°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･𝔟𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔞

i repost freak shit!! | 20

[glorydescent]

𝖜𝖊𝖑𝖈𝖔𝖒𝖊 ! ⋆‧°𓏲ּ𝄢 ⋆˚࿔

𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 <𝟑 .ᐟ

𝚋𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚊 ⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ 20, 𝚜𝚑𝚎/𝚑𝚎𝚛, ♋︎

♰ 18+ 𝚋𝚕𝚘𝚐

♰ 𝚛𝚎𝚚𝚞𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚜 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚘𝚙𝚎𝚗

𝚒’𝚖 𝚏𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚕𝚢 𝚗𝚎𝚠 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚞𝚖𝚋𝚕𝚛 𝚜𝚘 𝚙𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚎 𝚋𝚎 𝚖𝚎𝚛𝚌𝚒𝚏𝚞𝚕 ! 𝚖𝚢 𝚒𝚗𝚋𝚘𝚡 𝚒𝚜 𝚊𝚕𝚠𝚊𝚢𝚜 𝚘𝚙𝚎𝚗. 𝚒 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚏𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚜 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚜𝚘 𝚙𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚎 𝚍𝚘𝚗’𝚝 𝚋𝚎 𝚜𝚑𝚢 :^]

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖐𝖘 ᝰ.ᐟ

💭 - 𝚜𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚘𝚜 💌 - 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚌𝚊𝚗𝚘𝚗𝚜

𝚜𝚎𝚛 𝚍𝚞𝚗𝚌𝚊𝚗

💭 𝚍𝚞𝚗𝚔 𝚒𝚜 𝚌𝚕𝚞𝚎𝚕𝚎𝚜𝚜 𝚝𝚘 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚠𝚒𝚏𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚘 𝚑𝚒𝚖

💭 𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚑𝚒𝚖 𝚑𝚘𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚐𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚔𝚒𝚜𝚜𝚎𝚜

💭𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚋𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚏!𝚔𝚗𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝!𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛

💌 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚜𝚘𝚘𝚗…

𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚛𝚔 𝚔𝚎𝚗𝚝

💭 𝚜𝚒𝚖𝚙𝚕𝚎 𝚏𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚜

𝖗𝖊𝖇𝖑𝖔𝖌𝖘 ᝰ.ᐟ

𝚜𝚎𝚛 𝚍𝚞𝚗𝚌𝚊𝚗

𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚛𝚔 𝚔𝚎𝚗𝚝

𝚋𝚞𝚌𝚔𝚢 𝚋𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚜

𝚕𝚘𝚐𝚊𝚗 𝚑𝚘𝚠𝚕𝚎𝚝𝚝

𝚋𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚎𝚛 𝚌𝚛𝚎𝚍𝚜 𝚝𝚘 @𝚌𝚞𝚛𝚜𝚎𝚍-𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚎 @𝚏𝚎𝚒𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚘

[cat-fire]

humbly requesting for some more Dunk fics because you are just that good! I Can’t stop thinking about him discovering that he likes his hair being pulled. Hehe

Like You Owned Me

Ser Duncan the Tall x Female Reader

18+, outdoor, oral sex, hair pulling, kinda soft to feral, but romantic because it’s implied that reader 🩷 Dunk.

words count: 2.4 k

The sun was low, turning the river into a sheet of beaten gold. The world felt quiet, held in the warm embrace of the late afternoon. Your usual spot was a secret hollow, hidden by a curtain of willow branches that brushed the water's edge. The grass was soft, and the blanket you shared was a faded patch of color against the green. It was here, away from the judging eyes of the keep, where you and Dunk could be yourselves.

He was beside you, his huge frame making the simple blanket seem small. He'd just finished his training for the day, and the scent of leather, steel, and clean sweat clung to him. You'd brought a small loaf of bread and some cheese, but the food lay forgotten between you. His attention was on you, and yours was on him.

His calloused hand traced the curve of your cheek, his thumb brushing your lower lip. "You're so beautiful," he rumbled, his voice a low vibration that you felt more than heard. "How did a great oaf like me get so lucky?"

You smiled, leaning into his touch. His shyness still surfaced at times like this, as if he couldn't quite believe you were real, that you had chosen him. "You're not an oaf," you whispered, your fingers tracing the scar on his brow.

He huffed a soft laugh, but his eyes never left yours. They were dark with a hunger that had been building all day. You'd seen him watching you from across the yard, his gaze lingering when you bent to pick up a pail or when the wind caught your skirt. That look was in his eyes now, raw and open.

"I want to show you something," he said, his voice dropping deeper.

He shifted, his big body moving with a grace that always surprised you. He didn't give you a chance to ask what he meant. His hands found the laces of your bodice, his thick fingers surprisingly deft as he pulled them loose. The fabric parted, and he eased the garment from your shoulders, letting it pool around your waist. Your skin prickled in the warm air.

Dunk stared, his breathing gone rough. He looked at you like you were a miracle, his gaze worshipful. He reached out, his massive palm hovering just above your bare skin, a tremor in his thick fingers.

"I'm always afraid I'll wake up back in Flea Bottom, and none of this will be real."

"It's real, Dunk," you murmured, reaching up to press his hand flat against your chest so he could feel your racing pulse. "I'm right here."

He leaned down, and instead of the kiss you expected, his lips met your shoulder. It was a soft, closed-mouth press of his mouth to your skin. Then another, an inch lower. And another. He began a slow trail of kisses down your collarbone, his breath hot against your skin. It was strange, tender, and it made a shiver run down your spine.

His hands came to your waist, guiding you to lie back on the blanket. You went willingly, the soft wool cushioning your back. He loomed over you, his shadow shielding you from the sun. He looked down at you, his eyes wide and unblinking.

"I don't deserve you," he whispered against your skin, his hands sliding down to grip the material of your skirt. "I swear to the gods, I don't."

With a gentle tug, he began to pull it up, revealing your legs inch by inch. He didn't stop until the fabric was bunched at your waist, leaving you bare from the waist down. The vulnerability made your heart hammer in your chest, but the look on his face was pure reverence.

He knelt between your thighs, his frame making you feel small and cherished. He bent and kissed your knee. It was such a simple thing, but the intent behind it made your breath catch. He kissed the inside of your thigh, his beard tickling your skin. Then the other. He was methodical, his mouth worshipping every inch of your legs, moving higher with each kiss.

A flush crept up your chest and neck, burning your cheeks. This was new. This was... intense. He wasn't rushing to the main event, he was savoring the journey. He reached the top of your thigh, his breath ghosting over the most sensitive part of you. You were wet, you could feel it, the cool air a stark contrast to your heat.

He paused, his nose brushing the curls there. He inhaled deeply, a low groan rumbling in his chest. "Gods, the way you smell," he rasped.

Then, his tongue was on you. A broad, flat stroke that had you gasping and arching off the blanket. He didn't tease. He licked you again, a slow, deliberate lap from your entrance to your clit. His hands gripped your thighs, holding you open for him.

He was lost in it, his eyes closed as he tasted you. He licked and nuzzled, his face pressed against your core. Your shyness was being burned away by a wave of undiluted pleasure. You felt exposed, but the way he was acting, like he'd found the most sacred place in the world, made it feel less like vulnerability and more like an offering.

He groaned against you, the sound vibrating through your whole body. "You taste... better than I ever dreamed," he slurred, his words muffled by your flesh.

He dove back in, his tongue working with more fervor. You could feel the slickness on his chin, see the way his own arousal strained against his breeches. The sight of this huge, powerful knight completely undone by the taste of you was intoxicating.

The slow, tormenting rhythm became unbearable. The heat coiling in your belly tightened into a fierce, demanding knot. Your hands flew to his hair, your fingers sinking deep into the thick strands. You gripped hard, yanking his head back, forcing him to still.

Dunk let out a broken gasp, freezing under your touch. His neck arched against your grip, his head tilted back, his blue eyes dark and hazy, dazed as he stared up the length of your body. He looked lost, utterly undone by the simple pull of your hand.

"Gods above, girl," he choked out, his voice a raw, ragged thing. "Don't... don't stop."

"Dunk, look at me," you panted, your own voice shaking with a desperate, wild need. You tightened your grip, his hair a rough rope in your fist. "D-Dunk… give me your tongue, your teeth. Give me everything."

He swallowed hard, his thick fingers instantly wrapping around your wrist. He didn't try to pull your hand away. He pressed it closer, forcing your fingers deeper into his scalp, giving you a better, stronger hold on him.

"Seven hells," he rasped, his voice dropping into an uneven growl. "Tell me. Hold me fast and tell me what you need."

"Harder," you cried out, your fingers twisting in his hair as you slammed his head back down into your heat, demanding his mouth. "Use your tongue, Dunk. Right there. Don't be gentle with me now, by the gods, please!"

A choked groan tore from his chest as he obeyed, completely unspooled by the force of your command. The hard, steady pull on his hair stripped away the last of his knightly restraint. He buried his face against you, his mouth opening wide against your slick folds as his tongue began a heavy, driving assault on your clit. The wet, slurping sounds filled the small clearing, lewd and perfect. He was lost in you, his only purpose to please you, to make you break apart on his tongue. The sound of his mouth on you, the feel of his hair in your fist, the pleasure of it all, made your head spin. You loved this man, this great knight who was so completely at your mercy. You loved him with a fierceness that scared you, and you never wanted to let him go.

You let out a broken scream, your nails digging into his scalp to hold him flush against you. "Yes! Gods, Dunk, yes!"

He rumbled in approval against your skin, completely possessed by the frantic urgency in your voice. One of his massive hands left your thigh, sliding up to press flat against your lower stomach to hold your lifting pelvis steady, while his other hand snared your ass, tilting you up perfectly for his mouth. He was eating you with a desperate fervor, the heavy mixture of his saliva and your own slick wetness creating a loud, obscene, sloshing sound that echoed through the quiet willow glade.

Before you could gather your senses, his first thick finger forced its way inside you. Your back bowed completely off the blanket. "Dunk! Oh, gods... you're stretching me. It's too much."

"It's not enough," he muttered roughly against your flesh, his words slurred with lust as he pumped his finger deep, matching the heavy friction of his tongue. He added a second finger, filling you completely. "Tell me you like it. Let me hear you, girl."

"I love it, I'm breaking, Dunk, please—" You were a sobbing, breathless mess, your hands alternating between violently tugging his hair to force his mouth harder against your clit and clawing frantically at his scalp. "Please, please please!"

The sight was utterly wicked. This giant of a man, built for shields and battlefields, was hunched small between your thighs, completely ruled by the tight grip of your hand in his hair and the frantic cries tearing from your throat. The massive bulge in his leather breeches looked agonizingly tight, throbbing against his thigh, but he didn't care about his own release. He only wanted to hear you ruin yourself for him.

"Then break for me," he choked out, his tongue flicking hard, unyielding rhythms over your clit while his fingers curled deep inside you. "Right here in my mouth, sweet girl. Let it go."

Those desperate words pushed you right over the brink. The orgasm hit you, stealing the air from your lungs. Your inner walls clamped down violently around his fingers, your thighs locking around his head as your body convulsed.

"Dunk! Dunk!" you screamed his name into the quiet hollow, your fingers ripping into his hair, pulling him so close against your core that there was no space left between you as the pleasure ripped through your veins.

He didn't pull back. He kept his tongue pressed hard against you, his movements only softening into gentle, soothing strokes as your tremors slowly began to quiet.

When you finally went entirely limp, panting and dazed against the wool blanket, your fingers slowly uncurled from his hair, leaving his thick strands tangled and wild. He placed one last, lingering kiss on your sensitive flesh before slowly lifting his head.

His face was glistening in the fading gold light, his beard damp with you. He looked up the length of your body with feral satisfaction, his blue eyes burning with absolute adoration. He slowly withdrew his fingers, and a tiny whimper escaped your lips at the loss.

"Are you alright?" he whispered, his voice rough and uneven as he brought his hand up, gently licking his fingers clean while his eyes stayed locked on yours.

"More than alright," you breathed, reaching out for him, your arms trembling. "Come here. I need to feel how heavy you are."

He crawled up the blanket, settling his immense, heavy weight over your body, careful to shield you without crushing you. He was still fully clothed, his agonizing hardness pressing thick and insistent against your thigh.

You cupped his face in your hands, pulling him down into a deep, fierce kiss. You tasted yourself on his lips and tongue, a raw, intimate flavor that made you whimper into his mouth and wrap your legs around his lean hips. He groaned, one hand tangling in your hair as he ground against you, his desperation obvious.

You dragged your lips from his, panting, and let your hands slide down his huge chest. The muscles were hard and taut beneath your palms. As your fingers traced the strained laces of his breeches, you felt a sudden, hot dampness against your thigh.

You froze, looking down. There, a dark, wet stain was spreading fast across the front of his leather pants, the fabric soaked and clinging to the shape of his heavy, throbbing cock. He was coming, right there against you, with no hands.

"Did I...?" Your voice trailed off, your eyes snapping up to meet his.

Dunk's face had turned a deep, furious red, his eyes wide with a mix of shock and pure, helpless embarrassment. "Gods be damned," he rasped, his voice choked. "I... I'm sorry. I couldn't—"

"No, don't be," you cut him off, your own voice trembling with a fierce, shocked excitement. Your hand darted out, pressing flat against the hot, wet stain, feeling the pulse of his cock jerking beneath the leather. "You did this for me? Because I pulled your hair?"

He groaned, his forehead dropping against your shoulder, his entire body shuddering."You held my head down," he whispered harshly against your skin, his hips jerking helplessly against your palm. "You pulled my hair like you owned me, and I was so deep in you, the taste of you everywhere... I couldn't hold it. The thought of you finishing like that... it just—seven hells ..it broke me."

A breathless, thrilled laugh escaped you, your heart hammering wildly. You slid your hand inside his waistband, feeling the hot, sticky mess of his spend coating your fingers. You found him, still hard and pulsing, and wrapped your wet hand around his shaft.

"Dunk," you moaned, stroking him slowly, making him shudder violently. "Do you know what it does to me, knowing I made you spill like this? Just from holding you where I needed you?"

He let out a strangled sound, his hips thrusting up into your fist. "Girl, don't say that. I'll go again."

You grinned, feeling wicked and powerful. "Good," you whispered, tightening your grip. "Because I'm not done with you yet, my knight. Not by a long shot."

His only answer was to crush his mouth to yours, kissing you with a new, desperate intensity as you milked the last shudders of pleasure from his cock, both of you knowing that this was only the beginning. The wet spot on his pants was proof of your power over him, a secret, primal victory you would cherish in the quiet of your bed long after the sun had set.

A/N: Hiiii, hello! Sorry it’s been so long, but I’m back in the hedge knight game! I really hope you guys missed me ✨ thank you for reading, kisses for everyone!🩷

[avadcniels]

A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS ⇢ 1x04 | SEVEN

[aegonsdrunkenpoetry]

PETER CLAFFEY

AKOTSK Premiere in Berlin: x

[silkaurum]

Are you still taking requests? If you’d like, can you do akotsk men flirting style? (ignore this if requests are closed 🥺🙏🏼)

i want to apologize very, very deeply, my sweet anon ♡⸝⸝ i wrote these headcanons too late, but i held your request in my head this entire time. i carefully nurtured the idea and eagerly waited for the moment i could calmly bring it to life. i couldn't pass it up, because it's a wonderful idea .ᐟ thank you for sending it in. and once again, i am a thousand times sorry. i really hope you like it. mwah mwah ₍ᐢ‥ᐢ₎ ₊˚ෆ

𝘃𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗿 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗿𝘆𝗲𝗻

in short: discreetly yet masterfully. sometimes a single glance is enough, sometimes something more is needed

Valarr is masterfully skilled in the art of flirting. He never acts directly. Open flirting is something unrefined, unworthy of his sophisticated princely nature. Valarr can devour you with his eyes. He looks at you for a long time, with a sultry gaze, so confident and hot that everything around you starts to melt. You feel his eyes on your back as you walk away. His eyes speak much louder than any words. "I want you to be mine." It is a silent plea, made of longing and stubborn confidence that he gets what he wants. Always. He is not pushy, yet somehow you keep running into each other in the same places, by the will of the gods. Or not by the will of the gods at all. Walking through the gardens, maintaining the proper distance that society's morals prescribe, he keeps glancing your way. His hand hovers casually in the air near the green foliage. Valarr smiles with just one corner of his lips, and it is the most devilish thing you have ever seen in all of Westeros! He maintains the dignity of a prince. He is a gentleman. But in his eyes, a fire dances. His neat, delicate fingers pluck a flower with effortless ease. Something inside you turns over at the sound, the way the stem breaks and bends, just like your knees. Valarr does not hand you the flower. Brazenly, he tucks it into your hair. Then, almost immediately, he says that the delicate petals feel like your skin. He apologizes for his foolishness almost at once, but it is not hard to guess that he did it on purpose.

𝗱𝗮𝗲𝗿𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗿𝘆𝗲𝗻

in short: he's not that bad at flirting, but when he really likes someone, he can get a little awkward

Daeron is a real tease when it comes to flirting, because he uses his hands. Sometimes it comes out very awkwardly, the way he tries to touch your wrist with his fingertips. He shyly looks away, just like a boy, when he notices you trying to stop his flirting, or when he thinks you're about to. His palms become silly, slightly clammy from nervousness, because he spent all his effort on simply keeping a straight face, and his hands were no longer his responsibility. He is sensitive to rejection, so it's much easier for him to say that you simply misunderstood him. "You're beautiful." slips from his tongue like a treacherous prayer, and his eyes, the color of the evening sky with gold, trace your face. Daeron has forgotten how to read your emotions from the mere flutter of your lashes. He is not particularly religious, but he couldn't help but pray to the gods for help. When shyness took hold of you, he could barely contain his smug pride, because it truly felt like a victory. "I just meant it in a friendly way... I just noticed." the prince excuses himself hastily, even though his warm hand has already reached for yours. But Daeron grabbed at thin air, clenching it like an elusive dream, feeling like the greatest fool of all. He turns away sharply, as if a cat had sunk its claws into his leg. He clears his throat, grabbing a plump, spice-scented cookie from a tray. He shoves it into his mouth without any grace, as if it could help him forget his recent shame. "It's tasty." Daeron declares a minute later, with the look of a martyr begging for oblivion.

𝗮𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗿𝘆𝗲𝗻

in short: flirting or a declaration of ownership. he doesn't really distinguish between the two

It's unclear who is flirting with you Aerion or his smugness. He speaks without any concealment about his interest in you. He throws generous, seductive phrases your way, about you, about how handsome you'll look together as a couple. Aerion approaches you from behind, like a predator, but he doesn't sneak up on you. You notice his silhouette immediately. He smiles at you in the mirror's reflection. His whole irritatingly pleased face says, "You've been waiting for me, haven't you?" His hands, which he has imperiously placed on your shoulders, feel like something heavy. Not like shackles, but something like metric chains that you could easily slip out of if you really wanted to. He tilts his head, and your insides twist into a knot. He is a dragon, after all. He might bite. But Aerion simply bathes your neck in his hot breath. He blows a few stray hairs from the back of your neck, finding them rather bothersome. His fingers catch on the thin chain of your pendant. The prince twirls it, amusing himself, nothing more. Your body looks wooden, because you dare not even move. "Red would suit you." An insolent statement, not requiring a response. Even if you had intended to make one, Aerion has already stifled that urge. The way the tip of his nose tickles your cheek is something painfully menacing and wrongly stirring. "And this pendant looks disgusting," he says, pulling away. "I will give you another." Oh, this is not a gesture of a generous soul. It is an order. Every encounter like this leaves a strange aftertaste. Is this his damn idea of flirting?

𝗯𝗮𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗿𝘆𝗲𝗻

in short: not insolent, but not timid either. everything exists on the edge

Baelor's flirtation is wrapped in elegant ribbons. No insolence, even though who could be more confident than the future king? He wouldn't commit any thoughtless, boyish actions. He is a pillar of calm. It seems like he could catch lightning with his bare hands and not get burned. This man is not cautious at all. He doesn't hesitate, blushing like a fool, when trying to compliment your attire today. Baelor would rather give an approving nod when he sees you. Triumph flickers in his gaze. As if he could ever doubt his own taste for even a second. And you are certainly part of his excellent taste! Baelor sits closer to you, so that the skirt of your dress brushes against his knee. No one else would notice. Or so it might seem to everyone around. The prince smiles as he raises his golden cup to his lips, but this small gesture cannot escape your notice. He did it on purpose. Baelor has made the first move and now waits for you to do the same. Even if you don't dare, seeing how suspiciously and jealously a servant is looking, this man will not keep you waiting. His fingers pinch a piece of the fabric, as if plucking it. "Hmm, is this silk? It shimmers so wonderfully in the sun." His hand freezes dangerously close to your thigh, but he would never commit any unforgivable vulgarity. This is what excites you all the more: feeling the warmth of his hands and wondering what it would be like to be gripped by those fingers. Not this silk, which had the honor of being caressed by the future king. "I don't want to seem picky, but the tea seems to have gone cold." He says it with no hint of reproach. A lazy, knowing smile appears on his face.

