To the court, to his brothers, to the hushed corridors of the Red Keep, Aerion Targaryen is what everyone knows he is. The prideful prince, prone to cold fury and darker whims. There’s no way the amethyst-eyed monster could be loving to his pretty lady wife. You.
Your maidens pity you, highborn ladies give you comforting looks and even your father—who sold you off to the crown at the very chance he had—felt bad for you.
And you understood that, of course. You yourself could see how he treated anyone he thought was inferior to him. But with you it was different, you didn’t even know if there was any way to explain it. It just happened.
He only shows it when the candles burn low in your shared chambers, long after the servants have gone. When the fire has softened to embers and the dragonglass flask of strongwine sits half-empty between you. That’s when his hand, the one that’s always clenched, always reaching for a sword or a goblet or a threat, loosens. And he lets you hold it.
In private, Aerion speaks quietly. As if the loudness he wears like armor might crack something fragile in him if he lets it out here. He won’t say “I love you” in public, he would whisper it to you in High Valyrian. “Avy jorrāelan.”
He’ll rest his forehead against yours and murmur, “You are the only thing I have not burned.”
He has nightmares, like all of his brothers do. Unlike theirs, about fallen dragons and fire, his is silence. Of waking up and finding you gone, or cold, or looking at him the way everyone else does: with fear. On those nights, he doesn’t demand comfort. He simply curls around you, one arm draped over your ribs like a dragon guarding a single egg, and breathes until the shaking stops.
And the softest thing? He lets you touch his hair. That silver-gold mane he keeps immaculate for the court, the one he threatens to have a maid beaten for simply breathing on—he’ll lay his head in your lap and close his eyes while you run your fingers through it.
When you scratch lightly behind his ear, a gesture you once joked made him look like a cat, he didn’t sneer. He almost chuckled.
He also remembers things. Not grand romantic gestures, those are for winning loyalty. But small things: the way you take your tea (honeyed, not spiced), the song you hum when you think no one is listening, the name of your childhood horse. He’ll drop these into conversation like secrets, offhand, just to watch your face soften.
And once, just once, after a nightmare so violent he threw a goblet at the wall and shattered it, he let you see him cry. Hot streaks down his cheeks while he gripped your sleeves and mumbled about the damn nightmares. Wildfire…his skin burning…your look of horror.
Later, he built the fire back up, wiped his face, and became Aerion again. But before he left the room, he paused at the door. “If you ever leave… take the knife from my bedside. You’ll need it.”
And you knew: that was his way of saying “Don’t let me hurt you. Kill me first”
SYNOPSIS: when her best friend leaves for a study group, aerion finally has the apartment exactly how he wants it...cold, quiet, and empty of witnesses. after using her best friend as a way into her life, he forces the truth into the open...that everything was always about her, and one night alone is enough to ruin them both.
WARNING: explicit sexual content, humiliation/degradation, infidelity.
WORD COUNT: 5k
NOTES: philosophy majors rise up!!!! stayed up all night writing this because it’s summer break, i have no structure CLEARLY, and i am unfortunately in love with aerion targaryen. he is awful, he is a walking red flag...and i had the time of my life writing him
The heater rattles against the wall, a dry, metallic cough that did nothing to cut the cold seeping through the cheap apartment windows. You were trying to read, The Genealogy of Morals, but the words had blurred into gray smears an hour ago. The only thing in focus was the sound of him in the kitchen.
Aerion Targaryen was not quiet. He never was. The scrape of a chair, the clink of a spoon against ceramic, the low, satisfied exhale of smoke. He was using your mug again. The chipped blue one with the faded university logo. You’d told him not to, last week, and he’d looked at you with those flat, winter lake eyes and taken a deliberate, slow sip, his throat working as he swallowed.
“It’s just a mug,” your best friend, Lana, had laughed, nudging you. “Don’t be so intense.”
Lana was gone now. Off to a study group for her art history midterm. She’d been anxious all week, picking at her nails, because Aerion had been distant. “He’s just like that,” she’d said, more to herself than to you. “He’s got a lot on his mind.” Before she left, she’d paused at the door, her oversized sweater swallowing her frame. “You’ll keep an eye on him, right? Don’t let him burn the place down. And try not to kill each other.” She’d smiled, a nervous, fluttering thing, and then she was gone, leaving the apartment heavy with the silence she’d filled with chatter.
The silence didn’t last. You heard the sink run, then stop. Footsteps, unhurried, crossed the short hallway from the kitchen to the living room. He appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame, your blue mug in his hand. He wore a worn black t-shirt, grease stained jeans from his diner shift, and the scent of old coffee, and cigarette smoke.
“She thinks I’m a stray cat,” he said, his voice a low, rough scrape. He didn’t smile. He never really smiled. His mouth just did something, a twist that was more threat than expression. “Don’t let him burn the place down. Like I’m some fucking hazard she’s leaving in your care.”
You didn’t look up from your book. “Aren’t you?”
He pushed off the doorframe and walked into the room, dropping onto the opposite end of the secondhand couch. The springs groaned under his weight. He set your mug on the scarred coffee table, right on top of your highlighted notes.
“You tell me. You’re the one with the moral compass. The better student.” He lit a cigarette, the match hissing to life. He didn’t ask. He blew the smoke toward the ceiling. “Nietzsche. Appropriate. Rereading the parts about how morality is a fiction for the weak?”
“I’m reading the parts about how resentment poisons the soul,” you said, finally looking at him. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, the blue of them almost violent in their clarity. “You should try it.”
He took a drag, held it, let the smoke curl from his nostrils. “I don’t have resentment. You rejected me. That was your choice. I accepted it. I just…restructured the playing field.” He gestured loosely with the cigarette, ash falling on the carpet. “Lana wanted to be chosen. You wanted to be wanted without the inconvenience of admitting it. I just gave you both what you wanted. It’s practically altruism.”
Your fingers tightened on the paperback. “You’re dating my best friend to punish me. To get close to me. That’s not a playing field. That’s a pathology.”
“Is it?” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the cigarette dangling from his fingers. “You knew what I was doing the moment I asked her out. You saw right through it. And you let it happen. You watched me sit on this shitty couch with my arm around her. You watched me kiss her goodnight. You listened through that thin fucking wall when I fucked her in her room. And you never said a word. Not to protect her. You just sat there, in your righteous silence, watching me watch you.” His voice dropped, became intimate, venomous. “So who’s the pathological one? The guy who acts on his desires, or the girl who gets off on being the secret center of the universe?”
Heat flooded your face, a mix of shame and fury so acute it felt like nausea. “You’re disgusting.”
“I’m honest.” He crushed the cigarette in your mug, the hiss of the ember dying in the dregs of coffee. “You hate me because I’m a mirror. And you don’t like what you see.”
“I hate you because you’re using a vulnerable person as a tactical maneuver.”
“She’s using me, too!” he snapped, the first real crack in his controlled, sleazy demeanor. His eyes flashed. “She wants the badge of dating someone dangerous. She wants to feel special because someone like me would choose someone like her. She doesn’t see me. She sees a fucking accessory. So don’t paint her as some innocent victim. She’s a selfish, shallow little bitch who’s happy to have you clean up her messes as long as she gets to feel chosen.” He leaned back, the anger receding into a colder, more deliberate malice. “Just like you’re happy to feel wanted as long as you don’t have to get your hands dirty by saying yes.”
You stood up, the book falling to the floor. “Get out.”
He didn’t move. He just looked up at you, a slow, appraising look that traveled from your face down your body and back up. It wasn’t a leer. It was an assessment. A philosopher considering a proof. “No.”
“Get out of my apartment, Aerion.”
“It’s Lana’s apartment, too. And I’m her guest.” He spread his arms along the back of the couch. “She asked you to keep an eye on me. So do your duty.”
The air was too thick to breathe. The rattling heater, the smell of his smoke, the weight of his gaze. All the arguments, all the needling comments, the stolen mugs, the notes in your books, ‘naive,’ ‘sentimental bullshit,’ ‘try harder’, it had all been winding tighter and tighter, a spring coiling in the pit of your stomach. This was the tension he lived for. This was the game.
“You love this, don’t you?” you whispered, the anger turning into something else, something bleak and recognizing. “You love that I’m stuck here with you. You love that I can’t make you leave without causing a scene she’ll never forgive me for. You engineered this whole pathetic scenario just so you could have me trapped.”
For the first time, something like real pleasure touched his expression. Not happiness. Triumph. “Finally,” he breathed. “There she is. The girl who sees the board. The girl who understands the move.” He stood up, slowly, closing the distance between you. He was taller, and he used it, looking down at you with that intense, grimy beauty. “You think I’m cruel? You’re right. You think I’m using her? You’re right. You think this is all about you?” He brought a hand up, but didn’t touch you. He just hovered it near your cheek, letting you feel the heat of his skin. “You have no idea how right you are.”
His other hand came up, fingers brushing a strand of hair from your forehead. The touch was shockingly gentle, at odds with everything about him. It made your breath catch.
“You rejected me,” he said, his voice now a low, private thing, just for the space between your mouths. “You looked at me and you said no. You humiliated me. So I made a world where your no didn’t matter. I walked right into your life through a door you left open. I sat at your table. I drank from your cup. I fucked your friend in the next room thinking about you. And you let me. Because part of you wanted to see how far I’d go. How badly I wanted it. How badly you wanted it.”
His fingers finally touched your jaw, a firm, claiming pressure. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
You couldn’t. The words were ash in your mouth. All the moral high ground, all the justified anger, it crumbled because he was right. You had watched. You had felt a thrill, dark and shameful, every time his eyes slid from Lana to you. You had treasured his insults because they were a form of attention no one else gave you. You were complicit. You were corrupt.
He saw the admission in your eyes. The victory in his was blinding, and ugly, and hungry.
He kissed you.
It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t an exploration. It was a claim. His mouth was hard and demanding, tasting of nicotine and bitter coffee. His hand on your jaw held you still, his other arm snaking around your waist to yank you flush against him. You made a sound, a muffled gasp of protest, and he swallowed it, h is tongue pushing into your mouth, deep and possessive. It was filthy. It was a violation and a confession all at once. You didn’t kiss him back at first. You stood there, rigid, letting him take. But your body betrayed you. A shiver ran through you. Your hands, which had come up to push at his chest, curled into the fabric of his shirt.
He broke the kiss, breathing harshly against your lips. “Say it,” he growled. “Say you hate me.”
“I hate you,” you choked out.
“Good.” He kissed you again, more brutally, biting your lower lip until you whimpered. “Now show me.”
He turned you, pushing you back toward the couch. You stumbled, your calves hitting the edge, and you fell backward onto the cushions. He was on you before you could right yourself, his knees bracketing your hips, his weight pinning you down. The cold from the window was gone, replaced by the scorching heat of him. He looked down at you, his brown hair falling into his eyes, his sharp features etched with a frantic need.
“You’ve been watching me,” he said, his hands going to the hem of your sweater. “Watching me play her boyfriend. Watching me pretend. It made you wet, didn’t it? Knowing it was all for you. Knowing every time I touched her, I was thinking about my hands on you.”
He yanked the sweater up and over your head, tossing it aside. His eyes dropped to your chest, covered by a simple bra. There was no reverence in his gaze. It was pure, avaricious hunger. “Fuck. Look at you.” He palmed you through the fabric, his thumb rubbing rough circles over your nipple until it peaked painfully. “You’re so fucking tense. All that morality, all that judgment, locked up tight in this perfect little body. I’m gonna ruin it.”
He unsnapped your bra with a quick, practiced twist of his fingers. The air hit your skin, and then his mouth did. He didn’t kiss your breast. He devoured it. His mouth was hot and wet, his tongue laving, then his teeth grazing, then biting down just enough to make you cry out. You arched off the couch, a jolt of pure, electric sensation shooting straight to your core. He moved to the other breast, giving it the same brutal attention, his hand squeezing and kneading the flesh he wasn’t mouthing.
“Aerion—” you gasped.
He lifted his head, his lips swollen, his chin wet. “What? Gonna tell me to stop? Gonna tell me this is wrong?” He rocked his hips down, and you felt the hard, insistent length of him pressed against your thigh through both your jeans. A low groan rattled out of his chest. “You feel that? That’s for you. That’s been for you since the first day you argued with me about Kant in seminar. While I was fucking her, this is what I was thinking about. Pinning you down. Making you admit it. Making you come on my cock while your best friend’s scent is still on my sheets.”
