32. Chapter 32

The days pass. Rey guards her newfound realization with her life.

It hadn’t come to her as dramatically as she’d expected that something like it would warrant. Although—as far as scenery is concerned, she supposes that any Muggle romance film could do worse than the hills and moorlands of the Isle of Skye. It had been her epiphany that had happened so simply—that had dawned, just like that—as she peeked down at Ben’s head of moonlit dark hair while he covered her body in soft kisses.

I fell in love the way you fall asleep. She’d read that somewhere, but she hadn’t been able to understand it until now. Slowly, and then all at once.

Needless to say, she gets really bloody excellent at Occlumency. It’s almost frightening how quickly she progresses. Even Ben himself is stunned.

“I think that you just might be a natural Occlumens,” he tells her at the end of one session, beaming as much as a man like him can beam.

Rey doesn’t quite have the heart to tell him that what’s natural is someone doing everything they can to protect a secret.

The truth is—while she’s not sure if he feels the same, what she is sure of is that she won’t be able to handle it if he doesn’t.

It’s similar to the time she asked him to give her a taste of what serious Legilimency would be like. There are some things that she’s better of not knowing.

On the twenty-second of February, Ravenclaw beats Slytherin in what is so far the most intense Quidditch match of the season. Jannah throws herself into a fervor for the whole of the next week and the week after that, ceaselessly impressing upon her teammates how vital it is that they develop counterstrategies for all of the new formations that Kazuda Xiono, Ravenclaw’s captain, had devised. She pulls Rey into brainstorming with her and Rey, in turn, spends most of her time with Ben talking about potential tactics when they’re not having sex.

Ever since that night in the Hebrides she’s gotten more comfortable discussing Quidditch stuff with him. Or, well—she is the one doing most of the discussing. Ben just listens, and he never gives any indication that she’s boring him.

There are times when—during a frenzied midnight shag in the Room of Requirement—she gets a brilliant idea right after coming, her mind all relaxed, and she’s drowning him in the babble tap even before he’s rolled off of her. On these occasions, Ben simply wedges his bare arm under her head so that she can use it as a pillow and absentmindedly cards his fingers through her mussed hair while she talks and he listens and she can sense him fighting back his usual post-orgasm drowsiness until she’s done.

It's really nice. They fall into a comfortable sort of routine. And this secret love that she carries in her heart, it grows and grows with each new sunrise, with each new time that she sees him.

With this growing love comes a desire to give him—well, everything. All that she has to offer. She allows him to be rougher in bed when he wants to be. She allows him to be a little more controlling, if that’s what he needs at that particular moment. There’s no act that she won’t say yes to, because her acquiescence is one of the precious few things that she can give.

Even then, her motives aren’t entirely unselfish.

Because she never comes as hard as when she is the sole object of his undivided affections. When she surrenders to the fantasy that she’s the only one who can take being on the receiving end of all his intensity and he will never let her go.

Her bum is, like, permanently red with his handprints these days.

March brings with it slightly milder temperatures, as well as slivers of the first real sunlight that Rey’s seen in a while. At this point in time, she’s so well-disposed toward Ben that she devotes a fair portion of her free time to dreaming up new sexual escapades—sexcapades, as she likes to call them.

This is one of the things she’s gleamed from having no choice but to overhear Tallie and Jess’ conversations throughout the years. Boys—or, well, men—are apparently very simple creatures. It doesn’t take much more than a shag now and then to keep them happy. But, even so, they won’t be content with the same-old-same-old for too long and it’s best to switch it up once in a while. To keep things exciting.

Hence the sexcapades. Which, Rey thinks smugly, have all been very well received so far, if I do say so myself.

One Friday morning after breakfast, as the seventh years are scurrying to their D.A.D.A. class on the third floor of the castle, Rose hands Rey another box of sugar quills from Mr. and Mrs. Tico. And Rey gets what is quite possibly the greatest idea of her life.

She enters Ben’s classroom feeling like she’s walking on air. She’s that giddy.

He’s at his desk, poring over rolls of parchment that he occasionally scratches at with a quill. He doesn’t’ look up as the students start pouring in—only once they’ve all settled down.

He seems a little tired, Rey thinks. She knows that the teachers are busy preparing for the next round of exams and she hasn’t seen him all of this week—which is quite frankly ridiculous, even for a castle as big as Hogwarts. The man really should learn to take his meals in the Great Hall like a normal person.

