Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Harry Potter series.

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"His fingers dig into her back as if he holds her, as if he could keep her with him

when she is already gone."

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The surge of his anger at her lateness morphs into cruel amusement as he notices the absolutely disarrayed state in which she enters. Her hair, though always wild, is a shamble. She has missed a button on her cloak. At the slope of her neck her dress is crooked, revealing the lacy strap of her bra. The lust in her eyes has barely cooled. Her cheeks flush with color as she notices his gaze.

Bellatrix bows immediately, her lips spilling apologies. Her eyes, when she dares to glance at his, promise devotion.

"Master, forgive me."

He can smell her sincerity as strongly as he did her perfume this morning. But he will have his fun; she practically begs for teasing.

"You are late."

"I am sorry."

Her gaze returns to the floor when her eyes meet his displeasure.

"How will your sorrow serve me?" he hisses.

"Inadequately, my lord," Bellatrix whispers. Then, a bit louder she says, "I will remedy my faults, if you will allow me."

Bellatrix kisses his feet. He considers meeting her lips with a swift turn of his heel. He decides against it. She will be even less useful if he renders her an emotional wreck.

"I will require it, Bella," he says. "Stand."

She obeys, tossing her hair behind her shoulder. A strand escapes to grace her cheek with its shadow. He reaches out his hand, curls the hair around his finger, holds the side of her face.

Bellatrix closes her eyes and knows that without his fingers wrapped around her hair she would surely fall to the ground. Her legs, like her breathing, become weak and tremble. He is so close. She can feel the air shift as he takes a breath from her. Bellatrix is losing her senses rapidly and she'll grasp the closest thing to save herself. She grabs the sides of his face, launches her mouth against his. It is brief, so brief she might have imagined that there is a moment when their lips connect before his fingers dig into her jaw and push her away.

Her eyes flash open. She is surprised when his eyes do not burn with anger, but instead hold curiosity enough to let his gaze linger. Bellatrix knows better than to fidget, still she acknowledges his prolonged stare with a quiet cough.

Finally, he says, "You've changed perfumes."

"Have I?" Bellatrix replies.

His nose does not trail the length of her neck as she had hoped.

"Yes; you smell of your husband," he chuckles.

Bellatrix's face tingles with blotches of red embarrassment. She wonders if she should apologize once more. His eyes, however, warn her not to snivel at the slightest glance of his distaste. Bellatrix takes a chance at cheekiness. She pushes the dress from her shoulders and lets it gather at her feet. Her underwear she dismisses with a flick of her wand.

"I can bathe first, if you would like," she says, tossing her hair once more to expose him further to the scent.

Again, he chuckles.

"You are so presumptuous. There are any number of reasons I might have called you," he hisses, his mouth against her jawbone. "An assignment, or more training," he says between nipping her flesh. "I might have summoned you merely to inconvenience you. Yet you assume I had need of your body."

Bellatrix knows he is testing her, waiting to hear her reply. She turns her cheek so that his lips brush against the corner of his mouth. "Not need, my lord. Certainly you are above that. Perhaps desire, though."

His nails dig into the small of her back.

"Foolish girl," he growls.

Bellatrix laughs quietly, buoyed with reckless bravery.

"But desire is understandable. My husband would sympathize with you."

The joke is tasteless, but Bellatrix can't quite bring herself to regret it as her master's body exhibits need if not desire.

"Your arrogance is nearly intolerable."

"Only nearly?" Bellatrix asks softly.

He raises his hand to strike her, but pauses when she fails to flinch. His fingers fall to the bruise upon her cheek.

Bellatrix surprises herself when she says, "My sister was even less pleased than my husband. About the bruises," Bellatrix adds quietly, realizing she has never before spoken so intimately of her sister to her master.

"And you? Do you see bruises as signs of weakness?" he asks.

His fingers stroke the slight side of her waist where those same fingers have previously left imprints of their grip.

"No, my lord," Bellatrix replies calmly.

She sees herself in his eyes.