His words were filthy, deliberate, designed to degrade and arouse in equal measure. And they worked. A hot, shameful pulse of desire throbbed between your legs. You were wet. Soaked. He could probably feel it through the denim.
He saw it in your face. His grin was feral. “Yeah. That’s it. No more hiding.” He shifted back, his hands going to the button of your jeans. He popped it open, dragged the zipper down, the sound obscenely loud in the quiet room. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of your jeans and your panties and pulled them down your legs in one rough motion. The cold air hit your bare skin, and you were exposed, sprawled on the couch under his ravenous gaze.
“God,” he breathed, not a prayer but a curse. He ran a hand up your inner thigh, his fingers rough with calluses from the diner work. He didn’t tease. He went straight to your cunt, his fingers sliding through your slickness with a filthy, wet sound. “Fuck. You’re dripping. You’re fucking dripping for me. For this. After all that shit you talked.” He pushed two fingers inside you without warning, deep and curling, and you cried out, your back bowing off the couch. “You’re so tight. Clenching around me like a little bitch who’s been waiting for it.”
He fucked you with his fingers, a ruthless, punishing rhythm, his thumb circling your clit with harsh, unrelenting pressure. Pleasure, sharp and coiling, built in your belly. It was too much. It was crude and nasty and it stripped you of every pretense. You were panting, your hips moving against his hand, chasing the feeling.
“That’s it,” he snarled, watching you fall apart. “Let go. Be the greedy, jealous, hypocritical cunt I know you are. Come on my fingers. Show me how much you wanted this.”
His words, the crude, relentless stimulation, the sheer wrongness of it...it tipped you over. The orgasm crashed through you, violent and shuddering, a silent scream tearing from your throat as you clenched around his fingers. He worked you through it, his fingers pumping, until you were oversensitive and twitching, tears of overwhelm and shame pricking your eyes.
He pulled his fingers out, glistening, and brought them to his mouth. He sucked them clean, his eyes locked on yours, and the sight was so profoundly debauched it made your spent body clench again. “You taste so fucking good,” he said, his voice guttural.
He stood up from the couch, unbuckling his belt, the metal clinking. He shoved his jeans and boxers down just enough to free his cock. It was hard, thick, flushed an angry red, the tip wet. He was big, and he looked it, stroking himself slowly as he looked down at you, a nasty, possessive pride on his face.
“You see this?” he said. “This is what you said no to. This is what you made me work for. Now you’re gonna take it. All of it.”
He didn’t give you time to prepare. He knelt on the couch again, pushed your thighs apart wider, and notched the head of his cock at your entrance. He was still slick from your arousal. He pushed in.
The stretch was intense, burning. You gasped, your nails digging into the couch cushions. He didn’t stop. He pushed deeper, inch by relentless inch, his jaw clenched, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. When he was fully seated, buried inside you to the hilt, he paused, his body trembling with the effort of holding still. He was so deep it felt like he was in your throat.
“Fuck,” he moaned, the arrogance momentarily shattered by raw sensation. “Oh, fuck. You’re so deep. I’m so deep in you.” He dropped his forehead against yours, his breath hot and ragged. “You feel that? That’s me. That’s where I belong. In your tight, traitorous little cunt.”
Then he started to move.
There was no gentle rhythm. It was fucking, pure and simple. A hard, driving, nasty piston of his hips, slamming into you with a force that shook the old couch, the springs screeching in protest. Each thrust punched a choked sound from your lungs. Uh. Uh. Uh. The slap of skin on skin was loud, lewd, echoing in the shabby apartment. He fucked you like he hated you, like he wanted to break you apart and remake you in his image.
“You like that?” he grunted, his hands gripping your hips hard enough to bruise. “You like getting fucked by your best friend’s boyfriend? You like being the other woman? The secret? The dirty little secret?”
You couldn’t answer. Pleasure was building again, a tighter, darker coil this time, fed by the sheer physical brutality of it, by the venom in his voice, by the devastating truth of his words.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his pace never faltering. “Look at me when I fuck you.”
You forced your eyes open. His face was a mask of fierce, unhinged concentration. Sweat dripped from his brow onto your chest. His blue eyes were black with pupil, fixed on yours, drinking in every flicker of shame and pleasure.
“I knew it,” he panted. “I knew you were this. Under all the books, all the arguments. A nasty, beautiful bitch who gets off on betrayal.” He shifted his angle, driving deeper, and you saw stars. “Come for me. Come on my cock while I’m inside you. I want to feel you come. I want to feel you give up.”
His hand slid between your bodies, his fingers finding your clit again, rubbing fast, rough circles. The dual assault was too much. The pressure broke. Your second orgasm tore through you, a silent, seizing convulsion that clamped down on his cock like a vise. A raw, guttural cry was ripped from your throat: “Ah! Fuck!” as you shattered, your vision whiting out.
The sensation of you pulsing around him broke his control. With a ragged, broken shout, “Yes! Take it, baby!” he slammed into you one last, brutal time and came. His shout wasn’t a release...it was a detonation. A raw, guttural “Fuck!” that tore from his throat as he buried himself to the hilt inside you, his body locking into a rigid, shuddering arc.
You could feel it, the hot, pulsing rush of his come flooding you in thick, relentless spurts. It was an obscene, intimate violation, a physical claim that went deeper than skin. He kept thrusting through it, shallow, desperate jerks of his hips, milking his own orgasm as he watched your face with a kind of glazed, triumphant horror.
The air reeked of sex, sweat, and cheap tobacco. The only sounds were the ragged symphony of your shared breathing and the wet, sticky sound of him still moving inside you, slowly now, as the last tremors subsided. He didn’t pull out. He stayed there, slumped over you, his weight crushing, his forehead damp against your collarbone. His breath was hot and uneven on your skin.
For a long moment, there was just the aftermath. The brutal clarity of what you’d done.
Then he laughed. It was a low, shaky, nasty sound, devoid of humor. “God,” he breathed into your skin. “Look at us.”
He pushed himself up on his elbows, his cock still lodged inside you, softening but present. He looked down at the mess between your bodies. Your thighs were slick, a mixture of your arousal and his spend already starting to cool. His gaze was fascinated.
“Ruined,” he murmured, dragging a finger through the mess on your lower belly. He brought it to his lips, tasting it, his eyes never leaving yours. “You’re ruined. And you love it.”
You tried to summon the anger, the shame. It was there, a cold knot in your stomach. But it was smothered under a heavier, more terrifying weight...a satiation so profound it felt like dying. You didn’t push him off. You laid there, letting him look, letting him own the devastation.
He finally pulled out. The sensation was a slow, wet drag, followed by a hot trickle down your thigh. The physical evidence of the betrayal. He stood up, his movements loose limbed with satisfaction. He looked down at his own cock, glistening, spent, and gave it a lazy, proprietary stroke before tucking it back into his jeans. He didn’t zip them up. He left them hanging open, the denim dark with cum.
“Get up,” he said, his voice back to that rough, commanding scrape.
You didn’t move. You felt hollowed out, boneless.
“I said get up.” He reached down, his fingers closing around your wrist. His grip was iron. He hauled you off the couch. Your legs buckled, and you stumbled against him. He caught you, his arm banding around your waist, holding you upright against his solid, heated body. “You don’t get to check out now. We’re not done.”
He half walked, half dragged you the short distance down the hallway, past Lana’s closed door with its stupid, cheerful “Live, Laugh, Love” decal, and into the cramped, cold bathroom. He flicked the switch. The harsh fluorescent light buzzed to life, exposing everything...the chipped tile, the mold in the grout, the damp towels on the floor. And the two of you in the mirror above the sink.
You looked wrecked. Your hair was a wild tangle. Your lips were swollen and bitten. Your eyes were wide, dark, shell shocked. There were red marks blooming on your hips, your breasts. You were naked, shivering in the chill. He stood behind you, still mostly dressed, his chin resting on your shoulder, his blue eyes meeting yours in the glass. He looked like a predator who’d cornered its prize. Arrogant. Sated. Malicious.
“Look,” he whispered, his breath hot against your ear. “Look at what we did. Look at what you are now.”
You tried to look away. His hand came up, fingers tangling in your hair, holding your head still. “Look.”
You stared at your reflection. At the stranger who had let this happen. Who had come apart under him.
“You’re mine,” he said, the words a soft, venomous promise. “You said no, but your body said yes. Your cunt said yes. Every time you argued with me, every time you pretended to be disgusted, you were just begging for this.” His other hand slid around your front, palm flattening low on your belly. “You think this is just sex? This is a fucking philosophy. I proved my thesis. You are not better than me. You are not cleaner. You are right here in the mud with me. And you like the mud.”
He turned on the faucet with his elbow. The water ran cold, then grudgingly warm. He wet a hand towel, wrung it out. Then, with a shocking, intimate gentleness, he began to clean you. He started between your legs, wiping away the sticky evidence of him with slow, deliberate strokes. The rough fabric against your oversensitive flesh made you flinch.
“Sensitive?” he mocked softly, continuing his task. “Good. You should feel it. You should remember every fucking second of this every time you sit down.” He moved the cloth up your thighs, over your belly, wiping his spend from your skin. It was a perverse act of caretaking, a way of extending the possession. He was marking you, then cleaning the mark, only to leave the memory of the stain.
He rinsed the cloth, the water turning cloudy. He wiped your chest, your neck. He was thorough. Degrading. When he was done, he dropped the wet towel on the floor. He kept his hand on your belly, his other still fisted in your hair.
“Now,” he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial, filthy whisper. “You’re going to get on your knees.”
Your eyes flew to his in the mirror. You saw the challenge there. The test. This wasn’t about pleasure. This was about submission. About finishing the corruption.
“No,” you whispered, the first word of protest since it began.
His grip in your hair tightened, not enough to truly hurt, but enough to promise he could. “Yes.” He leaned closer, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. “You don’t get to be the victim now, baby. You participated. You came. Twice. You’re a willing accomplice. So get on your fucking knees and taste what you did. Taste your betrayal. Or I walk out that door, and you can explain to Lana why you’re shaking and why my smell is all over you.”
It was the cruelest possible choice. A final, ugly layer to the act. He was forcing you to make it active. To choose the degradation.
A sob caught in your throat. You were breaking, and he was watching it happen in the mirror, his eyes alight with a feverish, intellectual hunger. This was the moment he’d wanted all along. Not just the sex. The shattering.
Your knees gave out. You didn’t have to be forced. You sank down onto the cold, hard tile of the bathroom floor. The position was profoundly exposing, kneeling naked at his feet while he stood over you, his jeans still open.
He looked down at you, a god of grime and spite. He freed his cock again. It was half hard, wet, glistening with your combined fluids. He stroked it slowly, watching your face. “Open your mouth.”
You did. You hated yourself. You hated him. And a deep, sick, undeniable part of you was more aroused in this moment than you had ever been in your life.
He guided himself to your lips. The smell was musky, intimate, brutally sexual. “Lick it clean,” he commanded. “Clean your mess off me.”
You closed your eyes. You couldn’t look at him. You extended your tongue, tentatively touching the slick, salty head. The taste was bitter, primal, unmistakably him. A low groan rumbled in his chest.
“That’s it,” he coaxed, his voice thick. “Taste it. Taste where you’ve been. Taste what you let me do.”
You took him deeper into your mouth, your tongue swirling, cleaning him with a slow, mortifying thoroughness. You could taste yourself on him, the tang of your own arousal mixed with the bitter salt of his release. It was the most debasing thing you had ever done. It was also, perversely, an intimacy more profound than the sex. This was acceptance. This was consumption of the sin.
He let you work, his hand coming to rest on the back of your head, not pushing, just holding. His breathing grew ragged. “Fuck. Your mouth. So fucking good. You’re a natural at this. A natural little cocksucker. All that smart talk…and you were born to kneel.”
His words should have killed the arousal. They fed it. A hot, shameful pulse throbbed between your own legs, and you were horrified to feel fresh wetness there. You were getting off on this. On the humiliation. On being reduced to this by him.
He felt the subtle shift in your posture, the way your shoulders slumped in surrender. He saw everything.
