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The shoreline on the eastern side of the island had a splendid austerity that suited his mood. There was no sand on the beaches here, it was all rock; smooth and black, with cracks and fissures that formed a network of cold pools, alive with shrimp and limpets; with tiny crabs, delicate and transparent. In places a rusty, dry-looking seaweed grew upon it like a beard, and on the inland side, wooded slopes rose steep from the stones below, oozing fresh water that trickled down in shallow channels to mix with the grey salt of the Firth of Clyde.
The weather was mild for February, but still cold enough for the wind to pinch his ears and nose and make his breath form fleeting clouds in the air. The sea was the colour of steel, the surface whipped up into frothy waves; but the restless splashing and rush of the surf was repetitive and soothing. At night, ignoring the cold, he slept with the bedroom window open so he could hear it.
Feeling stronger, earlier that day he had walked to the northern end of the island. There was a place there where he could see how layers of ancient sedimentary rocks were rammed against each other; as if they had once been violently smashed apart from below, then forced together again into a vast and random jigsaw puzzle.
Sometimes he felt ancient himself, and tired. As if his thirty-six years had somehow, without him noticing, turned into a hundred or more.
Such philosophical musings occupied him for several solitary hours, but as the light was fading in the early evening, he returned to the little stone cottage on the beach that was, temporarily, home.
In his reflective frame of mind, he had neglected the mundane business of finding some food while he was out. That was why, when there was an unexpected knock on the door, he was, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, slicing an onion on to a stale piece of bread. He paused what he was doing, wondering if he was hearing things. The landlady had left a note assuring him he would not see her, and to leave the key under the doormat when he left; and the only other person who knew he was there would probably not have knocked. He deposited another slice of dry bread on top of the onion and pressed it down hopefully, but when he let go, it sprang apart.
There was a second knock, sharper and more insistent. Precariously balancing his onion sandwich on a small plate, he went to answer the door.
“Wotcher, RJ!”
Despite the involuntary rush of pleasure and desire he always experienced on seeing her, his heart sank.
“Tonks! What in Merlin’s name are you doing here? It’s getting dark!”
“Oh that’s nice, I must say! I thought you’d be pleased to see me. Aren’t you going to ask me in? I brought food.”
That threw a different complexion on the matter, he had to admit.“You’ve got food? I suppose you’d better come in then.” He stepped aside, holding the door open.
She tripped over the door sill as she entered, falling against him and sending his sandwich flying. “Oops, sorry!” she said, bending down to pick up the debris. “Trust me to make a dramatic entrance!”
When she had retrieved the constituent parts of his supper from the floor, she regarded them with disapproval. “An onion sandwich? There isn’t even any butter on this! You aren’t looking after yourself are you? I told Albus you wouldn’t be!”
She looked at him with concern and put her hand on his cheek, stroking the week’s growth of stubble. He allowed his eyes to close for a moment enjoying the comfort of her touch.
Her voice was soft and husky. “You look tired. It was a rough one this time, wasn’t it?”
He did not deny it. “I’m on the right side of it now. I even went for a walk today. I’ll be back to normal in a day or two.”
“Oh Remus, why won’t you let me take care of you? You know I want to.”
“There’s no need,” he said. “I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.”
She looked at the remains of the onion sandwich and raised her eyebrows. “We can continue this conversation later. Let’s eat now. Have you got plates?”
She was wearing Muggle clothes and carrying only what appeared to be a small pouch on a shoulder strap; but she reached in to it and pulled out a multitude of packages, piling them on the table. “I’ve brought ham, Scottish butter, Scottish cheese and these are proper Scottish oatcakes,” she said, unwrapping one and buttering the biscuit for him. She carefully placed a wedge of cheese on top. “Have some salad.” She piled leaves on his plate. “I love rocket, don’t you?”
“It’s a leaf, what’s to love about it?” He put a piece in his mouth and chewed. “It just tastes green.”
“Don’t be such a philistine,” she said. “Anyway, I’ve brought dressing.” She fished a bottle out of her bag. “Thousand Island. It’s my favourite Muggle food. Apart from chips. Or chips with Thousand Island dressing.”
Remus was dubious. “It’s pink.”
“It’s delicious, try it.”
After they had eaten and taken the dishes into the tiny kitchen, Remus leaned against the doorframe, with one eye supervising the pot washing and the other on Tonks as she explored the sitting room.
“Put a couple of logs on the fire while you’re there,” he said.
She opened the stove door and took a log from the basket at the side, then cursed as she dropped it on her foot.
“Why don’t you have a normal fire?” she grumbled.
He grinned at her. “Driftwood gives a better heat, don’t you think? And it burns a nice colour too.”
“Huh. I can make nice colours for you, if that’s what you want.” She took her wand from where she had it tucked in the back of her jeans and waved it at the fire which turned a violent magenta for a few seconds. “This is a Muggle cottage, right?”
“Hmm. They use it for holidays in the summer, but it’s usually empty off-season. I’ve been before. Albus has an arrangement with the owner. She’s a squib, I think.”
