Remus was just dozing off when there was a soft knock on his door. Without waiting for a reply, whoever it was pushed the door open, and he blinked as the light from the hallway slipped into his room and then was gone as the door closed again. He heard soft footsteps shuffling towards him, and, somehow, even before he saw her face he knew it was her. He reached for his wand and lit the lamp on his bedside table, casting dancing shadows across the room. He propped himself up on his elbows, taking in her ridiculously oversized pink and black striped pyjamas, in which she looked, of course, adorable.
"Tonks?" he said. "What are you doing here? I thought you went home hours ago?"
"I did," she said. "Couldn't sleep, so I came back."
"In your pyjamas?" he said, lifting an eyebrow in her direction. She looked down.
"Oh," she said, smiling at them as if she hadn't realised what she was wearing. "Yes."
Minutes passed, and he attempted to swallow his odd sense of foreboding. He watched the shadows dance across her face, not really knowing what to think about her sudden appearance in his bedroom, late at night. Mostly his thoughts were trapped in a spiral centring on the words 'Tonks', 'bedroom' and 'in my', which he knew was ridiculous since that was where she'd spent the previous night, but with him, obviously, notably absent.
Not that she knew that. He swallowed.
"Remus?" Tonks said.
"Yes?" he said, warily raising his eyebrows at her.
"I've been thinking," she said.
"Right."
She offered him a rather frustrated frown. "Don't you want to know what?" she said.
"Go on, then," he said.
Tonks edged closer, coming round the end of the bed and up to where he was lying. "I was thinking that maybe you should refresh my memory," she said.
"You know, memory retrieval spells are very complic– "
"I wasn't talking about a spell," she said, coming even closer, lowering her voice. She met his, he imagined, panic-stricken eyes, hers twinkling seductively, and then drew back the covers and slid in next to him.
Remus swallowed, hard, as her leg brushed his.
He thought he should probably shuffle away, put some distance between them, but he thought that would be a bit rude, not to mention utterly unconvincing if they'd spent the previous night entwined around each other in a sweaty frenzy.
On the other hand, having her so close was, well, a bit disconcerting, and he thought that the last thing he needed to be, if he had any hope of handling this, was disconcerted.
While he was caught in indecision, she'd turned and edged even closer, pressing herself into his side. He forced a smile, and she met his eye briefly, and then took his face in her hand and started softly kissing his jaw.
His skin heated beneath her lips as she tasted, making her way slowly along his jaw and down his neck, tracing the same pattern on the other side with her fingertips. His eyes drifted closed as he savoured the sensation of her lips and breath on his neck, and instinctively he shifted a little closer. Her hair tickled his cheek, and he shivered a little.
He could see only two courses of action – one, tell her the truth, or two, go through with whatever it was that she had in mind. His conscience thought he should probably go with the first one; his body seemed to think the other one might not be a bad idea, especially if she kept doing that thing on his neck with her tongue.
He found his voice, somehow. "Tonks?" he said. "What are you doing?"
"I'd have thought, Remus," she whispered, huskily, right in his ear, "that that was obvious." She followed her words with actions, taking his ear lobe into her mouth and sucking it gently before making her way back down his neck. He breathed heavily, turning further into her kisses.
All of a sudden, it seemed to make sense. She'd said 'work together, if nothing else', talked about what they were going to do next, and it dawned on him that perhaps his ruse might have spectacularly unforeseen consequences. She already thought they'd slept together once, after all, and it didn't really seem as if she was content for it to be a one time thing. He pondered the idea that she might really want to be with him, and the thought was every bit as enticing as her lips on his skin.
He tried to stop thinking, to allow himself to focus entirely on the sensations she was sending through his body, and she was making it desperately easy to forget everything but her – she seemed to know exactly how hard to press her lips to his skin, and by the time she'd made her way back up to his ear he was practically whimpering. She stopped, and he could feel the gentle tease of her breath on his ear lobe. "I believe it's called – " she said, husky whisper still intact. And then, abruptly, she dropped her hand, and the husky tone. " – 'calling your bluff'," she whispered.
"What?"
He opened his eyes, wondering if he looked as startled as he felt.
She smirked at him momentarily. He noted with some apprehension that she was still insanely, worryingly, close, and then she twitched her eyebrows at him in triumph and flopped back against the pillow, cackling. "Had you going, though, didn't I?"
For a moment he pondered the double meaning of her words, and the fact that she'd had him well and truly going in both senses.