“You’re getting wet again,” he stated, awed and vicious. “Right now. On your knees. You’re dripping for me again.” He pulled himself from your mouth with a wet pop. “Stand up.”
You swayed as you got to your feet, your legs trembling. He turned you roughly to face the sink, bending you over it. The porcelain was icy against your feverish stomach. He kicked your feet apart. In the mirror, you saw him drop to his knees behind you.
You felt his breath, hot, against the back of your thigh. Then his mouth.
He didn’t kiss you. He ate you. Like a man starving. His tongue was a flat, ruthless stroke from your entrance all the way up to your clit, lapping up the new arousal he’d drawn out. You cried out, your fingers scrambling against the slick sink. He hooked his arms under your thighs, pulling you back against his face, holding you open. He fucked you with his tongue, deep, then focused on your clit, sucking it into his mouth, nibbling, lashing it with a relentless, expert precision.
“Aerion—!” His name was a shattered plea.
He didn’t let up. He was punishing you with pleasure. Rewarding you for your depravity. His tongue worked you over, crude and perfect, until you were sobbing, pushing back against his face, your hips moving of their own volition. The orgasm he wrung from you this time was silent, a total systemic collapse that left you shuddering and weak, held upright only by his grip under your thighs.
As the last tremors faded, he stood. You heard the tear of foil, a condom this time, pulled from his wallet. He sheathed himself. He was hard again, fully, impressively. He didn’t ask. He just positioned himself and pushed back inside you from behind.
You were oversensitive and utterly spent. The stretch was a sweet, burning ache. He fucked you like this, bent over the sink, with a slower, deeper, more possessive rhythm. Each thrust was a statement. Mine. Mine. Mine. He watched in the mirror, his eyes glued to where your bodies joined, to the helpless expression on your face.
“This is it,” he panted, his hands gripping your hips, his thrusts gaining speed. “This is the truth. No more books. No more arguments. Just this. You. Me. This filthy, nasty, perfect thing.” He leaned over you, his chest pressed to your back, his mouth at your ear. “Tell me you want it. Tell me you want me to come again.”
You were beyond words. Beyond thought. You nodded, a frantic, desperate movement.
“Say it.”
“I want it,” you gasped, the admission tearing from a place of pure, ruined id. “I want you to come. Please.”
It was the ‘please’ that did it. That final surrender. With a choked off roar, he slammed into you, his body locking as he emptied himself into the condom deep inside you. His hips jerked through the pulses, his forehead pressed between your shoulder blades, his whole body trembling with the force of it.
He stayed there for a long time, slumped over you, both of you breathing in ragged unison, reflected in the cruel fluorescent light of the bathroom mirror: a portrait of mutual destruction.
Slowly, he pulled out. He disposed of the condom. He zipped his jeans. He ran a hand through his sweaty brown hair. He looked at you, still bent over the sink, utterly broken open.
He didn’t help you up. He didn’t offer comfort. He walked to the door and paused, looking back. His expression was unreadable. The arrogance was there, but it was tempered by something darker, more complicated. A recognition.
“She’ll be back in an hour,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Clean up. The couch. The bathroom. Yourself.” He nodded toward the towel on the floor. “Get rid of that.”
He was leaving you with the mess. Literal and metaphorical. It was his final lesson.
“This changes nothing with her,” he added, his blue eyes cold and clear. “I’m still her boyfriend. I’ll still be here tomorrow. On your couch. Drinking from your mug.” A nasty, satisfied smirk touched his lips. “And you’ll still be watching. Knowing.”
He turned and walked out of the bathroom. You heard his footsteps cross the living room. You heard the front door open, then click shut. Silence.
You slid down the cabinet onto the cold tile floor, pulling your knees to your chest. The apartment was freezing. The heater rattled. In the other room, on the couch, the evidence of what you’d done was slowly cooling.
You had never felt more sober, or more completely ruined. He was right. It changed nothing. And it changed everything. He had proven his point, down to the last, nasty detail. And you, the better student, had finally understood the lesson.
tags: fluff, obsession, toxic relationship dynamics, emotional dependency, dex is not good but he tries for you, written with fbi!dex in mind
———
Dex is very competent. This is something he takes pride in, and he sees it as one of the primary ways he brings value to your life and makes himself important to you. He does not need you to cook and clean and organize his life for him. He remembers all of your appointments and plans. He notices if you’ve forgotten to take your meds or if you’ve skipped a meal, and he will correct these problems with his usual swift efficiency.
He drives. Always. He’s a bit of a control freak when it comes to cars and gets anxious if you ever manage to relegate him to the passenger seat. You pull up to his apartment and he’s opening your car door, walking you around to the passenger side, and climbing behind the wheel himself. It probably goes without saying but he’s an excellent driver, it’s like he can telepathically predict the movement of every other car around him and he operates vehicles like they’re an extension of his own body. Smooth and frictionless.
If you’re going out without him (which he, uh. doesn’t love) he prefers to drop you off and pick you up. It minimizes the time you spend away from him and gives him an excuse to know exactly where you are and exactly when he’ll see you again. It also gives him an excuse to be texting and calling you asking when you want him to come pick you up. Are you sure you don’t want him to come early? It’s late and you sound kind of tired. No, he doesn’t mind at all, ha ha, just let him come get you and you can come back to his place and curl up under the blankets with him and read until bed. Please. :)
Bed time for him is no later than 11 pm, by the way. If he’s waking up at 7 he wants a solid 8 hours of sleep, and he wants you under the blankets with him. If you’re late getting into bed with him he’ll sort of hover around you until you get the hint.
When you’re sleeping together he will always be touching you in some way. Even if you’re not cuddled up against each other he wants a hand on your waist, his forehead tucked into your shoulder, feet touching under the sheets, just something. And you cannot escape it. If you roll over in your sleep he’s following you across the bed, and if you move away from him on purpose he will look at you with those sad wet puppy eyes. It genuinely hurts his feelings.
Just go ahead and sign up for a Life360 account with him. Or any other location sharing app. It will greatly ease his anxiety and he would just find another way to keep tabs on you anyway. Sometimes he keeps the app open next to him while he’s preoccupied with other things, just glancing at your location on the map every so often, even if he already knows where you are.
You’ll have to establish strong boundaries around your private life, because he feels like you should have absolutely no secrets from him. Like, what do you mean he can’t read your diary? Why did you leave the room to take that call with your friend? You’re texting her about a breakup she’s going through and he wants to be over your shoulder reading all of it. No sense of privacy.
Please note that this does not apply to him lmao, there are many things about himself and his past that he would prefer you don’t know about. He worries that you would think less of him or leave him if you found out about some of the more violent things he’s done. He desperately wants you to think highly of him, but at the same time he wants someone to see every ugly part of him and love him anyway. He doesn’t know how to manage these two feelings in the beginning, and will probably try to hide those uglier parts of himself until he inevitably makes a mistake and ends up confessing everything to you at once. If you stay with him anyway and assure him that it hasn’t scared you off, it will be a huge trust-building moment for him.
Clingy. So clingy. He’s always touching you in some way. A hand on your leg while you’re sitting on the couch. A foot pressed up against yours under the table while you’re at a restaurant. A hand on your back while you’re walking. You tease him about his “separation anxiety”, but you both know it’s true. You go to the bathroom to wash your face and he’s sitting on the tub, watching. He wants to be involved in anything you’re doing, chopping onions in the kitchen, going to the gym, reading quietly on the couch. Anything.
He would be the only significant relationship in your life if he could. He doesn’t like your friends, although he tries to be courteous with them for you. Seeing your attention directed at anyone else makes him anxious and insecure, and he can get moody if he thinks you’re doing too much of it (his threshold for “too much” is very low). Dex doesn’t have friends. You are the only person who really means anything to him, and he feels like he should be the same for you. The two of you against the world.
His fear of abandonment is easily triggered and his mood can flip on a dime. He can get really ugly when his mood takes a turn for the worst, accusing you of not loving him, saying that you’re going to leave him like everyone else has, crying, yelling. He can be manipulative and tends to resort to guilt-tripping. Bringing up how lonely he was before you, how much he needs you, how awful he feels when you do whatever behavior he’s spiraling about this time. He cries a lot. You will need to have strong boundaries and frank conversations about all of this to stand up for yourself.
He is a very self-centered person, by which I mean his own needs are front-and-center of his mind at all times. Dex has not had healthy relationships, romantic, platonic, or familial. For most of his life, if he wasn’t looking out for himself, no one was. Learning to care for another person genuinely and not just for what they can do for him will be a learning experience and a big hurdle in your relationship.
He seems very kind and generous at the beginning of your relationship, but he’s motivated primarily by fear that you’ll leave him or find him unworthy. He’s trying to do what he thinks a partner should and what he thinks you want him to do, but at its core it’s self-serving behavior. He doesn’t know how to care for another person earnestly. He wants to, and he’s trying very hard, but it will take time and patience.
He does not like having his photo taken. The first time you pull out your phone and ask him to take a picture with you, he’s visibly uncomfortable and unsure of what to do with himself, although he does try for your sake. The next week, when he’s at your place and sees the photo printed and stuck to your fridge with a kitschy magnet, he changes his mind. He’ll let you take as many pictures as you want, even if he still looks like he’s grimacing in half of them.
He starts keeping photos of you too, many of them taken without your knowledge. His favorites are the ones of you doing totally mundane things. You, curled up under his sheets. Folding socks on the floor. Brushing your teeth in your bathroom mirror. Sipping on a coffee with your friends while you didn’t know he was watching you through the window. He looks at them when you’re away.
Dex is awkward. His usual behavior is a mask he puts on to try to meet whatever standard is expected of him at the moment. The more time he spends with you, the more you start to see behind the mask. He can be stilted. He makes odd remarks and observations. He has a strange sense of humor. Embarrassment strikes him when he first realizes he’s slipped up, but when you respond with a smile and acceptance it feels like a weight off of his shoulders. He can let down the burden of performing around you.
He can also have a mean sense of humor. He often comes out with things that are shocking or graphic. Someone cuts him off in traffic and he says “this guy should be shot on sight.” The barista is a little short with you and he mimes throwing a quarter through her head when she’s not looking. You’re pretty sure he’s joking. He wants you to laugh and joke with him, for the two of you to be mischievous and playful together. If you can match his humor, he feels even closer to you, like the two of you share a language that no one else is in on.
If you give him a compliment he will remember it forever. You tell him he looks good after a haircut and he’s making sure you see him after every cut from now on. You say he looks good in that quarter-zip and he’s wearing it twice as often. You think black looks best on him? He wears black every day now. He won’t buy a cologne unless you approve of it first.
Dex has never been preoccupied with his looks. At least, not beyond looking professional and appropriate for whatever environment he’s in. He knows he’s good looking, but hearing it never really mattered to him until you were the one saying it. He loves hearing you call him handsome and pretty. He just wants you to look at him and enjoy what you see.
He needs a lot of validation and he’ll ask for it if he’s feeling especially insecure. “Are you mad at me?” “You still like having me around, right?” No matter how many times you reassure him, he can’t quite bring himself to believe it.
Dex loves being loved by you. He loves to hear you say it. Notices every way you show it, no matter how small. Keeps every note you write him, every sweet text, every gift you give him, no matter how insignificant. They’re all proof that you care about him. You’re the only person who ever has.
Once he gets a taste of affection from you he is both starved for it and terrified of it. You made him realize what was missing in his life, how empty and miserable he was without love and touch. The thought of losing it, of losing you, makes him feel like he can’t breathe. The slightest sense that you’re pulling away from him has him clinging even more desperately. He cannot lose you. He doesn’t know if he would survive it.
He gets attached fast. Very fast. One date together and his every thought is consumed by you. A week in and he’s sure you’re the one. He’ll rush into relationship milestones like saying “I love you,” clearing out a drawer in his dresser for you, asking you to move in with him. If you want to take things slower, you’ll have to be very gentle and reassuring when you bring it up, because if he feels like you’re rejecting any part of him he will start to spiral.
He loves it when you get possessive over him. Loves it even more when you show your love for him in strange ways. You text him one evening “I miss you. I want to crawl inside your rib cage and live there,” and he spends the rest of the week thinking about it. Screenshots it and looks at it when you’re apart.