Happily, Tonks flicked the light switch on and off several times. “I love these eclectic lights!”
“Electric lights,” he said.
“Whatever. So much better than candles. And you can have loads on at the same time without having to think about them at all! Oh look!” She sounded excited. “Remus, you’ve got a telly-visual here!”
“Television,” he corrected, absently, going back into the kitchen and stacking the plates in a cupboard.
“My granny Tonks has got one of these, they’re great! Let’s see what’s on!” He heard the faint click of the screen coming to life and the video player switching on to autoplay.
With a sudden, horrifying thought, he recalled the content of the video and rushed back into the other room.
“I’ve just remembered it’s, er, it’s not working properly!” He looked around for the remote control, but Tonks was holding it.
“It seems okay to me.” The television was only showing lines of white text on a black background. Then it changed to a title screen. ‘Love Box’ it said in big red letters. “Oh, is this a romance?” said Tonks, settling into a chair.
“No, no, it’s terrible, you won’t like it! Let’s see what else is on.” He reached for the remote with growing panic.
“No, this is fine,” she said, holding it to her chest. After a minute, she added. “Actually, you’re right, it is terrible. The acting is awful, and fancy starting a story with a broken washing machine! And the repairman has come ever so quickly. Granny Tonks had to wait three days when her machine broke down. And look what that woman is wearing! That’s stupid. You can see her knickers every time she bends over!”
In desperation, Remus stood in front of the screen. “Honestly it’s not worth watching.”
“Move,” she said impatiently, peering round him. “Oh! Oh crikey. RJ! See what they’re doing now!” She looked up at him in shock. “This isn’t a normal film, is it?”
She sank back into the chair, her expressive eyes wide with hurt. Her voice was unusually quiet. “You’ve been watching pornigraphy?”
“Pornography,” he said automatically, then wished he had kept his mouth shut.
“Well, whatever you want to call it. You’ve made it clear don’t want me, but you want to watch things like that? Is it because that woman has got enormous breasts?”
“No! Don’t be ridiculous! And it’s not that I don’t want you. You know it’s not!”
“Isn’t it? You could do all of those things with me, you know. I wish you would.”
As far as Remus was concerned, their relationship had reached a point where it was largely defined for him by sexual frustration. He was used to being in a certain state of arousal whenever he was near her, but things were rapidly moving to a different level. He had developed an erection that was almost painful, not to mention potentially embarrassing.
“And now I’m thinking of you watching another woman,” she continued, “and. . . doing things to yourself. And it’s not fair!” The pitch of her voice was rising. “If you won’t make love to me, will you let me watch you – you know!”
“No!” he gasped, horrified. “Absolutely bloody not!”
“You’re such a prude,” she said. She stared at the television screen again. “What is she doing now? Oh my!”
“Turn it off!” he cried desperately, grabbing for the remote control.
“No.” She held it out of reach. “He’s putting his thing in her mouth!”
“Thing?”
“You know. Whatever you want to call it. Pecker. He’s putting his pecker in her mouth.”
He could not help laughing. “Pecker? Really? Is that the best you can do?”
Tonks turned nearly as pink as her hair. “Well what do you want me to call it? Cock? Is that better?”
It was not better. His own cock jumped to attention again.
“I could do that,” said Tonks wistfully. “I could take your cock in my mouth. I’d like to, you know.”
Remus gritted his teeth and yanked his robes securely in front of his crotch.
“I’ve been practising,” she said.
“Practising? Practising what?”
“Well, practising sex of course.”
“What?” Remus’s erection shrivelled to the size of a walnut in an instant, and an awful sick feeling lodged in his gut. Quite unexpectedly, his eyes felt hot and sore.
He had to swallow before he could get the words out. “Who the hell – I mean, who have you been – practising – sex - with?”
“Oh,” she said, casually. “Only Charlie.”
“Charlie? Charlie Weasley?”
“I don’t know any other Charlies.”
He could see Charlie Weasley’s strawberry blond head next to hers, against her breasts, between her thighs. He felt sick and wanted to weep. He wanted to scream and break things. He wanted to thump the absent Charlie.
The words were forced unwillingly from between stiff lips. “Well, at least Charlie is the right age for you. He’ll be a much better choice. And he doesn’t have the. . . the taint I have in my blood.”
“But I only want you. You know that. I have loved you since the day I met you, and I will love you till the day I die. I know my own mind. Don’t presume to know better than me.”
She stood up in front of him and took his face between her hands. “Doesn’t it bother you?” she said, “that I had sex with Charlie? If you had sex with someone else, I’d want to kill them. And you too, probably,” she added after a moment’s thought.
“Nymphadora” –
“Don’t call me that!”
“I can’t call you Tonks, not at a time like this. It makes you sound like a plumber.”
“My granddad Tonks is a plumber,” she said. “Nothing wrong with that. He makes loads of money.”
“But I don’t want to make love to your granddad Tonks!” he groaned. “Dora, then!”
“That’s no good. That’s what my dad calls me.”
“Nymph – Dora - bloody hell! Nora! How about Nora?”
