Chapter Text
Summer days were always better had in Malibu. It was where the sun was bright, the heat scorching, as sweet and rich as the drink named after it.
You were free to be whoever you wanted to be in a city made of stars, in a place where the sand was soft like a lover's caress, the rocky bluffs as sharp as the dips of their chest.
And that was why Hermione chose to be a trophy wife.
A choice. A deliberate one.
One bred from freedom. Of the bountiful riches it afforded her.
It was what being a righteous woman was all about.
She could cash in on her riches endlessly, day after day, night after night, as much as her little heart desired.
And oh, did it desire.
In the mornings, her riches always take the same form.
The rising California sun over her pool out back, water dripping over the edge infinitely. The rocky cliffs out on the horizon, her tanned bare legs stretched out on a cabana chaise. A mimosa cocktail in her freshly manicured hand, painted to match the colour of her barely there bikini.
And Theodore Nott, her pool boy, in a pair of swim trunks so short, so tight, she can make out every crevice of his body, each muscle and vein that he has buried beneath.
She’s intimately familiar with all parts of him, having traced his lines plenty of times before.
Hermione watches him with a rake in his hand as he gently skims the top layer of the pool water. Nobody actually uses the pool. There’s really nobody to even clean it for.
But she enjoys watching him work.
Theo was made for this time of day, his sun-kissed skin glistening with sweat under the early morning heat. Every single one of his movements is gentle, soft, ever precise. Because he knows she’s watching, and he’s a master at putting on a show.
A tingle appears, the kind that never really goes away, settling between the swell of her legs.
She arches back in her chaise, a finger twirling around the loosened tie of her thong, and takes a long sweet sip of her cocktail. Any remnants left on her lips are licked off only when he looks up at her, sinful eyes dragging along her nearly barren form.
When he smiles that crooked smile, arching to stand, his hand brushing back the tendrils of his fallen hair, she knows the show is just beginning.
The life she lives is a manifesto, the feminist kind written just for herself.
No timid woman ever yearns to marry a man that they don’t love. But Hermione is anything but timid. And one can certainly marry for a life they love, rather than a man. Because a life that affords indulgence, one that allows choice as much as the decisive choice that birthed it, is worth everything.
It means Hermione can take as much as she can get.
Her actual husband graces her with his presence approximately twice a year. For the other three hundred and sixty-three days, she does everything but think about him.
Because she doesn’t love him.
She doesn’t even like him.
One could almost say she loathes every bit of who he is.
But she adores the life she gets to live in his stead.
As Theo moves along the edge of the pool, slowly nearing, she lets her hands rove her body, savouring the sight of all that he is. Soft chestnut curls, always kept long enough to drag her wicked fingers through. Eyes so green one would think the colour was sourced from the palms themselves that line Malibu. A colour she’s taken a particular liking to, especially when he looks at her the way that he does. And a deliciously masculine body, hard edges matched with unjustly smooth lines, and a stride so long that he’s never too far out of reach when she wants him.
The tingle swells. She feels the exact moment it spreads through her limbs, bringing every nerve ending to a blistering edge.
And he’s standing before her the moment it does as if he knows. As if the heat calls to him.
“Hermione,” he says lazily, his tongue rolling over her name with a curl. The motion pulls sunlight into his dimpled cheek and as sweet as his smile is, it’s in outright contrast to his eyes; roving, hungry, ravenous. “Lovely morning, isn’t it?”
The strings of her bikini on her left hip are long undone, scattered to the wayside. She’s got her finger grazing along the lips of her cunt as she traces the lines of his chest.
“Yes,” she croons. “Just lovely.”
Her gaze doesn’t waver from the v-line of his abdomen. She knows with fervent intimacy what exists below the waistband of those trunks.
He flexes his fingers around the pool rake in his grasp. “Do you need a hand today?”
An eager boy, always greedy for his bite. Because he’s a servant of the house–her house–after all. He’s gladly lent more than just hands when she’s needed them.
Hermione feels a trickle of her essence slip out, one she catches and immediately smears between her fingers lest the precious gem goes to waste.
It’s this, her power, that every one of them flocks to.
Theo watches carefully, breath beginning to thicken. But she feels light today, airy, the tingle fluttering against every one of her senses.
She’s always been more than capable of pleasing herself.
And not being part of it makes them all ache and yearn that much more for their turn the next go-around.
“No.” She arches back into her chaise, knees falling open to reveal herself entirely. With her free hand, she gently tweaks a nipple from above the tiny scrap of fabric over it. “Today, you can just watch, darling.”
Theo’s teeth tug at his bottom lip, his eyes flicking down to the tent building in his swim trunks. He stares, thinking, before her sharp intake of air, just as she brushes her swollen clit, calls his attention back to her.
“Gods,” he groans, eyes rolling back before they settle raptly back on her. “What a show.” He palms himself through his trunks, gaze never leaving her body. It’s dangerous and sinful, and everything she loves about the way he always looks at her; as if she’s all that he wants, as if he’s never laid eyes on anything more perfect, as if she’s the entirety of every one of his fantasies. “I’d love to thoroughly enjoy it.”
Hermione laughs before her breath catches, just as she slips two fingers inside her wet and sopping hole.
“I’d be affronted if you didn’t,” she says on a gasp.
She watches him pull his cock out, the way he fists it at the head. Hermione loves to think about all the ways, all the places, in which he’s undone her with it.
Her fingers pump in and out, and the notion of an audience, under the rapture of his stare, makes every push and pull feel that much more sinful, that much more divine.
It isn’t long before the tingle turns into a coil, before it tightens beneath her abdomen, before she begins to see stars beyond her gaze.
Theo watches her, pumping himself slowly, until she tumbles over the edge, the stars exploding. Her back arches, two fingers pushing in and out while the other hand swirls fervently, and she gasps for air, her not-quite-naked body heaving its breaths.
And like the good boy that Theo is, he waits patiently for her to come undone first, before he follows her over the edge, hot seed spilling across his chest.
Hermione’s morning riches, as always, are left dripping with abundance.