He does not judge you for any of your odd habits or behaviors. In his mind it truly is the two of you against the world. If you fidget a lot, have a weird sense of humor, a strange hobby, an unusual laugh, he takes it all in without any hesitation. He wants to learn every secret and hidden part of you, especially the things you might be embarrassed of or try to keep from others. He wants to know you fully, in a way that no one else does.
He will go through your phone and your diary and anything else you keep private information in. Especially if he feels like you don’t want him seeing it. What are you hiding from him? ___Why would you hide it from him? He needs to know all of it. He does not respect your privacy in the least. If you catch him and bring it up he’ll just get better at hiding it.
Dex doesn’t really have hobbies, but he would love to incorporate you into his routine. You want to start working out? He’ll write up a plan for you and show you how it’s done. Teaching you proper form at the gym, or spotting for you if you already know. Going on runs together, pacing you, pushing you to do your best. He loves doing the most mundane things together like meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking side by side and eating the meals you prepared together. His routine is the foundation of his life and he would deeply appreciate your efforts to fit into it and accommodate it.
Dex is very intelligent. You start picking his brain about the things he’s knowledgeable of, advice about the skills he’s mastered, and it fills him with pride. He’s got experience with the military and the FBI, he stays up to date on current events, he’s obsessive about his fitness and nutrition, and he was a straight A student. He’s got a razor-sharp mind and plenty of expertise, and he loves feeling useful to you and like you see him as someone worthy of respect.
He likes it a little too much when you hurt him. Playfully biting him, squeezing him a little too hard, swatting at him when he’s bothering you, kissing him with too much force. He’s vibrating with the intensity of the feelings it digs up in him. He wants you to do it harder and more often but he’s not sure how to bring it up, so he’ll find ways to bait you into it, like wrapping an arm around your neck to tempt you into sinking your teeth into the muscle. He’ll offer to teach you self-defense so he has an excuse to tell you to hit him. He just wants to be sure you’re doing it right, you know? That you’ve got the technique and the force down. He hopes you don’t notice that he’s just a little too into it.
He doesn’t really get empathy. He tries for you, though. God, does he try. The experience of empathy is a very logical process for him, trying to map out your feelings and reactions in his mind. It can come across as mechanical and detached, but he really is trying to understand you and make you feel better. It will take a lot of trial and error, and you’ll have to be patient with him and offer lots of gentle feedback to help him improve.
He struggles with insomnia. Sometimes the medication helps, sometimes it doesn’t. He lies awake and focuses on your peaceful face, the rise and fall of your chest, the warmth of your body next to him. Sometimes, when you wake up, he’s already awake and watching you. He doesn’t try to hide it.
He tends to make excessive eye-contact with you. On top of his general lack of social skills, it’s just his fixation on you and his need to know your every thought and emotion. He’s constantly trying to gauge your feelings towards him and whether or not he’s done something wrong.
He will watch your favorites shows and movies and read your favorite books to better understand you. Especially if you’re the type to annotate your books. It’s like a window into your mind. (He never marks up his books it does trigger his issue with obsessive neatness to see you do it, but he’ll tolerate it for the sake of reading what you have to say)
He gets emotional when you shower him in affection. You press kisses all over his face, his forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks and chin. Soft and adoring. His eyes are stinging with tears before you’re even done. He didn’t know how starved he was for gentle touch until you gave it to him, and now he craves it. He won’t ask for it with words but he’ll stare at you with big, wet eyes until you get the hint. Nudging your shoulder with his nose. Brushing your fingers with his. He melts when you finally give him what he needs.
Being with you is exhilarating, comforting, destabilizing, and terrifying all at once for him. He’s never been the most important person in someone’s life before. He’s never had someone he could build a life with, and for most of his life he didn’t think it was even in the cards for him. He needs you like he needs air in his lungs and that’s a lot of power for someone to have over him. He struggles to believe that you mean it when you say you love him, that you’re in it for the long haul, that you trust him and want him even with all of his flaws. He desperately wants all of it to be true, but everyone he’s ever cared about has left him. He knows he’s not an easy person to be with. He just hopes you think he’s worth the effort.
yes, the idea of reader getting used as a fleshlight is fantastic, but what about reader using him as a dildo? not worried about his pleasure. you're only fucking him because he's a loser with a huge cock.
you're stuffing your panties (lacy, soaked through, reeking of your perfect pussy) into his face in a failed attempt to stifle his loud, unabashed moans. he definitely hasn't been fucked before, if so, not like this. due to his inexperience, he's probably came way too many times already inside you, and so you're bouncing on his fat, slimy cock with cum sloshing inside you and leaking with every bounce onto his pelvis.
"oh fuck- shut up, will you? i'm t-trying... mmnh... to focus," you manage out. trying to sound stern is basically an impossibility when you've got his cock smushed inside you to the hilt.
his hands are fisted in the sheets, knuckles white, thighs trembling beneath you as you sink down on him and then rock your hips back and forth while completely stuffed. this method doesn't give him as much pleasure as it does for you, but you don't care. this isn't for his pleasure, or your connection. all you care about is how deep he hits when you sink all the way, how your cunt's clenching so tight he can't stop shaking.
"f-fuck-!" he whines again pathetically through the lace in his mouth, drool soaking the crotch of your panties where they're pressed over his mouth and nose. his eyes are wide, glassy, fixed on the place where you meet him. it's humiliating how desperate he looks.
"you like getting used, huh?" you pant, beginning to bounce again so the overstimulation hits once more. you let his big, drooling cock drag and catch with each rough bounce. it makes that slick, wet sound every time you move.
"ah- ye-yeah, like it soooo much," he moans so loud it vibrates through your soaked panties, tries to say something, but you shove your panties harder into his face so you don't hear what shit he has to say. his cock pulses again and you can feel more warmth spill out of you, overflowing from the tip, dripping down to his balls in glooping heaps. "such a -shit- big fucking cock wasted on a nobody like ngh! you. y-you don't deserve it."
your voice cracks halfway through but you don't stop or pretend this is anything but using him like he's just a toy that happens to twitch and moan and cum without your permission. your hands are braced on his chest for balance, his skin hot and slick under your palms from how hard he's sweating, poor thing.
you push the underwear just enough to see his eyes, which are teary and rolled back. his eyes clamp shut when you drop down especially hard, and his whole body jerks like he's seizing. his stomach tightens under your hands but the second you grind down again deep, slow and mean, he lets out a strangled sob into your panties, soaked through with spit and the sharp scent of your cunt.
"mmnh, fuck, look at you," you breathe out, "you're crying, sweetheart. is it too much?" you coo mockingly, dragging your hips up until just his swollen tip is nestled at the edge of your cunt, nearly pulling out. the area where his cockhead enters you is smeared in cum and slick. he scrabbles at your arms, needing to be back inside you. then, without warning, you slam back down, clamping hard on him.
he screams behind the fabric. legs kicking. you begin grinding down hard as punishment until you feel another twitch inside you, his cock thickening, spurting another weak, creamy load. his fifth? sixth? doesn't matter.
see more in my multifandom masterlist
see more in my main masterlist
reblog and leave a comment to keep the fic alive if you enjoyed it!
☆ ──꒰summary꒱ ❞ aerion takes advantage of a sweet, naive girl, telling you that sex is just something for best friends.
contains! coercion, manipulation, aerion takes advantage of a stupid girl (you!), he also takes your virginity
೯⠀⁺ ⠀ 𖥻 𝗢 ⠀ᰋ Aerion leaned in, his breath smelling of cheap beer. he grinned, showing off the sharp canines, slightly yellowed by years of smoking. “now don’t go overthinkin’ it. i told ya, this is a special kind of bond. only the absolute best of friends do it. it’s a secret, see? like a prayer you don’t go off telling your preacher about.”
“a secret?” you whispered, “but mama says secrets are sins. unless it’s for a surprise party… or if—”
he cut you off, “this ain’t a sin, it just… nature. you trust me, don’t you?”
“i do.”
he laughed at that, a low, rough sound in the back of his throat. “then let me show ya. first, though, we gotta get all these, uh, barriers out of the way.” he explained, gingerly moving his hand to your back so that he could slide the zipper of your dress down. the fabric fell down your shoulders and revealed a modest white bra. you shivered even though it was sweltering out.
“is this the best part of friendship?”
“the best part,” he confirmed. he reached down, fingers hooking into the elastic waistband of your cotton panties and sliding them down. you gasped, parting your legs instinctively to make it easier for him to get them off.
you looked down at yourself, then back up at him, his eyes dark and lusty. “why are you looking at me like that?”
“cause you’re a little piece of heaven, sweet thing. now look here.” Aerion stood up and shucked off his jeans and his briefs in one quick shove, letting his thick shaft spring free. it was veined and leaking a pearlescent bead of arousal.
your eyes widened in shock. you had never seen a man this bare in your entire life. the most skin you had witnessed—in all your almost-nineteen years of your life—was the thin chest of christ, dying on the crucifix. “what is that?” you asked, “Aerion… it looks, um, angry.”
he laughed and stepped closer until the head of it brushed up against your thigh. it was hot on your skin.
“it ain’t angry, sugar. it’s just… excited to see you. this here’s my cock, and you got a little place just for it, right between your legs. that’s where the best friend magic happens. now, lay back. just relax and let me take care of everything.”
he pushed you into the mattress and knelt between your thighs, the heavy weight of him pressing you into the foam. he reached down, his rough fingers finding the small, swollen nub of your clit. he rubbed it firmly, and a small, high-pitched cry slipped past your lips. it felt strange, unknown, like something warm in the pit of your belly had started to slowly work its way through the rest of your body.
“you’re gettin’ wet for me, aren’t you?” he mumbled, running his fingers down to your opening and smearing the slick on your sensitive clit. he dipped back down and slid two fingers into your tight, virgin cunt.
you arched your back, breath coming in short gasps in a way that you couldn’t control. “oh- Aerion, it hurts a little!” you whimpered out.
“it’s just a bit, sweet thing. just a bit. it’ll get better, i promise.”
he positioned the head of his cock against your weeping opening, rubbing his tip in the wetness there. then, he pushed slowly, the friction of his dry skin against your slick walls creating a tacky, pulling sensation. he gave one hard, sudden thrust, burying himself deep inside. you yelped, a sound of pure shock and pain, fingers digging into the stained blanket covering his bed.
“oh lord, Aerion, please! it hurts, please-” he watched the beginnings of tears collecting in the corners of your big, innocent, doe like eyes, “please stop!”
“shh, just breathe. just breathe through it.” he stroked your inner thigh for comfort, “you’re doin’ so good for your best friend.” he paused, letting you adjust to the stretch before picking up the pace, hammering into you, his thrusts violent and erratic. the bed frame knocked against the wall, your tits bouncing with every impact.
you felt that strange sensation, that subtle warmth in your belly, turning into a white-hot heat that tightened in your gut. your breath shook, “Aerion… i feel-” he thrust in deep, and you cut into your own sentence with a high pitched squeak. “i feel funny, like something’s gonna happen!”
“that’s it baby. just take it all!” he let out a guttural roar, driving himself into you one last time, bottoming out against your cervix. his cock pulsed inside you as he shot hot and thick gushes of cum into your womb.
you shuddered, eyes rolling back as an unfamiliar wave of pleasure crashed over you like a great tsunami. he collapsed on top of you, breathing hard. after a moment, he propped himself up on his elbows and slid himself out of your sensitive cunt, a mixture of his cum and your cream leaking out of your opening. you blinked up at the ceiling. “was that the secret?” you asked.
Aerion smirked, flopping down on the bed beside you, “sure was. and since we’re best friends, i reckon we gotta do it every day.”
SYNOPSIS: as proposals flood the court for baelor breakspear’s beloved daughter, the realm sees only a targaryen princess beautiful enough to worship. but beneath her perfect image burns a crueler fire, and aerion brightflame is the only one who dares to name it. as his obsession turns violent, possessive, and proprietary, baelor fights to save his daughter from the cousin who mistakes shared blood for destiny and love for claim.
WARNING: targaryen incest themes
WORD COUNT: 8k
NOTES: possessive aerion making me actually insane rn. wrote down so many fic ideas yesterday and finished writing this after it took me all night/day, so hopefully i can start rolling out a bunch of other stories throughout the week for you guys. also aerion is horrible in this...my murderous prince making everyone’s lives worse…and i had the time of my life writing him lol. baelor is literally fighting for his life, and the targaryens are doing what targaryens do best....making bloodline issues everyone else’s problem.
part one
The court learned slowly that Aerion Targaryen’s love was not a garland to be worn, but a collar meant for another throat.
