Hermione need not have worried herself about planning a reception. The Weasleys were more than happy to disperse noisily and reconvene at the Burrow, and in a matter of tick tocks, tables were set up in the yard and a full blown celebration was in swing. Hermione shook her head as she watched food being thrown together, drinks hauled out of the house, and organic decorations make their way into the trees. She let out a little amazed laugh, delighted. What seemed like chaos cleared, and there was actually a pretty good spread set on the table, music playing, and a happy couple enjoying a party.

Hermione let the joy of the occasion wash over her and smiled softly at her friends. Harry felt her eyes on him and glanced about until he noticed her and waved her over. Ginny saw her coming and leapt up to her feet to give an enthusiastic hug. "I thought I'd just have to wait to have a decent wedding, but you worked a miracle! Thank you. Thank you so much. Nothing could have been more perfect. Thank you so much!"

Hermione shrugged off the enthusiastic thanks by telling her friend what a beautiful bride she was and inserted herself into the group where a heated debate was taking place. Harry didn't want to open the envelope that Malfoy had given him. Ginny felt it was rude to discard it, especially in regards to Malfoy's 'relationship' with Hermione. Charlie was explaining that the Malfoys were known for their extravagant wedding gifts to everyone; apparently, Bill and Fluer had received a diamond encrusted tea set that had been liquidated to make a down payment on their house.

"He hasn't singled you out specifically for bribery," Ron added. "They give everyone in the wizarding world an obnoxious gift at weddings and births. They like showing off how rich they are in the most passive aggressive, snobbish way possible."

Hermione ended the debate by reaching over and plucking the envelope from Harry's fingers, opening it in one fluid no nonsense movement. "You can always return it if it's inappropriate," she began before trailing off as she read the handwritten note.

'McGonagall has already approved your school absence. Bon Voyage.'

Inside the envelope were two tickets for a suite aboard the Royal Wizarding Arcadia for a ten day luxury cruise to Hawaii.

Hermione silently handed the envelope's contents over, and Ginny snatched them out of Harry's hands. "We are NOT giving these back!" She squealed excitedly, jumping up and down waving them about. "I need to find my bathing suit," she declared, rushing away, the tickets held protectively to her chest.

Harry's angry scowl had only gotten more pronounced. "I don't think we should be taking extravagant gifts from the sodding Malfoys," he declared, taking a few steps in Ginny's direction before Ron stopped him.

"Do you really want to ruin your wedding day by telling your new wife she can't go on honeymoon over ethics?" he asked with one of those rare insights that made him so good at chess.

Hermione thought Harry's frustrated growl was adorable.

It took all of Hermione's willpower not to take a page out of Harry's book and growl at these stupid lawyers. Instead she took a deep breath and tried again.

"I understand your premise," she said calmly. "Repeating yourselves without acknowledging my statement is counterproductive to moving this meeting forward."

She picked up the agenda the lawyers had brought with them and shook it for emphasis. "It's not that I fail to grasp your 13 point plan; the problem is that I don't agree with it."

"Miss Granger," said the smarmy, handsome head mouthpiece who had been doing most of the talking, giving her a toothy smile that was so completely fake that it ought to be on a dentist commercial. "As we have explained, it is not likely or possible to completely overturn the law. There is precedent, there are grounds, and this law has the overwhelming support of the Wizenmongot. We can't overturn the law because it offends you. What we can do is challenge individual pieces of the law, get those clauses modified, thus rendering the law ineffectual and useless."

"And I've explained to you that is unacceptable," Hermione snapped, slapping the useless agenda down on the table. "It is not okay to let this law remain on the books in any capacity. It must be completely repealed and deemed unlawful. Otherwise, we create a precedent for future invasive legislation of this nature."

She took a calming breath and went on in a more reasonable tone. "We might win this particular battle only to set us up to lose the war later. What's to stop Kingley or future Ministers of Magic from proposing other outrageous laws and pointing to this one as an example of why this is acceptable? We must set limits on governmental overreach in people's personal lives! There is more at stake here than our individual concerns."

The lawyer sighed, glanced around the table for support, and tried to explain to her yet again how she was wrong. Hermione dropped her head down into her hands, rubbing her temples in an attempt to stave off a headache. She was going to need a lie down after this meeting.