She smiled at him, the tips of her hair turning a vivid fuchsia, and Remus felt as if she had poured warm syrup all over him.
“Nora. Oh yes, I like that. Only you, Remus. Only you can call me that.”
She pushed him down into a chair, and leaning into him, she kissed him then, her tongue sweet and eager in his mouth. The last vestiges of his resistance collapsed into distant insignificance. Her hands were on his arms and shoulders, pushing his robes away, stroking the hairs on his chest; running over his belly until her seeking fingers just touched him at the tip of his erection, and without warning, the unthinkable happened.
“Oh no, oh stop! Shit! – Sorry, ah! Ah! ” Merlin help him, he came all over her hand; his pleasure soured by humiliation.
When the spasms had ceased, he could not bear to open his eyes. The sticky semen was cooling on his stomach “Bugger. I’m so sorry.” Mortified, he could not look at her.
He felt her fingers dipping into the wetness and wanted to weep. “Bloody hell. Don’t do that. Let me get cleaned up. You’ll want to be going now, I suppose?”
“I’m going to clean you up,” she said. “And why would I want to go? Or are you trying to tell me that happens a lot?”
“No! of course not!” He opened his eyes and looked at her in misery. “It’s just – it’s been so long, and I’ve. . . I’ve thought of you so much.”
Her eyes were soft and her voice gentle. “Well, in that case, my love, what’s the problem? We have all night.”
With exquisite tenderness, she washed him, kissing his belly and his cock, which started to swell again in anticipation.
“Your recovery time is excellent,” she said. “Truly it is.”
She stood up and pulled her t-shirt over her head. “I bought some new underwear specially for you,” she said. “Do you like it?” She kicked her jeans off.
He swallowed. “There’s not much of it, is there? It’s gorgeous. Not as gorgeous as what’s underneath though, I’m sure.”
The corners of her mouth quirked up, and she put her hands behind her, unsnapping the fastening of the pathetic scrap of white lace that passed for a bra, and slipping it off. She sat down on his knee and put her arms around his neck.
“Oh Nora.” He cupped her breasts, watching his strong brown fingers on her pale skin, so translucent that faint blue veins were visible beneath. The delicate pink tips stiffened when he brushed them with his thumbs.
She sighed, “They’re only small. Not like that woman in the film.”
He could hardly speak. “You’re beautiful. Your breasts are beautiful. Everything about you is beautiful.”
“Oh sweetheart, I think you’re beautiful too.”
“Silly girl. Men aren’t beautiful.”
“You are,” she said firmly. “Remus? You’re crying!”
“So I am, beautiful girl, so I am.”
By turns, he licked and kissed and sucked at her nipples, as her hands tightened on his head, pulling him close to her. He slid on to the floor and pulled her down beside him to lie on the rug in front of the warm fire. His hands traced her flanks to where her hip bones created a little valley at each side of the slight swell of her belly. Then he hooked his fingers under the top of her knickers and pulled them down. With delight, he noticed that her pubic hair was tinted a delicate lilac. He lifted her hips so that he could see better and stroked the insides of her thighs where they were shining and wet with her excitement. She spread her legs wider and he could see the pink flesh of her vulva.
Her nails dug into his arms. “Touch me Remus, please. Oh, please!”
“All in good time,” he murmured, teasing her; stroking her everywhere except the secret place that wept and swelled and begged for his caress; until she was crying out for him, her hands tangled tight and anxious in his hair.
For months, he had resisted this and dreamed of it, but the reality was so much better than anything he could have imagined. As soon as his fingers slipped into her soft heat, stroking and pressing inwards and upwards, and his tongue tasted the sea in her and found the place that was too sensitive for any other sort of touch, her hips rose and she cried out and trembled. Inside her, the muscles around his fingers tightened and pulsed and he held still until she settled again.
She urged him up, so that he was leaning back against the chair, and straddled him. For a few seconds she was poised above him, the tip of his cock just resting at the way into her. He worshipped her perfect breasts with his hands and mouth and she sighed and gave a little wriggle. He tried to push himself into her, but she held him just where he was; in that inch of wet, irresistible promise.
“Marry me,” she said. “You will marry me, you know. I won’t give up.”
“Nora, are you sure?”
“You fool,” she whispered and slipped down on to him.
He was lost, and he was found; and inside her, he was home. As she rose and fell on him, she twisted and circled around him, until the only things that mattered were the way his cock felt inside her and the way she moaned and called his name. In escalating ripples, her orgasm took her, and she grew tight around him and he sobbed as his own climax spilled into her in helpless spasms of blinding intensity. For several seconds her hair pulsed in waves of colour like the sun through falling rain and he was dazzled by it, and breathless.
Still above him, she held his head to her shoulder and stroked his back. He rested against her, calm and at peace.
She placed her hand flat and warm against his chest. “I can feel your heart beating,” she said dreamily. “You know that thing I said about practising sex with Charlie Weasley?”
He tensed with unease. “Yes.”
“I lied,” she said simply.
Giddy with joy, Remus thought his heart might burst from his chest and fly, singing, away into that vast, empty, starlit Scottish sky.
.