amused. Indifference tinged with the slightest hint of affection; enough to make her come unhinged, because courting his regard is often destructive.

He tells her to kneel and she does; fall of crimson silk a muted splash on the smooth stones that bite into her kneecaps. She presses her mouth so carefully to the hem of his robes and hears his caustic laugh. They're coarse and rough against her lips, tasting faintly of dust.

Are never your beloved army, are we? Means to an end and nothing more.

She presses her forehead onto the stones and feels for a moment the coolness as it infuses her skin. She burns all the time, fire simmers under her skin and dances in her eyes. In his presence, she drinks in his coldness like a balm, and it soothes her, and she spills out her breath as she remains prostrate before him.

“My lord.” Bellatrix means this sobriquet with every infinitesimal fiber of her being; her loyalty to him is interwoven with her intensity and there is no way to separate them, even if she wants to. She doesn't want to disjoin them, not at all, and this is why she is dangerous.

“You have come today because you've agreed to what I want.” There is no question in his tone—she has fallen before him and grasped his knees like Thetis begging Zeus for the life of her son.

Like any Greek god worth his laurels, he will grant her wish and it will be presented to her as a thing of marble beauty, though perhaps in time it will fade like the statues she sees in the museum, staring back at her with lifeless blank eyes.

Beware Greeks bearing gifts.

Beware Dark Lords and their promises.

Her shoulders shake with silent laughter.

“I have agreed, my lord.” Her voice a steel knife sliding across satin sheets—a susurration of the murderous and the mesmeric entwined.

“Good.” His voice is the blade; implacable and incisive.

She is lead unresisting to the pillar of marble where he arranges her for his pleasure; her arms prettily crossed at the wrists and bound by thin silver chains above her head. He has a deep and abiding love for the aesthetic; even now he stops to push her lustrous dark hair over her shoulders so it lies darkly against her ivory skin. The light spills into the windows and falls around her like some erotic pieta enshrined in afternoon sun, bleached white and almost holy.

“Pretty Bella,” the Dark Lord whispers; to her, it sounds like he mocks her.

Her eyes travel over his tall, lean form adorned in his austere black robes. His hair brushes his forehead, dark eyes shine with his charismatic intensity in his pale face. Even his caricature of a smile emits power.

Pretty Voldemort.

His lips pull back and his nostrils flare; the briefest flare of temper before he smacks her casually across the mouth.

She sucks in her breath as the tiniest of agonies blossoms on her lips. The apology hovers there, but she cannot make her tongue push it forth. It comes to life in her mind, this word; a dripping, red color framed with spiky letters. Sorry. Obscene, it hangs and shimmers in the contours of her mind.

“Not quite yet, I don't think,” he says pleasantly, in answer to her unspoken confession. “But soon. Rodolphus, join us, if you would.”

At this, her carefully cultivated lascivious pose changes to one of pure annoyance—eyes narrow, face flushes, breathing snarls from between clenched teeth—she hates Rodolphus Lestrange. Why is he here?

“I believe I told you, Bella, that I would chose the most efficient method of teaching you Occulmency, did I not?” He caresses her face and the cold sparks on her skin, though he cannot so easily douse her ire.

“Yes, my lord.” There is no other answer to give him. Bellatrix twists lightly and pushes herself back against the marble, as he is still touching her. She has never seduced him with anything other than her pure talent for causing pain and her dazzling capacity for sheer devotion. If he wanted her body, she supposed he could have it; though he's never indicated that he wants it.

Her mind seems to be what he is so eager to possess, and that she has given him.

He smiles at that; a pure smile of malice, but a smile nonetheless. “My Bella,” he whispers, and he trails his fingers over the blood on her lips, pressing it inside. Her tongue licks, cat-like, as she takes it back inside herself.

“Rodolphus dislikes you, Bella, but he seems to have a certain fondness for your … charms.” The perfunctory disdainful way in which he says this is aimed to hurt her, and it works, a little.

She postures a bit, thrusting out her silk-covered bosom, but falls to pouting when his expression does not change.

He leans forward, and places his mouth at her ear. “You were right the first time, my Bella. This body—” He trails his fingers down her chest and ice lingers in their wake. “He can have. Your mind…and your soul…those are mine, pretty Bella.”

She nods, for what else can she do? He speaks only the truth, and this is known to them both.

“When you fail me, Bella, when you allow me to slide in that silken shadow you call a mind, then I will allow him to do…whatever he wants.” He chuckles, because her infuriation with this idea is so prettily displayed in the thoughts he can so easily read.

“You're not doing a very good job, Bella,” he admonishes her, stepping away into the corner of the room where no light falls. The Dark Lord takes his name because he can command shadow and force it to enshroud him like a funeral mantle.

“Rodolphus, I sense you want her naked. See to it.” His voice is coolly amused.

Bellatrix glares so hard at Rodolphus Lestrange as he approaches that she could cut diamonds with the strength of her obsidian gaze.

Rodolphus' lips have arranged themselves into a pleasant smile, and rage licks at her from within as he pulls the clothes from her body and leaves her naked. The cold marble presses against her back, buttocks and calves, and it is a bother.

She tilts her chin up under his scrutiny, but forces her mind to be quiet, serene. For her, this is the ultimate challenge; quietness is not a state to which her body is accustomed.

“Nice,” Rodolphus murmurs gently.

