Everything i've loved i loved it straight to death

dead dove | 20 | mdni

[danysdaughter]

His Cousin’s Wife

꒰ pairing ꒱ gwayne hightower x fem!reader

꒰ wc ꒱ 23k words (guys i am so srry) ꒰ summary꒱ being Lord Ormund Hightower’s wife has afforded you many luxuries. his handsome cousin is the only one you have yet to acquire.

.ᐟ contents | 18+ (MDNI), smut, seduction, religious guilt, sexual tension, mutual lust, emotional manipulation, shameless!reader, conflicted!gwayne, gwayne’s crisis of faith, obsessive attraction, mean!reader, vain!reader, family rivalry, reader and ormund lowkey in a lavender marriage, dysfunctional marriage, forbidden relationship, ormund being ormund, reader has a child, unprotected piv, cheating sex, oral sex (f!receiving), mating press, cheating/infidelity, creampie, praise, degradation, rough sex, overstimulation, period-typical sexism .ᐟ lizzy’s note | back to my asoiaf writing roots. gwayne genuinely got me back to watching hotd, so all thx to him. im actuallly so sick of this fic, but i'm free now. also might anyone want a sequel with ormund x wife!reader mayhaps? enjoy .ᐟ

likes comments and reblogs are much appreciated ✨

divider by @omi-resources

Supper in the Hightower might have been the worst part of your day.

Not the petitions, with their endless parades of merchants and smallfolk, each weaving their troubles into tapestries of breathless appeal.

Not the household accounts, those dry ledgers where every copper was a stone upon your chest. Not even the ceaseless procession of men who seemed to believe that speaking slowly to you would make their concerns sound more urgent, as though your sex rendered you incapable of understanding plain Common Tongue.

No. It was supper.

The one ritual your husband insisted upon every evening, without fail.

A small table in his solar, always laid for the family. It might have been intimate, had your husband been a different sort of man.

Had he been the sort who reached for your hand beneath the cloth, or who paused to ask after your day with genuine curiosity, or who smiled at his son as though the boy were something more than an heir-in-training.

Instead, it was merely another chamber in which Lord Hightower could hear himself speak. Mostly, you suspected, it pleased him to look upon the arrangement; his wife, his son, his young ward, his table, his tower.

His life. Neatly arranged around him.

At present, Ormund was speaking at length about some new philosophical revelation that had apparently seized him during the afternoon. Something about the necessary refinement of taste, the vulgarity of spectacle, and the slow degradation of noble discernment among lesser houses.

You had ceased properly listening somewhere between the second and third mention of “cultural decay.”

Daeron, sweet boy that he was, was making a valiant effort to appear attentive. He sat very straight, hands properly placed, eyes politely fixed upon Ormund whenever your husband’s gaze passed over him.

But you noticed the way his shoulders had drawn in, the slight hunch he could not quite suppress. He always grew smaller under Ormund’s attention.

Olyvar, mercifully, was too occupied with his supper to care.

You drew his plate a little closer and began cutting his meat and vegetables into smaller pieces, careful and automatic, the way you had done since he was old enough to chew solid foods.

Ormund’s voice stopped.

The silence was so abrupt that even Daeron glanced up, his blue eyes widening like a startled deer.

“Do not help him, wife.”

You stilled. The knife hovered above the last piece of carrot, frozen mid-stroke. For a brief moment, only the fire spoke, crackling softly in the hearth behind you.

Then you lifted your eyes to your husband with great care, forcing your expression into something that might, from a charitable distance, resemble patience.

“Ormund,” you said evenly, “he is five.”

“And yet you insist on keeping him helpless.” Ormund leaned back in his chair, the wood groaning beneath his weight. His expression was one of mild disapproval, as though you were not his wife but a poorly argued treatise placed before him for correction. “Let the boy do it himself.”

Olyvar looked between you both, his little mouth parting, the spoon forgotten in his grip.

“He is learning,” you replied. The words came out softer than you intended, but there was a blade hidden beneath the velvet.

“Then permit him to learn.” Ormund reached for his wine, his fingers curling around the stem of the goblet with practiced ease. “You cannot expect him to become capable while forever placing your hands over his.”

Your fingers tightened around the knife. The handle bit into your palm.

For one small, ugly moment, you wanted very badly to ask him whether he had formed that opinion before or after spending all of ten minutes a day in his son’s presence.