Hermione left the meeting late and in a huff. After all of the back and forth about Malfoy's lawyers' fundamentally flawed challenge to the law, it was decided that they didn't need to be in agreement right this minute.

Give the government an inch and they would try to take a mile. Case in point, the Ministry had attempted to launch additional legislation first thing that morning mandating that unauthorized pregnancies should be terminated in response to the Potter stunt. However, luckily, they were unable to sneak it into law because they were short on the votes needed to pass and they had entered into a debate phase giving citizens a chance to protest and lobby to have the ridiculous law thrown out.

Obviously this new nasty law took precedent for several reasons. One, forced terminations of pregnancies would affect people permanently and immediately whereas the marriage law had three months of breathing room. Secondly, since the law had not been passed it would be much easier to block than having a current law repealed. And thirdly, and most importantly in Hermione's opinion, the notion that the government could enact any law they felt like on a whim needed to be slapped down hard and viciously. One day termination of a magical pregnancy is a crime and the next it's required? Madness. Where to draw the line needed to be established immediately.

Hermione took some comfort in the fact that blocking this downright evil law actually had both pureblood and mainstream support. It was a relief to know that the entire wizarding world had not completely lost their sanity. Also encouraging, according to Malfoy's lawyers, this proposal had severely damaged Kinglseys reputation and lost him a lot of support. She needed all the encouragement she could get. Her lawyer had told her that her lawsuit would be more for publicity than anything else so she had really been counting on Malfoy's lawyers and their stupid 13 point law challenge.

The team had an aggressive attack strategy against the termination law that had been proposed and had already filed petitions and briefs and were planning press conferences. She felt reasonably confident that this law would be stalled permanently and never be enacted. Still, Hermione refused to have anything positive to say about that slimy pack of condescending leeches. They wouldn't even acknowledge how the new termination law proposed by the Ministry was a perfect example of overreach that needed to be curbed.

Wankers.

Frustrated and hungry, Hermione didn't immediately notice that there was something off with the click of her heels on the empty hallway as she hurried down the corridor towards the stairs that would lead to Gryffindor tower. She just wanted to get to her dorm and borrow notes, catch up with her homework, and get ready to get back to classes in the morning. It wasn't until her steps faltered a bit as she went over the meeting in her head for the hundredth time that she heard a faint echo to her step that sounded out of time. Careful not to change her pace further or give any indication that she had noticed something, she made a left hand turn, changing her direction, and heard the hesitation in her follower's step again. She sped up just a bit like she was in a hurry to get to the Great Hall to give herself a bit of a lead. The steps trailing her quickened with just a half second lag. Hermione sprung into action, activating her wand holster and casting wordlessly as she dropped to the floor in one smooth motion.

Hermione felt her magic collide with an invisible someone a dozen steps behind her before there was a male grunt and the sound of someone collapsing in response to her Stupify. She rolled quickly, keeping herself a moving target and cast up and down the hall to see if there were multiple invisible people even as she created a magical force field around her captive and hit him with an Immobulus. Relatively certain she had eliminated other threats, she still did a revealing spell both behind and in front of her before casting on her sprawled captive and magically removing the cloak that had rendered him invisible.

Huddled on the floor, twisted up from his fall, was a sandy haired man dressed all in black, clutching his useless wand half raised. She summoned his wand and used magic to jerk him to his feet.

"Why are you following me?" she hissed, loosening her magical hold just enough for him to move his tongue and speak.

"Please, Miss, I mean you no harm!" the man cried, trembling against her magic. "My name is Frank Houston, and I've been engaged as your personal bodyguard."

"A bodyguard who sneaks around behind me, wearing an invisibility cloak, without my knowledge?" she scoffed, wondering the best way to transport him to Professor McGonagall's office for interrogation.

"I had planned to stay out of sight and not bother you until you were alone in your room so I could introduce myself undetected," he informed, much calmer. He gave her a giddy smile. "I must say, Miss Granger, it's an honor to have been stunned by you. I'd heard you were fierce, but the legend does not do you justice. I'll be proud to be your bodyguard for as long as you require my services."

"What kind of moron would hire you to stalk me invisibly and sneak into my private chambers?" she asked, a sneaking suspicion forming in her mind.

"Please don't hold it against me, Miss Granger, but I've been recruited by Draco Malfoy. And a point of clarification: I was NEVER to step foot inside your chambers for any reason on point of death...I planned to knock on your door." At her stunned silence he continued. "I am also never to interfere with you or your activities, speak about anything I observe, and keep invisible at all times in public so as not to draw attention to the fact that protection has been secured for you."