Also, so that her eyes will be able to eat as well.

“Today we’ll be discussing the legalities of the Unforgivable Curses.” Ben gets to his feet and walks around his desk to stand in front of it. “To be honest, as your very much American professor, I’m not sure if I’m comfortable teaching any aspect of British wizarding law, but the Ministry of Magic requires that one session of the N.E.W.T.-level Defense Against the Dark Arts course be devoted to this subject. Therefore, here we are.” For a moment he seems to be struggling not to roll his eyes. “This will undoubtedly be rehashed in Auror training, for those of you who will pursue that track, but I suppose that a little background in it wouldn’t go amiss for new recruits. So, pay attention.”

He looks every inch like a professor today, even more so than usual. He’s wearing a golden taupe sport coat in herringbone plaid that would have veered faintly toward dweebish if it hadn’t been stretched out over a broad torso that is pure, solid muscle. His collared shirt underneath is white with a blue graph check and his tie and perfectly tailored trousers are blue.

Because this school year is so far continuing to prove that Rey is a bit of a trollop—although most days she just feels like a troll, period—the professorness of Ben’s ensemble is enough to get her, well, going, to not put too fine a point on it.

She tries to be a responsible student of Hogwarts and an upstanding citizen of wizarding Britain for all of fifteen minutes. The operative word here being try. But it’s not long before she gets restless. Not even a proper fittie like Ben can make the Ministry’s particular brand of long-winded legalese more interesting than the life cycle of the common flobberworm.

And it’s so obvious that his heart’s not even in it. His voice is flat, his features are a blank slate. It’s almost like he’s using an extraordinary amount of Occlumency, but why—

Of course.

Talking about the Unforgivables, especially the Imperius Curse, must be hell for him.

She gasps once she realizes it. Loud and sharp. Several nearby students look at her oddly.

Something in Ben’s expression flickers, then closes off again.

He knows that she’s figured it out.

Still, he continues with the lecture. Powering through it, stone-faced. And she thinks that her heart might bleed for him if he’ll let it, and she wants to tell him that they are so much more than their pasts, he’d taught her that, and he has to learn to be kinder to himself, too—

But she can’t say anything now, can she?

Jessika raises a tentative hand in the middle of Ben’s curt recitation. “Professor? So, what you’re saying is that someone can be pardoned even for the most heinous crimes if they show proof of having been Imperiused?”

Ben’s jaw clenches infinitesimally. “That is correct, Miss Pava. However, since Veritaserum is not foolproof, there are cases wherein the crime is especially heinous and few exculpatory evidence is admissible before the Wizengamot outside of eyewitness testimony or the confession—or conviction—of the person who cast the curse.” He flashes the cruelest smirk that Rey has ever seen on his face, particularly cruel because it’s turned on himself. “Those who do not wish to submit to this due process are cowards at best.”

And Rey thinks about how Ben hadn’t needed any form of exculpatory evidence, how he hadn’t even been tried. She thinks about how Leia had taken care of all of it. And she thinks about how Ben must feel like he doesn’t deserve his mother’s grace and all the strings she’d pulled.

But he goes on with his lecture. He holds himself stiffly. All eyes on him and yet Rey’s the only one who can see the cracks in his façade.

She has to do something. She can’t just sit here and continue to let this be one of the worst moments of his life.

But what can she do?

She remembers the plan that she’d come up with and she wonders if she dares to put it into motion, given the circumstances.

And then she decides that yes, she does.

Because it’s all so bloody stupid, isn’t it, Ben having to talk about this and having to pretend that nothing’s wrong. Just to fulfill the wishes of a bunch of doddering bureaucrats.

Bugger this for a lark, yeah?

She shrugs out of her stuffy black school robes, folding them haphazardly beside her. This is unremarkable in itself, because Ben is one of the few professors who’s not a stickler for proper dress code. She retrieves the box of sugar quills from her book bag, then plucks one out. She takes a few halfhearted notes, concentrating on the beloved sound of Ben’s voice rather than what he’s actually saying.

After a decent amount of time has passed, she crosses her legs and pops the tip of the crystalline feather-shaped confection into her mouth.

He’d already told her that she’s not allowed to do this. He’d been so darkly angry when he said it, back in the early days. Because she’d distracted him while he was lecturing.