Whether he had ever watched the boy wake from a nightmare, or taught him to hold a quill, or kissed the crown of his head when he was too tired to speak.

Then Daeron shifted slightly in his chair, eyes lowering to his own plate. And your son’s brows began to pull together in the way they did when he sensed discord but could not yet name it.

So instead, you inhaled through your nose and set the knife down. “Very well,” you murmured.

Olyvar’s lower lip wobbled with concentration as you placed the cutlery into his small hands. You adjusted his grip carefully, turning the knife so he would not nick himself, then brushed your thumb once over his knuckles.

“There,” you said softly. “Slowly, sweetling. No need to rush.”

Ormund gave a faint sound of approval which irritated you more than an outright insult might have done. And then, having successfully corrected the household to his satisfaction, he resumed speaking as though nothing had occurred.

“As I was saying, the issue is not merely taste, but the absence of discipline required to cultivate taste. Any merchant with coin may commission a fresco. That does not make him a patron. It makes him a purchaser with delusions of refinement.”

Daeron nodded because he was kind. Because he had been raised to nod. Because he was a prince far from his mother’s court, and he had learned that it was easier to agree than to not.

You lowered your eyes to your plate because you were not. A good example, you reminded yourself. For your son. For poor Daeron.

Your gaze drifted across the room, seeking any surface less tedious than the sight of Ormund’s mouth shaping another sermon. And snagged on a pair of blue eyes already fixed upon you.

Ser Gwayne sat near the far end of the table, newly returned to Oldtown after several months in King’s Landing. He had arrived that morning, travel-worn, but smiling.

He was your husband’s cousin. A familiar figure in the household whenever duty dragged him home. Handsome, yes, but handsome men were hardly rare among noble families.

The Hightower’s bred for it, it seemed. Generations of careful marriages filtering their blood until only the finest thread remained. You had never been a woman easily made foolish by a pretty face.

And yet he was looking at you now. His expression held some faint, mistaken softness that took you a moment to place.

Sympathy.

You scowled before you could stop yourself. Sympathy. From him. What in the seven hells had you done to earn pity from your husband’s cousin?

Gwayne seemed to recognise his error at once. The soft line of his mouth flattened, and he lowered his gaze in retreat. Then he reached for his cup with unhurried care, letting the movement shield whatever might have lingered in his face.

You turned deliberately to Olyvar, who had managed a crooked little piece of meat and was staring at it with triumph.

“Well done, sweetling,” you whispered.

He beamed.

Across the table, Ormund continued speaking as though the air had never been disturbed. “The tragedy, of course, is that most men mistake abundance for beauty.”

You nearly laughed aloud. From a man whose entire household was a monument to excess, the observation was either profound hypocrisy or staggering self-unawareness.

You let your eyes drift back to Ser Gwayne as though pulled by an invisible thread.

He had lifted his wine cup and was listening to Ormund with the practiced patience of a man who had spent his youth in this very hall. There was nothing remarkable in that. All men of Ormund’s blood learned eventually how to sit through him.

Yet now, under the softening candlelight, you found your attention catching on details you had never bothered to catalogue.

The leather jerkin he still wore, unbuttoned at the collar. The breadth of his shoulders, which seemed more pronounced than when you had last seen him.

Perhaps it was the riding leathers. Perhaps it was the way he had broadened through the chest. Perhaps it was only that you were desperate for a distraction.

Then Gwayne looked back.

A brief flicker. Questioning. His eyes met yours across your husband’s table, and after a breath of hesitation, he offered a small smile. Tentative. Cautious.

You did not return it. You merely watched him, as though he were a puzzle placed before you without warning.

The smile faltered. His fingers shifted once against the stem of his cup.

“You are very quiet,” Ormund said.

You turned your head slowly, feeling the weight of every gaze at the table now that his attention had shifted to you. “Would you prefer I interrupt?”

“No,” he said, his mouth curving with something that was not quite warmth. “I merely find the novelty... distracting.”

“I was listening.”

“Were you?” He tilted his head, a gesture of delicate disbelief. “To which part, precisely?”

“To the grand thesis on cultural decay,” you replied, letting a pleasant smile settle over your features. “I am saving my objections for the inevitable conclusion.”