Son of a bitch.

Hermione could hear the rowdy music and commotion from the hallway and frowned. It was a well after curfew. It only took her four tries to guess the password, so predictable. As she suspected, she was greeted by a full on party when she entered the Slytherin common room. The carousing students didn't even have the decency to scramble around pretending that they were studying or sleeping when she burst into the room. They simply glanced at her and continued dancing, drinking, laughing. She smelled cigarettes and maybe something else a little more troubling and had to push her way through the crowd in search.

This was not improving her mood. Finally, she managed to spot him, leaning against a chair, laughing with his friends in front of one of the huge blazing fireplaces. Still dressed in blue from the wedding, he hadn't bothered to change clothes. But where as before he had been buttoned up tight, he had now shed his robes, pushed up his sleeves, undone his collar, let his hair fall into his eyes. The effect was devastatingly handsome, and her stomach dropped alarmingly when he noticed her and gave her that breathtaking smile he had been aiming her way lately.

That wouldn't be working on her tonight. She was quite furious with him. Thank you very much.

"Well, well, well...the woman of the hour." He pushed off the chair he had been leaning against and came to his full height, snagging a second drink off the coffee table to bring it to her in his usual swift way. "I didn't think you would come or I would have invited you. My apologies."

He had been drinking again, the scent of strong spirits mingling with the mint on his breath, his eyes not as sharp and cutting as they usually were, his smile just barely skewed.

"Why on earth would you invite me to a Slytherin party?" she asked, accepting the glass of God knew what just to have something to do with her hands while her brain short circuited at his sudden proximity and apparent pleasure at her presence.

"It's not a Slytherin party, it's our engagement party; we just figured the Golden Gryffs would be too stuck up to come," he let out a laugh at his pathetic slur and took a quick drink of his own glass. Something about the way that he said the word 'our' rolled around in her stomach, creating a weird butterfly sensation.

Hermione deliberately set her glass aside, keeping her expression firm and making it clear she hadn't arrived to crash his stupid party. "I'm not here because Slytherins will use any excuse to throw a party. I'm here to talk about Frank Houston."

"Who's that then? Does he go here?" One long finger reached out and touched the rose still tucked behind her ear, and Hermione pulled back sharply, more startled than offended.

"Don't play coy with me! You know damn well who Frank Houston is, and we need to discuss it right now!" she snapped.

His lips turned up in that sardonic way of his, and suddenly, Hermione was aware of the people standing about staring. The music rolled on, loud and rautious, but several people had diverted their attention to her and Draco. Self consciousness washed over her, and she felt a blush rising like the tide, and the need to flee kicked her in the gut. Inadvertently, she made eye contact with Pansy Parkinson of all people, and the downright knowing smirk on her face was just too much. Did these people think that her and Malfoy were in a real relationship? Did they think this was a lovers spat?

Before she could stop herself, Hermione was grabbing Malfoy's hand and dragging him through the crowd. She had half expected him to pull away and laugh and tease her. She wasn't really prepared for a Malfoy who gripped her hand lightly and let himself be tugged along. She almost instantly regretted her action since they were so far from the door and more and more people were being bumped aside and turning to stare at the spectacle of her dragging the Prince of Slytherin, clearly willingly, to somewhere private. What must they think? But she had to push on, the course was already set. She risked a glance over her shoulder and was further embarrassed to see Pansy and Zabini laughing at them. Pansy gave a little waggle of her fingers and Hermione quickened her pace in her rush to get away. It seemed like it took five hours to get to the door, and she was breathing quite heavily and acutely aware of Malfoy's long, strong fingers wrapped around her nervous hand.

She pushed out the door, spinning to face him, and jerking her hand loose as if she wasn't the one who had initiated the hand holding in the first place. Her hand was warm and tingly, and she was all wound up emotionally, bouncing between fury, embarrassment; and the weird awareness of him that seemed to dominate every encounter they had.

"You don't have to make up some barmy excuse to see me. If you wanted me all to yourself, all you had to do is ask." He leaned up against the now bare expanse of wall where the door to the Slytherin common room hid behind a magic password. His long black lashes swept down framing storm swept eyes as he gave her a deliberate and slow once over.

