Who: Juliana Travers & Christopher Loftus
What: yikes
Where: TRAVERS ABODE~
When: in the recent past!
Christopher couldn’t quite say he had been entirely obtuse about his true intentions behind appearing at his cousin’s door relatively unannounced. There had been an inkling, a seedling in the back of his mind for some time now, that had been growing into one of discontent. Restlessness, perhaps a bit of malice, but for the most part feeling that he was unfulfilled with his current life. It had nothing to do with Prisca, nor his son, who both seemed to be nothing but consistently usual.
Or, perhaps they had everything to do with it, for Christopher had noticed a great effort on his part to be especially absent from the both of their lives as much as possible as late.
It was no matter, he decided, as he hovered over Juliana’s form, taking his time in savoring her fair face. Their lives would go on, they were both provided for, and his thoughts did not wander much farther than these obligations.
He continued to brush his fingers along the side of Juliana’s face, pulling them lightly across her skin while trailing down her jaw. Why had this reunion not come earlier? Before eventually breaking away, Christopher looked at her steadily for a moment, silently, before suddenly shifting to sit up straight and throw his legs over the side of the bed.
“Your breasts have sagged,” he stated, back to her as he bent over to reach the pile of clothes on the ground.
“If you preferred them as they were, then perhaps you should have done a better job of
containing yourself last we met this way.”
Juliana’s rebuttal was all laze and disinterest as she laid back in the pillows, sheet strewn over her body not quite to the standards of discretion, and took stock of her freshly manicured nails. The last thing on this green earth that could bother her was Christopher of all people throwing insults. She wasn’t the sorry prick with a perfectly loving wife and son at home making bed with his cousin. There was a certain smug comfort in the fact that there wasn’t a single word that he could utter towards her that could make him the better person of the two of them.
At least
her spouse was in prison and would have killed her before their wedding had the specter of her brothers not been hanging over his head.
She cocked a thin smile as Orpheus’s face the night he had been taken away floated back into her memory. It had been ages since she had last thought of the Boy, and Juliana found that she had forgotten how very satisfied the reminder of his pathetic fate made her feel.
That was, of course, partially due to Christopher himself. For as unappealing as being a mother was--even if only in title, for she certainly did not
see the girl but once in a blue moon--Juliana could admit that without Mischa, securing her husband’s fortune for herself would not have been so delightfully easy.
“I do hope you’ve done better this time,” she finally said, shooting him a glance at last and dropping her hand back to the bed. “Were such an inconvenience to occur again, I would hate to have to ruin your life with a sob story of the closet sex fiend cousin preying upon and taking advantage of a defenseless woman, left all alone without her husband to protect her.”
Actually, she would probably have enjoyed that very much.
His face deadpanned, and it was probably for the best that his back was facing Juliana when it had. His self-preserving cynicism would hardly entertain the idea of Juliana
Travers of all people ruining his life over something so... easy to brush under the carpet. She would not take kindly to such an obvious dismissal, but in that moment, Christopher decided, he didn’t really care how she felt. It was preposterous to think that she had the power to even remotely destroy him.
So, abandoning his robes for the time being, Christopher twisted to look back at Juliana with nothing short of a skeptical look on his face. Before speaking, his eyes roved slowly, deliberately, over her her sprawled form. His gaze eventually rested on her face, to which he produced a humorless smile.
“And in what world would any witch or wizard believe the wife of a Death Eater over an Auror?” he asked, simply, almost innocently. It
was a valid question, after all. He had done much for the Ministry over the years. “Dear cousin?”
Past Juliana’s lips rolled a mocking laugh, one which she found she could hardly help--and she imagined, were her cousin any smarter, that he would have felt as well--at hearing his response.
“Oh
come now, Christopher,” she began. Her hand waved towards him dismissively. “The association to a Death Eater was all but taken care of the moment I ran to the Ministry with the proof that the Boy had laid his hands on me.”
It had all worked out so well that she had managed to push Orpheus to the breaking point that night, hadn’t it? For sure, had she known ahead of time that he would raise a hand to her, she might not have dared provoke him on that particular evening several years ago, but it
had managed to twist itself around into such a lovely conclusion. That incident, after all, had been the very thing that had started the Aurors looking into him and subsequently discovering his place within the Dark Lord’s ranks.
Juliana’s fingers found her cousin’s hand and teasingly walked their way up his arm as she spoke. “I am naught but the unfortunate lady, forced into a violent marriage, who helped to send her husband straight to the dementors with full cooperation.” When her hand reached his shoulder, their eyes met and she sent him a smile. “I’m merely an innocent bystander.”
He didn’t hold back the most disbelieving of snorts that came out of his nose, though nor did Christopher seek to remove Juliana’s hand from his shoulder. It was a complex feeling coursing through him, that of equal disdain and arousal, and it was because of that that he held his tongue for a few beats to ensure he would not say something that would come back to hex him.
“You are many things, Juliana,” Christopher began, leaning back toward her as he spoke. His eyes roved over her face, watching it intently before producing the sickeningly sweetest of smiles. “But innocent has never been one of them.”
Christopher, as he spoke, reached toward the side of her face, cupping it in his hand under her ear. Would they meet again like this? Probably, yes, now that he had gotten a taste of the past and it was fulfilling as ever. That, of course, couldn’t be said for the time being. He curled his fingers slightly, dropping his hand to hold up her chin to him.
“You can’t say you don’t agree,” he spoke in a much different tone than mere moments ago. A spark reappeared in the corner of his eye, and Christopher leaned closer to her still, his crumpled robes falling to the floor once more.
He was really something, this cousin of hers.
Not to say that Juliana Travers was exactly the pinnacle of propriety or marital fidelity, but it was really quite astounding to her that a man so satisfactorily settled as Christopher could convince himself of the wiseness of coming here, to his cousin’s bedroom, and put all of that in jeopardy. He himself proclaimed her lack of innocence, so he must know that her threats were not
entirely empty. If it came to benefit her, it would have been naive to imagine that she would not let out his secrets at any time.
But this did not change the fact that he was still here, now even leaning in for seconds in this sinful game that they were revisiting.
For now, at least, he could consider himself on solid ground. To his luck, there was nothing for now that Juliana had to gain from exposing him, and everything to lose if she did. It had been too long, far too long, that she had had this much fun; it was all but evident in the glimmer in her eyes as she traced that hand down his bare chest and smiled sweetly up at his ever-nearing face.
“Even if I did,” she drawled. “You might have to force it out of me.”
His lips parted into a smug smile, and his grip on her tightened. That wouldn’t be too difficult, as he felt himself well-versed in the art of making Juliana bend to his desires.
Certain desires. Ones that most certainly did not include exposing his adulterous relationship with his cousin to the world, no. That was certainly not on his mind, and not really a true threat coming from her mouth. What leverage would she gain from exposing this, them? None, and she never would, which was why Christopher could so easily brush off her idle threats. For now, at least, and focus on much more pleasurable thoughts than how one would seek to ruin the other’s life as it was known.
“That won’t be a problem.”
And without saying much more, he closed the shrinking gap between them to show just how easy it was for him to get what he wanted from her.