A beat of silence. Ormund’s smile sharpened with genuine pleasure. He did enjoy this, the cut and thrust of a wife who refused to bend entirely. “How wise of you.”

“I’m aware.”

For a heartbeat, the table held itself very still. Daeron’s eyes flickered between you and Ormund before dropping to his plate.

You looked away first. Your gaze slid back towards the far end of the table, almost of its own accord. Ser Gwayne had not looked away. Your eyes met. He dropped his gaze at once, a trained movement, but not quickly enough.

There had been something in his face. Curiosity, stripped of its careful neutrality. The faintest glimmer of admiration before he remembered himself.

And for the first time that evening, supper became tolerable.

You had no clear notion of where your sudden interest in your husband’s cousin had seeded itself.

Desire, perhaps. Boredom, more likely.

The inevitable consequence of a life measured out in quiet afternoons and colder nights, spent beside a man who possessed the rare talent of making even fine Dornish red taste flat, simply by talking over it long enough.

Perhaps you ought to have felt guilt. There were, after all, several forms of guilt readily available to a woman of your station. The heavy, familiar drape of religious shame, if you had been feeling devout.

The colder weight of marital duty, if you had wished to pretend your union had ever been built on anything warmer than alliance and accommodation.

The quiet voice of conscience, urging you to remember your vows and the solemn weight of your name. No such voice came. And if it had, you suspected you would have silenced it without ceremony.

Instead, you had chosen to pursue the matter.

No… pursue implied a peasant greed, a grasping hunger unbecoming of your station.

You had always been a woman of refined taste, one who savoured rather than devoured. You had chosen to investigate. You sought only to determine whether the pious, honourable Ser Gwayne Hightower desired his cousin’s wife.

Which was how, two days later, you found yourself taking luncheon in the training yard. You had expressed a wish for fresh air, and the household had obliged.

Beneath the shaded arcade that overlooked the yard, a small table had appeared, dressed in linen and laden with the afternoon’s bounty. Your ladies had lingered only long enough to exchange pleasantries before you dismissed them with a soft word, granting yourself solitude.

Olyvar alone remained, settled on a cushion near your feet, his painted wooden knights drawn up in opposing armies across the stone. The fate of a dozen imaginary houses rested on his small hands.

The yard below was alive with the familiar music of men at practice, the crisp ring of blunted steel, the scuff of boots on packed earth, and the occasional burst of low laughter when some young squire overreached and paid for his ambition with a mouthful of dust.

Ser Gwayne was not difficult to find among the men. He stood out as a flame stands out among dying embers. You told yourself this was mere practical observation.

He was paired with a knight of your husband’s household guard, a seasoned man who was beginning to look profoundly dissatisfied with the shape of the lesson.

Gwayne fought with a clean grace that bordered on maddening. No wasted theatrics, no brute display of strength simply to intimidate.

He was quick when speed was demanded, firm when force was required, his sword flashing in the high sun before turning aside another blow with that maddening elegance.

You leaned back, your head tilting as you considered him. It was not simply that he was handsome. Many men were handsome from a suitable distance, and considerably less so once they opened their mouths. Gwayne was something altogether rarer.

He was pretty.

The word felt almost improper for a knight wearing spurs, a man of proven steel and honourable name. Yet it was the truth of him. The fine structure of his face. The blue of his eyes like a shard of summer sky, vivid even from this distance. The colour that exertion had painted high on his cheekbones.

The damp strands of fair hair that had pulled loose near his temple, clinging to the skin there. A knight, yes. Unmistakably a man, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped and capable.

But a pretty one, all the same.

“Mother?”

Olyvar’s voice cut cleanly through your reverie. You looked down. He was holding up a wooden knight, its red paint chipped from a hundred imagined battles.

“Ser Redwyne has fallen,” he announced.

“A tragedy,” you said, your voice softening. “Was he taken honourably?”

“In the head,” Olyvar said, frowning at the knight’s fate. “He did not see the blow.”

“Then he ought to have worn a better helm,” you replied, a faint smile touching your mouth. “A commander must learn from his defeats.”

Olyvar considered this with the grave deliberation, then nodded once, satisfied with your counsel, before returning to his campaign.

Below, Gwayne turned to receive some remark from a man at the edge of the yard. And then, with the casual lift of a man stretching his neck, his gaze swept the arcade.