𝗹𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗼𝗻

in short: open, honest, and loud. almost like a performance

Lyonel is the type to tell you he likes you without any unnecessary shyness, and it's not because he's drunk. Alcohol doesn't loosen his tongue at all. It's useless. This loud man's tongue is always as sharp as a dagger. He says what he thinks and never regrets it. No delicacy, and he certainly doesn't care about anyone around him. Let them stare and enjoy the show. If you're in his line of sight, he will chase after you like a promised doe on a hunt. He is literally ready to jump up from his seat and interrupt a conversation to give his attention to his love interest. "God, shut up, you're ruining my view of the most beautiful woman in the room. My woman." Lyonel will wave off his conversation partner, even if a second ago it was a heated argument he swore he would win. He will glide over to you looking like a victor. He already looks smug and overconfident. His hands are already reaching for you. He needs to touch you. His chances of survival depend on it. Lyonel will kiss your fingers, not because he's a gentleman (let's be honest), but because he can. He doesn't care what people think (again). He already considers you almost his wife, and this is just a temporary obstacle. If he wants something, he will never back down, and stubbornness will be the main reason. Lyonel doesn't know how to deny himself pleasure. And seeing how you amusingly and ever so slightly narrow your eyes when his beard pricks your skin is quite a pleasure. He'll do it again, knowing that you are true to your habits, just as he is to his.

𝗱𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗹

in short: prefers something a little more genuine than mere flirtation

Duncan and flirting? That already sounds like something impossible, doesn't it? This large, awkward man takes some things too literally. So, for the sake of all Seven, please do not try to flirt with him in any complicated way. He may be a simple guy in some ways, but you will never find such sincerity in anyone else. He has an enormous heart, and there is room in it not only for the horses he treats as true conversational partners, not only for the boy who cannot sit still and spins like a top, but also for so much else. But you are not so much else. You are his whole world. He would not dare to say this out loud for too long. It is too shameful and too… simply too much? Still, Duncan is used to proving everything through actions. He is a knight in every sense. Honor guides him with far more success than he can guide little Egg. Duncan is one of the few men who is ready to love from afar. It will be torture for him, but there are things he believes he must accept. Once, a girl made an inappropriate joke about how, if he's so tall and his foot is so big, is he that big everywhere? The knight lowered his gaze, feeling oddly ashamed. It took some courage for him to pull you to his side, wrapping an arm around your waist. "My lady would be the better judge of that from her perspective." But as soon as he looked at you and saw how happily you smiled, Duncan lost his fire. "Let's not discuss this, alright? It's too… obvious of a joke…"

𝗺𝗮𝗲𝗸𝗮𝗿 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗿𝘆𝗲𝗻

in short: when boundaries are blurred, he won't display anything openly, but he won't exactly hide either

First, let's just look at Maekar. So. In my opinion, he doesn't look like a person who flirts at all. Does he even smile to begin with? But anything can happen. Snow can fall in summer. He would definitely take his time weighing the decision. It takes him far too long just to come to the conclusion that you attract him. Though even after that, he will spend quite a while looking for something annoying in you, in your manners, your gait, even your smile. He deceives himself the most, replaying your image in his head over and over again. Let him be angry at himself rather than at you, you who is completely unaware of how sinisterly you have captured his poor thoughts. Maekar doesn't like the fact that he seems to be the only one suffering from this. And again, he will try to forget everything, considering your presence near him a huge mistake. The more he denies it, the more obvious it becomes. The castle corridors aren't narrow at all, so why do your bodies pass so close to each other? Or why is he kinder than everyone else in helping you mount your horse, when just a few days ago you were climbing on without any difficulty? "Clumsy." he will say, adjusting your leg, placing it firmly into the stirrup. "Clingy." he will add, trying to appear displeased with your antics. At any meal, even if the tables are as long as a snake, the two of you still find each other's eyes. No one would think that you have crossed the bounds of propriety, almost undressing each other across that table with a respectable distance between you. The two of you have a different kind of feast.

dividers by: @cursed-carmine @/s-silk ₊˚⊹ ᰔ

[samthegreenapologist]

Genesis

Modern Duncan The Tall X F reader

Tags: Modern/College AU, Makeout session😚, Dunk being cautious and cute, hand stuff (M and F), oral M receiving, Dunk a butt guy, unprotected PnV, size difference, reader is more experienced than Dunk, established friendship ,Dunk generally being flustered at all times, friends to lovers, there’s a decent amount of fluffy bits to this because Duncan’s in love fr!

Word Count: 5.5 k

Summary: After admitting to Dunk that you had feelings for him a few weeks ago, he visits you at college and you are determined to hurl your relationship out of the friend zone entirely!

A/N: Could be read as a standalone but is part 2 for Crossroads. @niceforcum22 it’s not Truck Sex but I had to ensure they banged at some point! (Mature under the cut)

You felt all floaty, and your eyes were a bit heavy by this time of night, but every time he touched you it was like a warm exciting zing to your system. Dunk was strong, and you were finding out he was also strict. He was constantly reaching for you on this walk. Not that you minded. For one you didn’t want somebody else grabbing at you and two, his touch was heavy enough it cut through the beer haze that had settled over you.

“no…c’mon your this way.”

You giggled when he had to only strech his arm out to tug you back to him so you wouldn’t turn down another sidewalk.

He didn't even need to take a step off his path to reach you that’s how long his arms were.

Fucking hell it made your face feel warm!

You smirked all the way up at him grabbing his hand by the thumb and bring it around you so you were wrapped up in his elbow, both your arms around his midsection.

“so smart…you should be a geographer. There’s a program for that here, by the way.”

He rolled his eyes so deeply that you pressed your face against his ribs knowing he wasn’t going to indulge any more of your peer pressuring. He’d come to visit you, and to take you back home because finals had just finished for the semester.

You were dead set on convincing him that he should sign up for next semester. You wanted him here. So you packed most of your stuff up before he actually arrived so you could show him around campus…let him experience the dinning hall. You were right to assume that he’d enjoy the all you can eat aspect of it. He probably had three plates and two different bowls of cereal!

Then it was a walk around campus, he wanted to see some of the places you had described to him over the phone. It was sweet how much he remembered about the pointless conversations you guys had.

A pregame at your friends off campus apartment, with some game, and then ending the night at a pub. At some point between pre drinks your buzz has hit you, and thank god for it because it made you bold enough to break the touch barrier with him. You’d made it in his truck…for awhile that day when he found you trying to get some to surprise him. The day you born admitted there was something a lot deeper than just friendship happening between you two. But you went back to school two days later and so nothing more had actually kicked off.

Your friends knew how disappointed you were that nothing else had happened and so there was lots of giggling and joking at the pub when Dunk would go get you another drink, when he’d touch your back to alert you to somebody trying to squeeze by, and the snickering even came out of you when a table finally opened up and you were one seat short for the group.

You’d pushed Dunks hand off his lap and sat yourself right in it. Neither of you move again for the rest of the night. Your fluttering lashes kept him firmly seated when even the guys in the group called him over for another beer, and you were way to busy making little comments to him and tracing the lines on his palm to join your girlfriends in the bathroom.

He was staying with you tonight, obviously, and driving you back home to flea bottom in his truck whenever you guys woke up. He refused to imagine you attempting that long of a drive again in your beater of a car. “Would he fuckin wreckless of me not to just drive ya back” you’d blushed so badly when he told you that a few days ago and was bloody greatful it was a phone call and not FaceTime!

“my roommates staying at her boyfriend.” You told him slipping away from his side to get your key in the door.

“she okay there?” He asked, he was to sweet for his own good.

You nodded with a laugh as you got your heels off and the denim jacket you’d worn out. You wanted to be comfortable as soon as possible.

“she’s exactly where she wants to be.” You promise “and it’s sort of a favor to me.” You explained bending down to plug your phone into the charger.

“favor? In what way?” Dunk had grabbed your water bottle off the desk and as holding it down for you to take. He knew you’d probably gotten way more sloshed than this over the course of the semester but this as his first time actually seeing you have more than one drink so he was being a bit overprotective, at the bar and now apparently also with the possible future hangover you might get.

“wanted us to-“ you sigh when you turn and see the water being shoved to you. Being down on your knees infront of him, what you want to swallow down is not exactly water… but you do, because you know he’ll grumble, about how you really should, if you don’t.

“-Have some privacy.” You stood up wobbling a bit and leaning back against the lofted beds support. Taking another long drink of water and handing it back to him while he seems to fish around for a reply.

“you do want to have sex don’t you?”

“yes! Gods, yes. Absolutely I do-“ Dunk exclaimed quickly when his lack of response had made you second guess it you’d read this whole thing wrong.

“great!” You grabbed the water bottle from his hand and tossed it at your bean bag chair pushing yourself against him instantly and grabbing his shoulders. You couldn’t reach his lips, tippy toes or not so he was going to have to help you out a bit and bend down. Or pick you up-you’d be happy with that option too!

He reached a hand up to touch your side, to stabilize you a bit but he didn’t actually bent down to meet your lips, which were currently kissing at the bit of skin that the collar of his shirt didn’t cover.

“You’re lovely,” he was clearly fighting the words as they came out. “But your drunk…”

You pull your arms down a bit taken back by the comment. “So are you!” You gawk slightly looking up at him.

“I don’t want ‘ya waking up and regretting this.” He approached his hesitation from a different angle this time but when you started to strip your skirt off a foot from him his resolve threatened to break.

He had been feeling you arse thought your skirt all night…rubbing slightly at it when you would shift in his lap.

“fuck me-“ he groaned and ran a hand down his face with a low groan.

“yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thing ta do!” You laughed and stood there looking up so sweetly at him when his hand finally stopped shielding his eyes.

Your top was cropped so it wasn’t hiding any of your pratically bare midsection and legs from him. Your skin was so smooth…shinny still from the lotion he’d watch you apply earlier before the pub.

When you realized that he seemed pretty focused on the lace flowers that were patterned onto the front of your thong you reached down, bitting your lip and trailing your hand over the fabric.

“pretty aren’t they?” You spoke softly, clearly trying to be a bit more seductive than your normal voice might allow.

“feel them-“

“Shouldn’t be out wearing that sort of thing doll.” He warned, like scolding you might distract him from the actual desires he was having. He wanted to feel them for himself but he also wanted to pull them off and stuff them on his pocket for later. He had a sick idea that what was between your thighs was softer than your underwear. That was what he wanted to feel, you.

“That’s why I wore them out with you Dunk.” You rolled your eyes a bit. “Don’t think anybody could even attempt to look up my skirt with your big hand grabbing at my backside.”

“big hand-they aren’t-they aren’t that big are they?”

When he held his palms up between you two you almost moaned out loud. He had no blood clue how big they were, or that you’d gotten wet just from feeling how much expansive they were on your figure and he never he touched you.

“they are.” You blinked eyes glued to them and you legitimately licked your lip when seeing one of the veins bulge a bit.

“Sit down.” You push on his chest and he willingly sits down in your bean bag chair. It’s not much more than cushion for a man of his size but it’s better than just being on the floor.

“listen to me Duncan. I’m not that drunk-not by a fucking mile-“ he opened his mouth like he was about to argue with you and you covered his mouth with your hand and sat down in his lap. “-and I don’t think I’m capable of regretting anything that I might do with you.”

“Doll-you…you could regret it! Might not be what you like, or not as good as you expected.”

You’d grabbed his hand now and rubbed at it before leading his palm back to your arse and pushing on his fingers until he grope at the curve of you.

“I’ll regret not doing this and going home being able to pretend like all we are is friends.” You knew if this didn’t happen that both of you would just fall into normal routine back in flea bottom, that this moment of mutual attention and shared boldness would pass right over you two.

“Now don’t tell me what I want and don’t want, I’m serious Duncan.” You warn him as you grab the bottom of your shirt and pulled it up over your head.

“okay.” He blubbered out, eyes following your tits at the shirt comes off and your tits jiggle because they are only being controlled by some bra cakes.

“If you don’t want to sleep with me then that’s fine…but if all you’re worried about is my sensibilities in the morning then we don’t have anything stopping us!”

Apparently that speech, or the removal of your shirt, was reassuring enough for him because the second you stopped speaking he grabbed your jaw and pulled you to his mouth.

The exasperated attitude you had less than 20 seconds ago was completly melted away as you turned to straddle him and strech your neck to keep reaching as your lips for lost in the constant contact with his.

“For fucks sake…” Duncan had to break the kiss, lips flushed and his nose a bit red. Both of you panting for air unable to wipe the dopey smiles off either of your faces.

“don’t huff about something you like.” You kissed his jaw, warm tongue gently poking out to make the kisses your trailed down his neck warm and wet.

Your eyes glanced up at him when his big fingers gathered your hair and tossed it back behind your shoulder.

“you love kissing me…don’t you?” You drawled out softly, just before sucking a mark onto the underside of his jaw.

“Does taunting me get you off or something?” He quipped and sunk down against the bean bag a bit.

“You could find you-“ you whispered in his ear shaking your hips from side to side a bit as he lounged into a relaxed sitting position. Cutting yourself off when your voice trembled because Duncan had laid his warm hand down on your side, fingers catching the waistband of your thong a bit. You were dripping thinking about him pulling them down and touching you there. Forehead hiding against his shoulder as you anticipated the sensation, wanting to be able to muffle the moans that would start flowing embarrassingly quickly once he gave you the attention you were vying for.

“Come ‘er.” His voice was deeper when both of his hands bypassed the string over your hips and instead latched to your ass. Each cupping a cheek and squeezing.

The lift from his hands did bring you up a bit off his lap, so now were basically laid against his upper body. Dunks hands didn’t move though, even once he was content with your positioning.

You slung a arm up around his head when he groped the meat of your backside and you whined hiding your face from him still because the room was now filled with your join heavy breathing and the wet vulgar noise of your pussy. Each time he moved his hands against your bum the squelching of arousal between your lips was heard.

“So wet for me.” Duncan hummed, like he was hypnotized by the feeling of your skin under his hands and hearing how much you wanted him had only made the enhancement stronger.

“D-Dunk…” you were just whining, no clue what else to say, no thought on what you wanted all you knew was that you need him!

You had gone from overeager and amused to all soft and whimpery. He hoped that wasn’t a bad thing. It didn’t feel like it was a bad thing when your fingers were twirling the hair at the nape of his neck.

“You okay doll?” He tucked his chin down to see you, his hand stopping with his fingers up under the string that went between you cheeks and his grip on your cheek lightened some, he’d feel sick from how his head would spin the morning when you’d tell him you had little sprinklings of bruises all over your arse. He wouldn’t know if he should hit himself for being such an idiot or if he should palm his crotch because of how hard he got seeing you turn around to show him each little mark. His outstretched fingers left.

“mhm…” you blink up at him, looking way more drunk than any pint could make you! “Feels good.” You whisper laying your cheek back down.

“Take em off me.” You begged sweetly and he couldn’t resist doing what you asked so within the minute your panties and little bra pasties were off without you having to move an inch.

Duncan had shifted you up against his chest some more so your face could reach his better and it was his turn to press soft pecks down your neck and jaw. He didn't suck like you had, he didn't want people looking at you for a second time to confirm what mark their minds had seen.

He diddnt want people getting the wrong idea about you, thinking you were flinging yourself at people.

“touch me.” His thought, that were trying very hard to be valiant, faded when you press your hips forward and humped his stomach. “Don’t make me do it myself Duncan.” You groaned and before you could finish talking his hand had reached under your compeltly, forearm laid on your bum and fingers trailing over your warm swollen lips.

You turned your chin up so you could kiss him when he started to push them daringly against you. Easily working his long middle finger into your slit and dragging it right over your clit.

The sensation made you jolt a bit, you knew you’d been pretty worked up but the zinging feeling that his fingers rubbing against your hardened clit caused was so instant that it took you off guard. Normally it took a while for you you start feeling that sensation. Hell, normally the guy was already in you and you’d just started to play with yourself to make it somewhat stimulating for yourself!

But the gentlest touch, the simplest thing had you twitching when it was Dunk doing it.

“That too hard?” He pulled his head back so you could answer him instead of just muttering against his mouth. He wasn’t nearly as experienced as he wished he was right now. He thought those noises sounded good but the other girl he’d been with hadn’t started moaning so quickly…she hadn’t jerked around when he touched her.

Your forehead was pinched together and he couldn’t tell if it was focus or discomfort…until your head dropped back and he saw a happy smile strech over your face. So big that he caught a flash of your teeth as you nodded and your cheeks raised up making your eyes squinty.

“No, not to hard,” your words were flowing together “feels so good-I promise”. Your hand slipped down his back and grabbed a decent amount of fabric before pulling it up and tugging the long sleeve over his head.

Your hands instantly dragging down his broad chest and your tongue jutted out to lick your lips some as your fingers trailed over his stomach.

“can you keep rubbing me like that?” You requested while taking ahold of his forearm and rubbing through the pale hair that covered that bit of him, feeling the occasional little scar.

His face went warm at your insistence that he keep going, he wasn’t going to deny you, but the way you nodded fast, eyes moving from his face to his hand over and over had his pants starting to feel uncomfortable. You were just so bloody pretty and you wanted him to touch you so badly that you were bringing his hand to your soaked cunt?! It made him feel dizzy.

“so soft here.” He observed as his fingers rubbed gently against your damp folds and then began to make circles over your clit.

“and here-god, you’re really soft here.” The unoccupied hand had left your side and cupped one of your breasts. Experimenting with how the flesh pooled into the spaces between his fingers, that your dusky nipple hardened when he flicked at it with his thumb.

You’d taken to gripping at the bloody bean bag chair by this point because his hand between your thighs and the other toying with your nipples had you feeling better than the little vibrating wand you had stuffed in your sock drawer did! In the battle of man versus machine, Duncan was putting up a really good showing for man!

“Ahh! Fuck-hmm Jesus fucking Christ!” You swore eyes sealing shut and your back arched pretty severely as you came. Hips shaking and your legs slammed shut, trapping his wrist so he couldn’t keep stimulating you. “Oh my god…” you finally exhale, chest heaving as you caught your breath and slowly peeled your eyes open looking at him. He’d let go of your boob at some point during all that and had cupped the back of your head.

He just looked amazed and bewildered at the same time. Like he didn’t know women could react as strongly as men did when they had an orgasm.

You turned your head kissing his bicep while slowly opening your knees up so blood flow could return to his hand.

“That was amazing darling.” His voice was husky and deep. Need dripping from it but he wasn’t going to let his hunger have an impact on your enjoyment or in this situation your recovered post climax.

You murmured thank you’s against his arm. Laughing at yourself when his hand finally was allowed by your thighs to move and you almost instantly groaned from the loss of contact.

“I’m done for.” You groaned a bit rubbing your face and taking a deep steadying breath. You’d just had an orgasm that was so full bodied and wonderful that you were legitimately sweating and already you were winging about his hand leaving you?

“your lovely,” he smiled taking your spent image in, you look so pretty, hair all gone astray, cheeks red and eyes heavy. He bent over you a bit to peck your lips that were glued in a pleased little girl. “Look lovely.” He hummed kissing down your neck a bit hand cupping your sides.

“Dunk-“ you knew what he was planning, there was only one reason a man every started kissing down between your breasts and to your stomach. And as much as you did want his head trapped between your thighs you also knew yourself well enough to know that you’d likely he exhausted if you came again so soon, and you wanted to be able to help him get off!

His hands kept lowering down your sides, his big mouth devouring your lower belly in kisses as his fingers held to the sides of your bottom. He was pratically drooling, he wanted to taste you, wanted to make you moan like you had a minute ago with his fingers.

You almost forgot about needing to cool off because he started to kiss your thighs and his nose was dragging against the nook between your thighs and mound.

“wait-let me taste ya” he breathed out piercing blue eyes looking up at you as your pushed his big head back. “Come’on doll.” He wasn’t begging but he did sound like you’d taken the last bite of his plate.

With a shocking amount of agility you swung your leg over his broad back and rolled off the bean bag onto your knees, hands pressed to the floor to stand yourself up. He flopped over onto his back against the squishy ‘chair’ and just smiled, looking at you in all your glory. He hand rested on his chest for a moment, chest rising and falling quickly and when he saw your eyes dart to his jeans he groaned quickly covering the bulge with his palms.

“I don’t need any of that from ya.” He spoke quickly. “I can handle this, just want you to get what you need.”

