If Paths Diverge

Chapter 45

Voldemort's eyes devoured the boy. He was thinner than he remembered, paler, and his long hair lacked the lustre it held when regularly cleaned.

Exquisite.

The boy was more perfect than he had allowed himself to remember.

"Voldemort."

His name, a whispered caress on the lips of that elusive being. He felt his body move closer, drawn like a planet by the sun, wanting to touch, to realign. To recapture the peace he had lost. The need was almost violent in its intensity. His chest ached and his fingers twitched.

Harry made a strangled sound in his throat and immediately Voldemort lost control.

His magic flared out, blinding in its impatience and he found himself suddenly clutching the boy, tearing at his clothing, biting and sucking every inch of skin he uncovered, growling from his desperation to repossess, to remind Harry that this was breath and life and the only nourishment they would ever require.

Harry yielded to him with anguished sobs, allowing Voldemort to lift him and carry him to the boy's bedroom. Leaning down, he placed the treasured figure upon the comforter and then helplessly followed, his body covering the quivering, clinging form, seizing the salty lips and rejoicing at the homecoming he received.

The fingers on one of his hands gently tangled in the long black locks while the others slid impatiently down that trembling body, needing to touch the solid heat that pressed against him.

He groaned when he reached his goal, the boy crying out and panting wetly against his chest. He stroked the silken flesh a few times and then freed himself, unable to wait another moment.

When he breached the boy, their foreheads connected and they opened their eyes. Wide, trusting, shimmering orbs met his and he was unable to look away as he began to thrust into the maddening, blissful heat.

They were silent in this for the first time and the absence of words was alarming in the clarity it brought. He saw Harry fully. His fear and his longing, his lust and his guilt. Voldemort tasted the other men Harry had been with on his lips, every single one of them bitter and acrid on his tongue, but he made himself take notice so that he could absorb every nuance of the boy beneath him.

Every secret, every flaw.

Harry's nails scratched down his back and spectres threatened to overcome him, but Harry's scent kept him present, kept him safe.

They moved together, surrendering to this moment, this one perfect moment before everything would fall apart, before the boy learned the truth and despised him, before they bowed to merciless inevitability.

When Harry's cries began to grow in pitch and torment, when his own delirious movements became fiercer and his mind tunnelled down to Harry's face, he sent his magic through his hand wrapped around the boy's rigid cock and released him finally from the curse he had placed there so many years previously.

He watched Harry's mouth drop open, his pupils dilate, and then the boy was spasming in his arms, gripping him with hands like claws, but Voldemort could not be drawn away from cataloging every flavour of the boy's climax, knowing it was the last one he would ever get to witness.

His own fall came moments later, his body freezing forward, head finally bowing to burrow in the boy's neck, pressing silent words and apologies against the throbbing of blood under the fluttering skin.

One last gasp of sublimity before the close.

~*~