Well. There’s just something about fate that begs to be tempted. A thrill of anticipation swims pleasantly through her core.

Rey sucks on the sugar quill with all the nonchalance that she can muster as she stares down at her scrap of parchment, sneaking glances at Ben every once in a while. He is speaking with one hand in his pocket while he leans against the front of the teacher’s desk, his gaze slowly roving over the assembled students with the solemn haughtiness that she knows by now is self-defense. As that gaze moves in her direction, she looks down again before their eyes can meet.

“For all of the aforementioned reasons,” Ben says, “generous usage of the Imperius Curse is a favored tactic of dark wizards as much as it is the first line of defense for any wizard who has been caught by the relevant authorities—um. Er.”

He clears his throat.

Rey bites back a smile.

Nonchalant.

She has to be nonchalant.

She pops the candy out of her mouth and swirls her tongue over the curved point of it before slipping it back in. Acting like she’s doing so without a care in the world.

Ben clears his throat.

That, in itself, Rey considers as a minor victory.

“As I was saying.” His tone is sharper now. Sharp enough that her breath catches. “There have been several cases wherein the accused have submitted being placed under Imperio as testament to their innocence. We will now review them and the ensuing verdicts.”

And he talks and he talks, and she sucks, and she imagines that it’s him she’s sucking, and how nice it is that she can make him lose his train of thought every now and then, whenever her tongue darts out to lap at the sugar grains. How nice it is that she can help him forget about his lecture hitting a little too close to home. She savors the sweetness. She savors the secrets—because it can be good, when it’s like this. All eyes on him and he would only look at her, if he could.

Her thighs squeeze together under her pleated skirt, the apex of them deliciously damp.

“Right. Let’s move on to Cruciatus.”

Rey looks up from her frankly illegible and nonsensical notes just in time to catch Ben glancing away from her. To her immense satisfaction, his hands reach up to loosen his tie even as he speaks. On the surface, the gesture is casual. She alone knows the reason for it.

And it makes her a little braver. She stares at him. She gives him her utmost attention, her lips pursed around the sugar quill, while he discusses the legal ramifications of being found guilty of using what is known as the Torture Curse. She waits until he turns toward her side of the classroom again before tilting her head slightly and licking a wet stripe up the side of the confection, from base to tip.

“If the victim is provably driven to insanity, the penalty is therefore harsher, and—”

Their gazes meet and hold, and he stops talking.

He just stops. Plain and simple.

His eyes are so, so dark.

Only then does she allow herself to flash him a smile, small and demure, before plunging the tip of the confection back into her mouth and sucking deliberately, peering at him through her lashes.

“Er, Professor Solo?” someone prompts, and in all honesty Rey has no idea who it is, and she doesn’t care. There is only Ben. “Everything all right, sir?”

“No,” Ben growls, still staring at Rey.

At least she has the good sense to stop giving the quill a nosh before anyone can catch on, whipping it out of her mouth and ducking her head and very studiously taking notes.

She feels rather than sees her teacher’s burning eyes sliding away from her.

“I apologize,” he snaps to the rest of the seventh years. “I’m not feeling well. Let’s call it a day.”

Rey’s classmates are understandably bewildered, but it’s not like there’s anyone who would complain about an excruciatingly dry lecture ending thirty minutes before it actually should. They pack up their things and get to their feet, chatting excitedly about what to do with this spate of unexpected free time.

Rey very casually does not put her black robes back on over her uniform. There’s no point. She’s just going to have to take them off again, anyway.

But she does make a show of folding them over her arm as she starts to walk with Finn and Rose…

“Miss Niima,” Ben calls over the hubbub, “don’t think that I didn’t notice you eating candy when you should have been listening. In lieu of an actual detention, you can stay behind and help me organize my papers.”

Rey would normally hate to be singled out like this and chastised in front of everyone, but Ben sounds so very stern. And she is so very wet.

Finn grimaces at her. “Rotten luck, mate.”

“I know.” Rey fakes an aggrieved sigh. She nods at him and a sympathetic-looking Rose. “Go on, then. I’ll see you later.”

Rey stands by the door and waves her friends off, trying not to bounce on her heels as she impatiently waits for all of the other students to leave the classroom. After several minutes have passed, when the hallway is deserted, she closes the door and turns around to the sound of magical locks clicking into place, her lips stretching into a mischievous grin—

—that turns into a soft squeak. Ben’s right in front of her. Inches away. His hands crossed in front of his chest. His expression so thunderous that it makes her think for a second that she’d gone too far.