You smiled slightly and shook your head. “And what if I want to handle it Dunk?” He could fucking cum at the sound of those words falling from your mouth. You got an audible groan from him when you continued. “I wanted your cock in my mouth since you touched my back during pre-drinks.” Promptly turning and going up the ladder to your lofted bunk bed.

“And don’t make me wrestle with those bloody jeans.” You called out, the bed creaking as you laid against it. Smiling to yourself, this was going so well, you couldn’t help but be giddy.

Duncan, to your joy, had taken a single step on the ladder to reach your mattress. He looked around a bit. It was a tight squeeze.

“do these things have a weight limit?” He grumbled while getting himself laid beside you. It was more intimate up here, you basically had to be touching and your eyes didn’t have anything to look at other than the other persons face.

Something about the closeness, his hand heaving over the curve of your hip and his head resting on the same pillow as yours made you nervous.

“I’ve actually hosted quite a party up here before. Orgys and whatnot.” You joke, feeling the need to lighten the intensity you were feeling in your heart.

“You’ve not, Jesus.” He rolled his eyes and you cracked a smile when his hand squeezed your hip. “Just don’t need to destroy your dorm the day before move out.” He muttered, lips brushing yours.

“I don’t know,” you breath in the air he exhales and your nose settles just under his. “That seems like rather convenient timing for me.”

He kiss him his laugh getting stuck in his throat and slowly you shit your knees under you and break the connection of your lips glancing down to see he had indeed gotten rid of the jeans but still had on his tight briefs.

Your hand reached down and grabbed him through the fabric, squeezing until he gave a pleased moan. You wanted to see what kind of grip he liked, all guys were different after all.

He gone red and silent, a hand covering his face as he twitched. You liked how shy he was about it, he wasn’t some prick who was as used to girls going down on him constantly and just expected it to occur. He was all flustered about your face even being level with his crotch and it just made you even more eager to give him a good show!

“you’re suppose to watch.” You hummed, dragging the waistband down his legs.

“Jesus fucking Christ-“ he shot up, head hitting the ceiling when he attempted to sit up to grab you. He was worried you were going to fall off the end of the bed trying to get his underwear off his feet, which were hanging pretty significantly off the end of the bed. “Fuck!” He hissed one hand rubbing the red spot on his forhead and his other hand had grabbed one of your thighs, gripping it quite hard and literally yanking you back.

You sat up eyes wide and cringed as his hand pulled away and you saw the bump on his forhead. “That why you’re suppose to just lay down and let me do this”. You sighed leaning down. Gently pressing a kiss to the injury.

“Just-stay away from the cliff that if the end of this bed, please!” He groaned, hand rubbing over your back as you peppered his lips and jaw with kisses.

“okay…” you started to kiss down his neck over his chest and smiled up at him when you reached the happy trail below his naval. “Can I stop right…here…this isn’t to close to the edge.” You spoke softly as your nose dragged against the sensitive skin leading to the base of his cock.

“Right Dunk?” You look up at him as your tongue came out to wet his shaft. Pupils widening as you as you get a taste of him. “Hm?” Your tongue laves up one side until your reach his tip and cock your brow waiting for a response from him.

“mmm, yeah-yeah that’s grand right there.” He nodded when you stopped moving. “So good there.” He swallowed the lump in his throat while reaching down to push your hair over your shoulder so he could see you better.

You give him a cheeky smirk and sneak a peck to his palm when it brushes your cheek before lowering yourself down properly and starting to lick and suck at him in earnest. You just wanted tk taunt him a bit. Not drive him mad, he didn’t deserve that!

“fuck!” He swore brows coming together as he watched your hand wrapped around him and your mouth strech wide. Your lips were cracked a bit in the corner but that didn’t bother you, actually it spurred you on more. The concept that he was so bloody big that your throat could not even take him fully-that made your thighs squeezed together. “Right there-y-yeah, just like that, oh fuck” he moaned as your cheeks puffed out from him taking up all the space in your mouth nodding down at you as the tip of your little tongue reached beyond your lips to reach even just a bit more of his veiny throbbing dick.

You were mumbling things against him. He had no fucking idea what you were saying because your mouth was very much occupied by him but he appropriate how it made your throat vibrate.

“S-stop- you gotta stop I’m going to finish.” He bit out, his hand leaving its place on your ass. He’d started rubbing over that curve as you knelt over him. You weren’t sure if it was more soothing to him or you!

You couldn’t frown, but you would have because he backed his hips up and pulled you back up the bed, rising his side off the mattress and slipping you under him.

“I’m not going to cum until you do.” He said seriously and you wiped your mouth, knees already rising up instinctively and settling against his sides. Opening yourself up to him. Whimpering your you felt his leaking tip drag against your warm slit. It felt like he was made for you. Cock hung at the perfect angle to slot right in…all he needed to do was part your puffy lips some.

“okay…” you were breathless in anticipation, holding to the back of his neck. “Technically I came already but yeah, okay.” You stroke the back of his head watching his face as his hand moved between you and he circled your clit until your hips lifted to meet his hand. Eyelids fluttering at the sensation and just before you opened your mouth to tell him to stop stalling his cockhead hooked inside your.

“oh-“ your brows raised that the feeling and your mouth hung open. Duncan was using his arms to keep himself up so you weren’t of entirely crushed under him. He was watching you very closely, observing you for discomfort or warnings he should stop. He had to sink in a few inches, mostly because his back was as hitting the ceiling and that wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world…but also because he couldn’t fully resist chasing the silk warm feeling of your core.

“more-“ you basically growl, fingers pulling a bit on his hair trying to urge him down to kiss you but he was way to paranoid about hurting you to get lost against your lips.

Duncan watch your face, watch your neck to look for signs of tensing or cringing as he complied with your demand, slowly rocking more of him into your insanely wet cunt.

“F-fuc-fuck!” You drawl out the groan as he stretches you. Able to feel him so deep that you swore he was moving around things in your stomach. “Fuck-your big.” You turn your face into the pillow whimpering.

“Hey-no, I need you to open your eyes….i gotta see you’re okay.” He said seriously, cheek to your jaw as his hips stutter to a stop.

You whined and turned your head forward against opening your eyes.

“keep going…please.” You wrapped your legs around his back and pushed your heels into him.

“Please”

Duncan kissed you, finally, for the first time since entering you and both of you just melted into one another. His hands always moving, soothing you as his hips began to jolt forward. You were gripping tightly to his hair, devouring his lips with yours and gasping out encouragement.

“Fuck! Oh god-faster!” You bite down on his shoulder hands shaking when his tips reaches a bit deeper and hits a spot in you that nobody has ever reached. It made you eyes go black and your fingers tense.

“Duncan-keep going.” You begged him. Voice breathy but deathly serious. He could feel how you were tensing around him, your walls squeezing hard and it was making his own vision a bit blurry from how good it felt to feel you milk him.

“keep-ugh!” You almost shout and push hard against his chest, not nearly having the strength to move him but he pulled out of you instantly, looking down as his cock legitimately dripped worn your release.

You were clinging to him in the moments after the intense orgasm, hiding your face in his neck and whimpering continuously, he is as kissing your neck stroking his thumb over your cheek. Just smiling like a fool because you look so bloody beautiful and you’d just physically given him everything you had. He was enamored before but now…well now he didn’t even have a word for what he felt!

Belatedly you regained a more normal breathing rhythm and the haze in your eyes cleared. Looking down between you because there was something warm on you. Your exhaled with a smile and bit at your bottom lip when you saw Duncan had came on your stomach at some point in the mist of your orgasm. He was heavy and soft against your hip now and when he realized he’d made such a mess against you he slipped to his side and groaned.

“Fuck, I’m sorry.” He sighed, instantly bearing himself up. He was about to reach for his underwear to wipe you up right away but you were looking down at your soft abdomen with a transfixed look, fingers slowly dancing down them and swirling up the pearly thick liquid.

“Finish in me next time.” You whispered feeling his release between your fingers.

He laughed into your shoulder having to look away from the playing your fingers were doing. Opting instead to look at your face.

“You’re serious?” He blinked and the flush returned to his ears.

“Mhm,” you nodded and turned your head so both of your cheeks were flush to the pillow and guy smiled sweetly at him.

“I think there’s alot of things about me that might shock you Dunk.” You smirk. Blinking softly at him as he leans over to kiss your cheek, just before your hand come up to your mouth and your lick your leash fingers clean. Not breaking eye contact with him for a second.

[knightofcassiopeia]

reading to dunk;

dunk was a solid warmth against your back, his body a shield against the hard wall and floor. he shaped himself around you as best he could, ensuring that not for a moment you were uncomfortable under the constant changes of your body. he would take a thousand lances through his stomach if it meant keeping you content.

although, when he’d spoken the words aloud one morning, you had half a mind to throw a pan at him and demand he never say such things.

“…and the bird had asked for forgiveness,” you murmured into the darkness, the light from the lantern just enough to get through the ink upon the paper. “he had traveled day and night to reach the poppy field, but his wings were an inch too small. had he been better born, the bluebird might have made it in time.”

dunk perched his chin over your shoulder, eyes dragging against words he could speak, but could not read. it was a wretched disconnect, and you had tried to teach him. but he preferred to listen.

“is that the end?” he muttered, his hands slow to move against your rounding stomach. touching you was a simple comfort of his; to know you were truly there with him.

“aye,” your hand came to his hair, fingers wading into his growing locks. “that’s the end.”

dunk squinted, “what is that, then?”

his arm lifted, his hand coming to point at the last paragraph in the book. a smile etched onto your lips.

“i just read that, dearest.”

“ah.”

dunk’s hand returned to you, his touch firmer as you asked, “you did not like it?”

“yes,” he said before he twisted himself through a loop. “no. yeah…no. it was—it was good. i just prefer the better endings. the…happier ones.”

“the happier ones.”

dunk’s ears burned. you felt the heat creep onto your skin, and dunk was a wicked man for it. wicked for making your heart melt over the poor tale of a little blue bird.

"i do, too," you admitted to him, "life is already a sad thing...stories like this ought to be happier. make up for all the joy this world sucks out of us."

dunk snorted, stunned by your blunt honesty and strangely enamored by it, too. "what?"

"don't you think so?" you turned to him. "every tale in this book ends in disappointment, torment, or death. i do not think we've had a single one have a happy ending."

and you go to bed dejected and confused, you wanted to add. and i feel guilt for it all because you make me read it to you!

"wait, now," he kept his voice low. "the fair maiden did marry the beast of the forest."

"yes. just for her to be crushed on their wedding night."

dunk blinked, his mind crawling to remember those exact words spilling from your lips some nights before. yet he found none, and he was left bewildered. "i don't remember that."

"it was between the lines."

"that's—well, i cannot read between the lines."

"not...not literally," you groaned quietly, knowing if you continued to go back and forth, the boy sleeping on the bed would wake. "dunk..."

"aye? i'm upsetting you, aren't i?" he sighed. "i'm sorry. i don't mean to upset you or the little one."

you laid your head back. "you're not, my love...i think we should find something new to read. or something else to do."

"i like when you read to me."

you hummed.

"i enjoy it when we do other things, too," dunk followed with, just to feel his face flush. he hadn't meant it that way, or any way, really; he only wanted to agree. "what...what were you saying? something else?"

"dunk!" you scolded with a whisper, although you felt more embarrassment than irritation.

"no, i'm asking. well, i meant—“ he groaned, his arms pulling you impossibly closer to bury his face into your neck. no matter what, he'd stumble as he spoke. "let's...let's get some rest."

despite his lingering awkwardness, and perhaps his hunger, you nodded against him. "i like that idea."

i lub my illiterate hedge knight

[knightofcassiopeia]

guys if dunk could read he would be LETHAL. that voice of his? A DEATH WISH. he’d be too good.

[glorydescent]

💭 has anyone else seen that clip of martin crying playing fortnite cus he misses mandy (she’s in the next room). that’s the most dunk thing ever, especially if he’s a little drunk. i might need to write a little blurb abt dunk getting drunk n tearing up cus he misses his lady so bad…

[ratgirl300]

we have a what’s wrong with them. So what do you think is right with them?

What's Right With These Guys?

18+ MDNI

Summary: What good traits do the akotsk men have? How does that show in relation to you? 

AN: I loved this, thank you for the suggestion!! I’ll be honest, I almost skipped Aerion on this one lol bc like….. Yeah. Anyway, if you’d like to read about what's wrong with them, you can do so here. I hope you enjoy! <3 

Warnings: some violence, fem(ish) reader but not really, a little angst

2.6 Words

Daeron:

Daeron is soft in a way that few men are. Maybe it's the loss of almost all shame over the years; waking up in ditches, filthy, rank, stained. He’s not one to be domineering, nor is he masculine in the traditional sense. He has spent years listening to his father berate him for his disinterest in all things political, a lack of propriety, and inability to handle a sword.The constant pressure has only forced him deeper into his depravity, but has also made him a gentler soul, despite it all. 

It's no secret Daeron believes himself incapable of good. He states to Dunk that he’s doomed to hell, certain there’s nothing redeemable about him. Yes he’s a coward, and yes he allows his dreams to rule his life, but the truth is, there is a good deep down in him. Sometimes it's so deep, it's difficult to find, but he’s not violent, or cruel, or brutal like so many men in the Realm. When he hasn’t drunk so much that his mind has gone, he’s funny and clever. There's a small joy for him in teasing you, flipping your braid or tugging at your cloak, whispering in your ear small obscenities or silly words. Making you laugh means he’s done something right. Even when it irritates you instead, he’s just happy for the attention honestly. 

The Prince is also very fond of being close to you. Where other lords, and certainly some of the Princes, would find it unfitting or childish, Daeron will not shy away from holding your hand, tucking his head against your shoulder, or putting an arm around you. Several times, you’ve had to giggle and step away, playfully chiding him about his public image. He is well aware of how people see him, and if that means he can stand with you pressed against him in a crowd, he doesn’t mind in the slightest. 

I had this vision of him that struck me while writing this: Daeron, drunk out of his mind, lost in the dark outside of a tavern, halfway to Ashford with no brother in sight. He’s upset, confused, stumbling around in the woods, and falls against a tree when his legs can no longer keep himself up. He falls into restless sleep, visions of dragons spinning in his head. When he wakes, there’s only a dim light on the horizon, and a warmth pressed against his hip. It's a cat, ragged fur and a notched ear, sleeping soundly against him. He’s extremely confused in his drunk, half-asleep state, but scratches its head as it purrs, and falls back into slumber with a hand protectively on its back. Even when he thinks the worst of himself, others can sense the innate goodness, deep down. 

Maekar: 

Maekar is loyal to a fault. He’s a soldier, trained from a young age to take orders as the youngest son of a King. As an adult, it shows in his dedication to the people he loves. He is Baelor’s shadow, on and off the battlefield. The expendable spare, ready to take a hit for the brother he looks up to so fondly. There's a discipline in him; training, learning, listening to what he’s told and executing it with efficiency and competence. 

It is the same in his marriage; even if there isn’t love right away, he would never think to break an oath. He may not be soft or warm or cuddly but make no mistake, you can feel how much he cares peeking through his incessant need to keep you safe. He feels the need to do things for you himself. Yes you have an escort of guards around you, but he insists on being the one to take a turn with you in the gardens alone. If you’re planning on a ride, he checks your saddle before you mount, ensuring it will not fail. Maekar learns quickly to anticipate your needs; a new gown when you tear a hem, the next volume before you’ve finished a book, his cloak around your shoulders before you even realize you’re chilly. 

He’s not one for poetry or song, often he doesn’t even verbalize his love for you, but you feel it all the same. You know it's hard for him to admit his feelings, years of forcing down opinions in favor of those who give orders has made him unsure of how to open up. And Maekar hates feeling unsure of himself. Instead, he’ll avoid awkward confessions and scrambled musings of love, the unwavering faithfulness all the admission you need to know he feels the same. 

I touched on this in the other post, but he does secretly love attention and affection, especially physical. If you ask him to snuggle up to you in bed, he’ll grumble about how undignified it is for a prince to do something so silly, but he pulls you against his chest and tucks you under his chin. Part of it is a protection aspect: where would you be safer than in his arms? He also just loves the feeling of your hand holding his head or rubbing his back. 

Despite most of his life being an exercise in strength, brutality, and honing the ability to turn off emotions, Maekar loves hard. It doesn’t really look like it to people who don’t know him well, and that’s by design. For the first time in his life, he does not care what anyone but the person he loves thinks of him. He’s stern and grouchy, tough and crass, but he would follow you to hell and back if you asked him. 

Aerion:

For all his faults, and there are many, Aerion is extremely protective over what he deems as his. This can be toxic, at times, possessive, but there is a fierceness in which he would defend anyone or anything that he loves. He takes pride in the feeling of keeping someone safe, a true dragon defending his hoard. There are no lengths he would not go to defend someone if he truly loves them. He’s easily the most skilled warrior of his brothers, something else he takes pride in, spending hours training and dedicating himself to the task. He’s strong, wiry and tough, and able to stand up to men much bigger than himself without hesitation. Of course, it gets him into trouble.

He cares, very deeply, about a great many things; what you think of him, if he’s strong enough to warrant a reputation,  his own standing in the dragon house, but he has an ability to mask any insecurity, and turn it into confidence. It frightens most, lords and commonfolk alike keeping their distance. He revels in the fear, but he also knows it keeps you safe. He’s obsessive: a word spoken in jest about you, an eye staring too long at your neck, a hand offered to help you to your seat, and he’s losing it. It's his job to help you, to leer at your decolletage and to tease you mercilessly. Gods help any man who tries, they’ll suddenly find themselves at his mercy, and we’ve all seen where that leads. Bloody knuckles, broken bones, bruised eyes and egos. He’ll fight and fight until he feels like whatever wrongdoing has been fully paid back. Aerion doesn’t care how injured he gets, his eyes see red and feeling leaves his body as the adrenaline rushes. After, as long as you’re safe in his arms, kissing his face and cleaning his wounds, he’s content to keep fighting. 

Dunk:

Dunk is the very truest of knights. Honor, integrity, truth, these are the traits he knows are baked into the oath every knight swears, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t follow them. He’s chivalrous, but not in a way where it feels condescending. You know when he offers to carry your basket, he’s doing it to be kind, not because he thinks you can’t do it yourself. When he wraps his cloak around your shoulders, it's because he wants you to be warm, not because he expects anything in return. When he steps in front of you at the sight of danger, it's because the thought of you hurt makes him so angry that his body moves before his brain has fully formed the thought. He wants to help people, to be useful, needed. Helping old ladies up stairs, teaching a young squire a sword trick, giving the crust of his bread to a curious bird. It's purely out of the goodness of his heart. 

He’s the most lovesick puppy of a man. Following close behind you, dopey grin on his face, while you go about your day. He preens when you ask him to get something down from a high shelf, his shoulders shift back and his spine straightens when you thank him for helping you. Helping you up on a horse, tying your boot laces, giving you the warmer blanket, he’s just so pleased to have someone to take care of, and the way he knows how to show his love is to help. He does the same for Egg, though he does try to be sterner with the boy. His sweet, brotherly affection he shows for the child is heartwarming. There’s no end to threats of clouts on the ear, bed without supper, tending to the horses alone, but you, Egg, and even Dunk himself knows it's all in vain. The fond look on his face when the little Prince disarms him gives him away instantly. 

Dunk is well aware of how large he is, how if someone didn't know his kind heart, they might find him daunting. He goes out of his way to be smaller and softer, to move slowly so as not to spook people. I’ve mentioned it before, but Gwin Ashford picks at him, gets in his face, and feels no fear. She’s literally a tween girl, but immediately senses that he won’t retaliate if she jabs at him. It takes a lot to provoke him to real anger, and anything less means he tries hard to be unintimidating. 

He almost dies from happiness when you give the same attention back to him. Mending holes in his clothes, chatting with the horses as you feed them, gently pulling his giant form out of the way so he doesn't trip over tree roots. It's the simplest things, but he covets the attention you give him. Dunk adores you, and shows you by acts of service, so when you do something for him, it tells him how much you love him back. 

Baelor:

Despite being raised in King’s Landing, years of heavy strength and swordsmanship training, and countless bouts on the battlefield, Baelor remains gentle and kind in a way so few men in Westeros are. It's not weakness by any means, rather he fights all his instincts; the lessons engrained in him, his hot Targaryen dragon blood. For the realm, it means an even-headed, calm, intelligent man ruling with both compassion and tenacity. 

For you, it means a man who will listen to you speak for hours so that he can better understand every part of you. A man who will take a deep breath and apologize instead of escalating an argument. A man who, in spite of his status, treats you as an equal and insists on you calling him Baelor; not my Prince, or eventually my King, just the name he was given. Of course duty is important to him, he works himself to the bone to try and live up to his own standards, but he also yearns for a connection with you and to know you wholly, and for you to know him. 