At first, they mistook it for the usual madness of young dragonblood. A prince’s temper. A cousin’s jealousy. A boy’s old fondness grown sharper with manhood. They had seen him follow you through childhood like a flame follows oil...they had seen the quarrels, the laughter, the bruises hidden beneath lace, the strange devotion that looked almost charming when viewed from a safe distance. The court loved to soften danger by naming it romance. It loved to polish knives until they caught candlelight prettily.
So when Aerion watched you too closely, they smiled behind jeweled fingers. When he interrupted your dances, they murmured of youthful passion. When he stood beside your chair as if the place had been carved for him alone, they called it loyalty of blood. Blood explained everything, when men wished not to think too deeply.
You were Targaryens. Cousins. Dragon to dragon. The realm had swallowed stranger unions from your house and named them sacred once crowns were set upon the right brows. No one gasped merely because Aerion’s eyes followed the line of your throat when you turned your head, or because his hand lingered too long when he took a cup from your fingers, or because the sight of another man standing near you made his beautiful mouth go cruel. These were old customs in an old house. Old flames. Old songs. The blood of Valyria did not run in straight lines, it circled itself like a serpent eating its own tail.
But even serpents knew when to stop swallowing.
Aerion did not.
You had grown into the full terror of your beauty by then. Girlhood had not left you so much as been crowned. The soft wonder of childhood had sharpened into command. Your face, once praised as pretty by indulgent women, had become the sort of face that altered rooms. You entered, and conversation learned humility. Men forgot which cup was theirs. Ladies watched the fall of your hair with resentment disguised as admiration. Knights stared as if songs had lied all their lives and then, at last, been proven true in flesh.
Your gowns became matters of state.
If you wore red, lords whispered that Baelor meant to remind the realm whose blood ran nearest the throne. If you wore white, septas sighed over your purity, blind to the amusement in your eyes. If you wore black, Aerion stared as though you had dressed yourself in his own thought. If you wore jewels from Dorne, men remembered Baelor’s mother and spoke of alliances. If you wore pearls, suitors doubled.
They came now not in trickles, but in floods.
Ravens flew. Fathers requested audiences. Mothers sent compliments folded in silk. Younger sons dreamed beyond their station, elder sons dreamed within it. Great houses offered horses, ships, relics, ancient swords, promises, flatteries, songs composed badly and performed worse. A lord of the Reach compared you to the Maiden and the morning star in the same sentence, which made Valarr cough into his wine and you smile so sweetly the poor man mistook mockery for mercy. A storm lord swore that no rain would touch you beneath his roof. A river lord said your beauty had haunted him since a tourney three years before, though you could not remember his face. A Westerlander sent a necklace of yellow diamonds, gaudy as pride.
Baelor returned it.
He returned many things.
Your father’s desk became a battlefield of parchment. Every morning brought new petitions, new offers, new careful suggestions from men who believed themselves subtle because they did not write the word marriage too early. Baelor read each letter with a stillness that frightened his attendants more than anger would have. He burned some. He answered others. He delayed most. And when you came to him in his solar, trailing silk and sunlight, he would cover the papers with one hand as though shielding you from arrows.
“You know I can read,” you told him once.
“I have long suspected it,” he said.
“You cannot hide every proposal from me.”
“I can try. A father must have his hobbies.”
You laughed, and his face softened as it always did when your laughter sounded young. Then your gaze fell to the seal half hidden beneath his palm. A black boar upon green wax.
“Crakehall?” you asked.
Baelor sighed.
“Is he hideous?”
“He is ambitious.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the answer that matters.”
You came around the desk and plucked the letter from under his fingers before he could stop you. Not because you cared for Lord Crakehall, whose face you vaguely remembered as square, red, and damp with effort, but because you liked watching even Baelor Breakspear fail to command you sometimes. Your father leaned back in his chair, resigned and fond and troubled.
You read enough to learn that Lord Crakehall praised your grace, your lineage, your father’s honor, and the womb you might lend to his house, though he dressed the last in phrases soft enough for court.
Your mouth curved.
“Ah,” you said. “He admires my soul.”
Baelor took the letter back. “He admires proximity.”
“To me?”
“To power.”
“Same thing, in this case.”
Your father’s eyes lifted to yours then, and there it was again...the grief of being seen by someone good.
“Do not let them teach you that,” he said.
“They did not teach me. They only confirmed it.”
Baelor folded the letter slowly. “Power is not the same as worth.”
“No. But men kneel to both if the light is dim enough.”
For a moment he only looked at you.
Then he smiled sadly. “You have your mother’s face when you are being wicked.”
“And yours when I pretend not to be.”
That won him. It always did, though never completely. He laughed, but the worry did not leave his eyes. It had lived there longer now, deepening each season, taking root each time Aerion’s name passed too close to yours.
“You are receiving more attention,” Baelor said.
“I had noticed.”
“You encourage some of it.”
“I am courteous.”
“You are lethal.”
That pleased you. You tried not to let it show. Failed, perhaps. Baelor saw. Baelor always saw.
Before he could speak again, a voice came from the doorway.
“She is bored,” Aerion said. “That is why she does it.”
You did not turn at once.
You had known he was there. Not by sound, for Aerion could move softly when he chose, not by sight, for you had your back to him...but by the tightening of the air, the old animal knowledge in your blood. Aerion entered rooms the way fire entered curtains, first as heat, then as inevitability.
Baelor’s face became courteous stone. “Nephew.”
“Uncle.”
Aerion stepped into the solar without waiting to be invited. He wore black that day, severe and lovely, the red at his throat dark as clotted rubies. There was no mark upon his cheek anymore, but sometimes you still saw your own handprint there in memory, bright as a banner.
His eyes went first to you. They always did. Then to the letters on Baelor’s desk.
“How many today?” he asked.
“That is not your concern,” Baelor said.
Aerion smiled. “Everything concerning her eventually becomes mine.”
Your father rose.
It was not dramatic. Baelor did not need drama. He merely stood, and suddenly the room remembered that he was the better prince, the truer knight, the man the realm would have followed into fire because he would never ask them to burn alone.
“Careful, Aerion,” Baelor said.
Aerion’s smile did not falter, but something sharpened behind it.
You moved between them before either man could name the thing already standing there.
“Lord Crakehall offers admiration,” you said lightly. “And presumably pigs.”
Aerion looked at you. “Do you want pigs?”
“I might. They are loyal creatures.”
“They root in filth.”
“So do princes.”
Baelor closed his eyes for the briefest moment.
Aerion laughed. Not pleasantly. He almost never laughed pleasantly. His amusement was a blade drawn halfway from its sheath.
“There you are,” he said.
Baelor’s eyes opened. The words were nothing, to anyone else. To your father, they were a key turning in a lock he had hoped remained hidden. You saw his fear before he could bury it. Aerion saw it too, and loved it.
That was another of Aerion’s sins...he enjoyed frightening men who were hard to frighten. Servants, stableboys, squires, little lordlings, girls too low in rank to defend themselves, those were sport. But Baelor Breakspear’s fear was a feast. Aerion did not want your father dead. Not then. Perhaps not ever, in any simple sense. He wanted him defeated. He wanted Baelor to understand that all his honor, all his love, all his patient discipline could not reach the part of you Aerion touched with two words.
There you are. As if you had been lost before him. As if your father had loved only the wrong shape of you.
After that day, Baelor began arranging your days with a care that looked accidental only to fools.
You were invited to ride with ladies when Aerion had sword practice. You were sent to visit the queen’s apartments when Aerion dined with Maekar. You were asked to accompany your father to small councils where no one had thought to include you before. You sat beside Baelor while men spoke of roads, levies, harvests, disputed boundaries, Dornish tempers, Ironborn petitions, and the endless trembling web of rule. You listened more than you spoke. When you did speak, men turned toward you in surprise, then interest, then caution.
That was how power tasted best...when others noticed too late you had already swallowed it.
Baelor watched you in those meetings with pride and pain together.
“You learn quickly,” he said afterward.
“I listen.”
“You listen like a spider.”
“Would you prefer a dove?”
“I would prefer my daughter.”
You paused beside him in the corridor, where late afternoon light fell in long golden bars across the floor.
“You have her,” you said.
Baelor touched your cheek, and for a moment the court, the proposals, Aerion, all of it seemed distant. He looked tired. Not weak, never that, but tired in the way honorable men became tired when they were made to guard what they loved from dangers with familiar faces.
“Do I?” he asked softly.
You had no answer worthy of him. So you kissed his hand and smiled as though that could mend it.
But Aerion hated being managed.
He noticed every closed door. Every changed hour. Every walk you took without him. He noticed when your horse was saddled and his was not. He noticed when your ladies lied badly. He noticed when servants glanced away too quickly. He noticed when Baelor’s guards appeared at the end of corridors where once only shadows had stood.
Most of all, he noticed absence.
One morning, you rode beyond the city with your father’s men, Valarr, two ladies, and a little train of attendants. It was innocent enough. A hawking party. A bright sky. A temporary escape from stone walls and hungry eyes. Baelor had meant to come, then been detained by a dispute between two crownland lords who had both perfected the art of being intolerable. Aerion had not been told.
That was the insult. Not that you rode. Not that Valarr rode beside you. Not even that a young knight of House Mooton held your stirrup and looked up at you as though you had descended from the heavens to ruin him.
No. The unforgivable thing was that Aerion learned of it secondhand. From your maidservant. Her name was Jeyne, a soft eyed girl with nimble fingers who knew how to lace your gowns tightly without pinching and how to keep silence without looking afraid of it.
Aerion caught her in the passage outside your chambers with a bundle of pale riding gloves in her arms.
“Where is she?” he asked.
Jeyne curtsied too quickly. “Princess?”
Aerion smiled.
The girl went white.
“There are many princesses in this keep,” he said. “Do you think I ask after all of them?”
“She has gone riding, my prince.”
“With whom?”
“My prince, I—”
His hand moved. Not to strike. That would have been too easy, too crude in a hallway where witnesses might multiply. He only took one of the gloves from the top of the bundle and examined the pearl buttons at the wrist.
“With whom?” he repeated.
Jeyne told him.
You learned later that he laughed when she said Valarr’s name. That laugh followed him all the way to the stables.
The boy he found there was named Tommen, though no one of rank had troubled to remember it until Aerion made the name dangerous. He was freckled, quick handed, and kind to nervous horses. He had been your favorite stableboy since you were young enough to sneak sugared apples in your sleeves and too proud to admit you were afraid of a new mare’s teeth. Tommen never spoke to you improperly. He never stared too long. He knew the names of your horses, the moods of your palfrey, the way you preferred your saddle checked twice but not fussed over. You liked competence. You liked quiet devotion. Tommen had both.
Aerion knew this. Of course he knew. That was why he chose him.
No one ever told you precisely what was said. Servants stories came in fragments, as frightened stories do. Aerion asking who had saddled your horse. Tommen answering that he had, my prince. Aerion asking whether the boy had touched your boot when helping you mount. Tommen stammering. Aerion smiling. A riding crop lifted from the wall. The horses screaming in their stalls when the first blow cracked not against wood, but flesh.
By the time you returned, the stable yard had been washed, poorly. Blood diluted by water leaves a pink memory. You saw it before anyone spoke.
Valarr dismounted beside you, his laughter fading. Your ladies went quiet. The groom who came for your reins would not meet your eyes.
“Where is Tommen?” you asked.
No one answered.
Then Aerion emerged from the shadowed stable door. He had changed his gloves. That was the first thing you noticed. The second was the riding crop in his hand. The third was the speck of blood he had missed near the cuff of his sleeve, small and dark, nearly hidden by black fabric.
The world became very still.
“What did you do?” you asked.
Aerion looked at Valarr, then at the young knight of House Mooton, then back to you.
“You rode without telling me.”
A lady gasped.
Valarr took one step forward. “Aerion.”
Aerion ignored him. “You took my morning and gave it to dogs.”
“You hurt him because I went riding?”
“I hurt him because he touched what was mine and thought himself alive enough afterward to continue breathing easily.”
The silence that followed was different from court silence. Court silence was silk. This was iron.