He flopped back down onto the pillow next to her, not failing to notice that their shoulders and arms were touching, and wishing he was wearing something other than a flimsy T shirt and a rather scruffy pair of pyjama bottoms, through which the heat of her body was all too evident.
He stared fixedly at the ceiling. "You remembered what really happened?" he said. His voice sounded oddly strangled and he cleared his throat.
"Enough," she said, her voice dancing.
Remus clutched the sheets a little tighter to him as he felt his stomach freeze in disappointment – not that she'd seen through his charade, but more that it had been a charade in the first place. He was definitely sorry that she wasn't doing that thing to his neck any more.
"I can't believe I fell for it twice," she said, chuckling quietly, shaking her head. "But kudos on the whole virgin fake-out thing. That was inspired."
"Thank you."
They both stared at the ceiling for a while. Remus' skin prickled at the desperateness of his situation. He knew that this was nothing less than he deserved, and yet….
More worryingly, he knew that he should find this funny. His inner Marauder should be laughing his socks off at having been so spectacularly got, but he didn't find it amusing at all. In fact, he found it something else entirely.
His heart was racing his mind for which could speed fastest through the sensations, feelings, and thoughts he desperately needed to process. He ignored his racing heart, since that never really knew what it was talking about, deciding to try and deal with some of his thoughts instead. The most pressing seemed to be that he was disappointed. That meant that he'd wanted, on some level, something to happen.
That wasn't news, though, was it?
He wondered why it felt like a surprise, and, more than that, a revelation.
"Have you ever wondered – "
Tonks interrupted his thoughts, and then stopped herself.
"Have I ever wondered what?" he said, propping himself up on his elbow to look at her.
"Nothing," she said, avoiding his gaze as she nestled on his pillow.
"No," he said, softly, "go on."
Tonks rolled her eyes and then seemed to come to a decision. "Have you ever wondered what it'd be like if we – " She paused, bit her lip a little before meeting his eye. " – did?"
For a moment he panicked that she could read minds.
"No," he said, dropping onto his back and staring at the ceiling again.
"Me neither," she said quickly.
They were quiet for what seemed like a very long time.
Remus linked his fingers together and rested them on top of the sheets on his stomach, right above the place where a butterfly colony seemed to have taken up residence. "It'd probably be awful," he said, not entirely sure who he was trying to convince.
"Probably," she said.
"Horrible," he added, with far more conviction than he felt.
"A shambles."
"Disastrous."
"Definitely," she said, and he felt the pillow they were sharing move as she nodded emphatically.
He smoothed the sheet down a little over his stomach. "I mean, we don't even really get on," he said.
"Better off out of it," she said.
"Nothing in common."
"No," she said. "Because you're so sensible – "
"And you talk too much."
"And you're boring."
"And you're far too cheerful."
"And you're very annoying," she said.
He stalled, unable to think of anything else bad to say about her. "We'd be ridiculous together," he said.
There was no snappy retort, just a pause, no longer than a heartbeat, and then she said:
"Would we?"
He turned his head on the pillow, finding her looking right at him, her big, twinkling dark eyes inches away. "Wouldn't we?" he said tentatively, raising his eyebrows at her.
"Yes," she said, glancing at the ceiling. "Totally. Nightmare."
"Complete and utter," he concurred.
There was another heartbeat's pause. "We do appear to be in bed together, though," she said.
"Hmm," he said, his eyes flickering to hers entirely of their own accord. "I had noticed that."
"Do you want me to get out?" she offered. He swallowed.
"Not especially."
"Not especially?" she said.
"No."
"Ok."
Silence descended. Remus clenched his fingers together and then released them, hoping that that might dispel some of the tension in his body. It didn't.
"Why not?" she said, eventually, her voice deadly quiet.
"Erm – "
He couldn't really think of an answer. Well, he could. He just wasn't sure….
"Look," he said, finding himself unexpectedly just confident enough. "Do you want to – "
He faltered, suddenly unsure that what he thought was happening was happening.
"What?" she said, quietly, turning towards him a little. He shot her the briefest of glances before staring back at the ceiling, wondering, fleetingly, if he had seen what he thought he'd seen in her eyes.
"Nothing. Just – " he let out a sigh, frustrated at himself. He wondered what it was that he thought he had to lose. "Do you want to go out with me?"
"Go out with you?" she said, her tone high and surprised. All the muscles in his body tensed.
"Forget I said it," he said quickly.
"I don't want to."
"Go out with me?" he asked, not entirely surprised at the disappointed tinge to his voice.
