𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐒, james potter

48. all we are is skin and bone

warning: sexual content

JAMES NUDGES HER thigh with his hand without looking over at her.

She furrows her eyebrows, glancing at him from the corner of her eye before noticing the folded-up piece of paper in his hand. Subtly, so no one else can see, she grabs the paper with two fingers.

She unfolds it and looks down to read it.

Meet me in the Head Boy's room tonight?

She bites her lip to stop herself from smiling.

She doesn't answer him or even turn to look at him. Out of her peripheral vision, she sees him frowning. He keeps tapping her leg and nudging her shoulder to get her answer.

But she doesn't give it.

When class ends, she leaves and spares him one glance before disappearing into her next class. She knows that he knows she will be there tonight. She just likes messing with him.

The day passes by excruciatingly slowly as the anticipation of what is going to happen when she gets to James's room seeps through her. She's giddy with excitement and plagued by the desire for him.

They keep stealing glances at each other all throughout dinner in the Great Hall.

Every time they make eye contact, James smiles suggestively and Nesrin blushes or she brings her ice cream dessert to her lips and swipes her tongue across it ever so slowly which makes James's eyes darken.

If it's possible to burn someone with one's gaze, Nesrin would be ash a thousand times over.

At around eleven at night, Nesrin sneaks out of the Slytherin common room and quietly makes her way to the Gryffindor Head Boy room.

The door is unlocked when she gets there, so she carefully lets herself in and casts an anti-alohomora charm on the lock so no one can get in.

She treks across the room and around the corner.

She sees James sitting in bed, night lamp on, glasses discarded on the table next to him, book in his hands, staring down at the words.

It takes a second for her eyes to catch the title of the book.

Anna Karenina.

It is suddenly unusually hard for her to breathe.

He looks up, his hazel eyes settling on hers. His gaze trails down her body painfully slow, burning her skin in the most intimate way possible. When he meets her eyes again, his chest is rising more rapidly than before. He pats the spot on the bed next to him and gestures for her to come over.

She walks to the side of the bed, lifting the duvet and coming to sit beside him. He pulls her into his side and she leans her head against his shoulder.

"Hi," she whispers even though they are completely alone and no one would be able to hear them even if they put their ears against the door.

She feels him smile against her temple. "Hi."

She curls further into his body, desperate for the warmth only he can provide.

"Are you really reading Anna Karenina?"

His laugh is deep and Nesrin can feel it vibrate throughout her entire body.

Instead of replying to her question, he reads out the part of the book he was on.

"He felt that the love that bound him to Anna was not a momentary impulse, which would pass, as worldly intrigues do pass, leaving no other traces in the life of either but pleasant or unpleasant memories. He felt all the torture of his own and her position, all the difficulty there was for them, conspicuous as they were in the eye of all the world, in concealing their love, in lying and deceiving; and in lying, deceiving, feigning, and continually thinking of others, when the passion that united them was so intense that they were both oblivious of everything else but their love."