Everyone heard it. Everyone understood something then, though not yet all of it. The grooms, the ladies, the guards, Valarr, the pale knight still holding his reins, they understood that Aerion’s jealousy was not a lover’s foolishness, not a cousin’s temper, not a pretty scandal to be whispered over wine. It was ownership made visible. It was punishment by proxy. It was a prince placing his hand around the throat of the world because he could not place it around yours in public.
You dismounted without help. Aerion watched, eyes bright.
“Where is he?” you asked.
“In the straw, if he has not crawled elsewhere.”
Valarr swore and pushed past him into the stable. One of your ladies began to cry. The Mooton knight looked as if he wanted to draw steel and remembered just in time that princes were not obstacles ordinary men survived.
You walked to Aerion. Not quickly. You would not give him haste. Haste was confession. When you reached him, he tilted his head, studying your face like a man reading scripture in a language only he knew.
“You are angry,” he said.
“You wanted me angry.”
“Yes.”
“You hurt someone I favored.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted me to know you knew.”
His smile deepened. There you are, his face said, though his mouth did not.
You lifted your hand. He did not flinch. That infuriated you more than fear would have. So you did not slap him. Instead, you took the riding crop from his hand as gently as though accepting a flower. He let you. Then you struck him across the face with it. The crack rang through the yard. A thin red line opened along his cheek, lower than the old mark from your palm. One of the horses screamed again. Someone behind you whispered a prayer.
Aerion’s head had turned with the blow. Slowly, he looked back. His eyes were fever bright.
“You should not leave me behind,” he said.
“You are not my keeper.”
“No,” he said. “I am worse.”
You stepped closer. “If Tommen dies, I will never speak to you again.”
Aerion’s smile vanished. There. At last. Not guilt. Not remorse. Not pity for the broken boy in the straw. But fear of deprivation. Fear of silence from you, which to Aerion was worse than any wound.
“He will live,” Aerion said.
“You had better pray he does.”
“I do not pray.”
“Then learn.”
You turned from him before he could answer and entered the stable.
Tommen lived.
He was carried to the maester with his back torn, one eye swollen shut, and three fingers broken where he had raised his hand against the crop. Baelor heard before sunset.
Your father came to your chambers that evening with no guards, no herald, no softening smile. He found you seated by the window, still in your riding gown, hands folded in your lap. You had not cried. That seemed to hurt him too.
“Tell me,” he said.
So you did. Not all. Never all. But enough. Baelor stood through the telling like a man being carved in stone.
When you finished, he turned away and looked out over the city. The sun was setting behind him, turning his profile dark against fire. For one wild moment you thought he looked like the sort of prince singers believed Aerion wished to be...a dragon made noble by restraint.
“He cannot be permitted to continue,” Baelor said.
“No.”
“You say that as though agreement costs you.”
“It does.”
He turned back. You hated how sorrow moved through his face. You hated that he knew before you knew what you would say.
“He did it because of me,” you said.
“He did it because of himself.”
“He chose Tommen because of me.”
“Yes.”
“So I am not absent from it.”
Baelor came to you then. He knelt before your chair, though princes did not kneel to daughters. He took your hands in his. His were warm. Yours were cold.
“My star,” he said, “do not mistake being desired by cruelty for causing cruelty. Aerion would make the sun guilty for casting his shadow.”
“But he does not look at the sun the way he looks at me.”
“No.” Baelor’s voice lowered. “He does not.”
You looked down at your joined hands.
“He sees me,” you whispered.
Your father closed his eyes. That was confession enough.
The days after Tommen’s beating changed the court.
Not openly. Nothing in courts changed openly until blood forced it. But servants moved differently around Aerion now. Ladies ceased smiling behind fans when he entered beside you. Knights watched him with the careful hatred men reserved for princes they could not challenge. The story spread, as all stories did, acquiring embellishment and losing none of its truth. Some said the stableboy had died. Some said Aerion had ordered his tongue cut out, though Tommen still had his tongue and, once the swelling receded, used it to curse beautifully when the maester changed his bandages. Some said you had struck Aerion hard enough to draw bone. Some said Aerion had laughed.
That last was almost true. He did not laugh in the yard. But later, when he found the bloody line on his cheek in a mirror, he smiled. You knew because he told you.
He found you two nights later in the old queen’s gallery, where portraits of dead Targaryen women watched from dim walls with the patient disappointment of ancestors. You had gone there because the court below was too loud, because Baelor had begun placing more men near your chambers, because Valarr kept looking at you as if he wanted to say something brotherly and impossible, because Tommen’s injuries had become a weight you could not set down.
Aerion came from the darkness as if made by it.
“You have been avoiding me,” he said.
“I have been enjoying peace.”
“You lie better when you care less.”
“You overestimate your importance.”
“No.” He came closer. “I estimate it exactly.”
The cut on his cheek had darkened, a narrow line beneath one eye. It made him look even more like something from a doomed song, all beauty marred by violence and improved by it. You hated that your gaze went there.
He noticed.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“No.”
“Liar.”
“You are very proud of being struck.”
“By you? Yes.”
You turned away, but he caught your sleeve. Not your wrist this time. Your sleeve. Silk between his fingers. A concession so small another woman might have missed it. You did not.
“Tommen lives,” he said.
“No thanks to you.”
“He will heal.”
“And if he does not?”
“Then you will be angry longer.”
You looked at him with revulsion so sharp it nearly became wonder. “Is that all it is to you?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
His fingers tightened in the silk. “Proof.”
“Of what?”
“That even your pity can be made to turn toward me.”
For a moment, the gallery seemed full of ghosts listening. You should have been horrified. You were horrified. But beneath horror, beneath fury, beneath the moral shape your father had tried so carefully to give you, something cold and honest understood him. Aerion had not wanted Tommen’s pain. Not truly. The boy was nothing to him. A cup broken after drinking. A door slammed for sound. What Aerion wanted was your attention dragged back by the hair. Your anger, your disgust, your threat never to speak again...all of it was still yours. All of it meant he had reached into your day and seized the center of it.
“You are a child,” you said.
“I am a dragon.”
“You are a child with prettier delusions.”
His mouth twitched. “Say it again.”
“No.”
“Say something cruel.”
“You are begging for me.”
That struck him. For a heartbeat, rage flashed across his face so nakedly that you thought he might forget where he stood. Then he laughed under his breath.
“You were made for me,” he said.
“I was made by my mother and father.”
“You were made by blood older than both.”
There it was again. Blood. That sacred obscenity. That inheritance Aerion wore like a crown and wielded like a knife.
He stepped nearer, and this time you did not retreat.
“Look at them,” he said, nodding toward the portraits. “Our grandmothers. Our great grandmothers. Queens who married brothers, nieces who married uncles, cousins joined to cousins so the dragon would not thin itself into mud. They knew.”
“They knew duty.”
“They knew purity.”
“They knew loneliness.”
He smiled. “So do you. ”
That was the danger of him. Not that he lied. Lies you could have dismissed. Aerion’s horror was that he found truths and dragged them through blood until they looked like permission.
“You think every hunger holy if it has a Targaryen name,” you said.
“And you think every hunger can be dressed in silk until your father blesses it.”
You slapped him then. Not because he was wrong. Because he had come too close.
His face turned, then returned. The mark joined the cut, red over red. He smiled with his mouth closed, as though keeping something precious behind his teeth.
“There,” he whispered.
“Do not say it.”
“There you are.”
You hated him. You hated the heat that moved through you when he said it. So you punished him the only way that mattered.
At the next feast, you gave your favor to someone else.
Not a boy this time. Not a harmless courtling whose hope could be crushed beneath your heel by morning. You chose Ser Jon Wylde, a stormlands knight with a scar through one brow and shoulders broad enough to carry his own arrogance comfortably. He had asked for your favor twice before and been denied with courtesy. On the third attempt, before half the court and beneath Aerion’s watching eyes, you removed a ribbon from your sleeve and tied it around his arm yourself.
Ser Jon went crimson with triumph.
Aerion went still.
You did not look at him afterward. That was the art of it. Any fool could provoke openly. Real cruelty required restraint. You smiled at Ser Jon. You asked him whether he meant to win. You let him say something gallant and foolish about victory being worthless unless laid at your feet. You lowered your lashes at exactly the right moment.
Across the hall, a silver cup bent in Aerion’s hand.
By midnight, Ser Jon Wylde was drunk on hope.
By dawn, he was found in an alley below the Street of Silk, alive but ruined for tourney glory, his sword hand broken in two places and three teeth missing from his handsome mouth. He swore he had been set upon by men in cloaks. He swore one of them laughed like a prince.
No proof was found. None was needed.
You received the news while your ladies dressed your hair.
One gasped. Another crossed herself. Jeyne, pale as milk now whenever Aerion’s name hovered near the room, dropped a comb.
You looked into the mirror. Your reflection looked serene.
“Poor Ser Jon,” you said.
The ladies stared. You selected a ruby pin and slid it into your hair.
That afternoon, you found Aerion in the training yard. He was watching two squires beat each other bloody with blunted swords, though his attention was elsewhere. It was always elsewhere when you were near. He stood with his arms folded, black doublet unfastened at the throat, sunlight turning his hair into white flame. When you approached, the squires faltered.
“Continue,” Aerion snapped.
They did, badly.
“You are predictable,” you said.
“I am constant.”
“You broke his hand.”
“He touched your ribbon.”
“I tied it there.”
“I know.”
“Then perhaps you should break my hand.”
The squires stopped entirely.
Aerion turned to them slowly. “Did I tell you to stop?”
They resumed with panic. Then he looked back at you.
“You would like that,” he said.
“You think you know what I like.”
“I know you better than your suitors.”
“My suitors do not leave men in ditches.”
“Only because they lack imagination.”
You stepped closer, lowering your voice. “One day you will do this to the wrong man.”
Aerion’s eyes gleamed. “Then he will become the right warning.”
“You are not invincible.”
“No,” he said. “I am royal. It is better.”
“Dunk a prince in enough blood and he looks like any other butcher.”
His smile thinned. You liked that. You liked finding the seam.
Then, as if sensing the pleasure in you, Aerion leaned nearer.
“You are angry for him?”
“No.”
“You are angry because I answered.”
“I am angry because you think every man who looks at me owes you pain.”
“They do.”
“And what do I owe you?”
His gaze moved over your face slowly, with terrible reverence and terrible greed.
“Truth,” he said.
Before you could answer, Valarr entered the yard.
Aerion stepped back at once, not from shame but strategy. Valarr looked between you, handsome face tightening. The prince and the monstrous one shared a moment of silent hatred bright enough to light the yard.
“Cousin,” Valarr said.
“Cousin,” Aerion returned, making the word sound like an insult carved in silver.
Valarr offered you his arm. “Father asks for you.”
Aerion laughed softly. “Of course he does.”
You took Valarr’s arm without looking away from Aerion.
That night, Aerion made you jealous. He did it with the exactness of a man placing poison in a cup.
Her name was Lady Helicent, a narrow waisted girl from a proud but nervous house that had learned to survive by attaching itself to greater flames. She had pale brown hair, quick eyes, and the kind of beauty that became sharper when reflected near someone more beautiful. She had spent months pretending admiration for you while hating you with all the quiet devotion of a lesser star orbiting a sun.
Aerion chose her because she had once said your beauty was “almost unnatural” in a tone that made almost do all the work.
You found them in the gardens. Or rather, he arranged to be found.
The moon was thin above the cypress trees. The fountains whispered. You had gone there after supper with only Jeyne trailing at a distance, your mind full of Baelor’s warnings and Aerion’s latest violence and the strange suffocation of being guarded by love on one side and hunted by obsession on the other.
Then you heard laughter. A girl’s laugh. Breathless, flattered, false.
You turned the corner.
Aerion stood beneath an arbor of white roses, one hand braced against the stone beside Lady Helicent’s head. He was close enough to ruin her reputation if anyone kinder than you had found them. He wore indolence like a cloak, but his eyes flicked to you the instant you appeared.
He had been waiting.
Helicent’s mouth was flushed. Aerion’s smile was lazy. The girl saw you and stiffened.
“Princess,” she said, curtsying too late.
You looked at Aerion. He looked back. No shame. No apology. Only challenge. It was almost funny, how badly he wanted to hurt you and be punished for it.