"Forget you said it," she said softly.
"Oh."
His eyes widened entirely of their own accord as a thought occurred. He looked at her askance. "Was that a yes?" he said, and she laughed.
"I think it might have been."
He let out the breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, and propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her. "I think I'd rather you were sure," he said, smiling. She grinned, bit her lip and then nodded. "Ok," he said, feeling that, as endearing as an ear to ear grin was on her, he probably looked like an idiot. He tried to recover a little, but the grin didn't go without a fight. "Do you want to get out now?"
"Do you want me to?" she said, raising her eyebrows at him.
"No," he said, "just, you know – I thought it might be odd."
"Right," she said. "Me getting in here to get you back for being a big git isn't odd, but being in bed with someone you want to go out with is?"
He smiled to himself, and the thought that this would be a hell of a story to tell people when they asked how they got together flashed through his mind. "Well," he said, "I suppose not, when you put it like that."
Tonks propped herself up on her elbow next to him, seeming a lot closer than she had when they were both lying down. "Besides," she said. Her voice was low, quiet, and teasing. It made his heart beat faster. She reached up and her gentle fingers drifted down his face, just as they had the night before, only this time he allowed himself to enjoy it, closing his eyes as he savoured the sensation. "If we're going to go out, we're probably going to end up here anyway, sooner or later."
He wondered if she was going to try and kiss him again, knowing that this time, he'd let her. "Probably," he said, slowly opening his eyes. For a second he thought she'd had hers closed too, but on closer inspection he saw that she was just looking down, watching his lips, waiting, he supposed, for him to make the first move.
Or the next move, because it suddenly occurred to him that they'd been making these little moves towards each other for weeks, months, probably, and that whatever was about to happen was just the next in a long chain of events. "So if we're going to end up here anyway…." she said.
Everything shifted.
As their lips met, he couldn't remember if it was him or her who'd closed the miniscule distance between them, and he really didn't care. It was a brief kiss, a flirtation with the idea that they were really going to do this, but even so Remus took a ragged, gasping breath as the intensity of it took him by surprise, or, more accurately, didn't. It took him a moment to realise that the noise he'd heard was Tonks doing exactly the same thing. He met her eye briefly to see, to check, whether he was feeling what he was feeling alone.
Her eyes twinkled with nervous excitement, and he knew that he wasn't, and so he kissed her again, properly this time, taking her face in his hand and giving himself over entirely to the sensation of kissing her. He quickly came to the conclusion that it was a good job he was already lying down, because his body swiftly abandoned the pretence that it cared about anything but the feel of her soft lips on his, the gentle tease of her tongue as it tentatively explored his mouth, or her fingers tickling his neck. He was fairly certain other things existed; none of them seemed very important by comparison, though.
After a little while he pulled away, but he couldn't bare to stop touching her altogether, and he let his fingers linger on her cheek, follow the contours of her face down to rest on her neck. "I see," he said, but already his lips were yearning for more, protesting about being separated from hers, and he was leaning back in. "What you're saying is that it might be better to – " He couldn't resist kissing her again for a second longer, and she responded eagerly.
" – cut to the chase," she offered, a little breathlessly. He murmured his agreement against her lips.
"Avoid all the – " he started. She threaded her fingers into his hair, and his train of thought well and truly left the station. He ran his fingertips over the outline of her jaw, bringing her lips properly back to his for a deliciously soft, intense kiss.
" – unnecessary stuff in the middle," she added, her words little more than drowsy breath on his lips between kisses.
He couldn't resist the urge any longer. He pulled her closer and lowered her back on the bed, kissing her ardently. He tasted her jaw, just as she'd tasted his, moving quickly along to her ear. "So what you're basically saying is that you'd rather – " he whispered before continuing down her throat.
" – skip the going out part entirely – " she said, letting out a little gasp as he kissed the hollow at the base of her throat.
" – and just get on with it."
He crushed his lips against hers, and, for a while, time seemed to stand still or become entirely irrelevant or impossibly confused, he wasn't sure which. He kissed her for what seemed like an eternity, but when she moved away to offer his throat some attention, it felt as if it had been little more than a second, and consequently, over far too quickly. Still, he couldn't resist a little whimper as she pressed her lips to his skin – because really, she was very, very good at that – and then eased her face back to his, missing the warmth of her lips on his, wishing her mouth could be everywhere at once.