"Excuse me, what are you?...why?...I'm not making this up to get you alone, you insane egomaniac!" Hermione stomped her foot in frustration. Why? Why did he have this effect on her? It was insane! He should have no effect on her whatsoever. She should be completely indifferent to him. No matter how good he smelled, or how good he looked, or how it made her feel to have him tower over her looking down on her like she was the most delicious treat he'd ever been tempted with. He was just a boy. And not a very nice boy at that. He was a boy she was very mad at. Inconvenient engagement aside, he was just someone she was working with to accomplish a very important goal. She ought to be able to keep emotions and hormones completely separate from a working relationship.

"Right. You have to talk to me in the middle of night about this Frank character so badly you burst into the Slytherin common room. This has nothing to do with needing to take the edge off the Binding Spell." He let out a dry sardonic laugh and twisted his lips at her, clearly believing her to be chasing after him. But why would he think she would suddenly be interested?

Because he knew something, she realised. He knew something about the spell he hadn't told her, and he wasn't at all surprised to find her breathless and flushed in his presence.

"The Binding Spell?" Hermione gave his chest a good firm poke, relieving just a little of her bottled up tension. He was going to talk. And she knew his achilles heel; he had had plenty to drink, and if she pushed him hard enough, he'd spill all his secrets. "You assured me that the Binding Spell was nothing but loyalty and protection spells. Why would I need relief from a Binding Spell?"

"Are you going to sit there and lie straight to my face that you are having no side effects from a spell that rocked me to my magical core? I know you are feeling this, too!" And just like that he was just as worked up as she was, face flushed, eyes flashing.

Good. If she was going to be inflicted with this awful tension, then he ought to be equally affected. Rocked him, did she? Well, she shouldn't have! This was a business arrangement.

"But why? You said it was a pure binding, but there must have been something else. A lust or a connection or attraction spell…"

She trailed off embarrassed at his lewd grin. He was looking at her in that way again. Like he had at the Manor. Like she was some piece of delectable chocolate and he was going to gobble her up. His moods were mercurial, and she couldn't keep up with the lightning fast shifts.

"Lust?" he prompted, and she gave him another poke in his firm flesh.

Her magical nerve endings were awake and aware, the energy between them arcing and splicing and amplifying every feeling she was having, and it made her feel wild and reckless beneath her facade of self control. She wanted to slap him. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to run back to her room and hide from this insane situation.

"You know what I mean," she answered primly, drawing her back up straight and giving him her best 'drop it' look.

"No, I don't know," he drawled, straightening up to mirror her and taking a step in her direction that felt almost predatory.

She suppressed a shiver that started at the top of her curly head and worked it's way all the way down to her toes in the space of a heartbeat.

"I'm not in your skin. Why don't you tell me," he murmured, his eyes focusing on her lips, hungry and heavy lidded. Her mind immediately replayed every steamy moment of her dreams and desire spiked through her pooling down low in her middle with a low warm throb.

"Damn it, Malfoy," Hermione balled up her fists to keep herself from poking him again or grabbing his shirt and hauling him closer.

He was the one who had been drinking, and yet she was the one who wanted to spill all her secrets between them.

"You were there," he went on in an almost teasing tone, taking another step in her direction and officially entering her personal space. She wanted to step back; she wanted to step closer. He was a walking contradiction, and her reaction to him was just as paradoxical. "There was nothing in any of the spells we undertook to make you feel or think anything. So whatever this is that you are feeling was there before we cast."

There was that word choice again. We. Our. That feeling of being in this together was far too tempting. She had to remember that Malfoy's goals were not her goals, and she had no idea of his true motivations. He begged for her trust and then went behind her back to hire Frank. She had to remember that he had proven he couldn't be trusted.

"Relax, Granger," he breathed, leaning in enough to make her acutely aware of just how close they were now. All she would have to do was tilt her head up and they would be in kissing proximity. She stubbornly refused, staring resolutely at the undone buttons at his collar. And then he was touching her, using a finger to lift her chin and make eye contact. "You act like you have never been kissed before."

"I don't know why I'm disappointed in you," Hermione whispered, tears threatening the back of her throat. "I don't know why I dared to trust that you had some integrity just because you asked me to. You are lying right to my face, saying you don't feel any different after that spell than you did before. You wouldn't have been caught dead alone with me thinking about kissing before that spell. It had to have done something."

