HANDS
By Your Cruise Director

Only a pureblood could have such hands, such perfect hands. Pale, firm yet soft palms without a callus or blemish, knuckles precisely fitted to the width of the fingers, fingernails that slide beneath meticulously trimmed cuticles. There is never the sort of casual tension in the wrist that betrays fear. The fingers curl effortlessly on the walking stick, confident in their power to turn it into a weapon in a fraction of a moment. Whether the man is wearing his voluptuous snakeskin gloves or a simple platinum ring bearing his family's crest, his hands draw Severus' eyes and seduce him without his having to speak a single word.

It isn't that Lucius' are the longest, most elegant fingers Severus has ever seen, for they are not. Nor are they the strongest, the sharpest, the most fearsome. Yet when they slide between Severus' own, even if it is only to tug at him as a parent might, his entire body responds to the feel of smooth skin sliding up and down along his knuckles. When those same fingers touch his face, his chest, his belly, he feels like something living deep inside him has cracked open, hatching and stretching toward the light.

"Touch me," says Lucius softly, and Severus is ashamed. His hands are scarred and rough from a childhood spent helping his mother clean and repair their house while his father sat and snapped at them, refusing to lift one finger to help. Yet he lacked the refined hands of the wealthy, with short fat digits that turned purple in the cold. Severus' fingers are stronger and cleaner than his father's ever were, but when he wraps them around Lucius' cock, he knows that they do not have the same magnetic allure as Lucius' wondrous hands. They are stained from the acid of boiling potions, scarred from defending himself against Gryffindor cruelty.

Lucius can make Severus feel his presence just by disturbing the air over his flesh; sometimes he can make Severus come with a single long, slow stroke from the base of his cock to the tip, after talking and teasing and threatening for long enough. But sometimes Lucius will close his grip over Severus', on Severus' skin or his own. Then for awhile Severus believes that his fingers can perform the same magic as Lucius', for while he knows that he can equal Lucius with a wand in his hand, performing spells or charms, he does not dream that any part of himself will ever hold the same allure.

"Touch me," Lucius orders him again, pressing wantonly into his fingers, spreading out beneath his palm. Heat rises into Severus' body from his hands, with Lucius' skin beneath them and Lucius' fingers clenching over his own. A shudder, a moan and Severus' fist is covered with seed, wet and slippery on his rough fingers, transforming them momentarily so that they are as smooth and sensuous as Lucius'. "Perfect," sighs the pureblood, and though Severus' hands are not, he smiles.