Baelor works diligently on any task. Whether it's planning logistics for grain distribution, or helping you clip a necklace, he treats any duty like a chance to prove himself, and to execute said task with completeness. He does not not understand when you giggle to yourself in the mirror when he braids your hair with the same concentration he plans battle strategy, both are equally important to get right for him. 

He is also remarkably bright, focusing on his political and historical intelligence to better prepare himself when he ascends the throne. Baelor never makes you feel stupid, however. Intellect is something he covets, and he is more than interested in hearing what you know, and explaining what you ask him in a way that shows he thinks of you as academically equal. 

He’s not a show-off type, rather he knows his strengths, and is content to let them speak for themselves. Not one to brag, confident but with the poise of someone who knows his worth. You wouldn’t often see him on a tourney field, not only would it be unsafe for the heir, but he doesn't find he needs the satisfaction of winning. Why risk an injury, or frightening you, to knock some fresh boy off his horse? Baelor would much rather use that energy to practice and perfect his skill in a yard, sparring with experts he could actually learn something from. He’s not the proud sort. Rather, he’s a good man, with a good heart, who longs to take care of someone. 

Lyonel:

Lyonel is the type of man who never really cared about marriage; didn’t want a tidy wife to have to look after, and he certainly didn’t want to end his gallivanting and carnality. So when he does marry, he’s not the type to force a wife into the strict standards of a noblewoman. That doesn’t necessarily mean he needs someone who will get up and dance on a table with him (though he would certainly enjoy it), but he would never understand why some men want silence and subservience from a partner. 

Instead, he’s excited to hear you talk about your interests; he may cut in and ask questions or add his own commentary, but he’ll also sit and listen with his chin in his hand while you tell him about a book you read or a bit of gossip you heard. When you laugh loudly at a crude joke he makes, or make an even cruder one yourself, he’s grinning ear to ear. If you eagerly tell him how much you love dancing, he’s finding the nearest tavern to spin you in immediately. Lyonel has a way of making friends with anyone, and you are no exception. If the two of you will be living together, expected to make heirs and rule the Stormlands, he is determined to make you like him. He’s too busy trying to make you laugh with his antics, or impress you with a hunt, or regale you with stories of adventure, to realize he’s fallen head over heels, deeply, wildly in love. 

He’s not a serious person, and while that can have its faults, his lust for adventure and intense need for companionship mean that he wants to be around you constantly, and is in desperate desire for your pleasure. If you like to read, he’s sitting beside you in the gardens, fidgeting in his seat but trying to pay attention to the story. If you like to ride, he’s lifting you up onto a horse and following you out into the glen. You get the picture. It's not so much about the activity, as it is about getting to make you happy. 

At his core, Lyonel would do anything for the people he loves. I know I’ve said this before, but he literally joins a fight to the death for Dunk after knowing him for like a day. He is fiercely loyal, would step in front of an arrow for someone he cares for. It borders on crazy, certainly, but you cannot deny his devotion.

[quiteamessbabes]

clark trying to breakup with reader bc he thinks she deserves better than an alien boyfriend and reader is nottt having it and she’s yelling at him for ever thinking he could leave her (she knows hes just self sabotaging himself) and she ends up having clark underneath her and when she’s fucking his brains out she’s saying things like “how could you ever think i’d allow anyone else but me to have this cock ? this is mine”. i’d just loveee the concept of reader being possessive and standing her ground when clark thinks he can just walk away from her 😩

Waitttt anon your MINDDD!!! i love this plz be back when u have these sexy thoughts again

Thank u lots for the idea/request! love always, mani

Word Count: 1.6k

Content: MDNI (18+) Smut. Reader is a little rough with him but he likes it and deserves it. Angst and Fluff. Clark is called an idiot multiple times, but you'll see why.

Clark was an idiot. He was stupid, stupid man. He let some stupid comment from coworker get to him.

“I don’t think Superman could be in a relationship, y’know? He’s always busy and almost dying. Not exactly boyfriend material.” Steve said as Cat asked jokingly if Superman was seeing anyone. Clark glanced around the room at the seeming agreement of the comment and they moved on to another topic but it kept ringing in Clark’s mind. Not boyfriend material. And it was true. You sometimes stayed up late waiting for a message from him, worried sick. He’d flaked on a dozen dates because someone needed Superman.

And you, you were the best thing. So, so worthy of everything good but you had a boyfriend who couldn’t give that to you. He had always thought you were out of his league, c’mon, he wasn’t an idiot. He was your biggest fan, he had eyes. But you seemed to love him without any prejudice, any restraint or dissent. So he forgot about that and focused on being happy. And boy, was he happy. You were perfect, perfect for him. The dates were full of laughter, the late night talks were all comfort and honesty, the early mornings were sickeningly sweet like honey. And the sex, my god, the sex. It was insane. You were a siren, dirty and sweet. A challenge, he had the time of his life getting to know you and how to work your body, what you liked and what you loved. And you worked his just as well.

So, he was here, shaking as he held your hand and you sat in front of him. He had just spat it out, and your eyebrows were crossed as you inspected him.

“You wanna break up? With me?”

“I- uh. Yes.”

“Clark, at least have the balls to look at me.” You demanded, letting go of his hand and crossing your arms defensively. You looked particularly pretty today, so he rather not look up as he was saying it. Also, you could probably see in his face how awful he felt. He looked up, glancing at you once before his eyes drifted away to the window as if there was something interesting going on.

“And may I ask why?”

“Uh- I don’t think things are working out.”

“What things?”

“Y’know… things. Like you snore when you sleep sometimes.”

“You’re going to dump me because I snore sometimes?” You continued your inquiry because you didn’t believe for a second this was actually what he wanted. You knew Clark; he wasn’t a blabbering idiot. If he wanted to talk or had a problem, he’d come right out and say it. This wasn’t a sure Clark, this nervous and unserious man in front of you seemed like he had a gun pressed to his temple and was forcing him to do this.

“Among other things-“

“What other things? Clark, Jesus Christ, look at me. Look me in the eyes and repeat the words and I’ll believe you.” You put both of your hands on the table, smacking them down and making him look at you. He tried to focus on your eyes, a deep breath and instead of saying what he meant, his eyes started to fill with tears.

“I just think you deserve better.”

“Better? What are you talking about?” Clark looked up and blinked away the tears pricking his eyes as he looked up to the ceiling now.

“I- I’m an alien, for god’s sake! And I can’t be there for you all the time, I have so many things to do. You deserve someone who’s there for you.” Clark’s words were more rushed and seemed like he had been holding them in for a long time, like they had been hammering into the back of his brain since he thought them.

“Clark, you’re there for me! Where did this come from? You’re pissing me off now. You think I’m some sort of weak woman that can’t decide what she wants? What she needs?” You sounded angry, offended and confused as to the conversation you were having. You were supposed to go out for sushi and then come home and pretend to watch a movie while you fucked. How did it turn into this?

“No, I don’t think that. I think you’re amazing, as are all woman - not the point- but I don’t want you to settle.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’m settling for Superman? Do you hear yourself? You’re a fucking catch, Clark. Do you not see what everyone thinks of you? How much they love you? I’m so lucky to have you. Don’t tell me what I want.” You whispered the last part, as if your anger was fading into sadness. The last thing he wanted. Clark’s mind had been somehow relaxed as he heard what you actually thought of him and let his fears and insecurities quiet down somewhat to listen to you. How there was no stutter in your breath, no doubt in your words. You were mad he had a considered doing this.

“I- fucking love you, Clark. I don’t want anything more, I don’t need it. I need you. Can you just- listen to me? To yourself?” Clark nodded, standing and taking you into his arms with a tight hug, mumbling sorry’s and I love you’s into your mouth as he finally convinced himself to push all those negative thoughts.

“Don’t do this, don’t sabotage yourself. Scared me to death, you idiot.” You said and finally took his kiss, the anger seemingly melting away from your mind as you felt how desperate and sorrowful he was against you. This had probably been eating at him, his stupid brain baiting him into thinking he was noble and kind to try and force you to find someone better. The tears kept falling from his eyes, and they were on the verge of falling once again half an hour later while you took a break from riding him with force of a knight in battle and were drawing small circles with your hips.

“Trying to leave me, huh? You want some other girl? Is that it?” You asked as you held his head back, pulling on his hair. His hands were steady and brushing on your hips, trying to get you to go faster again but with no increase. You were calling the shots and he was so into it.

“No, no, baby. I want you.” Clark shook his head, what a preposterous accusation to think you hadn’t ruined him for everyone else. There was nothing better, no one better.

“That’s right. How could you ever think I’d allow anyone else but me to have this cock? This is mine.” Clark groaned at your words, nodding his head eagerly.

“I’m yours. Everything is yours.” He was pretty sure your pussy had been molded to fit him too. It always felt like the perfect fit, the perfect press. You nodded with a smirk and went back to riding him with harder movements, hips grinding back and forth, up and down, feeling the perfect kiss of his dick onto your cervix.

Your hips rolled as you continued to ride him, still holding his hair back with your hand to force him to keep his head up looking at you. Looking at what he wanted to give away.

“You’re- you feel so good. Taking me so deep.” Clark whispered basically, eyes midway shut like he couldn’t keep them open with his dick receiving the tide of his life but he still wanted to look at you, not only because you wanted him to, but because he wanted to. You were a sight for sore eyes, sweaty and hot and your mouth hung slightly open to help you breathe. Your lips were plumped from the kissing and the necklace he got you for your sixth month anniversary hung from your neck. He was such a fucking idiot.

“What were you gonna do without me? Huh? Be alone? Find some Smallville girl? Some alien? Think they’d make you happy?” Clark shook his head, your grip getting harder and hips getting rougher as you even entertained the idea of Clark being without you. You could feel him twitching inside you, his palpitations on his tip making your pussy squeeze; Clark moaned at the feeling and pressed the fingertips of his hands harder into your hips. You knew he was close, you could tell all the signs by now. Idiot.

“No fucking way, baby. I’m it.” His moan was whiny and absurd as he unloaded inside you, a ridiculous amount of cum filling you up as you still fucked yourself on him, slower and with longer jumps. You pushed his head to look down; letting him see how his cum poured out of you with every slight movement. It wasn’t about finishing yourself off, you knew Clark wouldn’t let you go without making you finish; but about letting him see how much you knew him. What he liked; how to get him to spill his heart from his dick in copious amounts.

“I love you, honey. I love you to death. Forever, you and me. Right?” Clark spoke as he looked back into your eyes when your hand finally let go of his hair. You smiled, nodding as he kissed your whole face. You could tell he was sorry. You closed your eyes as you felt his mouth wander around your face, so it took you off guard when he grabbed harder onto your hips and lifted you off, gasp escaping your mouth. He placed you onto his face, holding you up by your ass as he looked at your pussy still gushing and swollen.

“I’m gonna spend forever between these legs.” He said and kissed the tip of your clit, looking at the mess of white he had created inside you, marked you his. He sucked your clit into his mouth, making your laugh get lost between a whine.

“I’ll take a break to get you a ring tomorrow, though.”

[kwistowee]

PETER CLAFFEY as CORMAC KELLY WRECK | 1.02

[glorydescent]

💭clark kent x famous!reader in a sit-down profile interview and where clark occasionally asks her questions he simply wants to know about her personally. and then using her answers to impress her as superman later. questions like “what’s your favorite flowers?” that probably won’t make the final cut in his article, but superman will suddenly surprise her with them the next day.

[ratgirl300]

What do AKOTSK men do when they’re down or privately struggling? What’s their tells? Like does the laughing storm not eat, is baelor Breakspear fidgeting with his rings obsessively? 

How Do They Struggle?

Summary: How do the akotsk men struggle? How do you know? What can you do to help them?

AN: Sometimes I see an ask and it immediately rockets to the top of my list, I was so excited for this one!! I hope you enjoy, please send in more ideas this format is so fun! I have another one on the way soon <3

Warnings: Angst, suggestive stuff, fem(ish) reader a little 

2.6k Words

Daeron:

This one is a little obvious of course, Daeron throws himself down the neck of a bottle when his dreaming becomes too much for him. There's no shortage of times where he’s passed out in a ditch, or even the middle of the road, purse stolen and eyes unfocussed as he begs the gods for reprieve. There's another aspect to this that I don’t see people talking about quite so much, and that's the sex. Daeron is a drunk, but he also spends long nights in brothels, intent to stay up as long as possible. He’s addicted to the small joy of having someone close; often he;s drunk enough that he’s not embarrassed to ask the poor girl to stroke his hair or tell him he’s going to be alright. 

The immediate tell that he’s fallen into old habits is that he looks awful. Dark, sunken eyes, filthy clothes, stubble grown out, a bruise or two from some drunken brawl he cannot remember. He stumbles, slurring his words and reeking of wine and the incense burned in the pleasure houses. If you’re married or together, it's possible he refrains from his unsavory visits, but it means he tries to seek it with you. Daeron is honestly kind of disgusting when it gets real bad, but it's hard to be angry when you see the tormented look in his eye, and the way he falls to his knees at your feet, clutching your skirts and begging you to touch him. 

He needs you to yell at him, honestly. Make him stand, drag him back to his rooms with a firm hand gripping his surcoat roughly and telling him to pull his fucking shit together. It works because he knows that it only comes from a place of love, your fear of losing him pushes him to at least try. You send for a hot bath, the glare in your eye enough to keep him from asking if you’ll join him. He’s perfectly content to listen to you berate him for his behavior; he agrees with what you say, he just doesn’t know how to stop it. The thing that really helps him calm himself is the combination of the harsh reality of your words, and the tenderness in which you help the still half-drunk Daeron wash his hair. Even when you’re finally abed, continuing to chide him for frightening you, for the state you found him in, his eyes are falling shut without complaint for the first time in days. His head on your chest, damp hair seeping into your nightgown, he’s sleeping soundly. 

Maekar:

When Maekar is struggling, he becomes a monster. It's a defense mechanism; he’d rather hurt others and push people away than let them see something’s wrong. Yelling, shoving, cutting words said in anger but remembered. The servants know to give him a wide berth, and any lord or knight caught in the crossfire learns quickly how he gained his reputation. Even with you, he’s grumbling, snappy and trite. He won’t insult you, it goes against the oaths he’s sworn, but he’s grinding his teeth and glaring with a fiercer intensity than usual. There’s a coldness to him, when he cannot fix a problem or there's too much work for hours in a day. He needs to get the anger out, that crushing feeling of not being able to meet the mark. 

You find him in the training yard, hours after he’d usually be done and sharing a bath with you. Hacking at opponents, squires and trainers who can only gape and try to dodge hits that definitely look like they mean to kill. You can see the sweat trickling down the linen of his shirt and dampening the chest, the fabric clinging to his musculature. His arms shake with a tremor so slight only someone who’s spent hours memorizing his body could recognize. Maekar is fully aware he’s being a dick, that the literal child squiring for him did not mean to drop the shield, but he shouted at him for a good half hour about it anyway. It's not that he feels particularly bad about scaring people (other than you and some of his children), but he thinks it unprincely to go around intentionally rubbing people the wrong way. 

When he gets like this, he needs you to (very gently) take his sword arm, lowering the blade. Lead him away from the smell of steel and blood and smoke, up to your chambers. He sighs when you peel the damp material of his shirt away, pushing him down into the chair by the hearth. All he really wants is comfort, someone to listen without thinking him weak for being strained. His groan echoes through the room when you press your fingers to his shoulders, rubbing the hard knots built up around his neck and spine. (He is certainly the most tightly wound man ever like imagine the aching). Slowly you coax him to tell you what happened, listening to him rant. He doesn’t even mind when you disagree with him, listening to your opinions and going back and forth about the problem. Nothing calms him more than ending up in your bed, chin tucked against your bare shoulder with his arms around your waist. He grumbles when you make him apologize to the squire the next day. 

Aerion:

There is nothing private about Aerion struggling. He’s bitchy, snide, cruel to a point where it's almost fearsome. We see in the show where he snaps, hurting people because he can, because he’s made up a fault of theirs he must punish. It's not like his father, who’s angry and vicious but still disciplined, the Brightflame is a wild thing, striking anything in his path. It’s an immediate tell that he’s feeling insecure when he proclaims himself blood of the dragon, dragging on about how he’s closer to the creatures than anyone. It's his way of protecting himself, a barrier between his deep feelings of self-doubt, and the people around him he knows don’t respect him. Uncles, cousins, even his own brothers don’t have the love for him most family members would, and if they won’t care for him, they must fear him. 

Another tell is him vying for attention, especially from people he looks up to or cares about. Ridiculous armor, taunting words, tricks with the sword or lance; he’ll even try to impress you with his brutality and swagger. Attempting to make you see him for what he thinks he is by showing off his strength or violence. Despite how many times you tell him to stop, that you already care about him, and don’t want to see him hurt anyone, he continues to try and use his power to clear his conscience of any apprehension. He is unsure of his own abilities, so when he starts to show behaviors that he’s trying to impress himself, you know something deeper is getting at him.

What he really needs is a good slap in the face. Seriously though, something that can tether him back into the real world, but contains elements of the barbarism he is so accustomed to. It's not until Dunk beats the shit out of him (and I’ll admit, he does the same back) that he’s begging for mercy, the red-hot dragon gone and only a young Prince in his place. He doesn’t respond well to coddling, immediately thinking it shows that he’s weak, that you think he’s weak for needing it. Instead, meeting him where he is, matching his harshness, his cutting words, his bloodthirstiness, is the only thing that shakes him out of his own head. 

Dunk:

Dunk immediately becomes closed off when he’s upset or struggling. Him being capable, strong, and resilient is all he has, and when he cannot complete a task or he fails at something, it creates a moment where he sees himself as a man who cannot provide, who cannot protect the people around him who need it. What is a knight if not one who can keep his loved ones safe? His shoulders round, and he tries to make his extremely large body seem smaller. He does this any time he feels unworthy of being somewhere, or like he’s doing something a poor hedge knight ought not to. We see this when he’s addressing Lyonel for the first time; the Stormlord questions him, and accuses him of breaking into his party. Dunk tries to make himself less of a target (which Lyonel points out of course), and pulls himself close. 

He’ll throw himself into working, spending hours chopping wood for fires he won’t build, back slick and teeth clenched as he swings the axe. It would almost be erotic if not for the pained look in his eye, and the air of a kicked puppy that radiates off of him. He has a deep urge to provide, thinking it's the only reason people keep him around. 

Sometimes you have to come stop him, telling him something silly like you’re trying to save the tree he’s mercilessly hacking into. To get him to listen, to actually believe your words, you have to be casual about them. You cannot go singing his praises all willy nilly when he’s upset; he won’t actually believe a word, convinced you’re saying things just because you’re kind. Instead, you have to praise him subtly. Instead of saying he’s a good hunter, announcing to him and Egg “Wow, this dinner is lovely,” while seated around the fire. He knows that you know he is responsible for the meal, but his ears go red all the same. You have to work him up to bigger affections throughout the evening; mentioning how strong he looked with an axe in hand, how nice it was of him to teach Egg a new game, how gentle he is with the horses. Eventually you can cover his face in kisses, squeezing his shoulders as he blushes and half-heartedly tells you it's too much. Dunk’s mood finally turns back to his usual self when he laughs heartily at Egg loudly feigning disgust at your affection for his Ser.  

Baelor:

As the heir, Baelor can get really, really, really into work. It comes from a place of striving for perfection, needing to live up to the standards of all the great Kings who came before him. In reality, he’s just working himself to the bone in an effort to meet impossible standards he’s made for himself. You won’t see him for days sometimes; he stays tucked away in his solar in the tower of the Hand, scribbling away at messages, ledgers, long lines of numbers that make his head spin after staring for too long. It's not that he doesn’t want to see you, but he becomes so wound up in the affairs of the Realm, he would not want to burden you with the responsibility of knowing the Kingdom's troubles. Instead, he remains locked in council meetings, battle plans, or negotiations, because he believes he must be the one to do it. 

He’s stoic, rigid in a way only a Prince is, and the only real tell is the fidgeting. 

You can spot it right away. 

Twisting his rings around his long fingers, spinning the metal warmed by constant wear. He does it subconsciously now, able to speak with lords and deliver speeches, the only thing betraying his nerves is the careful movement of his fingertips. To most onlookers, it seems like a trivial matter. Boredom, maybe, or a Prince showing off his wealth. Many are too focused on the finery, his handsome face, or his moving words, to even recall he’s wearing them. But you always seem to spot it. 