He found you. You marked the instant awareness passed through him, a micro-shift in his posture, a pause barely long enough to measure. His eyes traced the table, the wine, the figs. Olyvar at your feet. Then you. After a beat, Gwayne inclined his head with the precise measure of courtesy owed to his cousin’s lady.

“My lady,” he called, his voice carrying cleanly across the stones, polite and proper for all the yard to witness.

“Ser Gwayne,” you returned.

And from that moment onward, his composure became a thinner thing.

He continued to fight well, beautifully even, but his attention had frayed at the edges. Every few passes, his eyes flickered up towards the arcade. Fleeting glances, brief enough that he must have believed them subtle.

They were not subtle.

You watched, unhurried, savouring the small triumph of observation. You reached for a fig, and brought it to your lips. The skin split beneath your teeth, the flesh yielding sweet and crimson. A small, private indulgence.

Olyvar made a small sound of triumph as one wooden knight toppled another.

“Was that Ser Redwyne avenged?” you asked, though your eyes remained on the yard.

“No,” Olyvar said. “That was Lord Costayne. He is dead now too.”

“How grim.”

Below, Gwayne’s gaze lifted again. His eyes met yours across the dust and sunlight, and this time you allowed yourself a smile. A small curve of your lips, intended for him alone.

A promise held out like a flower, waiting to see if he would reach for it.

The effect was immediate. His gaze dropped as though the weight of your attention had physically pressed him down. His jaw tightened. He faltered, just slightly, and the other knight pressed his advantage, almost landing a blow along his ribs.

Gwayne turned it aside at the last breath, an elegant recovery.

Then he answered. A counter-strike that rang through the yard, a perfect connection that forced his partner back several steps. The watching squires let out a low murmur of approval.

A few minutes later, the bout drew to its close. Gwayne stepped back, breathing a little harder, and clasped forearms with his opponent A servant appeared with water. Gwayne took the cup, raised it, and drank. Then, in a gesture so casual it felt almost on purpose, he tipped the remainder over the back of his neck.

You watched the water trace a silver path along his skin, disappear into the dark collar of his tunic, darken the fabric where it clung. Gwayne looked up once more, his gaze finding the arcade as though drawn there by a thread you had already begun to wind.

To your surprise, he passed his practice sword to one of the waiting squires and began walking towards the shaded arcade.

You watched him approach, your brow lifting a fraction.

He looked good like this, you thought with some irritation.

Flushed from exertion. His fair hair damp at the temples, darkened to auburn. The open collar of his tunic showing the hollow of his throat, the skin there still gleaming from the water he had poured.

He reached the shade of the arcade and bowed his head with dutiful courtesy.

“My lady,” he said. His voice was perfectly polite, though the breathlessness still clung to it, “I confess, I had not thought to find you watching over the yard.”

“Have I no right to observe the men of my own household?”

“You have every right. It is simply a pleasure I had not anticipated.”

That was well said. You let the words settle, then smiled. “I thought it would be good for Olyvar to observe the training yard. The discipline. The instruction. The camaraderie of men.”

You lied easily enough.

Gwayne’s eyes shifted past you. Olyvar, at your feet, had not looked up once throughout the entire exchange. His wooden knights lay in a violent little heap, and he was currently engaged in the solemn work of making one dead man stab another dead man.

Gwayne was quiet for half a second. Then his gaze returned to you.

“Ah,” he said.

You felt your mouth curve. “You seem unconvinced, Ser.”

“I should never presume to question a mother’s judgement.”

“A wise answer.”

“I try to give those when I can.”

That made you smile properly, a genuine warmth that you could not quite suppress.

Gwayne noticed it. You saw the flicker of his attention, the way his gaze touched your lips, fleeting as a blink, then returned at once to your eyes.

You leaned back slightly in your chair, considering him.

“You fight well,” you said.

His expression settled into modest courtesy at once. “You are kind to say so.”

“I did not say it to be kind.”

His eyes held yours a moment too long before he inclined his head again. “Then I thank you for your honesty.”

“How formal you are.”

“I am speaking with my lord cousin’s wife.”

“Yes,” you said mildly. “I am well aware of the relation.”

The air between you shifted. Gwayne seemed to feel it too, because whatever brief warmth had touched his face retreated behind the careful architecture of his courtesy.

He bowed once more. “I shall leave you to your luncheon, my lady.”

“So soon?”