"It's just attraction, you daft bint!" he snapped, taking an angry step back and crossing his arms. "It's natural and healthy, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised you don't recognize it since you've spent your formative years hanging out with Gryffindorks and losers. See when a girl likes a boy…"

"No," Hermione interrupted, her own temper flaring dangerously. "This is different! I can feel the magic between us making everything too intense and too powerful…it's not natural...it's..." She trailed off as words escaped her, but Malfoy was off on one of his rants about her parentage before she could organize her thoughts.

"That's the problem with the Muggle-borns. You grow up without learning to trust your magic. It's not something you can do; it's part of who you are. Didn't you learn anything at all on the path of knowledge? Fighting your magic is nothing but disaster; lean in. Trust it." He went from spitting mad to almost conjoling, but she had had enough of his brand of manipulation.

"Why on earth would my magic suddenly be pushing you on me? That makes no sense at all. And why is this 'attraction', as you put it, so damn strong? I don't like being manipulated; I don't like being pushed. That's not my magic, that's something in that Binding Spell you lied about."

"You're surprised that it's so strong?" He laughed at her, shaking his head as if she was as daft as he accused her of being. "Please tell me a witch of your caliber is not completely ignorant about the emotional aftermath of powerful spells. You bound yourself to me. You entered vows with me, completely voluntarily. Your magic is responding to the commitment you made. You're mine now, and I'm yours. It's simply a reaction to what we chose to do. A lesser witch out of tune with her magic probably wouldn't feel anything at all. Can't you tell the difference between magical amplification and magical coercion?"

Hermione did know these things. She just had never experienced them. She had read all about magical amplification and the effect that emotion had on powerful spells and vice versa. But she hadn't grown up in a fancy manor steeped in magic so deep you could feel the stones under your feet vibrate doing ancient ritual spells before breakfast on a regular basis. And she hated having that pointed out to her. That there was so much she had missed, and so much knowledge she didn't have, and so much she couldn't understand about this world that she loved as much as she loved her Muggle world. Feeling these effects was much different than reading about them.

Feeling these effects had her reeling.

Tears threatened and she blinked them back, brutally staring him down mutely, refusing to argue about what it was she didn't know. It wasn't fair. He had this lifetime of experience. Give her 18 years in the magical world and she would know and understand this world three times better than he did. He just had a head start, and connections, and opportunity. But she would catch up. This was a magical experience, invaluable information gained first hand, practical learning. She needed to take a step back and analyse this all properly. Perhaps start a scientific journal so she could gain perspective.

He ran a frustrated hand through disheveled hair and sighed dramatically.

"Look, Granger, Hermione, I didn't mean to argue with you. I'm sorry. I really didn't expect things to be quite this emotional either, but I've learned to go where my magic takes me. And my magic wants…" He stepped closer again, cupping her face in her hands, staring at her lips. It would be so easy to just go with it.

She wanted to taste him. She wanted to find out what it felt like to be kissed by him. But no. That wasn't what they agreed to. And he couldn't be trusted. Frank Houston was proof of that.

"My magic wants so bad…" he repeated, leaning in.

His hands were so warm on her face, his eyes so beautiful, his lips so close and coming closer. Later, she wouldn't be able to decide if panic was what made her jump back, or if she consciously made the decision to not be kissed.

"That wasn't our deal," she managed to get out in a strangled voice, hand rising to touch unkissed lips that almost ached for contact. The dreams she had experienced did not do justice to the intense way being so close to him felt. This was too much. Too all consuming. Hermione couldn't just let go of all control and get swept up by hormones and passion and desire. She wouldn't stop. Once he touched her, she didn't think she would be able to stop, and she was not going to give herself to him. He was just looking to 'take the edge off the spell'.

She knew herself, and she was much too deeply involved emotionally to risk getting hurt by doing something she would regret and then being discarded later when he was done with her.

"Lets just keep our distance and focus on destroying this law in time."

That sounded so final. But it was what was best. She couldn't keep him and didn't even know if she would want to.

"You're right, that wasn't our deal. And if you want me to keep my distance I will happily do so," he bit out, suddenly furious again, eyes flashing in the semi darkness of the hall. "But what I won't do is sit here and put up with you playing the victim. I won't let you lie to yourself and pretend I was harassing you or pressuring you. You were right there with me, and we both know it. So take that truth with you when you stomp on out of here in all your Gryffindor righteous fury."