It helps him when you give him something else to fiddle with. You’ll slide into the seat next to him, and immediately he’s tugging at the loose string of your gown or the ribbon tied around your hips. The best remedy is to give him your own hand, sliding your fingers between his to let him squeeze. If you wear rings, rest assured he’s twisting those too. He’s not one to be easily convinced to leave his work aside, but he is always so touched when you insist on joining him while in his solar. Sending for meals so you can eat together, bringing your sketchbook or stitching to take up space near him, reading aloud when he needs a moment of hearing your clear voice echo out through the room. Baelor is well aware that his work can be incredibly boring, and the mere fact that you want to spend time with him warms his heart and invigorates him to continue on. Someone needs to make the Realm a good place for you to live in. 

Lyonel:

Oh Lyonel, what a man. When something does get to him, when a problem or fault wiggles down past his carefree, blasé exterior, he throws himself into his entertainments and delights. Hunting and sailing, dancing and drinking, kissing pretty girls and boys alike, there is no end to the pleasures he seeks. He’ll throw lavish parties nights in a row, outdrinking each of his guests and starting fights. It's always, “What’s next?” what new excitement can entice him, distract him enough so that he cannot even form a thought around his responsibilities. If he’s not burning every synapse in his head and taking up every second with carnality, he will spiral. The wilder he gets, the worse he feels after, mentally and physically. 

It's kind of gross, similar to Daeron in that he’s so distracted he doesn’t really take care of himself. A lavish feast is prepared for his soirees, but he touches nothing because he’s too busy drinking ale and arm wrestling sell-swords. He won’t change his tunic after he spills a cup of wine down the side, because someone suggested a midnight ride and that sounded more pleasing than spending five minutes alone to switch garments. 

He needs someone headstrong enough to make him stop. Someone who will grab him by the face, force him to listen, and order him back to his keep this instant, or there will be hell to pay. The first time you pulled him from his frivolity, tugging at his arm and waving your hands around, he swore he fell in love with you, and popped a pretty sizable boner. You snap him back into reality, without shame. Well, maybe a little shame, but it comes from a good place. He’ll argue for the sake of it as you drag him away, pretending like he doesn’t absolutely adore when you try to shove his large frame up the stairs, or when you tell him he stinks of wine and needs a bath. 

Lyonel’s still drunk enough that you can plop him down in a chair and he won’t move, watching you call for a hot meal to be sent. You stand over him while he eats, maybe for the first time in a day or two, with your arms crossed and your brow furrowed. There's a smug satisfaction on your lips when you mention how very ill he will feel come morning, the turning of his stomach and the ache in his head. The ache all over, really, from silly brawling and throwing his body around like it's expendable. He doesn’t fight your berating. After all, deep down he knows you’re right, and he knows you’ll be beside him when he wakes, hand rubbing his back and lips against his forehead as he suffers the fate of his own actions. 

[knightofcassiopeia]

the first time you cuddle up with dunk, he doesn’t get a wink of sleep;

it was sudden and paralyzing. your body curled into him under the oak tree, your arms wrapping around his bicep to hold throughout the night. he was horrified—not because of your touch, but because he was sweaty. his entire body was on fire, clammy and slick from pure nerves. he didn’t know what to do with his hands, or his legs, and he refused to turn his head in your direction.

what if he stunk? what if he drenched you in himself because he had no control? by the seven, you’d wake under a warm waterfall and never look at him again.

he swore he died that very night. he swore when morning came, you’d realize your mistake and stray.

yet when the sun rose, you snuggled further, as if the warmth of the sun couldn’t compare to the heat of his skin. your head shifted onto his shoulder, and briefly, he melted for an entirely different reason.

“gods,” he choked out, hand fisting—grasping at your skirt without much recognition. gods, what am i to do?

“you’re up early, ser,” egg’s voice carried from the other side. for the first time since moonlight, dunk jerked his head to glare up at the child.

the boy simply smiled at him, and walked away to tend to the horses before dunk could sputter and become a permanent kin to apples.

[pearl-nouveau]

Foolish Knight

~{Ser Duncan the Tall x Traveling Companion!Reader}~

author’s note: short traveling companion reader x dunk lolzzz it’s the only fic ive been able to finish in a while i’m low on inspiration

plot description: after traveling with Dunk so long, you’d think that he’d want to return your friendship. But the man will hardly talk to you, and you begin to wonder if the foolish knight even wants you around at all.

warnings: none, lil suggestive as always

word count: ~1,600

enjoy!

Silence with Duncan was easy and familiar. Sitting across the fire, taking turns sparing glances at the other, that was the language you two communicated in.

Ever since he and Ser Arlan had found you alone on the road and let you join their party, Dunk had always been reserved in his interactions with you. Polite, impersonal greetings and necessary dialogue. You reasoned that he felt awkward around women, or found you difficult to converse with. But as the years passed and he still seemed to find no peace in your presence, you believed him to despise you for intruding upon his life. Perhaps his silence was a punishment, and he resented you. Nevertheless, Duncan never said a mean word, so you supposed his sullenness should be a relief if hatred was really what he felt for you.

Sometimes, when you caught his eyes on you, the softness made you think that it wasn’t hatred. When he gave you the larger portion at supper, or mended your cloak without request, or looked after you on nights when Arlan went to the brothel. Maybe he just couldn’t figure you out. After so long, perhaps he simply didn’t want to, because despite these small kindnesses, he never engaged with you beyond pleasantries.

His impassivity was exacerbated by fact that you were harboring an unfortunate crush on him, but how could you help it when the man was gentle and good and soft-spoken?

When Arlan passed, you were terrified that Dunk would leave you, but he said nothing to indicate he wanted you gone. Ashford nearly killed him, which made you eager to get on the road again. Even though you were unsure how the knight felt about you, the prospect of losing him had terrified you. When he lay recovering, you hardly left his side. He still said nothing; but he’d watched you through a swollen eye, and never asked you to leave, nor did he pull away when you held his hand for comfort.

Finally, a new trio rode out on Chestnut and Thunder, you sharing a saddle with Egg. Having someone to converse with was a welcome change, and Egg had plenty of knowledge of Westeros to keep you entertained on long days of riding. Duncan often listened in, sometimes chiming in. Something about the boy eased the quiet that had always settled between the two of you.

The three of you set camp upon a hill overlooking a nearby town, and Dunk had allowed Egg to go off and play with the children in the village, with the promise that he’d return before sunset. Watching him run off excitedly, you’d turned towards Dunk.

“He really brightens things, doesn’t he?” you inquired. Duncan had pressed his lips together in a thin line, humming in response.

Your heart had tugged with the realization that he still wouldn’t engage with you. The disappointment simmered as he moved to tend to the fire absently, and his nonchalance caused the sensation in your stomach to bubble with a vengeance until you were storming after him. You yanked the stick from his hand that he used to poke the coals and pointed it at him accusingly.

“I’ve been perfectly helpful and pleasant for all these years I’ve traveled with you,” you seethed, “and yet you snub me at every opportunity. If you find me so insufferable, I might as well just branch off here and leave you to enjoy conversation with Egg, since you won’t have one with me.”

With that, you stomped off, barely gathering the courage to look him in the eye as you blew past him. His brow was furrowed in what looked like fear, or confusion. It didn’t matter to you.

Down by the river you tried to cool off by pacing along the bank, muttering to yourself angrily. How could he still refuse your friendship after so many years of trust built between you? It had you wondering what could possibly be wrong with you that made him hate you. Still holding the stick from earlier, you poked at the soft mud beneath your feet. The rustling of leaves signaled the emergence of Duncan from the woods a few minutes later, and he approached you.

“I don’t want to talk now,” you huffed, refusing to meet his gaze. You looked across the water, but could feel his presence a few feet behind you. The warmth of his body shielded you from the late afternoon breeze.

“Aye, I know, so just let me talk.” he requested. You heard the man take a breath and murmur out a curse before beginning. “I’ve been a fool. A cowardly fool. All these years, I never found the courage to say it, and so I said nothing. It’s on the tip of my tongue whenever I speak to you, and so it’s easier… it’s better to say nothing. Fuck, I didn’t want to ruin anything. But now I’ve gone and ruined it anyways.”

You listened to his words carefully, turning slowly so that you could read his expression. He was finally looking you in the eye. Cerulean pools searched yours for a reaction. His chest was heaving with effort, or fear, or something of the like. But certainly not hatred. Now that you looked at him, he stepped closer. Closer than he’d ever willingly come to you, unless he was helping you from your mount.

“I want to speak to you, more than anything, only I cannot without risking telling you how I feel. And I’ve been afraid. But I am more afraid of losing you.”

You stared at him, a challenge. He accepted willingly, reaching out to grasp your hand. After so long holding back, he couldn’t help but tremble at the contact.

“Why have you been afraid of me?” You needed him to say it, out loud.

“Because every time I open my mouth around you, I chance spewing out how I want you to come closer.” he blurted, “be near me. I want to hear you laugh — I want to be the cause of it.”

“You’ve done a piss-poor job of making an effort to jest with me.” you bit back. And yet, you obliged his request for you to be nearer, and leaned into the warmth of his towering figure.

He laughed at that, an exhale of slight relief as he felt you squeeze his hand, an encouraging gesture that softened his shaking. “I feared you’d never return my affections so I stayed quiet.” he admitted earnestly. “But… I cannot have you interpret my silence as indifference. That is the furthest thing I feel for you.”

“Then what do you feel for me? I want you to tell me. I deserve that.” you urged him.

His jaw tightened. “It’ll change things.”

“Duncan.” you begged. He pulled your hands, enclosed in his giant ones, towards his lips.

“I love you,” he murmured, whispering the ghost of a kiss into your knuckles. “Gods, I love you. Every day I wish you were mine to hold, but I couldn’t imagine a world where I was worthy of ye. So I stayed quiet. I’m sorry for that, I’m sorry for the misery I’ve caused.” He searched your eyes. “Please forgive me. Please. I’ll be yours however you want me, even if it’s to be your manservant.”

“My manservant.” you said blankly. He flushed, thinking he’d gone too far. Until finally, finally, the smile he constantly sought to catch sight of crossed your lips. “I’ve never had one of those.”

“I’ll wash your clothes, and cook your meals, and protect you from harm.” he promised shyly.

“You already do those things, Dunk.”

“Well then… suppose I already am your manservant,” he pondered, the grin on your face emboldening him to push further into your space, enclosing you in his massive arms. “Maybe it’s time we became something else.”

“Have something else in mind?” you tugged at his shirt, pulling him towards your lips.

“I’ll be yours. I’m already yours. And if you want to be mine…”

“I’m already yours too, Duncan.” you swore, blinking at him expectantly. The way you pressed into his chest on the tips of your toes was enough permission for the man. His fingertips grazed up your spine and tangled in your hair, tugging just enough to tilt your head up properly. His hands were so large and warm, cupping around your entire head, encompassing your in a delicate hold that felt so right.

When Dunk’s lips finally closed over yours, the kiss came suddenly, like he couldn’t hold himself back any longer, thumbs stroking the apples of your cheek fondly. In your dreams, you’d imagined him to be timid — the reality was that he moved with practiced care, so tenderly did he find the seam of your lips waiting to be opened by his tongue. His boldness made you gasp and he hastily pulled away.

“Too much?” He apologized, examining your flushed face with concern. You shook your head and surged upward, throwing your arms around his thick neck. It was his turn to grunt with surprise as your weight fell into him, although he caught it without effort. His arms found the crook of your waist and lifted you with ease, allowing the kiss to deepen. Instinctively, your legs encircled his back to draw him closer. Duncan was slower to pull away this time, but he eventually sought air. “We ought to have enough to talk about now that we’ve cleared the air,” he smiled at you, pecking your lips a few more times. “Do you think?”

“I think I’m still a bit angry at you,” you teased, licking at his jaw. “I’m still not sure I want to talk.” Duncan suppressed a groan as you pressed yourself even closer against his body.

“Aye, I was never so good with words anyhow.” You took a moment to look at the way his eyes sparkled with a new emotion you’d never seen him show so freely. He watched you examine him and raised a brow, grinning contentedly. “Enjoying the view?”

“Just kiss me, foolish knight."

Your knight wasn’t foolish enough to refuse that order.

[metal-armed-muse]

bucky barnes vs. one (1) annotated romance novel

⤷ bucky barnes x f!reader ⋮ 2.7k

✦︎ — SUMMARY. Bucky finds your romance novel. Bucky reads the highlighted part. Bucky discovers you've both been silently wanting the same thing. Bucky proves he’s incapable of acting normal about this information.

WARNINGS. established relationship, MDNI, 18+, porn no plot, Bucky has a raging breeding kink, soft smut, unprotected pnv, creampie, cumplay, mentions of lactation kink, domestic intimacy, no use of y/n. NOTES. scheduled post bc your girl is on a break. also thank you for 4000 followers, what the hell 🥹

The only good thing about a mission was that it ended. And when it ended, Bucky can come home to you.

The door clicked behind him. He exhaled properly, maybe for the first time in three days, and let the quiet settle over him. He shed his jacket, his boots, and followed the strip of warm light under the bedroom door without thinking. Muscle memory by now, this particular walk. You were on your stomach, one leg bent, cheek soft against the pillow, mouth barely open the way it only went when you were properly under. Completely gone. One hand curled slack beside a book lying pages-down on the nightstand, spine cracked, the way books shouldn't be left if you cared about them. 

He'd seen this exact scene before — you falling asleep mid-read, the lamp still on — and his move was always the same: turn the light off, climb in behind you, sleep for ten hours. He almost did. His hand reached for the book to set it aside when his eyes caught the open page. He sat down slowly on the edge of the mattress because his legs stopped cooperating. The prose wasn't fancy. It didn't need to be, it was blunt about what it was describing. A man with both hands pressed to his girl's lower belly while he worked himself deep, telling her she was going to take every drop, that he wasn't stopping until he'd filled her up past overflowing. That's it, pretty girl, take my cum, let me breed this tight little cunt till it takes, want you so full of me you can't think, wanna see your belly swollen with my babies. The woman in the story was begging for it, wet and completely broken, while he kept his palm flat over her stomach. 

Bucky's hand tightened around the spine until the cover bent. He turned the page and found a star drawn in pencil in the margin. Your handwriting. Neat and small, beside the passage where the man pulled back just enough to watch his cum leak from her before pressing it back inside — not wasting a drop, gorgeous, every bit of it stays right here where it belongs. A star. He sat with that for a moment. Two moments. Maybe a full minute of just sitting there with the lamp warm on his hands and your soft breathing behind him. He knew this want. He'd been sitting on it for months — the need to just stay, every time he was buried inside you and the pull of it got so loud it took actual effort to talk himself back. The responsible thing. The right thing. Pull out. Don't push it. Don't put that on her. And then watching the mess of it on your skin and thinking about what it would mean to not. To keep it all where it was supposed to go. How many showers he'd stood in thinking about your belly. What you'd look like. How soft you'd go. How it would feel to press his palm there and know. To him, this wasn’t some random story anymore. Apparently his girl has been falling asleep to fantasies of getting claimed and filled until she carried his baby, the same urges he’d been swallowing down every time he pulled out and spilled across your skin instead, not wanting to push too far and scare away that sweet softness you always seem to give him.

He turned another page. Found another star, this one beside the line where the man cradled his girl's tits as he asked about nursing from her.  He closed the book and looked at you. All the love he felt towards you multiplied with the awakened hunger, hands itching to wake you right then, to show you how perfectly those pages matched the way he wanted to ruin you for anyone else. He stood up, stripped down. Shirt, pants, everything. He was not getting into bed in three-day mission clothes, even if his brain was only half working. 

He looked down at himself. Already half-hard, his cock thick against his thigh, wet at the tip just from reading. He'd been on missions that didn't break him this fast. He wrapped his hand around himself slowly, hissed at his own slickness smearing his palm and stroked just to get a handle on it.  He put his hand on your hip. "Baby." He shook you gently. "Wake up for me." The sound you made was small and personally offended by the concept of consciousness. You burrowed deeper. "Baby." He rubbed your hip. "Open your eyes." Slowly, you did, blinking like a deer caught, as you found him in the warm lamplight and your face just opened. All of it, the sleep-blur gone in a second, replaced by that warmth, that automatic reaching, your arms coming up before you'd even finished registering what you were looking at. Like some part of you knew it was him before your eyes did, and your whole body moved toward him on instinct. He gathered you in. He would never in his life stop being leveled by this, the way you reached for him like that, all open and unguarded, not one defensive thing in you when you saw him. He tucked his face into your hair and breathed. "You're home," you mumbled against his neck. No matter what, the images from the book spilled over, now all he saw was you and him, those dirty promises echoing. "I'm home." His lips found your temple. "Came home and found you sleeping like you haven't got a single bad thought in your pretty head." He felt your breath catching, your fingers going still in his shirt. "Left your book right out here for me." "It's just a book." You spoke into his skin, pressing closer into him, fingers digging into his shoulders with a restless energy, soft sounds vibrating through you that only made him harder "Pages worn soft from reading it." "Bucky —" "Little pencil stars in the margins." He pulled back just enough to look at your face. The flush was already climbing your throat, your eyes sliding sideways from his. He could see you trying to determine exactly how much he'd read. "My sweet girl." He shook his head slowly, as he watched you bite your lip. "Sleeping like an angel… with her breeding kink book on the nightstand." A mortified sound left you as you tried to press back into his chest. He let you, his mouth curving, his arms pulling you in. "Don't," you said, muffled by him. "I'm not doing anything." "You're laughing at me." "I'm not laughing." He really was, a little. He pressed his lips to your hair to hide it. "I would never." He rubbed your back, felt you slowly start to relax against him. "I've been pulling out," he said, into your hair. "This whole time." You went completely still. "Every single time," he continued. "Being responsible. Doing right by you. While you've been in here starring passages about being filled up and bred." He felt your fingers curl in his shirt. "I've been pulling out for nothin', baby." A long pause where you just nuzzled again and breathed. Then very quietly your voice came. "I didn't think you'd want —" "I think about it every time I'm inside you." He said it simply. Just the plain truth of it sitting between you. "Just — thought it would scare you. Thought I'd push you away." He pressed his lips to your forehead. 

He continued when you didn't reply, "so here we both were, keeping our mouths shut like absolute idiots." You looked up at him with an expression he could never quite name, somewhere between wanting and completely undone. He kissed you before either of you could ruin the moment with more words. Slow and thorough, hands cupping your face. You made a soft sound against his mouth that had always gone straight through him. Clothes came off fast, what little you had on was gone, and he was already bare. He settled between your thighs and looked at you properly. Your cunt was weeping before he'd even touched you. Slick and swollen, soaking the sheets, and he dragged two fingers through your folds and brought them to his mouth while holding your gaze the entire time. "You were dreamin' about it." He could still taste you on his tongue. "Weren't you? Dreaming about me filling up this tight little pussy." A broken whimper came as you turned your face into the pillow. "Baby." He tapped your thigh gently. "Look at me." Reluctantly, you met his eyes, warmth spreading to your ears. He circled your entrance without pushing in, felt you clench around nothing, as he listened to the sound it pulled out of you. "Don't get shy now, sweetheart. Tell me what you want." "Please —" "Please what baby?" "Fill me up. Please, Bucky, please just fill me up, I need it —" Your hand raised to hide your face, which he softly pulled away.  Bucky pushed in slowly. Your nails found his biceps before he was halfway there, digging crescents into the thick muscle. He worked into your dripping cunt inch by inch, feeling every clench and flutter, the wet sounds of it loud in the quiet room. 

When he got himself fully seated, he held there, both of you just breathing each other in. His palm pressed flat to your lower belly. "Feel that?" He pressed down gently and watched your eyes go soft. "That's me, baby. Right here." He pressed a little firmer and your breath punched out. "That's where it's staying. Every load, from now on." He pulled back slowly and drove in, as he watched your mouth fall open. "Never pulling out. Not wasting a drop. Gonna fill this pretty pussy up and keep her that way." "Bucky —"  "I know, baby." He started moving, finding a rhythm. "I know. We've been idiots." You came apart under his hands easily, wound up and desperate, scratching at his back, your thighs locking around his waist. Your cunt was soaking him, drooling around his cock with every thrust, the slick sounds of it filling the room. "I know you love swallowing." You made a soft, small sound when he said that. "And I love watching you do it. Love seeing my cum on your stomach, on your tits." He palmed your breast, taking your nipple between his thumb and pointer finger, feeling you jolt under him. He did it slower the second time, watching your face. "But that's done. From now on every single load goes right here." He ground his palm down over your lower belly. "Load after load, until you're round with my babies and everyone can see what we've been doing." "Yes — please —" "These tits." He thumbed your nipple again and your back bowed off the mattress. He felt you gush around him. "They're gonna fill up, you know that? Get so heavy and full." He kept his palm there, felt your pulse jumping under your skin. "Gonna let me drink from them." His thumb dragged slowly across your nipple again and your whole body shuddered in a shock. "Aren't you?" A gasp spilled from your lips, barely a sound. "Aren't you, baby?" "Yes," you gasped. "Yes, god, yes, anything you want —" "Atta girl." He sucked a mark into your throat and felt your cunt clench and flood around him, soaking him straight down his thighs. He kept his palm on your belly. Couldn't stop touching you there, the soft warm plane of it, the thought of it round and full of him. "Gonna put a baby right here." He spread his fingers wide. "Take such good care of you. You and our baby both, I promise you that." "More — please — Bucky—" He hooked your knee higher and drove in harder, making you cry and scratch at his skin.  His metal hand reached up, curving gently under the back of your neck and tilted you forward. "Look how good you're taking me." You looked down. He watched your face while you watched his cock move in and out of your puffy, soaked cunt, the slick mess of you coating every inch of him. Your thighs were dark and wet, your pussy drooling around each thrust and clinging to him when he drew back. He could see the drag and pull of it from here. Watch the way your cunt stretched open and tried to keep him every time he moved. "Look at her," he marveled. "See how she takes me? Sucking me in like she's been starving." He drove in to the hilt and held himself there, watching your head drop back. "Did I starve her? Hm?"