Their lips toyed with the idea of gentle exploratory kisses, and more passionate, fiery ones that spoke of nothing but the hitherto unacknowledged longing there had been between them, and finally settled on alternating both with kisses of a slow teasing pace that made Tonks emit little whispered sighs of approval and Remus' insides ache, either because of the kiss or her whispers of approval, he wasn't entirely sure which. He couldn't seem to resist the urge to touch her – to feel her hair beneath his fingers or to trace the outlines of her face, to find the place on her hip his hand fitted best. And she wasn't especially shy either, drawing one foot up his leg and tickling him with her toes and raking her fingers through his hair, down his back.
Their bodies began an urgent, flirtatious dance with each other, taking it in turns to press, to remit, to yield, to find a way of moving that made the other's grip tighten, their kisses pause to let a gasp or sigh escape, and every adjustment seemed to send a jolt right through him.
He hadn't imagined – not in his wildest dreams – that this would feel so…wonderful, or so right.
Remus hadn't had a lot of girlfriends, but he'd had enough to know that chances like this, feelings like this, didn't present themselves very often, and he was damned if he wasn't going to make the most of it. So, when Tonks rolled him onto his back and kissed him passionately, working her hands under his T shirt as she settled on top of him, he didn't protest, as he might have under other circumstances, that they were moving too fast.
Instead, he grasped her waist, and – he hadn't really intended to, but – finding her top had ridden up a little, couldn't resist the temptation of her delectable skin beneath his fingers. Between the way her body curved beneath his hands and the lazy patterns she was tracing on his sides, making him squirm, he was so distracted that anything even approaching rational thought was deliciously beyond his reach.
He didn't protest either when she divested him of his top altogether, barely lifting out of their kiss to do it, just marvelled at how she explored his body – not tentatively, as he might have expected, but as if it was something she already owned, and just the thought of that, let alone having her actually do it, was enough to make his insides quiver.
As exquisite, tingling warmth spread from her hands through his body, it felt so excruciatingly good that he wondered why they hadn't spent every single second of their time together doing this. The way she moved against him, kissed him, was….
He swallowed, suddenly unable to think of the word, or, in fact, any words at all. He mumbled rather incoherently and breathily, wondering if she'd even hear that over the deafening pounding of his blood in his veins.
He supposed it didn't matter that he couldn't tell her what he thought – her position was probably leaving her in little doubt about how much he liked what she was doing, and he delighted in the way her breathing hitched and she collapsed into his kisses as he gripped her hips and guided her a little more firmly against him.
By the time he started toying with the buttons on her pyjama top and felt them come undone beneath his fingers, he couldn't remember what his objections might have been in the first place, and focused instead on pressing his lips to her skin.
It was only when she moved away and trailed hot kisses across his shoulders and down his chest that he had anything resembling a coherent thought at all. And, of course, the only thing his brain could come up with was something rather disturbing. "You're not still calling my bluff, are you?" he said, raising his eyebrows at her, a little surprised at how gruff his own voice sounded, but not at all surprised at how desperately he wanted her answer to be no.
"What do you think?" she said, meeting his eye and smiling at him slyly from his bellybutton. Her kisses blazed a trail across his abdomen, each touch of her lips and flick of her tongue igniting the skin beneath. He swallowed.
"I think if you are it's no less than I deserve," he said, his voice rather lighter and more amused than he'd have thought himself capable of pulling off at such a moment. She slid back up his chest and quirked an eyebrow at him.
"No," she said, "probably not."
He grinned and rolled her over, settling on top of her. She let out a brief, breathy giggle of surprise, and he nuzzled her neck, dragged his lips across it, nipping at her skin and producing the most intriguing noises from low down in her throat, which did more to make his insides ache than her pressing closer against him. He slipped his hands inside her top, sliding them over her ribs as she took a shuddering breath against his mouth, and then up over her breasts, the lace of her acid green bra rough against his fingers. She arched into his touch, and the tightening in his stomach at her response made his breath shallow, and that that he had catch in his chest. "You're not calling mine, are you," she said, breathlessly, "to get me back for getting in here?"
He pulled back a little and couldn't resist a mischievous smile, as much at his fingers finding her nipple as at the – he hoped – not entirely serious idea that one of them might be joking. "What do you think?"
"I wouldn't put it past you," she said, smiling and biting her lip, then closing her eyes briefly as the nipple he was playing with hardened beneath his fingers.
"Hmm. Interesting," he said. He couldn't quite contain his grin, and she laughed, slipping her hands over his shoulders and around his neck, looking at him in a way that diverted the blood that had been flowing to his brain further south. "I did ask you out, though," he said.