"They are merely indications that I have survived," Bellatrix pauses, allows her lips the upward tilt of a smile, "…a great deal."

He gives her a small chuckle. Her eyes close and her lips part as he cups her face with a cool hand.

"Then bruises do become you, Bella."

The whisper's echo travels through her ear and hotly seeps into every sensation of her being.

Bella, Bella –she cannot bring herself to mind it when he says it. A small murmur escapes from her lips. The murmur becomes a moan as he presses his lips against the bruises laced across her breasts.

"I wonder," Bellatrix says with halting breaths, "if you can distinguish between those bruises incurred by the night and those by war."

His teeth graze a wound undoubtedly caused by the morning's training. Bellatrix gasps quietly.

"And I wonder the same of you," he hisses, his tongue flickering against her earlobe.

"Anything from you is an honor," Bellatrix whispers. She is weakened not by the blow of sudden contact as he pushes her against a bedpost. Her weakness comes from the emotion that inspires the words as her lips tremble against his.

He does not entertain her lips with his, but instead trails his mouth down her throat. A small noise of helpless adoration leaves Bellatrix's throat, and the noise vibrates against his teeth. His hands grip Bellatrix's wrists and he pins them above her head. Her eyes flash dark with devotion. Her eyes close however, and her mouth opens as he presses his robed body against her naked flesh. He strokes the outline of his finest mark, that of her left forearm. Bellatrix shivers and her eyes open as he presses his thumb into the mouth of the dark mark.

Her forearm burns, but it is not a heat that can be contained. Instead it courses through Bellatrix's body, and she is maddened by the equally hot proximity of him.

"Master, I am here," Bellatrix says. She cranes her neck to reach his lips. Before kissing him, she murmurs, "And I will always come when you call me."

"That is the second time today I have heard such a promise from you, Bella," he says with the faintest trace of amusement.

If only Bellatrix could understand the implications of her own promises, she might recoil beneath his heated gaze. But she understands only the passion, the pure blood that courses through her yearning body, the purpose that gives credence to her longing. Her purpose, she is beginning to understand, his promises hold.

She replies, "Then I mean it doubly."

Her legs snake around his waist, and she pulls herself against him. He will not give into her so easily. Bellatrix knows this even as she writhes beneath his ferocious mouth. His bite is merciless as his teeth sink into a bruise from the night before. Bellatrix frees her right arm from his grip; her hand falls upon the first clasp of his robe. He pauses in his feasting on the underside of her breast. Their eyes meet, and Bella's burn earnestly.

"Please."

He laughs and cups her lower back with the hand that does not clutch her dark mark. He carries her the short distance to the bed and climbs on top of her.

"Your manners astound me, Bella."

Bellatrix grins as the irony slips from her mouth, "I am hardly an aristocrat, but I am nothing if not aristocracy."

But it is obvious, even to Bellatrix, that he cares little for the cleverness of her tongue as he pushes into her eager flesh. Moreover, there is hardly anything refined about her current pursuit. Of all things, Bellatrix thinks of her mother's scowl if Druella could see her wildest daughter now. Bellatrix, she would surely say, has made a mockery of the proper pureblood wife. Bellatrix laughs at the prospect of her mother's scolding. If Druella could not even provide a son for her husband, how worse is Bellatrix for serving a master who promises to restore the wizarding world to the noblest of blood?

Bellatrix arches her back, bites her lip to prevent a scream of pleasure, rubs her hands against his thighs as he rocks into her.

Her father's disapproval, however, is more difficult to push from her mind even when her body is otherwise occupied. A man of honor, in his way, Cygnus Black would find disloyalty to Rodolphus shameful. Bellatrix opens her eyes to stare at the brand on her forearm, glistening with sweat. The dark mark, Bellatrix knows, is a mark of loyalty same as the ring she brazenly, foolishly neglected to take off.

"Your hubris is astounding, Bella," her master says, moving within her mind as he leaves her body. "Until you prove more skilled than today's session, your loyalty is not as consequential as you think."

A/N: More Bellamort to come, with the possibility of plot. :P Reviews are appreciated!