He turned to go back into his common room and panic overtook her. She couldn't let him leave like this. "Draco," she called out, desperate.

He turned back, and she fumbled for some reason to keep him with her, smooth things over, make things civil and easy again. "Frank, what are we going to do with Frank?"

"Huh?" he asked, bewildered, and she quickly walked over to the spot she had left Frank up against the wall. She pulled off the invisibility cloak she'd used to hide him and presented her current problem with a flourish. She was insanely grateful that she had thought to cast a bubble around him to keep him deaf, blind, and mute to the outside world ensuring that he had not witnessed that horrifyingly embarrassing conversation about her wild attraction to Malfoy.

"What the fuck is he doing here," Malfoy snarled, suddenly enraged. He reached into the bubble and hauled the immobilized man off his knees, shaking him violently.

"He was following me in his invisibility cloak, said you hired him." Hermione informed dryly.

"What?" Malfoy, whipped out his wand, his hand far too steady for someone who had been drinking. In fact, he hadn't fallen into any verbal traps at all, and Hermione was beginning to suspect that he had given her the impression he had been drunk deliberately when in fact he was very sober. "I hadn't even discussed a bodyguard with you, much less hired anyone. I hadn't even interviewed anyone yet. This guy was on the short list provided to me by my assistant."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes and Hermione almost felt sorry for Frank who was cowering as much as the immobilization spell she had him under would allow. He looked much more terrified of Malfoy than he had of her when she had questioned him. The difference between being caught by one of the good guys versus one of the bad guys she supposed. Malfoy did have a reputation darkened by his father's past. "You will tell the truth, or I will have you arrested," Malfoy began succinctly. "Why are you following my fiancée?"

Hermione lifted her muting spell and made sure her face showed no trace of her sympathy.

"I wanted the position," Frank blurted out, clearly eager to give Malfoy the information he wanted. "I knew over a hundred people had been interviewed by the Malfoy corporation so I thought I would prove I was the man for the job by sneaking into the castle undetected and introducing myself to Miss Granger. I figured if she liked me, you would be sure to hire me." He took a quick nervous breath, appealing to her with his eyes while he continued to talk. "I swear. I meant her no ill will; I never intended to make anyone uncomfortable or cause any trouble. I just really wanted the honor of protecting Miss Granger. I'll be completely invisible, loyal, you can trust me with her…"

Malfoy redid the silencing spell cutting off the man's eager endorsement and released him abruptly. Without Malfoy's support he sprawled ungracefully on the ground, but Hermione made no move to assist him.

A nervous spasm in her middle was happening, coursing all through her limbs, leaving her shaking. She believed him. Malfoy didn't set this fellow to follow her. He didn't lie to her, manipulate her, try to control her. Maybe he was telling the truth. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling cold and confused. She wanted to believe in him. She wanted to believe in the boy who had walked the path of knowledge and shared his pain with her and offered her his protection and wanted to kiss her. Perhaps that was the most dangerous thing of all. How much she wanted Malfoy to be who he seemed to be. Because that boy, that man, was someone she wanted to know better.

"Are you okay? You look awfully pale," he was now asking, touching her arm and looking concerned. Like he cared about her. "He must be telling the truth about not wanting to harm you. If you had been in any real danger, your protection magic would have kicked in. But if he could get in here, we do need to talk about hiring someone...Granger?"

She looked up into those beautiful eyes of his and thought herself a fool for rejecting his kiss earlier. A fool and a coward. She'd thought obsessively about kissing him for days, and when the time came, she had been too scared to take what she wanted. Some Gryffindor she turned out to be.

"Can you deal with him?" she asked, voice still shaky.

"Of course, do you need to see the nurse?" He was looking increasingly alarmed, and Hermione just wanted to escape. Get to her room and decompress and think all of this through without him looming over her making her feel overwhelmed and emotional. She draped the invisibility cloak over her arm and steeled her courage before going on tiptoe and brushing a chaste kiss over his startled lips. Before he could react or say a word, she had turned and walked away as quickly as possible without running. She half expected him to follow her but heard no click of shoes, and when she risked a glance behind her as she turned the corner, she saw he hadn't moved an inch from where she had left him.

Deep thanks to LightofEvolution for checking in on me and keeping me motivated to work on my update. And for her insightful and helpful read through.