"Could be part of your ruse," she said.
"And you did say yes."
"Could be part of my ruse," she said, and he chuckled.
"Could be," he said. "Are you willing to admit that this is something other than a ploy to get me back in rather spectacular fashion?"
"Are you?" she said, her voice loaded with playful challenge. He shook his head, even though he thought his smile was probably giving him away. "How are we going to sort this one out, then?" she said, twitching her eyebrows and squirming against him as his hand moved lower and stroked circles on her stomach.
"Well," he said, lowering his lips to the crook of her neck, "if you don't want to admit that you're not joking, and I don't want to admit I'm not joking…." He paused for a moment to think, and then he murmured his answer against her skin. "Maybe I'll just stop when you say when."
He cupped her neck, loving the feel of her muscles moving underneath his lips as he kissed her. She shifted underneath him, her fingers easing his face back to hers, meeting his lips with a kiss that took his breath away and set the blood that she'd just sent south on fire. He slipped her top off her shoulders and gasped at the feel of her bare stomach against his.
Merlin. He wondered if she had any idea what she was doing to him.
He kissed her soundly before giving in to the urge to pull away a little and look at her. Her bright pink hair was sticking up in all directions, and he couldn't help the little thrill that passed through him at the thought that he'd been the one to mess it up. His eyes swept lower, taking in the acid green, lacy bra she was wearing, and the acid green trim he could see just above the waist of her pyjama bottoms. With her pale complexion and pink hair, he couldn't deny it was a rather staggering sight. He felt a rather large smirk cross his features, and lowered his mouth to her skin, which seemed to smell of sunshine, sprinkling her stomach with kisses, slipping his hands underneath her back, lifting her to his lips.
Everything about this – them, together – felt so unerringly right that suddenly it seemed absurd – completely and utterly absurd – to Remus that they hadn't been doing this for months. He felt her breathing become erratic as he trailed his lips just above her low waistband, paying particular attention to the sensitive hollow near her hipbone, and when she let out a low, throaty moan he looked up to find her rather drowsy smile. He moved up her body. "Do you always wear such garish underwear?" he asked, his voice teasing as his fingers traced the place where his lips had just been and his lips found her neck.
"What?"
"Nothing," he said, leaning to kiss her cheek before moving to nuzzle her ear. "Just – if you do and this is going to become a regular occurrence, I might invest in some sunglasses."
She chuckled breathily, tickling his ear. "Well," she said, pressing her cheek to his before threading her fingers into his hair and easing him back far enough to give him a teasing, lop-sided smile. "If you don't like it, you can always take it off."
Most of him made a vague choking noise in surprise, even though his inner Marauder thought that was a very good point, and not a bad idea.
And since his inner Marauder had got him this far, Remus decided to listen to him. "I didn't say I didn't like it," he said. He twitched his eyebrows at her and kissed her unhurriedly before doing exactly what she suggested, and when her bra was nothing but a weird, acid green memory, he pulled himself back over her. She arched against him, and he traced a pattern of frantic kisses down her neck and across her breasts, feeling the breathlessness and desperation of desire coarse through him as her nipples slid under his tongue.
Her response left him in no doubt that she felt exactly the same. She quickly eased them both onto their sides, demanding that his lips meet hers and shifting against him in time with their kisses while he caressed her.
Her fingers roamed and were entirely merciless in their pursuit of the ultimate tease, and he held his breath as they fumbled with the tie on his pyjama bottoms. She undid the knot rather deftly, slipping her hand inside briefly and chuckling against his throat as he gasped and swallowed, hard, at the contact. She slipped his trousers off altogether, dropping them onto the floor, and then slid her hand up his thigh, tracing her nails across his skin in the briefest impression of a scratch. A quite undignified groan seemed to slip through his clenched teeth, regardless of his efforts to keep it internal, and he felt her smile – or more likely smirk – against his skin. He hooked his fingers inside the waistband of her pyjama bottoms – after all, two could play at that game. As he slipped them down she wriggled out of them, giggling, and before he'd even finished tossing them aside she was pressing her body back into his and capturing his lips in a soft, teasing kiss that did nothing to hide the intensity behind it.