"Bucky —"

"Tell me." He rocked into you, slow enough to be punishing. "Did I keep her empty when she wanted to be full?"

You whined in response, clinging to his arm. He pulled back slowly, and pushed back in. "That's done, babygirl." Your sounds had gone to pieces, his name breaking apart in your mouth. He worked you harder and felt you winding up, getting impossibly tight around him. "You'd make such a good momma." The words fell out of him without planning. He pressed his face into the curve of your neck. "Gonna make this belly round and take care of you through every bit of it. Every part. I mean that. You want that, sweet girl?" The headboard rattled at his pace, as you openly scratched at him harder, head lolling to one side, soft mewling sounds threading through each exhale.

"Say it baby. Come on, sweetheart."

"Please — I'm so close —"

"I know, baby… I know. Say it first."

"Make me a mommy —" It tore out of you. "Please, Bucky, please — make me a mommy—" That pushed him to the edge, and he came, hard and sudden, hips slamming forward and holding while his cock pulsed in long thick ropes inside you. You came apart with him, cunt clenching in tight rippling waves, whole body shaking, a broken sob of his name leaving your mouth. He felt you your pussy milking every last drop, as he kept grinding in, palm pressed hard to your lower belly, like if he just kept his hand there "Take it — take all of it — every drop, baby —" He was still rocking into you in slow, sloppy thrusts when he felt himself going soft, working the last of it out. You were limp and shaking underneath him, hands slack in his hair. He pressed his face to your neck and breathed until he could. He lay there with his softening cock still inside you, palm warm over your belly. You nuzzled your face against his jaw. The room smelled like sex. He pressed his lips to your cheekbone, your temple, the side of your mouth, anywhere he could reach. Told you between each one how good you were, how beautiful you'd be, how he'd meant every word. When he finally slipped free, it was reluctant, genuinely, physically reluctant, a resistance he had to push against. As he looked down, slow, thick stream of his cum leaked from your swollen, puffy cunt, running down your inner thighs. He pressed two fingers gently at your entrance before he'd even made a decision about it. Your whole body twitched. "Bucky." "Shh." He pushed it back inside, slow but thorough, and pressed his fingers there when he was done. Just held it there. Keeping the warmth of you against his palm, plugging you, not letting any more of it go. "I know what you're doing," you said. "I know you do." He didn't move his hand though. A small, helpless sound slipped out of you. You pressed closer into his chest, as he brought his other hand over your shoulders to rest on your lower belly. Both of them just stayed there — one cupping you from below, one warm and flat on your stomach. He nuzzled into your hair. Pressed his lips to your forehead. He's wanted this for so long, and he's going to be good at this no matter what. "You're not moving your hands," you said eventually, voice drowsy, sated, barely there. "No," he said. "Either one." "No." You made a sound that was too tired to be an objection and pressed your face into his chest. His thumb drew a slow circle on your belly and didn't move. 

EXTRAS. yeah idk what that was.

[goat-limbs]

Where Does The Nose Go? | part one

contents (sfw): Ser Duncan The Tall x fem!mer!reader, inspired by HCA's The Little Mermaid, switching POVs (indicated with dividers), medieval rom-com, love at first sight, witchcraft, body horror, transformation, romantic and sexual tension, mutual pining, yearning, caretaking, non-sexual nudity, there was only one bed(roll), sword of chastity, protective!Dunk, virgin!Dunk, soft!Dunk.

part two ->

synopsis: A mermaid falls in love with a knight praying on her riverbank. A witch gives her legs and three days to make him love her back.

word count: 13K

a/n: Banner is by me, dividers by @strangergraphics and @honeyluvsw! Thank you lovely humans for giving it a read before publishing (@lateknightbites and @siliceousooze). My last-minute mermay offering :') There will be two parts of this story!

The feeling of driving his sword through someone’s chest is entirely wretched. Duncan remembers the cause and what it carries, but every time he takes a life his jaw locks tight and his breath stops in a naïve surge of compassion.

The man pierced with Dunk’s iron says his mother’s name. It comes out thin and astonished, as though he had expected to die louder. Duncan hears it over the din. He watches the man’s eyes go queer in his face—film creeping over them, the pupils dulling, the whole wet look turning flat, the way dead fish do when they rise in poisoned water and the sun gets at their bellies.

An apology pushes up hard against Duncan’s teeth. He keeps it there. There is something mean in begging pardon of a man you have already run through. It makes him answer for your sorrow besides his own death. When the body sags and quits at last, Duncan braces a hand to the fellow’s shoulder, eases him off the blade, and lowers him onto his back with what care he can manage in a field full of screaming men. Then he pulls his sword free and breathes.

The stream is only a little way off. Sun has had all morning to work on his armour. The plates burn through his surcoat. The mail at his throat rubs raw and holds the heat there. Under it, the blood trapped in the quilted cloth has already begun to turn.

He knows he ought to go back. He knows the work is not done. His knees strike the bank before the thought is finished. He drags off one glove and then the other, drops them in the grass, and thrusts both hands into the current so fast the cold hurts. Water ropes round his fingers and under his nails and takes the blood by threads at first, then by clouds, until the stream runs pink, then weak as watered wine, then clear again as though the thing had never happened anywhere but inside his own skull.

He bows his head over it. His breath goes in rough through the nose and leaves slower. For a moment he can do nothing but look at his hands—broad things, nicked over the knuckles. Then he cups water to his face. The shock of it lifts the worst of the heat. He does it again. Lets it run from his brow and nose and mouth. Somewhere behind him men are still shouting. Steel still rings out, thin with distance now.

Duncan shuts his eyes. He has never been much for prayer, nor for finding the right words for it, but there are not many disbelievers in a foxhole. He opens his mouth.

“Mother, take him. He called your name. Forgive me for it. Mind his mother, too.” Breath shudders out of him. “Warrior, make me brave enough. Keep my hand true.”

Beyond the bank where the water deepens and the weeds grow long as hair, something has gone perfectly still to watch him.

When you see him kill your heart flutters strangely. Clean slice, straight for the heart. Merciful and cold in the same breath.

You know violence as the sharp white turn of a fish’s belly before your teeth close round it. The panic-kick of things that fit in your hands and things that do not, the times your own blood has gone stringing loose in the water because something bigger thought to make a meal of you first. Death below the surface is ugly, but it serves. Something eats. Something lives another day. Here, men spill one another open for reasons that do not end in hunger. The body falls in the grass and feeds no one. The waste of it catches at your mind.

Yet the great one uses his strength well. Joyless, he puts the blade where it must go and gets it done. Warrior, your thoughts supply at once, though he is younger than the word makes him sound.

Then, he stays. Only for a breath long enough to ease the dead man down from his sword and keep him from crumpling into the dirt like a sack split at the seams, but it is enough to draw you closer under the current. Almost as if he cannot bear for the man to go wholly alone. Almost as if being the hand that kills makes him answerable for that last small stretch between breath and none.

You slip nearer the bank, slow as weed-drift, and brace your fingers between the stones. The stream is clear here. It lets you see him drop to his knees. Lets you see him strip off his gloves with hands gone clumsy from heat. Blood clouds into the water when he thrusts his fingers in. He bends and sluices his face.

Your tail gives a hard, involuntary twitch. Until now he has been iron and leather and bright mail and the broad set of shoulders that belong to grown creatures who know their force. Then the water takes the blood and the grime from him and what rises from beneath it stills your breath clean out of you.

A boy. A beautiful boy. Young in the face despite the size of him. Wet lashes spiked dark. Mouth parted. Water running from brow to cheek to jaw, then slipping under the collar at his throat and down his neck. Your nails bite into the stones. Your gills flare wide and fast. You drag in more water through them without meaning to, as if the stream has suddenly thinned and left you short.

He opens his mouth and your eyes shut. The shouting from the field dulls. Stream keeps on at your shoulders. Wind moves somewhere high in the crowns of the trees. All of it goes faint around the shape of his voice. It reaches you blurred by distance, scant and earnest, with none of the grand sound men use when they want the world to think them holy. He asks for the dead man first. For the mother of the dead man. Forgiveness for what his own hand has done. Then he asks for bravery enough to return and do more of other men’s bidding before the sun goes down.

Nothing for himself. No glory. No protection. No rich spoil. Not even life.

Your grip slips and tightens again. Something deep in you, old as tide-pull, gives way. You have seen handsome things before. Fast things. Dangerous things. You have wanted and hunted and fed.

This is worse. This is a hurt that blooms sweet through the middle of you. By the time he lowers his head and the last of his prayer leaves his mouth and goes nowhere you can see, you love him so completely it feels less like being struck and more like sinking.

He rises and leaves, and the place he was at is empty as if it were bitten. The bank looks wrong without him on it. The water goes on over the stones as though nothing has happened. Your heart has no such manners. It follows him at once, crude and greedy, as though wanting were a hand with fingers on it. You part your lips with half a mind to call after him. Men can be called. Men can be coaxed to the water with the right note laid soft over the surface. You know how to turn the voice sweet enough to draw a neck forward, a foot wrong, a whole body into your keeping. The sound gathers under your tongue and dies there. To put a spell on him feels foul. It seems to you that a creature like that ought to come of his own will, or not at all.

You do not know by what rules men choose their maidens. You know only the old shapes from song and tale, the women with hair to their waists and wreaths at their throats, the ones led from halls by the hand, kissed before witnesses, warmed by fires built on dry land. Even the plainest of them has what you have not.

Legs.

By the time the sun tilts lower you are stern in the mind and weak in the heart, which is a poor way to go to a witch and the only way you have.

You gather what seems dear. Round pebbles from the streambed, the ones worn smooth as eggs. A white one with a milk-pale seam through the middle. A twist of yarrow and sage stolen from the bank where the roots drink deep. A handful of hazelnuts, though you have never eaten one and do not know if witches do. Three rowan berries bright as pinpricks of blood. One swan feather gone loose among the rushes.

Childish things, perhaps. Bride-things from the mind of a fool. You keep them all the same, tucked close in the fold of weed and river-grass you knot for carrying. Then you force yourself into one of the narrow runs that leaves the stream and threads the dark places inland. Mud slicks your sides. Roots comb your hair. The water grows warm and still and brown. It narrows to veins and then opens without warning into the bog pool, black at the middle, with a hut crouched on the shore as if it had grown there meanly from the peat.

You wait a long while with only your eyes above the weed. Nothing stirs but a gnat-cloud and the slow shake of sedge in the wind. At last you take one of the little stones from your hoard and throw it. It clicks against the wooden door. The sound is small; it still seems to carry everywhere. You sink lower, heart drumming hard, and hide among the pondweed with the offerings clutched to your breast, as if the right gifts and a brave face might yet make you into something a beautiful boy could love.

The door opens. The woman who steps out is bent nowhere and old everywhere. Her hair hangs in ropes the colour of drowned straw. Her shift is the grey of mushroom flesh. She peers toward the water as if she has smelt you already.

“Well,” she says. “What pretty thing noses at my threshold?”

You rise through the skin of water and push the bundle of gifts towards her. “I brought—”

“Did you.” She stoops and takes it between two fingers, as if it is something small and dead. “Then speak. A wish is no good to me till it has a mouth.”

You blink at her. Try to find the words for something prettier than a blunt girly whim, but they come out as they are. “I want legs.”

The witch looks at you for a moment. Then, she laughs. “That is not what you want.”

Mud stirs under your tail with the force of your annoyance. You dig the tip of it down into the black silt.

“Ah,” she coos, seeing it. “There is no shame in wanting, child. Only folly in pretending. You want a lad to love you.” You remain silent long enough for her eyes narrow with delight. “No. Not a lad.” She leans closer over the bank, and her smile turns terrible with it. “A knight.”

The scales along the back of your tail prickle. “Can you help me?”

“Likely.” She reaches down without warning, crooks one finger beneath your chin, and turns your face first one way, then the other. “You are fair enough for mortal work. Fairer than many that walk on two feet and think well of themselves besides. Why not sing to him? Why not call him into the water? Earth has given you gifts enough. Why do you not use them?”

You pull away from her hand. “I do not wish to lure him.”

Her mouth rounds. “Oh.” The sound is soft, but curdles your stomach all the same. “It is true love, then,” she says. “Pure as springwater. You would not stain your dear knight with a spell.” Her voice thins to a hiss. “What do you think you are doing here, if not spell-work?”

“The spell is not for him,” you say, and hear the weakness in it. “It is for me. I only need legs.”

“A spell is a spell all the same.”

She turns your bundle and lets the things fall. The pebbles, the berries, the herbs, the feather—all of it drops into the bog with a series of small, insulting plops. One hazelnut floats a moment before the water takes it.

“You may keep your trinkets,” she says. “I am not a hedge-wife to be bought with rowan and sage.”

Heat rises through you against the coldness of the bog. “Then why hear me?”

“Because I am curious.” She smiles again. “And because I can give you what you want. Under a condition,” she says.

Of course. Again, you keep still and say nothing. She seems to like that better than if you had begged.

“I will give you legs, and all that comes with them. You will wake with feet to stand on and knees to bend. You will go where he goes if you can keep pace. You will have three nights to win what you came for.”

The reeds whisper in the wind. Somewhere behind her hut a bird cries once and stops.

“If by the third night the knight loves you, the bargain is spent. If not, a soul is owed me.”

Your fingers tighten on the mud-bank. “Mine?”

“If you are dull enough.” The witch reaches into the fold of her garment and brings out a dagger. It is old and grisly, with a hilt of dark wood worn smooth by long handling. The blade is dark as well, but moonlight catches on it in a thin wet line. It looks hungry. “Or his.”

You stare at it.

“He may be given in your stead,” she says mildly. “A thrust under the rib. Upward, if you are weak in the arm. Bring him to me warm and I shall count us square.”

“Why would I do that?”

She lifts one shoulder. “Because hearts turn vicious when they do not get their fill. Because death is easier than longing for some creatures. Because on the third night you may find you love yourself a little more than him. I make room for all outcomes.”

The dagger gleams in her hand. You cannot stop looking at it. At last you whisper, “How shall I know if he loves me?”

The witch’s brows rise. “Were you not certain of it a moment ago?”

A pout blooms on your face unbidden.

She crouches at the bank then, bringing her face close to yours. Her breath smells of peat and old roots.

“When mortal men love their maidens,” she says, almost kindly, “they do not keep their hands to themselves. They part those fine legs you hunger after. They open the flesh between and put themselves there.”

A cold shiver runs the length of you.

Her smile returns, pleased and wicked. “There. That is plain enough even for a love-addled little fish.” She straightens. “Well? Do you accept?”

The word catches in your mouth. You sweep the dagger, the dark bog, the hut with your eyes. Then, her face, which has no mercy in it and no patience either. Because you have already loved him enough to come here, you say, “Yes.”

“Of course you do.” She puts the dagger down on the bank within your reach, then slips her hand somewhere inside her sleeve, deeper than the cloth ought to allow. When she draws it out again there is an egg in her palm, black-speckled and oddly warm.

You frown at it.

“Eat.”

“What is it?”

“An egg,” she says. “Do not go witless on me now.”

You take it from her. The shell is warm indeed, almost hot. “And then?”

“Then you sleep. Then you wake altered. It need not trouble you beyond that.”

It turns in your hand. “Raw?”

The witch gives you a look of withering contempt. “No, child. Put it in a silver cup and take it with honey.” She bares her teeth. “Yes, raw.”

Your eyes lower, ashamed of the question. The shell cracks easily. The inside slides thick and strange over your tongue. You swallow twice to get it down. The witch watches every motion.

When it is done, you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand and say, “How shall I find him?”

At that, something shifts in her face. Too rotten to be kindness, but it is the brief look of someone hearing a tune they know well.

“His blood is in the water,” she says.

Then she steps back, pulls the door open, and goes inside. It shuts between one blink and the next, leaving you in the bog with the dagger on the bank and the taste of the egg still clinging at the back of your throat.

You swim the way you came slowly. Moonlight makes the water mean and every root below look like a hand with the shape of something waiting. Above, the moon itself has thinned to a sickle near fine enough to seem a cut laid across the sky. It tells you that on the night of your judgement it will be gone altogether. You will hear it in the dark. His blood is in the water, the witch had said, and the current takes you at her word, carrying you through the narrow runs and back toward the broader stream where you first saw him kneel.

By the time you reach it, the bank is empty. You keep to the deeper part and let yourself drift there, belly turned uneasy by the egg, heart sore with a want that has already learned absence.

Sleep comes badly. Even so, it comes. The river rocks you. In the first fold of dreaming he leans over the bank again, all shadow and wet lashes, and this time when he opens his mouth it is not prayer that leaves it but your name. He reaches for you with a careful hand and thumb wedging under your chin. He bends and kisses you as though he has been thinking on nothing else.

Then the dream turns. Above you, something vast opens. The eye of god, grey and pale and lidless, hanging in the dark where the moon had been. Its patience is so complete the age of it exceeds the feeling of pity. Below, a pair of shears glints, iron-black and long as oars. The water thickens around you into a fat-like jelly, holds you fiercely, as the blades close with a sound no louder than a crab-shell snapping, and fire races you clean through. 

Scale after scale dulls and loosens. Webbing parts. Bone groans as if gripped and wrung by unseen hands. Your tail splits where no living thing ought to split and your flesh draws apart. New joints wrench themselves into being with a wet internal crack that never seems to finish. You open your mouth to scream and swallow black water instead. Heat tears through you from spine to hip to the new-made lengths of you, all the way to ten small, useless ends where your body has never ended before. Hair roots burn. Teeth ache. Even your fingertips feel changed, as though the whole of you has been dragged through too narrow an opening and forced to come out other.

You wake choking while dawn creeps into the sky. Half on the bank, half in the wash of the stream, naked to the chill, with the dagger clutched to your breast. Air rasps into you thinly through mouth and nose, making panic strike at once. You paw at your ribs and find only smooth skin where your gills ought to flare. Sealed. Gone. You drag another breath and another, each one scant enough to frighten. The water at your side offers no help. It laps your hip stupidly, as if it does not know you.

When you look down, you see them. Legs.

Two of them, long and bare and wrong as peeled roots. Knees knuckled sharp. Feet splayed in the mud with their blunt little toes. They belong to you no more than the moon belongs to the bog. The sight turns your stomach. You put a hand to one thigh. The skin there is soft and strange, without scale or sheen or the strength of a tail built to drive through current. When you try to draw the limb in, the knee folds with a hideous ease and the whole thing jerks sideways. It feels loose. Breakable. Made badly.

Still, you have asked for them. You plant both palms in the earth and try to rise and pain bites through your middle. Your legs buckle, each seeming to choose a different direction. One foot slides out from under you. The other catches on nothing and twists. You go down hard on your hands, palms full of mud. For a while you can do nothing but crouch there trembling, hair hanging round your face, breath coming sharp and ugly through a body that no longer knows its own shape.

Morning hones itself as you kneel in it. The scent of his blood has thinned almost to nothing. In its place comes the rest: men everywhere, dead and living both. Sweat gone sour in gambesons. Split guts, horse piss, iron and smoke. The field beyond the trees breathes out ruin by the lungful.

You have three days. Three days to find the knight, make him love you, and keep your soul out of a witch’s hand. You cannot even stand. Water clouds your vision and you laugh bitterly at how it won’t let you go entirely.