But it’s only for a second. Upon getting a closer look, there is hunger written all over his face. His dark eyes hold a deadly promise, as though he is a wolf that has caught her scent on the wind.

“Miss Niima.” He says it like it’s a prayer and a curse all at once, and her pulse spikes. “What was that?”

Rey blinks. The picture of innocence. “What was what, sir?”

He reaches out a hand, burying it in the buns of her hair. Tugging so that she’ll tilt her chin up. So that his stony gaze can search her face.

It’s a little rough. And a whole lot exciting.

“I already told you.” His voice is low and dangerous. “You’re not allowed to suck on sugar quills while I’m lecturing. But you did it anyway.”

“Oh,” she scrapes out. Her mind all swimmy. “I’m sorry, professor. I forgot.”

“No, I don’t think you did.” His fingers tighten their grip and, in response, so does the coil of arousal in her abdomen. “You knew exactly what you were doing, I believe. You wanted to distract me.”

She bites her lower lip, looking up at him with wide eyes.

And that’s when the barest hint of a lopsided, affectionate smile flickers along the hard line of his mouth. She’s about to take the piss out on him for breaking character, but he’s quick to disguise it with an elegant, disdainful scoff.

“Poor little Miss Niima. So hot for her teacher’s cock. Couldn’t even wait until class was over.” His voice is so silky now. It wraps around her. It floods through her like a drug. “Just had to tease me with a piece of fucking candy.”

With his free hand, Ben undoes the buttons of her blouse. Popping them loose one by one, so silently and so clinically that Rey forgets how to exhale. Once her shabby, pale pink bra is exposed, he shoves it down to expose her breasts, and then he pinches her left nipple.

She cries out, her knees buckling. She grabs at his arm for support.

But he is unmoved. He stimulates her breasts while his other hand continues to gently but firmly pull at her hair, and it’s not long before her breath is coming out in ragged pants and her arousal is leaking down her thigh. She honestly thinks that she can come just from this, as long as he keeps looking at her like that while he touches her like that—

Then he releases her and steps away.

“W—what—” she starts to falter, extremely turned on and extremely unsatisfied. “Professor—”

“I am very busy.” Ben sits back down behind his desk. He picks up his quill and starts going through the rolls of parchment once more. “There are a dozen essays that I need to finish grading before my next class.”

Rey is apoplectic. She stands there, glaring at his rugged profile, her tits out and her fists clenched at her sides.

It is not nice to receive a taste of one’s own medicine.

Another faint smile threatens to lift the corner of Ben’s mouth. “You can run along now, Miss Niima,” he hums, not even looking up from his task. “Or you can come here and suck my cock just like you sucked on that sugar quill.”

There had never really been any question of what Rey would end up choosing. Still, she tries her best to not appear too eager as she walks over to him, her desire to wipe all of that impassive sternness off of his face so tangible that she can almost taste it.

Ben is utterly fixated on his work. He doesn’t so much as glance at her as she crawls under his desk, although he moves his chair back a little to give her more room. She gets as comfortable as she can between his legs, the cold, hard floor biting into her bare knees.

He is not entirely unaffected. The considerable bulge in his trousers makes that clear. She actually has a bit of a difficult time unzipping him because of it, and she snorts as her fingers fumble with the fly that he is stretched against.

“That really is your fault, you know,” Ben sniffs, for a moment sounding genuinely aggrieved.

“I know,” Rey coos in the sweetest, most conciliatory tone that she’s capable of. It can’t have been easy for him to teach while fighting back a stiffy, even if she’d only given him one so that it could take his mind off of a subject that brought with it a wealth of horrid memories. A quick blowjob after class is the least she can do for him.

She finishes unzipping him and pushes his underwear down. His erection springs into view; it would have poked her eye out if she hadn’t dodged at the last possible second. It is as rigid as a board, flushed pink, already leaking a clear bead of precome. Once again she gets that rush to the head that can only be borne from knowing what she can do to him, plain and lonely girl that she is, and she allows herself a smile before lavishing him with long licks and slow kisses.

He tastes amazing and he smells so heady. She wraps her fist around his base, her eyes fluttering shut at how her fingers can barely encircle him. She seals her wet lips around his tip, giving it a gentle suck.