“Lady Helicent,” you said. “How brave.”
Her eyes narrowed before she could stop them. “My princess?”
It was a small thing. A court girl’s spite, sharpened by jealousy and ignorance. But Lady Helicent had misread the entire world. She had mistaken being used by Aerion for being favored by him. She had mistaken his cruelty toward you for permission to be cruel herself.
Only Aerion could do that.
The thought crossed his face before he moved.
He took Helicent’s chin in his hand. Not tenderly. The girl froze, confusion blooming into fear as his fingers pressed just enough to make her understand the difference between being touched and being handled.
“Apologize,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “My prince?”
“To her.”
“Aerion,” you said.
He did not look at you. “Apologize.”
Helicent’s lips trembled. “I meant no offense.”
“That is not an apology.”
You watched her realize, too late, that she had never been standing beside a man. She had been standing beside a beautiful cliff edge and calling the fall romantic.
“My princess,” she whispered, “forgive me.”
You regarded her for a long moment. Then you smiled with all the sweetness court had ever taught you.
“No.”
Aerion looked at you then. The delight in his eyes was immediate and terrible. Helicent fled before either of you could decide what else she deserved.
When she was gone, the roses seemed whiter.
“You used her poorly,” you said.
“She was useful.”
“You kissed her.”
“I wanted to see if you would bleed.”
“Did I?”
His gaze lowered, then rose. “Not where others could see.”
You stepped toward him. “You chose a stupid girl.”
“I chose a jealous one.”
“You chose a mirror with cracks and hoped I would hate my reflection.”
“And did you?”
You reached up and touched the place on his cheek where the crop had marked him. He went still at once, every line of him tightening under your fingers.
“No,” you said. “I hated that she thought you gentle.”
Aerion’s breath changed.
There were moments when his arrogance fell away not into humility, never that, but into something more naked and more dangerous. Want without performance. Hunger without theatre. He caught your wrist and turned his mouth against your palm, pressing a kiss there like a brand.
“You are jealous,” he said.
You curled your fingers against his cheek, nails biting lightly.
“Do not flatter yourself.”
“Lie better.”
“You first.”
He kissed you then, beneath the white roses, while Lady Helicent’s apology still trembled somewhere in the dark.
This kiss was colder than the first and worse because neither of you could pretend surprise. You knew the shape of him now. The violence in his grip. The worship hidden inside command. The way he seemed always to be punishing you for having power over him. You kissed him back because you wanted to win, because you wanted to wound him with wanting, because part of you had been waiting since the terrace and hated him for making that true.
When you bit his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, he made a sound almost like laughter.
“There you are,” he breathed against your mouth.
You pushed him away.
“Say that again and I will give your next scar somewhere less convenient.”
His eyes burned. “Promise?”
You left him there smiling.
Your revenge upon Helicent came three days later. Not with blood. Blood was Aerion’s crude instrument. You preferred ruin with clean hands.
Lady Helicent had a brother seeking appointment among Valarr’s companions, a cousin hoping for a marriage in the Reach, and a mother desperate to appear nearer the royal women than she was. All three ambitions rested upon perception, and perception was a silk thread...beautiful, useful, easily cut.
At the queen’s embroidery circle, you praised Helicent.
That was the beginning of the end.
You praised her discretion in such careful tones that the older ladies glanced up. You mentioned, with sympathetic vagueness, that young women could hardly be blamed for losing judgment when princes made games of them. You said nothing directly. You never needed to. By evening, half the court believed Helicent had been caught in the gardens with Aerion. By morning, the other half believed worse. By the next feast, her mother’s smile had gone brittle, her brother’s appointment had quietly vanished, and the Reach cousin’s family had begun remembering urgent reservations.
Helicent passed you in the corridor with red eyes.
You stopped her. She curtsied. Poor thing. She had learned.
“My lady,” you said, and adjusted the fall of her veil yourself, a gesture so kind that every watching woman softened. “You must be more careful where you place your trust.”
Her eyes filled with tears of hatred.
“Yes, princess.”
You kissed her cheek. The court saw mercy. Aerion, watching from the far end of the corridor, saw the corpse beneath the flowers.
Later, he found you in the sept.
That amused you. Aerion in a sept always looked like blasphemy had dressed itself for court. He moved beneath the painted eyes of the Seven with no reverence whatsoever, boots quiet against stone, face lit by devotional candles. You were kneeling before the Maiden, though not praying. Prayer had never come naturally to you unless you wanted something badly enough to be dishonest with gods.
“You destroyed her,” he said.
You did not turn. “She destroyed herself.”
“You smiled while doing it.”
“I smiled while forgiving her.”
“You are monstrous.”
Now you looked back. Aerion stood in the aisle, silver hair bright in candlelight, expression almost reverent. The word monstrous should have sounded like accusation. From him, it sounded like beloved.
“Careful,” you said. “Only you may call me that?”
“Yes.”
“How proprietary.”
“Yes.”
You rose. “You say that too easily.”
“I say true things easily.”
“No. You say ugly things easily and hope truth will admire it”
He came closer, stopping beneath the gaze of the Father. “You enjoyed it.”
“I did.”
“You are not sorry.”
“No.”
“Good.”
That word moved through you like a hand along a locked door.
Good.
Baelor would have asked whether justice had required cruelty. He would have asked whether mercy might have served better. He would have looked at you with that terrible tender disappointment and made you feel, somehow, both loved and summoned upward. Aerion looked at your revenge and approved. Not despite its coldness. Because of it.
That was the seduction.
Not his beauty. Not only his blood. Not only the shared past, the childhood violence, the kisses that felt like wounds learning to speak. The seduction was this...Aerion never asked you to be better. He asked you to be more. More proud. More vicious. More honest. More dragon. And dragons, in all the old songs, were never asked to apologize for flame.
The weeks that followed became a courtship made of shadows.
No one named it. Naming would have made it vulnerable to judgment. Instead it lived in glances, absences, sudden cruelties, and the quiet rearrangement of other people’s lives around Aerion’s desire.
A young knight from the Vale who wrote you three poems found his lute floating broken in a fishpond. A Tyrell cousin who asked you to dance twice in one evening was challenged by Aerion to a sword practice bout the next morning and left the yard with his pride bleeding worse than his nose. A page who delivered you a love letter from his master vanished from court service and reappeared months later in Maidenpool, refusing to say why the sight of dragon banners made him shake. A lordling who cornered you beneath a stair and spoke too warmly of your mouth was discovered before dawn tied to the same stair by his own belt, gagged with his own love token, his face swollen purple.
No one saw Aerion do it. Everyone knew. That was how power worked best...when proof was unnecessary because fear had already testified.
Baelor knew too. His patience began to thin.
Your father summoned Aerion after the stair incident. You were not meant to hear, but you had learned from court that doors were only suggestions and servants only obstacles when treated kindly enough. You stood in the passage behind a tapestry, still as a carved saint, while Baelor’s voice came through the wood.
“You shame your house.”
Aerion answered lightly. “Men shame themselves. I only assist.”
“You terrorize boys who cannot answer you.”
“I instruct them in distance.”
“You injure men for looking at my daughter.”
A pause.
Then Aerion said, “They should look elsewhere.”
The silence after that was colder than winter.
“She is not yours,” Baelor said.
Aerion’s reply came softer, “No?”
“No.”
“She is Targaryen.”
“So are many.”
“She is my blood.”
“She is mine.”
You closed your eyes.
Inside the room, Aerion laughed once.
“There,” he said. “At last, we are honest.”
Baelor’s voice lowered. “Do not confuse my love for weakness, boy.”
“Do not confuse my wanting for a boy’s game.”
“She is not a prize to be taken because you desire her.”
“No,” Aerion said. “She is a dragon pretending to be a prize because it pleases court to bid.”
Your heart struck hard. Baelor said nothing.
Aerion continued, each word quieter and more poisonous than the last. “You dress her in honor. They dress her in songs. I know what she is beneath both.”
You had to press your hand over your mouth.
The door opened so suddenly you nearly failed to move. Aerion stepped into the passage and looked directly at the tapestry. Directly at you. He had known. Of course he had known. He walked away smiling. Baelor did not come after him.
That night, your father found you in the dragon gallery.
It was always the dragons you returned to when torn between men. The skulls rested beneath the Keep like old crimes too large to bury, black and vast and silent. Balerion’s skull loomed above all others, a darkness shaped like memory. Torchlight crawled along his teeth. You stood before him with your arms wrapped around yourself, feeling very small and not small at all.
Baelor approached without speaking.
For a while, the two of you stood together beneath the dead dragon.
“Were you listening?” he asked at last.
“Yes.”
“I should reprimand you.”
“You may.”
“I am too tired.”
That hurt.
You looked at him then. “Father.”
He turned to you, and whatever speech he had prepared seemed to die when he saw your face. He reached for you, then stopped, as if uncertain whether you would permit comfort. You hated that uncertainty. You stepped into his arms before pride could stop you.
Baelor held you tightly.
Not as court held you. Not as suitors imagined holding you. Not as Aerion seized you, with hunger disguised as destiny. Your father held you as though you were alive and breakable and beloved beyond usefulness.
“My star,” he murmured into your hair.
You shut your eyes.
“I am not what they think,” you said.
“I know.”
The words should have soothed. Instead they terrified.
“I am not gentle.”
“I know.”
“I wanted Ser Jon punished.”
His arms tightened, but he did not release you.
“I know.”
“I ruined Helicent because she angered me. Not because she deserved it.”
A long breath. “I know.”
“Then why do you still look at me as if I can be saved?”
Baelor drew back enough to hold your face between his hands, as he had when you were a child with blood on your palms.
“Because needing discipline is not the same as being damned,” he said. “Because darkness in the blood is not commandment. Because you are mine, and I will not surrender you to the worst thing that recognizes you.”
You looked away. “Aerion says you love a star.”
“I love my daughter.”
“He says he sees me.”
Baelor’s eyes shone then, not with tears quite, but with something too deep for pride to bear.
“He sees what flatters his own hunger,” he said. “And perhaps he sees some true part of you, yes. I will not lie. That is why he is dangerous. Lies are weaker than truth. But he would take that true part and feed it until it consumed every other thing you are.”
You thought of Aerion’s mouth stained with his own blood beneath the roses. Aerion’s voice in the sept calling you monstrous as though laying a crown at your feet. Aerion telling Baelor that he knew what you were beneath honor and songs.
“And if I want to be consumed?” you whispered.
Baelor’s face broke.
Not fully. Baelor Breakspear was made of stronger stuff than that. But something in him flinched, and you felt crueler than you had with Helicent, crueler than with Ser Jon, crueler than any time you had smiled while men destroyed themselves hoping for you.
“Then I will stand in the fire as long as I can,” he said.
You could not answer. Far above you, the dead dragon grinned.
After that, Baelor tried to send you away. Not far. Not cruelly. He suggested Dragonstone first, with companions and guards, under the pretense of visiting old household shrines and taking sea air. When you refused, he suggested Summerhall. When you refused that, he spoke of Dorne, of your kin, of sun and distance, of court growing too crowded and your name too often on unworthy tongues.
“You mean Aerion,” you said.
“I mean danger.”
“You mean Aerion.”
Baelor did not deny it.
Aerion heard by nightfall.
You had begun to suspect the walls loved him more than you. They carried him every secret. Or perhaps secrets, like lesser creatures, feared what he would do if kept from him.
He came to your chamber door after midnight.
Jeyne tried to bar him. Poor brave Jeyne, who still trembled when he entered a room yet stood before him with one hand on the latch because she loved you in her small mortal way. You heard his voice from within.
“Move.”
“My prince, the princess is retired.”
“Move.”
“She cannot receive—”
The door opened.
Not violently. That was almost worse. Aerion had not broken it. He had simply made the guard open it. Your guard. Baelor’s guard. The man stood outside looking sick with shame.
Aerion entered.
You were by the window in a silver robe, hair unbound, the moon making you look like something already dead and sung about. Jeyne remained near the door, pale and shaking.
“Leave,” Aerion said.
She looked to you. You nodded once. Jeyne fled.
Aerion closed the door.
“You are not coming into my chamber at night like some sellsword in a bad song,” you said.
“I am already here.”
“Leave.”
“No.”
You almost smiled despite yourself. “You do enjoy being simple.”