On the morrow, Dunk sweeps through the edges of the battlefield after the worst of it, checking for men still breathing whose bodies might be saved or those who need a merciful hand to help them pass. His side aches badly where someone slashed him, one ear hears less than it did before the fight, and one of his sockets throbs with excess blood, but at least he’s not the one gasping his last. He keeps his eyes peeled for movement, yet when he notices a particular creature trembling at the very shore where his inept prayers were heard, he stills.

A girl. Mud-caked, naked, and—Gods—crying.

He hauls the reins on Sweetfoot at once, dulling an instinct to charge forward and holding her in a rushed trot instead. “M’lady!” he calls from horseback. “M’lady, be not afraid!”

Your eyes lift, but the rest of you dwindles immediately. Arms come to cover your head and Duncan notices you’re stricken with grime wrists to elbows as if you were trying to make your way uphill on all fours. He dismounts with a small grunt and hunches on instinct. His arms spread wide and gentle, and before he knows it he’s murmuring as he would to a skittish thing. “Easy now,” he whispers. “Easy. I vow this to you—I am no threat. My name is… Ser D-Duncan The Tall. I won't hurt you.”

The title sits oddly in his mouth when he’s half-shrunken and on bent legs. As he comes closer, his cheeks begin hoarding warmth despite him, for the shape of you is visible and evident even at this angle. Breasts plastered to your thighs billow with each frightened breath. Your belly creases in the middle and clay tears and crumbles off your knees when you shudder. He sees nothing else, but in his chest an unbearable instinct to cradle you almost overcomes him.

His head turns to the side, so he watches you only with his eye’s corner. When he’s close enough, he undoes his cape, spreads it gently over your back and lets it fall over you. He has a fleeting thought on what kind of smell it must carry and whether that matters.

Only then does he see the dagger. It is clutched in your fist, half-hidden by mud and the hunch of your body, but iron is iron. His hand stills on the edge of the wool. For a breath he says nothing. A crying maid with a blade is still a maid with a blade, and fear can make a body quicker than training.

“Easy,” he says again, lower. “You needn’t use that on me.”

You stop trembling enough to lift your face. The blade drops. Then all at once you are on him, hands closing round his waist with such force Dunk rocks back on his heels. Something reaches him through wool and shaking breath. Unintelligible mutter. Then—found me. And again, softer, urgent with respite. Knew you would. Knew you’d find me.

For a moment he does nothing but stand there with his own arms half-raised, startled clean through. Then they come round you, shy and boyish. One hand settles between your shoulders. He rubs once, then again, broad and slow, as though you are a frightened colt and his hand might smooth you into sense. “There now,” he says, because it is what comes. “There now.”

Beneath the mud and the cold reek of the stream there is a smell to you he cannot place. Something green. Something sweet. It cuts strangely through blood and horse and churned earth. 

He lets you cling till your breathing eases enough to stop catching. When it eases, he gives your shoulders one careful squeeze and tries to look at your face without looking full at your face.

“M’lady,” he says. “Have you been hurt?” You shake your head against him. He swallows. “And your clothes—were you robbed?” There is a pause to that. Then you nod.

“Ah.” Dunk shuts his mouth on all the things that might follow that and does not ask them. “Well. I’ll take you to the village,” he says. “We’ll find something to put on your back, and someone to look you over.”

You do not let go, and he finds he does not much mind that. By now he is holding most of your weight besides. He means to set you back a little then, only enough to walk you to Sweetfoot, but the moment he loosens his hold your legs betray you. They fold queerly with the loose, witless give of limbs that do not know their own business. Dunk catches you fast under the arms before your knees can strike earth. 

Some hurt in the low back, he thinks. Or the spine knocked wrong. He has seen men go slack in the limbs from less.

“Easy,” he says again, lower now. “I’ve you.”

Your head comes up. There is mud on your cheek, tears dried in bright tracks through it. Up close the sight of you lands worse on him than it did before. Such beauty in such a place. Such beauty at all. If someone asked him later, he would have no better answer than that.

“May I carry you?” he asks.

You nod.

He gathers the cape tight first, fingers making poor work of it. Then he crouches so you may put your arms round his neck. When you do, your face comes so near he feels the warmth of your breath on his mouth. His own has gone dry. “I will lift you now,” he says, for want of anything wiser.

One arm behind your back, the other under your knees. He brings you up. The pull in his side is vicious enough to whiten his sight for a blink, but he only grunts and holds you the tighter for it. You are light to him. Light should not be so difficult.

Sweetfoot turns her head and blows at the sight of you in Dunk’s arms. “Mind yourself,” Dunk mutters, and means the horse, and himself, and perhaps the day entire.

Getting you into the saddle proves ugly work. There is no good way to manage a naked maid wrapped in a cloak when one hand is wanted for decency, the other for balance, and his side seems set on parting company with him. He stands a moment with his jaw shut hard, then does it the only way such things ever get done—awkwardly.

“M’lady,” he says, hot-faced, “I must set you before me.” You only look at him with those wide, strange eyes and make no complaint.

He gets one boot to stirrup, hauls himself up enough to raise you after, and nearly fumbles you when the cloak slips and his forearm feels the bare warmth of your back through the wool. Heat runs through him so fast it feels wrong. He gets you right the second time by sheer stubbornness, settles you before the saddle-bow, then adjusts behind with a grunt he prays sounds like effort.

It does not improve matters.

There is no room worth speaking of. You sit before him with your hair damp and knees thrown to one side, and Dunk must put an arm round your middle the moment Sweetfoot moves or see you slide clean off. He has no notion what one does with a girl in such a fix. Horses, boys, wounds, armour, hard roads, those he understands. A maiden fair as vision and shaky in the limbs, is another matter. He finds himself hoping there is some widow in the village with a stern face and capable hands who might take one look at you and know everything he does not. Then he may ride on to Riverrun with peace in his mind.

The thought sits well enough till you lean back. A little more weight at each step, whether from weariness or trust he cannot tell. Soon your back is to his chest and your hair keeps straying under his chin. He has to look somewhere, so he looks at your hands on Sweetfoot’s neck.

Mud is dried in the lines of your palms and packed black beneath your nails. The nails themselves are pale in a way he mislikes. A drowned sort of blandness, as though the blood had only lately remembered to leave them. His hand closes harder on the reins.

What befell you? Robbed, you had said—no, nodded. Robbed of clothes and the strength in your legs. Robbed near of your wits, to be found bare and weeping on the skirts of slaughter. His mind offers up answers and every one of them is ugly.

“You are safe enough for now,” he says, because the words come and because he wants them said. “We’ll have you among decent folk directly.”

You say nothing. Perhaps doze. Perhaps you only listen. When Sweetfoot steps through a rut, your head tips back against him for an instant, and Dunk’s arm goes firmer round your waist.

Riverrun can wait an hour. Even a day, if it must. First the village. Clothes. Food. A woman to tend you. Then he will know what ought be done.

He keeps his eyes ahead and rides. When the road begins to thicken with huts and kitchen smoke he turns Sweetfoot toward the first cottage with a swept patch of yard and washing strung on a line. A hen darts from underhoof squawking. Dunk reins in, slides down, and reaches up for you.

The door opens before he can knock. A broad woman with red wrists and a face like a hatchet stands in the threshold, takes in Dunk, the horse, the cloak-wrapped girl in his arms, and narrows her eyes. “I can explain,” Dunk says, which is a poor beginning and sounds like one besides.

“Can you?” she says.

Heat climbs his neck. “I found her by the stream yonder. She’s been robbed, I think. She’s got no clothes, and her legs are none too steady. I thought—” He falters, then tries again. “I thought a woman might better see to her.”

The woman looks past him to your face. Something in hers shifts, not softer exactly, but less sharp. “Well, I am a woman,” she says. “Bring her in, then, you great oaf, and stand there bleeding on my threshold no longer.”

Dunk ducks his head and does as he’s bid. The cottage is low-ceilinged and close with the smell of onions and wool. He sets you down where the woman tells him, though not without trouble, for your legs go queer under you again and your hand catches in his sleeve with sudden force. “You are safe,” he says under his breath.

Your fingers tighten. “Please,” you whisper. “Do not leave.”

That near aches him more than the clinging had. “I’ll be just outside,” he says, for the woman is already flapping a hand at him to get out and because there is no fitting place for him in a room where a maid must be dressed. “Only outside. I vow it.”

A beat. Then, you let go. The door shuts on him. Dunk stands in the yard with a hand pressed to his side. Through the wall come the dim sounds of women’s voices, yours low and strange, the older one brisk and practical. Once there is a clatter. Once a silence long enough to make him straighten from the fence-post he had leaned on. He is thinking whether it would be madness to knock when the woman steps out at last, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Well?” Dunk asks.

“Well, nothing’s broke,” she says. “No fever that I can feel, no wound worth speaking of. She’s frightened half witless and weak in the legs, that’s all. Hungry, too, I’d say. May be she took some knock to the head. May be she was born a little moon-touched. Hard to say.”

Dunk blinks at her. “She knows her own name?” he asks.

The woman gives him a look. “She knows enough.”

That does not answer much, but before he can find a better question the door opens and you come out.

The clothes hang on you as they would on a child dressed from a dead woman’s chest: a coarse shift, a faded gown, sleeves a touch too short, hem uncertain, boots big enough to host toes twice as long as yours. Your hair has been pushed back from your face with damp hands. Your legs still look unsure of themselves. Dunk moves before thinking and takes you by the elbows when you waver on the step. “There now,” he murmurs. “Steady.”

You look up at him with such plain relief that his grip gentles.

The woman snorts softly behind you. “Take her home, then.”

Dunk clears his throat. “Aye. That is—” He looks down at you. “Where is your home, m’lady?”

Your hand comes up and closes over his forearm. “There is nothing for me there,” you say. Your fingers tighten. “Please.”

He opens his mouth, then shuts it. “I am bound for Riverrun,” he says at last. “I’ve business there. I cannot—”

“That is where I am going,” you say quickly. “The last place where I have anything. Please. Take me with you.”

Dunk stares. It may be nonsense. It may be the plain truth. It may be only the talk of a girl too frightened to be left among strangers. He cannot tell. What he can tell is the feel of your hand on his arm, the look of you trying not to sway where you stand, and the knowledge that if he leaves you here, he will think on it all the road to Riverrun and probably every road after.

The woman folds her arms and watches him make a misery of the choice. “Well?” she says.

Dunk lets out a breath. “I can take you as far as Riverrun,” he says, still looking at you. “No farther promised than that.”

Your smile is answer enough. Later, when doubt gets into him, it will be one of the things he reaches back for.

Soon after the village, Duncan finds himself about a number of tasks he had not meant to take on. He accepts the pity bundle of more garments from the woman, all of them light. He lifts you to the saddle, then goes back for Chestnut and Thunder. He loses the mark of his back, gathers his scant belongings, counts them, and thinks of the trouble of one bedroll. Riverrun lies four nights off, and his purse is too light for inns along the way. He shifts the saddle on Chestnut till it will hold you steady enough, then goes through the poor store of cloth he owns to see whether there is anything fit to spare you. At last he finds a blanket little better than rough army issue and ties it round your shoulders with a length of string.

When he is done, he steps back to look at you and nearly laughs for the misery of it. A strange girl with no place to go, less worldly goods than he has, a queer way of speaking, and legs that seem only half-convinced by land—and here he is, setting his road to her pace as though this were a sensible thing. Duncan knows well enough what sort of fool he is. Dunk the Lunk, thick as a castle wall, slow as an aurochs. Still, his mouth pulls into a shy half-smile.

“Ready?” he asks.

The world of men continues to bewilder. They kill each other relentlessly and let the bodies rot out in the fields until crows find them. They speak oddly. They wear clothes. Rough things that scratch the skin round armpits and knees, and make their beasts wear clothes too. They walk on two imbalanced legs that have less sense to them than you would ever think they have, which end with feeble little things that need the most woeful instrument imaginable to stay protected—shoes.

The pain comes on you late. At first everything is so strange that the cuts in your feet barely matter. Then, just as you get the first grasp on how to walk on those fleshy stilts, an old woman gives you a shift, a skirt that wedges itself between your thighs, stockings that roll beneath your knees, and a pair of disgusting animal-skin things that make the wound across your sole press and bleed, press and bleed. You could fit another set of those ugly little toes into them and still they’d knock your ankles raw. Duncan seems to think your wits were rumbled sideways by whatever befell you, and sighs through his nose each time you try a few wobbling steps before giving up and tossing you from one place to another. From doorstep to horseback. From horseback to ground. From ground back to horseback again. Then, the horse takes over the carrying.

None of this matters greatly. None of it rubs you wrong in any way, because your knight has found you and agreed to take you to Riverrun, of which you know only that it is overrun with rivers and mean spirits, and you want nothing to do with either. You want everything to do with him, though, so you let the beast called Chestnut carry you toward it and knock your newly acquired arse against the hard leather of her saddle.

You glance at him often, only to make certain you were right to choose him, but Duncan proves worth every bruise on your buttocks. He is prettier close by. Washed of blood, his face goes almost holy at moments—too open and clean in the look of it—then a shift of shade will catch under the brow and jaw and make a man of him again so suddenly it gives you pause. His arms are strong enough to carry a girl like you. His heart, plainly, is soft enough to help one and trust one within the space of a single hesitant breath.

That softness lives in him in sly places. Not only in the face, though the face does its share. In the stammer that catches him when he is too aware of himself. In the way he asks leave before he touches you, as though a thing may be both necessary and solemn. In how he handles even his own size like it might alarm somebody if set down too hard. You begin to see that the boyishness in him is not only a matter of smooth cheeks and dark lashes and that honest mouth. It lives deeper. Some tender piece of him has made it to his great age uncrushed.

You have no notion what he knows of love. His lips look unkissed, which strikes you at once as improbable and agreeable. Kissable all the same. So are his cheeks, if it comes to that, and the hollows under his eyes look made for the brushing of thumbs in acts of pity or fondness or whatever human girls do when they mean to soothe a man. You think, in the stupid way of girls, that it may be just as well if he knows nothing. You know very little yourself. The males of your kind are greedy, quarrelsome creatures who would bite the shine off a scale if they thought it theirs by right. The tenderest kiss you have ever given in all your life was to a trout, and that was mostly because it was dying.

Still, you know enough to know this: there is something dear in a creature so large keeping such a breakable heart inside him. Duncan feels safe to you in the way deep water once did. Not because he could not drown you if he wished, but because every part of him seems arranged against wishing it.

The road, of course, is another matter. It goes on and on, pale and hard beneath the horses, made by men for reasons men must have found clever. When there is no canopy the sun comes down bare and mean, scorching your face, your scalp, the tender tops of your hands. Dust lifts and settles in your throat. The saddle knocks under you with a steady, sour persistence, and after a while even wonder thins into boredom. You cannot understand why anyone would choose such a path. Roads have no give. They hold the day’s heat. They are full of stones and wheel-ruts and the old droppings of beasts. Water, at least, takes your shape when it carries you.

But then, toward evening, the land alters. Light begins to bleed richer colours over everything. It gathers in the grasses and tips the hedges. It slicks itself along the backs of flies until the air is full of brief, burning specks. The trunks of trees grow black on one side and warm on the other, and the far fields seem to have been brushed by something molten and low. From the height of Chestnut’s back, you see land from its own heart for the first time: furrow, ditch, thorn, moss, little stones shining in the road, the long back of the world lifting itself toward dark.

The dying sun finds Duncan too. It catches in his hair until the auburn of it wakes with red-gold hidden under it, banked fire stirred by a stick. All of him brightens: cheek, ear, the blunt line of his nose, the great slope of shoulder under travel-stained cloth. When the sun begins to go, his colours come alive. It seems unfair that a thing may grow more beautiful just when the light is going, as if it was never meant to be kept.

“M’lady?” His voice pulls you from the sky. You turn your head and find him watching you from Sweetfoot’s back. “Are you tired?”

You consider this. “Tired of what?”

He blinks.

“Sitting on a beast?” you ask.

A sound leaves him then, low and huffed through his nose. “Aye. Riding can weary a body. We should make camp soon. It will be dark before long.”

You look him over for signs of weariness, but he shows none that you can read. He sits tall enough, broad enough, with the reins easy in one hand and the dust on him as if it has been there all his life. “The road is hard,” you allow. “The beast is delightful.”

At that you lean forward and wrap both arms around Chestnut’s neck. Chestnut blows out a pleased breath and dips her head as if she agrees with you entirely.

Duncan stares for a moment. Then his mouth presses itself into a line and he looks back to the road.

“Do people always choose paths this hard?” you ask.

“This?” he says. “This is no hard road. It’s straight, and flat enough, and there’s no great wind to cut at us. There are harder paths than this.”

You frown. “Why would anyone take a harder path?”

“Sometimes they must.”

You consider that gravely. Men do seem fond of arranging misery into rules and then obeying them.

After another little while, Duncan says, “Keep your eyes peeled for a place to camp, if there is one you like.”

Your hand lifts before he has finished speaking. “There.”

He follows the line of your finger. There is only a thick tangle of trees and bramble ahead, with sun lying through the branches. “There?” he says.

“By the water.”

He looks again, slower this time, as if water may show itself out of courtesy. “There ain’t water there, m’lady.”

“There is.”

His gaze comes back to you. It is a look you dislike before you understand it. Careful. Mild. The look given to a creature who has said something foolish and might be frightened if the foolishness is named aloud. Pity sits in it, thinly covered.

Heat pinches under your ribs. “Beyond those trees,” you say. “Where the sun takes aim. There is water.”

Duncan shifts in the saddle. For a moment it seems he means to answer. Instead he only draws a breath and turns Sweetfoot’s head. “All right, then.”

The gentleness of it makes the pinch in you flare hotter. The males of your own kind speak so when they wish to make you small. Little thing, pretty thing, witless thing. They forget how quickly a little thing can open a throat when she has teeth and a mind to use them. How a male may reach for you in the weeds, grinning, and only know himself dead when his fingers will no longer close because all the blood has run out of them.

You say nothing. Chestnut follows Sweetfoot off the road and into the green press, Thunder trots close behind with all of the belongings clinking at his sides.

Branches drag over your shoulders. Leaves brush your face and catch in your hair. The ground grows softer almost immediately, darkening underhoof. You hear it before he does, of course: the low, glassy talk of water over stone, hidden under bird-call and the rasp of insects. A moment later Duncan hears it too. His head lifts. Sweetfoot’s ears prick forward. He urges her on a little faster without looking back.

The trees thin, and beyond them lies a small bed of grass pressed close to a clear stream running lazy under evening light. A willow grows at the bank with its long hair fallen into the water, making a green chamber beneath it. The surface holds the last of the sun in broken pieces and lets them go again.

Duncan reins in. At first, he only looks. “Well,” he says at last, quiet and baffled. “Gods be good.” You sit straighter on Chestnut’s back when he turns to you. “How did you know?”

Your chin lifts, because even though he has no right to know, you are a proud creature. “I am not so witless as you think me, knight.”

At that his face changes. The bafflement stays, but something troubled comes into it too. “I never thought you witless,” he says.

Instead of dignifying that with a response, you begin getting off Chestnut. It seems simple enough. One leg must go somewhere, then the other after it, and the ground waits below with its usual bad intentions. You slide halfway down the saddle and there the business collapses. Your skirt catches, one foot finds nothing. Your hands clutch at leather and mane, and you are left hanging from the side of the beast in a deeply humiliating fashion, breathing hard through your nose.

Duncan is there before you make a fool of yourself entire. His hands span your waist through the shift, large and warm and terribly sure. He lifts you down as if the effort costs him nothing, though you have seen the way his side catches sometimes when he thinks you are looking elsewhere.

“I only meant,” he says, setting you on the grass with more care than the world deserves, “you keep surprising me.”

You say nothing to that. Only look at him from close by, and shamelessly so. He is shy for a lad this big. It pleases and worries you in equal measure. It makes you wonder, briefly and without comfort, whether he will know what to do with you at all. Whether he knows how men put themselves between the legs of women who want them so dearly. Whether, third night from this one, the witch will have the soul she grinned for.

Before you can ask, Duncan looks away. “You may bathe, if you like,” he says. “Under the willow there. I’ll start a fire. See to some food. Water the horses after.” Then he turns from you with the haste of a sailor escaping a sinking ship.

The first thing you lose is the shoes. You wrench them off and drop them in the grass with hatred. The cut across your sole still presses when your foot meets earth, but at least it is no longer trapped against leather, forced to bleed and bleed in its own little prison. The stockings go next, or try to. They roll and cling beneath your knees like pale eels. Then, the blanket. You tug at the ties and laces and strings, cross with their stubbornness, then only angrier. Human clothes are full of tricks and no kindness. At last, with a tired grunt, you pull the shift up over your head.

Behind you, wood clatters. You look round.