This time the ache in his insides went all the way down to his soul, and he knew that he was utterly lost, lost in her, and would be for the foreseeable. He tore his lips away from hers, fantastically, amazingly, aware that soon, he wouldn't be able to pull away, to leave this, to leave the things his body was desperate to confess to hers unsaid. "You haven't said when yet," he said, voice thick as he met her eyes and searched them for some glimmer of indication that she wanted this as much as he did. She smiled and it lit up bits of him that had been lost to darkness long ago, and then kissed his chin, his jaw, urging his lips back down to hers.
"I don't want you to stop," she replied.
So he didn't.
Remus woke up to find a pink, fluffy mess of hair on the pillow beside him, and two sets of pyjamas and one set of rather striking acid green underwear strewn across the floor haphazardly. He sniggered quietly to himself, not wanting to wake her. She looked especially adorable in her sleep.
He wasn't entirely sure what this woman – this spectacularly brilliant, feisty, gloriously beautiful woman – was doing in his bed, but he couldn't help smiling about the fact that she was.
He knew that they'd rushed into things, but he supposed that she had been right – they probably were going to end up here sooner or later, and if he was honest with himself, it always would have been sooner rather than later.
He wondered when it was that under her skin had become the only place that felt like home.
Tonks shifted next to him, and he propped himself up on one elbow and met her eyes as they opened. A slow, drowsy smile spread across her face. "Wotcher," she said.
"So you don't have any other expressions of greeting, then," he said. "I always wondered…."
"Nope," she said. "Just wotcher – one word fits all occasions."
She shifted again, drawing one arm under her head on the pillow and curling a little closer to him. She smiled up at him and her dark eyes sparkled. "So," he said.
"So?"
"Hmm. Either you're the world's best actress and you're about to shout 'gotcha' in my face and run out with the tattered remains of my dignity," he said, raising an eyebrow at her, "or we need to have a conversation."
"A conversation?" she said. "About what?"
"About the fact that the last conversation we had involved nothing more than heavy breathing, a few muttered expletives and moaning each other's names."
She laughed, and he looked down, the briefest hint of a smirk playing on his lips. She lifted herself up onto her elbow next to him. "You're sexy when you smirk," she said, her voice a low, amused tease.
"So we're ruling out the actress option, are we?"
"You look good like this," she said, toying with the ends of his hair, pushing them behind his ear. His breathing felt oddly constricted, and his eyes roved her face, taking in every detail, cherishing the moment.
"Like what?" he said, his voice quiet and smiling.
"Rumpled," she said, "like you've been up to no good."
"I have been up to no good," he said, meeting her eye and raising his eyebrows at her. "Don't you remember?"
"Hmm," she murmured. She took his face in her hand and started slowly kissing his jaw. He shifted closer, turned his face into her kisses, holding his breath. "Some of the details are a little bit fuzzy," she whispered. "Maybe you should try and jog my memory."
"I thought we were going to have a conversation?"
"Oh we are," she said in a devilishly flirty tone that seemed to ignite his body. "It's just going to be the heavy-breathing, muttered expletive kind."
He dipped his head a little, trying desperately not to give in to the grin that was just below the surface. "Is that right."
"Hmm," she murmured.
"You seem to have it all figured out," he said. "It was barely worth me waking up at all."
"I wouldn't say that," she said, pressing him back against the bed, kissing his neck.
"Wouldn't you?" he asked as she shifted on top of him, drawing her legs up either side of his. His hands settled on her hips, and he took a moment to stop and marvel at how at home they felt there.
"No," she said, kissing his chest. "I think I'm going to make being awake very worth your while."
"Oh," he said with a soft chuckle.
She made her way slowly up to his mouth, and by the time she captured his lips it was all he could do to moan into her mouth before kissing her. "We're much better at this kind of conversation, don't you think?" she said between delicious kisses.
"Oh yes," he said.
He ran his hands up her spine, pulling her closer as he kissed her deeply, earnestly. She pulled away slightly, and he took the opportunity to start assaulting her throat. "Just one thing," she said.
"What?" he murmured into the crook of her neck.
"Don't call me Nymphadora, this time, Remus."
She squirmed as he laughed and his breath tickled her neck. "You're so annoying," he muttered, right against her skin, between kisses.
A/N: Well, to paraphrase The Doors, this is the end, my friends, the end….
….'cept it's not. Not really, because I'm planning to write a sequel to this/Under The Table – it's going to be called Over The Moon, so look out for it or click the handy author alert button thingy if you want to know what happens next.
Anyway, sincerest thanks to everyone who has taken the time to drop me a review, and for your traditional review bribe this time, I thought I'd offer you a chance to try and make Remus weak at the knees…. ;)