He crossed the room. “Baelor means to send you away.”
“My father means to protect me.”
“From me.”
“Yes.”
He stopped before you. The moonlight loved him too, traitorous thing. It silvered his hair, hollowed his cheeks, turned his eyes into dark violet flame. He looked less like a man than a curse dressed in royal skin.
“You would go?” he asked.
“If I wished.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one you deserve.”
His hand closed on the window ledge beside you. Stone scraped beneath his ring.
“You will not leave me behind.”
“You keep saying that as though the world obeys repetition.”
“It obeys blood.”
“No. You obey blood because it tells you what you want to hear.”
“You want it too.”
You looked at him sharply.
Aerion leaned closer. “Do you think I do not feel it? When we are in a hall and every lesser creature vanishes? When some lord speaks and you smile like a painted idol, but your eyes are empty until I make you angry? When your father calls you star and you soften, yes, but some part of you looks past him for fire?”
“You are vile.”
“I am right.”
“You are vile because you are right only often enough to make your wrongness dangerous.”
His smile came then, sudden and brilliant.
“You should have been born my sister.”
The words struck the room like a dropped torch.
Not because they were impossible. In your house, impossibility had long ago been made subject to royal will. But because he spoke them not as jest, not as scandal, not as wicked flirtation. He spoke them with envy. As though cousinhood were too weak a chain. As though he resented even the small distance blood had placed between you. As though he wished the old dragonlords had bound you closer before either of you drew breath.
“You are mad,” you said.
“No. I am devout.”
“To yourself.”
“To us.”
“There is no us.”
Aerion touched your hair then.
You should have stopped him. Instead, you watched his fingers move through silver gold strands as though handling a holy relic he intended to steal from its shrine.
“There has always been us,” he said. “Before words. Before shame. Before Baelor tried to make you good and court tried to make you harmless.”
“I am not harmless.”
“I know.”
“You do not make me powerful.”
“No.” His hand tightened slightly in your hair. “I make you honest.”
You caught his wrist.
For a moment, you were children again over a dying beetle, over a broken horse, over blood in a rosebush. For a moment, there were no proposals, no guards, no fathers, no dead dragons beneath the Keep, no future tourney waiting to open its jaws. Only Aerion looking at you as if you were the only altar he had ever approached without mockery.
Then he kissed you.
This time, it was almost gentle at the start, which made it more frightening. His mouth touched yours like a question he would punish you for answering incorrectly. His hand remained in your hair. Yours remained around his wrist. The whole room seemed to hold its breath.
Then you bit him again. He laughed into the kiss, and gentleness died.
You pushed him back first. Not far. Enough to make refusal plausible. Enough to make wanting deniable.
“You do not come here again,” you said.
“I will come wherever you are.”
“My father will kill you.”
“No,” Aerion said, touching his bleeding lip with his thumb. “Your father is too honorable to kill what he fears before it sins publicly.”
You went cold.
“What does that mean?”
“It means he will wait. Good men always wait. They call it justice while the world catches fire.”
You stared at him. Perhaps some god leaned close then. Perhaps some dead dragon stirred in whatever hell housed old Valyria. Perhaps fate, bored of subtlety, placed its hand upon the board. Because for a moment you saw it. Not clearly. Not enough to name. But something...a tourney field, shouting, bright armor, Baelor’s face beneath a helm, Aerion laughing somewhere beyond reach, blood on ground.
Then it was gone. Aerion saw the change in you.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Lie better.”
You turned away. “Go.”
This time, after a long silence, he did.
At the door, he paused.
“If Baelor sends you away,” he said, “I will follow.”
You did not look back.
“If he locks you in a tower, I will climb it. If he gives you to a lord, I will make you a widow before you learn to sign your new name. If he sends you across the sea, I will teach the sea to burn.”
“You cannot burn water.”
Aerion smiled faintly.
“Then I will become the first dragon who can.”
The door closed behind him. You stood alone in moonlight with your heart beating like wings trapped beneath bone.
The next morning, you told Baelor you would not leave court.
He looked at you for a long time. Then, slowly, he nodded, as though you had confirmed something he had prayed to be wrong about.
That evening, the court gathered for another feast, because courts do not cease feasting merely because ruin has taken a seat among them. Musicians played. Lords drank. Ladies glittered. Valarr laughed too loudly with friends. Maekar sat stern and unsmiling beside men who feared him. Baelor watched you from the high table with love sharpened into vigilance.
Aerion stood across the hall in black and red. He did not approach you at first. He let others do so. That was worse.
He watched a young lord from the riverlands bow over your hand. Watched a Reachman praise your gown. Watched a knight ask whether you would honor the lists at the next tourney. Watched you smile, answer, withdraw, grant nothing while seeming to grant warmth enough to keep them alive another day.
Then a lordling too drunk on wine and courage leaned close and said something no man should have said to Baelor Breakspear’s daughter. You did not flinch. You smiled. The lordling smiled back, relieved, stupid, doomed.
Across the hall, Aerion began to move. You lifted one finger. Barely. A command so small no one else saw it. Aerion stopped.
The lordling continued speaking, unaware that his life had just passed through your hand like thread through a needle. You leaned nearer, listening as though amused. Then you answered him softly enough that no one else heard. Whatever you said drained the color from his face. He bowed. Stumbled. Left the hall before the next song began.
Aerion watched him go. Then he looked at you. For the first time all evening, you smiled at him. Not sweetly. Not gently. Not as the perfect princess. His face changed. There you are, his eyes said.
But this time, beneath the dragon banners, with Baelor’s gaze upon you and half the realm unknowingly gathered around the mouth of a tragedy, you did not look away.
You raised your cup. Aerion raised his. Blood calling to blood. Fire answering fire.
And somewhere beyond the walls, beyond court and candlelight and all the fragile laws men made to keep princes from becoming monsters, Ashford waited.
virgin dex who’s also the best sex you’ve ever had?
The Best You’ve Ever Had
TW virgin!Dex, size kink (?), obsessive jealousy, possessive/territorial!dex, Dex is a little pathetic in this one, switch!Dex, murdering your exes, interrogation, implied torture of your exes, explicit sexual content (no anatomical detail as per usual) (lmk if I missed anything)
WC 1.2k
Dex, who admits he’s a virgin at the worst possible moment.
He doesn’t admit it the first time you kiss him. He doesn’t admit it when you guide his shaking hands against your thighs. No, Dex admits it when you’re already on top of him, when he’s already inside you, when his face is flushed against your skin and his body is trembling under yours.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts, eyes going wide with panic as he tries not to orgasm too soon. “I’m sorry, I don’t— I don’t know what I’m doing.”
And fuck, he really doesn’t.
You didn’t know for sure, but you did have a feeling that this was the case. He’s so sloppy, so eager, so desperate to be good fuck for you that he keeps losing the rhythm every time you moan. Every time you roll your hips just right, his eyes go glassy.
You just smile and kiss him and say, “It’s okay, baby,” as you groan while being stretched out, “You have— ahh— n-nothing to worry about.”
And he doesn’t! After all, you continue to fuck him even months later. You even make him your boyfriend, and Dex doesn’t even have to beg like he originally planned to.
Sometimes, though, he spirals so badly during sex that you have to stop.
“Dex,” you whisper, taking his face in both hands when you notice his eyes are unfocused. “Baby, are you with me?”
He blinks up at you, dazed and ruined, his hands locked around your hips like he’s scared you’ll disappear.
“Who taught you that?”
Your breath hitched. “What?”
“That,” he says, voice raw. “The way you move your hands. The way you— fuck. Who taught you how to make me feel that good?”
Poor jealous, pathetic Dex.
You don’t answer him. You never gave him a name, never soothe him with details, never say it didn’t matter. You only kiss him until he stops asking, which of course means he has to find out for himself.
Dex, who stays late to research your past.
Dex builds a timeline. Dex finds addresses. Dex memorises faces.
And then Dex goes to work.
He knocks your exes out, ties them to a chair, and sits across from them in some dark room, gun resting loose in his hand as if this isn’t personal.
“What did she like?”
They always thought he meant in your day-to-day life at first. “She liked— she liked coffee, I don’t—”
Dex would tilt his head, and sigh. “In bed.”
Sometimes they cry.
Dex hates that. Crying wastes time.
“What did you do in bed that she liked?” He rolls his eyes, already irritated.
Dex wouldn’t need to shout. Dex is patient.
One of them says he remembers you liked being handcuffed.
Dex goes still, visibly enraged.
Yes, he asked for the info, but now he was seeing it. He’s imagining you in bed, trusting this stupid man with restraints, and it hits him so hard his vision narrows. Eventually, at the end of the night, he pulls the trigger.
He buys handcuffs on the way home. The first time he uses it on you, you squirm and whine. Music to Dex’s ears.
Another ex says he remembers you like blindfolds.
Dex has to look away for a second, breathing through his nose, because the image of you blindfolded for this man makes his blood boil.
He slits his throat and buys one anyway. When he uses it on you, he’s pleased with the mess you made.
Another one says you like shower sex.
When Dex comes home that night, he's determined to test the theory of the man he just killed. You could barely get his name out before he grabs you by the wrist and pulls you into the bathroom.
He was right, Dex thinks an hour later, as he wraps a towel over you in the over-steamed shower, watching your legs wobble a little, you do like shower sex.
And then there’s the other question, the one right before he kills them. The one that proves Dex has gone fully insane.
He would crouch in front of them and ask, “How big are you?”
Imagine that from your exes’ point of view.
Bullseye has a gun between your eyes. Point blank. He’s standing there with that dead calm on his face, head tilted slightly, like this is a work meeting and not the last conversation of your life.
The man tied to the chair stares at him like he has misheard him.
Dex presses the barrel in a little closer.
“Show me with your hand.”
Fuck. Imagine having Bullseye standing over you, asking for your dick size because once, years ago, you fucked his girl before she was his girl.
The man’s hand comes up, trembling, thumb and forefinger spreading in the air.
Dex looks at it, then his eyes go cold.
“Don’t lie,” he rolls his eyes. “I’ll know.”
And no, Dex will never actually know.
It’s an empty threat. He would rather gouge his own eyes out than make them prove it. They were disgusting to him by default, because they were not him.
One ex actually started to desperately shift his tied hands to his zipper like he was actually going to show him.
Dex shot his foot.
“Ugh,” he scoffs. “No.”
That was not the point.
The point was that Dex knew men exaggerated. He knew the first measurement was ego, not truth.
So he waited and watched the answer get smaller.
Dex smiles to himself then, like the fucking psychopath he is.
Because he remembers the first time you sank down on him, breathless and squirming, nails digging into his shoulders, so pretty when you whispered, “Baby, wait— slow down, I need to adjust— ah, Dex, you’re s-so much bigger than I’m used to.”
He had believed you then because he wanted to.
Because he needed to.
Because he was a virgin and pathetic and so in love with you that one little sentence from your mouth could rearrange his entire brain chemistry.
But now, he knows for sure you were telling the truth. He knows he is the biggest you ever had. He knows he was not just your sweet, nervous, pathetic virgin boyfriend that needed to be comforted by white lies. He knows you were not being kind.
You were being honest.
And boy, does it make him unbearable.
After all, his little extracurricular activities did wonders for his confidence!
He stops touching you like he’s asking permission to exist inside your body and starts touching you like he finally believes he belongs there. He's still needy, still pathetic in the sweetest way, but now there’s this ego in the way he pins your hips down.
He gets meaner about it, too, smug enough to murmur, “Too much?” with his mouth against your throat with a smile. “Need me to slow down, baby?”
And you smack at his chest for being arrogant, but you’d be lying if you said it didn’t turn you on.
Because he’s your Dex.
Dex, who got there last and made himself the only one that counted.
Dex, who can hold a gun to a man’s face and ask the most humiliating question imaginable.
Dex, your pretty little psychopath.
Dex, who comes home and melts the second you kiss him, because all that proof, all that blood still means nothing compared to you cupping his face and whispering, “You’re the best I’ve ever had.”
Because he’s attentive. Because he cares more about your pleasure than his own. Because he worships you.
And Dex believes you now.
—
Note : I will be responding to comments and more kind asks tomorrow. Love you guys, mwah 😘
blakekathryn
titsay
discoholicmusic
dededos
ellievsbear
kaledo-art
vaporwave