Duncan stands a few feet away with firewood scattered at his boots. His mouth has parted. For one suspended moment he simply gapes. Then flush climbs fiercely round his ears, up his neck, into his face, and he drops into a crouch to gather the sticks as if they have become suddenly precious.

“M-m’lady,” he says, strangled. “You oughtn’t—Seven save me—you oughtn’t undress before a man you scarce know.”

You stare at him.

“I thought you meant to go beneath the willow,” he goes on, still looking hard at the twigs. “Out of sight. I thought—what are you doing? Have you never been on the road? Or near men? Or near folk at all?”

An instinct pinches you, strange and unwelcome, to cover your chest. You do, though slowly, and with no clear idea why. He looks as if you have done him some harm. “It is only flesh,” you say. “You have flesh too. What is so wicked about mine that you cannot look?”

He makes a small, suffering sound and bends lower over the firewood. “My flesh is—” He stops. Swallows. Tries again. “It is different.”

You glance down at yourself, then at him. “How?”

His hand closes on a stick so tightly the bark cracks. “M’lady, I beg you.”

“For what?”

“For pity,” he says, so miserably that your brows lift. “It is improper, is all. A maid shouldn’t—And I don’t mean to have you think I’m that sort of man. I am trying to do good by you.”

He sounds so nervous your annoyance falters. Only for a moment.

You pick up the shift and hold it to your chest, then begin toward the bank. Walking still feels like being made to argue with the earth. Each step must be planned, lowered, endured. Too much pressure and the pain flares white-hot. Too little and your knee goes soft. Your feet seem stupidly far away from the rest of you, little traitors sent ahead to ruin your dignity.

You stop beside him. Duncan bows his head even lower, as though your bare ankle might strike him blind.

“Do you dislike women’s bodies?” you ask.

The sound he makes then is very nearly a whine. “Please, m’lady. Spare me. I am only a hedge knight. I am trying—please.”

You huff at him. “Forgive me for tormenting you with some skin.” Then you limp on beneath the willow’s hanging hair.

There, hidden by the long green fall of it, you strip with more temper than grace and lower yourself toward the stream. This is going poorly. Your knight does not seem at all like the men you have watched from the shallows, those shore-men who seize their lovers round the waist and press them down laughing in the dark, bodies gleaming, mouths so sinful your tail once twitched hard enough to stir silt. Duncan behaves as though the sight of you is a trial set by cruel gods.

At least there is water.

The stream receives you kindly, though changed skin and sealed ribs make even kindness strange. You lie back over its cool sheet and drift where it is deep enough to hold you, looking up through the willow leaves as they sieve the last gold from the sky. The current slips beneath your new body, uncertain around the parts it no longer knows, and you let it carry what little of you it still can.

Duncan remains crouched over the scattered firewood long after you limp beneath the tree, ears burning as though someone has boxed them both. The stream talks quietly behind him. The horses crop at the grass.

He has no answer for what has just happened. None he likes, anyway.

You are strange. Stranger than any girl he has known, though known is too large a word for the few girls that ever had cause to look twice at him. Your face is strange too, in how open it is. He has not seen one so plain and easy to read since he was a boy looking down into still puddles and finding his own there. He can tell when you are baffled. When you are tired. When you are pleased. When you are angry.

Now you are angry. Likely under the willow still wearing that fierce little frown, cross with him because he turned his eyes away. That is the oddest part. Most maids, he thinks, would be angry with a man for gaping. You seem wounded that he did not gape longer.

He did gape. Only a heartbeat, maybe, before sense struck him like a thrown stone, but a heartbeat can be a mean long while when a girl stands bare in afternoon light. He saw the lift of your breasts before your arms came up, full where the borrowed shift had hidden them, and prickling with river-cool air. He saw the narrow give of your belly, the line where ribs fell into waist, the dark crease of shadow beneath. Enough. More than enough. Too much for a man meant to be gathering sticks and doing honourable things with his hands.

You asked how your flesh was different from his. The terrible thing is he would only need to stand up to show you.

That thought near makes him groan aloud. He jams another stick into the small pit he has scraped clear with his boot and starts arranging kindling with far more care than kindling deserves. Fire. Food. Horses. Bedroll. Those are proper troubles. Those can be solved with hands and a bit of sense.

The bedroll is the worst of them. Four nights to Riverrun. A purse too light for inns unless he means to arrive there hungry and horseless. He pokes at the kindling and gives himself over to a hard, practical anguish.

When the fire catches, he goes to see to the horses. Sweetfoot accepts his hand with her usual calm. Chestnut, traitor that she is, blows warm air straight into his face and tosses her head toward the willow.

“Oh, have you a new favourite?” Duncan mutters. Chestnut chews at nothing, looking pleased with herself. “Aye. Good. All of you against me, then.”

He returns to the fire with what food he has: one mangy rabbit still fit for roasting, a clutch of withered potatoes that have begun trying to become more potatoes, and bread gone hard enough to argue with a knife. He has had worse meals. Many worse. Still, he finds himself worrying whether it will be enough for a tender-mouthed creature like you, whether you are used to finer things, softer things, things served by hands that have never been black with battlefield mud.

The whole day sits oddly in his skull. Morning had found him still full of war. Blood from the day before. The sour stink of men opened for no good reason. Boys felled in the grass with their eyes gone milky and their mothers’ names drying on their tongues. He had been angry then, in a slow thick way, at killing and lords and banners and all the great heavy wheels that roll over little bodies until no one can tell what shape they had.

Then he found you by the stream, naked, half-wild with fear, concussed or close enough, begging him without quite begging to take you with him. Now you are angry because he would not stand there and leer at your tits.

Duncan understands horses better than people. Dogs too. Even mules, ugly-hearted beasts though they can be. A horse gives warning before it kicks. A dog shows teeth before it bites. People smile, weep, lie, ask strange questions, go hurt in places a man cannot see. You escape even the small customs he has managed to learn.

He lifts his eyes from the rabbit just as the wind moves the willow’s hanging hair aside. Through the green gaps, he sees you.

You are floating on your back where the stream broadens under the tree, arms spread loose on either side, legs moving slowly beneath the skin of the water. The last light scatters over you in pieces. A knee and a hip. The small rise of your belly. Water darkens and brightens as it crosses you, breaking your shape and making it whole again. Your hair fans out around your head. Your eyes are closed, mouth parted, and the stream slips between your lips as though you have invited it.

Duncan ought to look away, but the boy he is, he doesn't.

There is enough of you on display to shame a septa dead in her robes. Breasts, thighs, the place between them blurred and shown by water in turns. Yet your face holds him worst. The peace of it, the ease of it. Stripped of cloth and terror and all the hard rules that seem to trouble you, you look newly made and older than the earth together. Not human, he thinks. Then he feels wicked for it, because you are a girl, and hurt, and under his protection.

Still, you look like one of those goddesses men carved in old stones before the Seven came, the kind Duncan knows nothing about except that a wiser man would kneel or run. You look pleased to have the world off your skin. No wonder you shed clothing like a snare.

The willow falls back into place. Green covers you again. Duncan looks down at the rabbit, jaw tight, and turns it over the flame before it can make it to coal. He scolds himself too, keeps muttering Ser Arlan's little knightly preachings to tear his mind away from what boys think about, and back to what sworn swords should think about.

The stream sloshes and plops with the sound of a body being dragged out of it. There, Dunk wonders what exactly to do, because he knows well enough you are no good at walking yet, but finds himself in the grip of a strange preference. He would rather let the stumble happen and rush to help than prevent it outright, if prevention means enduring another comparison of flesh.

Soon enough, he catches you limping from the corner of his eye to the heart of his vision. You come to sit beside him much too close for his peace. The cold of the river comes off you plainly, running against the heat of his shoulder where yours nearly touches. Damp has darkened your hair and set loose drops along your neck. Before he can shift away without making it an insult, you arrange yourself with great importance and announce, “There. Modest.”

Dunk looks. Stupidly, but he does. He has never known cloth to be a thing worthy of praise. Cloth is only cloth. A courtesy. A barrier. A way for decent folk to go about the world without setting fire to one another’s ears. Yet in his want to tell you that you have done well, he stabs his own foot clean through.

The linen has clung to you everywhere it ought to have had the manners to hang loose. Breast, belly, the small inward draw of your waist—all made plainer by water and the thinness of the shift. The blanket lies in a heap too near the fire, abandoned as though wool has somehow offended you.

He holds the lump in his throat from becoming a sound. Then he reaches for the blanket, shakes the worst of the grass from it, and puts it over your shoulders with as much solemn care as if he were robing a queen. He draws it close beneath your throat and tucks one edge over the other.

“You’ve not dried yourself off,” he says. “Cold, aren’t ye?”

You look at him for a moment. Then, there's a nod, and, thank the Seven, your hands take over the keeping of the blanket at your breastbone. The lump in Dunk's throat loosens.

He busies himself with the food. The rabbit has given what it can to the pot, which is less than a rabbit ought to give and more than nothing. The potatoes have softened. The bread will have to be chewed with conviction. He ladles the thin pottage into one of his wooden bowls and passes it to you.

You take it in both hands and eye it with open suspicion. “What is this?”

“Supper,” he says.

You smell it.

“It ain’t much,” Dunk goes on, because the look on your face begins to trouble him. “Only rabbit and some potatoes, and the bread’s gone hard. Still, you ought to eat. There’s a day on the road ahead, and you’ve had naught in you since—” He stops, because he does not know since when. “A while, I’d wager.”

He expects disappointment, perhaps. Revulsion, if you are some lord’s daughter after all, though what lord’s daughter finds herself naked and half-drowned by a stream is beyond him.

Instead, you look bewildered. “You made this?”

Dunk blinks. “A-aye, m’lady.”

You dip your fingers in before he can offer a spoon. The first bite goes into your mouth carefully, as though supper may have sharp bits within it. Then your face changes.

It is a small thing, merely a lifting of brows and mouth pausing round the taste. Then you take another bit, and another, hotter than is wise, huffing through it and laughing once under your breath as though the whole notion of cooked rabbit has played some clever trick on you. Grease shines at the corner of your mouth. You lick it away with no shame at all.

“This is good,” you say, and sound surprised by your own gladness. “This is very good.”

Dunk is bewildered. It is one kind of cruelty to tease him and huff at him for trying his best at decency and failing, another to make a jest out of him and his hedge-ridden status. He looks down into his own bowl.

“Must you mock me?”

You stop chewing at once. The mouthful is too large to swallow cleanly, but you do it anyway and wince as it goes down. “Mock you?” you ask. “Why would I?”

“It’s only rabbit,” he mutters. “And mangled potatoes. You needn’t make a show of it.”

The hurt that comes into your face lands in him badly.

“I did not mean to hurt you,” you say. “Forgive me. I only meant—I would not be able to make this.” A pause. “Or start a fire, for that matter.”

Dunk lifts his head. “You do not know how to start a fire?”

You look at him a moment too long, then back into the bowl. “I’ve never needed it.”

That answer is another strange stone set on the growing pile of you. He gives a low hum and scrapes at his own supper with the spoon. “Well,” he says after a moment, rough with regret. “I beg your pardon, then. If you truly enjoy it, I am glad.”

Your eyes lift. “I do. Truly.”

Knowing it is true does something worse than the praise did. It catches him off guard and warms him under the breastbone, soft and dangerous. He leans back on one hand, taking you in. Half-smile, bare feet peeking from beneath the blanket, bowl clutched as though it contains some small wonder.

“So,” he says, because his mouth is safer when it is trying to crack an unresolvable riddle, “you’re a lady who cannot cook, cannot start a fire, and despises garments and shoes, but has some queer prescience when it comes to finding a body of water. Hm?”

Silence only, then a wide-eyed glance.

“Peculiar,” Dunk says.

“I do not understand why men wear so much cloth anyway,” you say, picking at the blanket where it sits under your chin. “What is peculiar is to have skin so feeble—”

There, your voice dies. Dunk has gone very still with his spoon halfway to his mouth. “Men?” he says.

You blink.

“You are people too,” he says, after a beat.

The words are gentle enough, but they come with a puzzled furrow between his brows, as though he is trying to set you in the proper place and cannot find the shelf. He takes another mouthful and chews it slowly. “Have you worn lighter cloth before, then? Before… all this?”

Before the stream, he means. Before the mud. Before the village woman and the borrowed gown. Before whatever thing he has decided happened to you.

Your fingers tighten round the bowl. “Lighter, yes.”

“How light?”

You give him a careful look.

Dunk seems to understand his mistake before you answer. Red returns to his ears with comic speed. “Never mind. You needn’t— That was no question to ask a maid.”

You consider him. “Do you not often see women naked?”

He chokes. It is only a little choke, but enough to make him turn his face and thump one fist against his chest. “Gods,” he says when he has breath again. “M’lady.”

“I am only asking.”

“Aye, well. Some questions ought to be asked with more care.”

“Why?”

“Because they—” He looks at you, then away, then helplessly down to his lap. “Because they put thoughts in a man’s head.”

“What thoughts?”

His mouth opens. Shuts. You lean closer, interested so plainly Dunk near suffocates on air that suddenly feels chewable in his mouth. “Do women’s bodies trouble all men so badly, or only hedge knights?” you ask.

He makes the suffering sound again. Quieter this time, but telling all the same. “I've seen women,” he says, with the grave misery of a fool walking barefoot over hot coals. “Some. A few. In bathhouses, once or twice by mistake. On the road, folk are not always private as they ought be. And, uh—” He clears his throat so hard it sounds painful. “And in places where women are paid to be looked at.”

You stare. “Paid?”

“Aye.”

“To be looked at?”

“Among other things.”

“What other things?”

Dunk puts his bowl down. You wait. He looks into the fire as if the flames might take pity on him and leap high enough to swallow his face. “Things between men and women.”

“What things?”

“Married things,” he says, too quickly.

“Only married people do them?”

His eyes close briefly. “No.”

“Then why call them married things?”

“Because I am trying to keep this talk decent,” Dunk huffs.

You frown into your supper. “Have you done them?” you ask.

It is such a rude and forthright question it strikes bone in him, though somehow it does not quite offend. His face pulls tight. The flush burns hotter, but something under it draws inward, shy and sore and young.

“N-no,” Duncan says, small.

You lean closer, as if trying to match him in secrecy lest his horses suddenly recognise human tongue. “Never?”

“No.”

“Why?”

He gives a small, helpless shrug. “I’ve had no wife.”

“But you said folk do these things without wives.”

“Aye, some do.” He groans then, low and exasperated, dragging one hand over his mouth. “Gods.”

“But you do not.”

“No.”

“Why?”

His thumb moves over the rim of his bowl. There is dirt under the nail, a split at the knuckle, the hand of a man who knows fire and reins and sword-hilts and very little of where to put himself when a girl asks him plain questions in the dusk.

“Seemed wrong, most times,” he says. “Or costly. Or I was too young. Or too big and stupid and slow to know what was wanted till the chance had gone.”

He goes quiet after that, hoping it is enough of a confession to satisfy you. Another part of him wonders what business he has entertaining the whim at all. A puzzle of a girl you are, that is for certain. Strange in your questions, in your frowns, in the careless tilt of your head when you hear a thing you cannot place.

Then a thought comes on him, tender and stupid enough to shame him: is this another chance he cannot recognise while it is being given? He lifts his face to check yours for some sign of what he imagines a lustful glance might be, though he has no real notion what he expects to find there. Heat? Mischief? Some womanly knowledge he would know when he saw it? Before he can make any proper fool’s study of you, you ask another question.

“Do you like kissing?”

You might as well have picked up a knife by the blade. “I—” His throat works. “I suppose I might.”

“You suppose?”

He breathes heavy. His skin surely can’t get any hotter, so he answers, “I have kissed.”

Your eyes brighten at that, keen enough to make him regret the disclosure at once. “How many times?”

Duncan laughs then, though there is little mirth in it. Nerves, mayhaps. Or the pure severity of you sitting there with rabbit grease on your mouth, asking after his kisses as if counting apples in a basket. He has admitted to being green and now sounds greener still. “Seven save me,” he whines.

“How many?”

“Enough to know a man should not count in front of a lady.”

“Was it good?”

The fire pops. Somewhere behind the pair of you one of the horses tears grass with its teeth. Dunk sits in deepening blushing silence.

You eat another bite. Hum, as if the flavours have managed to marry into something more delicious during the interrogation. “At the shore,” you say then, “men kiss women as if they are hungry.”

Dunk’s gaze snaps to you.

“I have seen it,” you add. “They hold them by the waist and put them down in the grass. Sometimes the women laugh. Sometimes they make sounds as if they are being bitten, but they keep their hands in the men’s hair, so I think they must like it.”

Duncan feels himself go past blushing into something worse. Stricken, feverish, and too aware of the place where his belly has kicked tight under your words. He cannot have you thinking him that sort of knight. Cannot sit here in the dark with you speaking of women pressed into grass and let his mind go where it has already begun to go.

“M’lady,” he says, and hears the plea in it himself. “I think we ought to try and get some sleep.”

“It is barely dark,” you say.

“It will be darker soon.”

“That happens whether we sleep or not.”

“Aye,” he says faintly. “So it does.”

You lick a bit of grease from your thumb. His eyes move there and away so fast he prays you miss it. “Do you want more supper?” he asks.

You smile into your bowl. “You are changing the subject.”

He smiles back, weakly. Hopes there is enough begging in it, though judging by your curiosity about every cursed thing under the moon, falling to his knees would only give you more to ask about. “I am… trying to save my soul.”

Your laugh comes out small and surprised, and it spills warm through his chest in a way that has no business being so pleasant.

“Eat,” he says. “Then sleep. There will be more road on the morrow, and you already hate the road.”

“I hate the shoes more,” you tell him.

“Aye. I had gathered.”

“And the stockings.”

“A terrible foe,” Dunk says, standing up.

“And the laces.”

“Cruel little beasts.”

You glance at him, something sharp and pleased on you. It is very difficult to keep thoughts from his head, foul thoughts, when you look like this. His heart softens a notch while the other parts of him harden, and before he is forced back to sitting, Dunk turns and tells you, “I’ll water the horses and prepare the bedroll for us.”

He does so. You follow him soon after, quiet-footed for once, and stop to eye the splay of oilcloth and old wool on the ground as if it is another human custom laid out for judgment.

Dunk clears his throat. “You should lie down. You’ve had a long day.”

That much, at least, you obey. You lower yourself carefully, one knee bending wrong at first, then righting with a frown that makes him look away before fondness can show too plainly on his face. He waits until you are settled, then pulls the blanket up over you and tucks it in at your shoulder. Only a little. Only enough to keep the night air off. His hand stills there for half a heartbeat before he draws it back.

Then he turns, draws his sword, and lays it down between the two sides of the bedroll.

It makes a good enough line. Honest steel. Cold steel. A better man than he is, perhaps, lying straight-backed where honour ought to be.

You watch him do it, and Dunk pretends not to notice.

Getting himself down beside you is less graceful than he would like. He lowers carefully, trying to favour the slash in his side, but the wound pulls anyway and a wince catches him regardless. He settles on his back at last with a breath through his teeth, one arm tucked behind his head, his body held a proper distance from the blade.

For a while there is only the fire. The horses. The soft working of water under the willow. But, of course, you must ask. “What is the sword for?”

Dunk shuts his eyes and opens them again. “For sleeping.”

You turn your face toward him. He can feel it without looking. “Are you afraid of me?”

“No,” he says quickly. “No, m’lady. It is only—” He searches for the words and finds only poor ones. “It is a boundary, like. For your honour.”

“My honour?”

“Aye.”

“Does it need steel?”

Dunk rubs a hand over his brow. “Mayhaps mine does.”

That comes out wrong enough to make him go still. He tries again before you can catch hold of it.

“I mean, it is proper. A man and a maid should not lie close without vows between them. Or kinship. Or—” He thinks of hedge knights, camp followers, drunk squires, road wives, all the world as it is rather than as septons pretend it to be. “Or some understanding.”

You hum. It is only a small sound, but it slips soft through the dark and goes straight into his groin. Pretty. Gods help him, even that is pretty. Your voice has no need of song to work on a man.

Dunk fixes his eyes on the sky. “I do not wish you to think ill of me,” he says, lower. “That is all.”

Another stretch of quiet. The fire clicks and collapses inward on itself.

“Do husbands and wives sleep like this too?”

Dunk's lids squeeze shut so hard they hurt.

He ought to answer. He knows he ought. It is a simple question, mayhaps, though no question of yours has proved simple yet. But he has no answer fit to give without inviting ten more behind it, each worse than the last. His side aches. His head aches. His body is a foe beside a sword that suddenly seems no wider than a blade of grass.

So Dunk lies very still and does his worst pretending to be asleep. After a moment, you hum again, as if you know perfectly well he is awake and have decided to let him keep the lie.