It's been said of Rodolphus Lestrange that he can torture you while he smiles, with both his lips and with his eyes. That is terrifying to Bellatrix; she who wears her darker passions proudly on every hollow and plane of her face.

The Dark Lord laughs. “She thinks you have a lovely smile, Rodolphus.” Voldemort waves his hand like some demented conductor directing his sadistic orchestra. “Tsk, tsk, Bellatrix, you've been a naughty girl,” he sings out lightly. “Do what you wish to her, Rodolphus.”

Rodolphus spends a few moments running his blunt fingers down the naked skin of her abdomen. She fights her body from reacting to the ghosting of his fingertips on her body; she fights her mind from capitulating to the Dark Lord's skilful invasion.

She can feel it, a bit. Tongue-like wisps of power, curling around her thoughts, tugging gently. No.

“Well done,” he praises her, voice warm.

Her body flushes under his accolades, and she lowers her lashes to veil her triumphant eyes and smirks at Rodolphus. She hears him growl and bites her lip in pleasure, squirming slightly.

It makes her body soften and weep between her thighs when Rodolphus is thwarted from touching her further. He can sense this and the balance of power when it happens, and she's further aroused by the knowledge of how this irritates him.

On and on they play, rather like a game of chess. When Bellatrix falters beneath the press of the Dark Lord's considerable talent with Legilimancy, Rodolphus is given leave to tease her, taunt her, run his fingers over her nipples and tweak them with gentle brutality.

His touches are all like that; soft and painful, accompanied by an angelic smile that lights his dark eyes and frightens her. The fear changes her annoyance with him to something else; and sensing it, the Dark Lord laughs softly in the shadows.

Rodolphus has his hand between her legs, and his thumb is moving with unerring precision over her clit. Her hips push against his hand and she struggles to keep herself removed from it all, but it's hard. He is pressed close to her and she can feel his erection pulsing against her thigh, she can smell the spicy scent he's wearing and the ineffable fragrance of his own maleness that permeates her senses.

“Will you be able to block your mind from me, Bella, when you come?” The Dark Lord speaks clinically about her impending orgasm, and Bellatrix bites her lip so hard blood rushes hot into her mouth. The taste of it only pushes her further towards the edge.

Despite her desire to stop his hand from bringing her to completion, she is rocking her hips against the tips of his fingers and his lips play host to that archaic smile that says everything and nothing all at once. She feels his darkness burn, a deep vast well of it, thick and rich like bitter chocolate. Bellatrix licks the blood from her lips and her answering grin returns the madness he pretends he does not share.

Her mind burns with images of torture and death, lives crumbling beneath the onslaught of her fearsome magic, screams delicately called forth by her skill with the Cruciatus. She imagines Rodolphus beside her, delivering death to their victims with his sinister benevolence firmly in place.

She images the Dark Mark burned like a brand in the sky; his hand entwined with hers as they watch the emerald symbol glitter malevolently amidst the distant stars.

“The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings,” The Dark Lord recites softly, his voice throbbing with intensity.

Bellatrix turns her head to him as Rodolphus continues to pleasure her, and she thinks she sees the Dark Lord's eyes glow red in the shadows.

She comes with a small cry, back arching, shivering from the release that moves through her. A sob is torn reluctantly from deep within her, but she raises her eyes to meet Rodolphus', and they exchange a long glance.

In that look, she loses her mind a little; a piece of what she has always considered sacred to the Dark Lord slips away from her vows of service, longing to entwine itself with this man who has tortured her and made her come for him with such exquisite expertise.

Something hot and vicious is growing between them, even as they stand there, enraptured by their madness and their fiendish passion.

“I see you have come to realize what I have long known,” the Dark Lord says patiently as Bellatrix and Rodolphus remain locked in an embrace of dark-eyed infatuation.

Neither of them can speak. His hands move over her body with languorous ease, discovering now what he had so cruelly pinched and tormented before. She likes the way his hands are warm on her body, the way his magic pours off him and teases her with prickly sensations somewhere between pain and pleasure.

The Dark Lord sighs and steps from the shadows, though his Death Eaters spare him no notice. She does not look at him, even when he stands next to her, even when his fingers lightly trace the Dark Mark burned on her forearm. He sighs; as if he knows there is now a piece of that ineffable part of her being that no longer wholly belongs to him.

With a quiet spell, her arms are free. “We will practice again, Bella,” the Dark Lord says as she lowers her arms, which are cramped and sore from their prolonged position above her head. Despite this, the movement is graceful as if she is a ballerina, performing some intricate pas-de-deux with the man who is now gently touching her face, as if she is precious to him.

The Dark Lord claps Rodolphus on the back lightly. “I know devotion when I see it,” he says, pleased. He leaves them there alone, still chuckling a bit as his cloak trails whisper-soft on the cold stone floor, slithering after him like a snake.

When the door is shut behind him, Rodolphus kisses her. The light of the sun burns her eyes so she shuts them, and clings to him, and gives him that piece of her soul. Like some psychotic communion rite, he accepts what she offers and joins her magic with his own.

For once, her mind is silent and quiet, and should the Dark Lord happen to read her thoughts at that moment, they would all be of the one who drinks from her lips, imbibing her madness as if it were a fine wine.

The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings.

All she hears is the beating of her heart as she kisses him back, but she thinks perhaps it is the same thing.

~Finis