He doesn’t react.

There is no sound but that of the quill scratching on parchment.

Rey scrunches up her nose in determination. She opens her mouth a little wider, she slips him in a whole lot deeper. She sucks and she swirls her tongue and she pumps her fist, until finally she is rewarded by Ben’s sharp intake of breath from above.

And then she closes her eyes and just enjoys it, settling into the rhythm that she knows he likes, her free hand wandering beneath her pleated skirt and moving up to rub her swollen clit through her drenched knickers, angling her body so that her exposed right breast scrapes against the rough material of his trouser leg.

Soon Ben’s left hand has snaked under his desk, pushing at the back of her head in wordless command. Rey steels herself and lets her jaw go slack, and with a snap of his hips he slides in until he’s almost hitting the back of her throat.

She gags.

“Christ,” Ben mutters. The scratches of his quill are furious now. She hears him shuffling parchment around haphazardly. “Your hot little mouth—”

Rey preens at the compliment. She leans forward, working him in earnest. Licking and sucking like she’s been gifted the best and biggest sugary candy ever. If anyone were to look into the classroom now, they’d only see Professor Solo busily marking essays. They’d have no idea that there’s a student hidden beneath the table, her head bobbing up and down on his cock.

They’d have no idea that it’s her, that she’s the only one for him in moments like these.

Her fingers quicken their pace at her clit. She moans around him as she feels herself start to crest.

“Are you going to come, Miss Niima?” Ben asks her quietly. “Going to come from sucking your professor off under his desk?”

Rey attempts to nod, before remembering that she’s got Ben’s dick in her mouth and he can’t see her, in any case. “Yes,” she groans out around him.

He pushes at the back of her head again. This time holding her gently and so still against his lap, her nose buried in the wiry hair at his groin. She gags again, a few tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes as her approaching orgasm begins to ring in her ears, and he rocks his hips in an upward motion against her face. Ever so slowly, ever so tenderly, like he’s afraid that she might break even as he fucks into her mouth.

It's an overload of sensations. Her fingers on her fabric-covered clit, her nipple pebbled against his trouser leg, his hard, thick length pulsating within the muscles of her throat. Her eyes cross and she tumbles headlong into a shivery, hard-won release, her gasp of delight causing her throat to constrict around him.

“Should have known you’d get yourself off while choking on my cock.” Ben sounds both exasperated and amused, even if it’s through gritted teeth. “This was supposed to be your punishment. Bad girl. Now swallow. Every drop.”

With one last thrust of his hips, he finishes inside her mouth, the taste of his warm come drenching her tongue. She gulps it all down. Like it’s water in the desert. He sighs like he’s pouring his soul into her.

✨✨✨

Rey’s mind is still a pleasant haze from her orgasm when Ben tucks himself back into his trousers and hauls her up to sit on his lap. She nuzzles into his chest as he runs a soothing hand down her spine. She feels so content that she wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d started purring.

He presses a kiss to the top of her head, tightening his embrace until she is surrounded by him, by the heat coming off of his body and his sandalwood scent. The tension that had seeped into his frame at the beginning of the lecture is completely gone, and it’s as though he’s collapsing into her. Around her.

“Thank you,” he mumbles into her hair. “I—”

He pauses.

“Mmm?” Rey prompts, lifting her head to blink up at him.

“Nothing.” He slants his mouth over hers in a languid kiss, nibbling on her lower lip before pulling away to smile faintly down at her.

She cards her fingers through his hair. Up close, he bears the pallor that he always does when he hasn’t gotten much sleep the night before.

“Are you terribly busy these days?” she asks.

He nods. “In addition to the usual paperwork, there is a certain—artifact that Plutt discovered in one of the storage rooms. I’m inspecting it for possible curses that I’ll then need to break. It’s very old and the magical signature is tangled.”

Her ears prick up with interest. “What sort of artifact is it, then?”

Ben studies her features for a while. Then his thumb traces along her cheek in a pattern that she soon realizes is him mapping out her freckles. A hint of boyish mischief glints in his solemn dark eyes. “Do you want to see it?”

Rey looks at him suspiciously. “This mysterious artifact wouldn’t happen to be your dick now, would it?”

He chucks her under the chin, the corners of his lips twitching. “Hardly. It’s a mirror. Come by my office on Sunday night and I’ll show you.”