Skin Of Pure Ice

chapter five

I swore to the gods.

I could feel my face lose its color and my body became ill. I tried my hardest not for him to see it but I could never hide what I was feeling because my facial expressions exposed it all. Every last bit of emotion.

Narcissa glanced at me for merely a second before she turned back to look at her son. "What time does he expect our arrival?" Her voice was calm and I was surprised. But yet again, she has done this a million times now.

"A quarter after five," He informed and Narcissa's eyes gazed over everything to find the nearest clock figuring out how much time they had.

Narcissa only nodded in her response while I just stood there utterly frozen. The air couldn't flow to my lungs and it stopped when the feeling of him standing there hit me again.

Go to him, go to him.

Be with him.

You need him.

He is yours.

The voices were screaming at me. Gnawing at me to move, touch him, feel him— Taste him. But I didn't dare take a step. He rolled his shoulders back as if to stretch, the blood glowing in the sunlight that hit the garden beside us.

He bowed his head to his mother and his mother only. I felt the yearning leave when he left as well. A weight lifted off my tight chest, pounding in my heart came to a halt, and I could breathe.

I shove down those thoughts with a long, deep breath that makes me slightly light-headed.

"I'd like to go back to my room," I told Narcissa.

"Yes."

* * *

I paced back and forth in my room, the walls closing in on me. Narcissa told me that she would be gone for no second more than an hour, giving me just enough time to panic and grasp onto the toilet bowl I could now call a new friend.

I let the dinner flow out of me and when I stood up, I couldn't look myself in the mirror. I could see my ribs and could see my heartbeat almost.

I had become a small deer and Malfoy was my predator. Seeking me out, waiting to pounce. My body crawled with the thoughts of him and me. It would be any day now that he would get on top of me. No warning, no chance for me to get away. My mind would go blank and I wouldn't dare scream.

I reached for the bowl again. It was a pattern. Get up, think it's over, think too much, and whatever I had left of me poured out into the bowl.

When I finally stopped, for good, someone knocked on the door. I jumped and said, "Enter!" Terrified of who it might be.

I saw the boots before I saw anything else and then the blond hair that I had seen too many times and now it makes my head spin. His face was the last thing I gazed upon. The blood was gone, he forgot a spot near his ear, but I didn't care as much as I had before.

We looked at each other for several moments. The first time we have been in the same room as each other without an audience and we say nothing. Just long stares and he opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but then shut it.

"Y- Yes?" My lips trembled.

Would this be the time?

His face cringed only slightly like he could read my thoughts. I wondered if I actually said it aloud.

He took a step forward and I flinched back.

"I'm not going to hurt you." He said quietly. "I wouldn't hurt you."