His eyes caught yours. The question had been plain enough to be heard, innocent enough to be denied.

“The men will be waiting,” he said.

“Of course.”

Another pause.

Then he gave you a small, dutiful smile, the sort of smile a man offers when he wishes to close a door without seeming to slam it. “Enjoy the rest of your day, my lady. I shall see you at supper.”

And then he left.

You watched him descend the shallow steps, noting the deliberate length of his stride. He did not glance back. Did not slow. He returned to the training yard as though the shade beneath the arcade had held no temptation at all.

You frowned. Was that all?

How vexing. Perhaps Ser Gwayne Hightower was too pious for implication. Or perhaps he simply needed a sharper provocation.

Very well, then.

You would need to be plainer.

“May I speak plainly, my lady?”

Daeron’s voice came from beside you, pitched low enough that the question might have been lost beneath the murmur of the fountain.

Your arm was hooked through his as the two of you walked slowly through the Hightower gardens, the gravel crunching beneath your slippers.

You turned your head towards him, noting the slight furrow between his brows, the way his gaze remained fixed on the path ahead rather than meeting yours. “With me, sweet prince? Always.”

He smiled faintly at that, though it did not quite reach his eyes.

You let your gaze drift ahead again, momentarily distracted by the peonies along the eastern walk. They were not blooming as they ought. Too sparse near the roots, too heavy in some places, and the colour had come in weaker than you had requested. A small irritation, perhaps, but one nonetheless.

You made a silent note to speak with the gardeners before the week’s end. Such neglect was unbecoming of a household of Oldtown’s standing.

Daeron walked quietly beside you for another few paces.

“I have missed our talks,” he admitted at last.

There was something almost shamefaced in the confession, as though he had failed at some duty by desiring a little ordinary companionship.

You looked at him more fully then, taking in the slight hunch of his shoulders, the way his hands clasped together behind his back as though he were still a boy being chastised by a maester.

He was no longer the shy ten-year-old you had met when you first came to Oldtown as Ormund’s bride. That boy had been all wide eyes and careful manners, quick to blush and quicker to apologise.

Daeron glanced down at the gravel path, his jaw working for a moment before he spoke again.

“The maesters have kept me very occupied,” he continued, his voice taking on a rehearsed quality. “Lord Ormund wished my lessons expanded. Histories of the Reach, the foundations of the Hightower, the genealogies of its principal bannermen, matters of law and patronage…”

His mouth twisted slightly before he corrected it. “It is a great honour, of course.”

“Of course,” you said, the words dry as dust.

“And important,” Daeron added quickly, as though fearing you might mistake him for ungrateful. “It is important to venerate the history of House Hightower. Lord Ormund says a prince fostered here ought not leave Oldtown ignorant of the house that shaped him.”

You hummed softly. “That sounds very much like something Lord Ormund would say.”

Daeron looked at you, uncertain whether he was permitted to laugh.

You saved him the trouble by squeezing his arm lightly. “You need not perform gratitude for me, sweet prince.”

His shoulders eased a fraction, the tension draining from his frame as though a knot had been loosened. “I am grateful,” he said, but more honestly this time. “Only… tired.”

“Those two things are allowed to exist in the same body.”

He breathed out, a long, slow exhale, and there it was, the quiet relief of a boy who had been granted permission to be less than perfectly composed. The breeze stirred the auburn hair at his temples, and for a moment, he looked younger than his years.

“I know the lessons matter,” Daeron murmured, his gaze fixed on the path ahead. “But sometimes it feels as though every hour must improve me somehow. If I read, it must be the correct book. If I ride, my seat must be assessed. If I speak, I must consider whether my thought is worth saying aloud.”

“Ah,” you hummed. “A particular cruelty. Being made to weigh every word before speaking.”

He gave you a small, knowing look, a flicker of something wry in his eyes. “You do not seem to suffer from it.”

“No,” you replied pleasantly. “Marriage cured me of that.”

Daeron’s lips parted in surprised amusement, and then he looked quickly ahead, as though worried someone might have heard him almost laugh.

Your gaze drifted past Daeron’s shoulder then, moving idly over the garden path, the sunlit hedges, the distant figures gathered near the cypress walk.

And caught on one figure in particular.

Ser Gwayne stood a little way off, conversing with some lord whose name you could not immediately recall and had no great desire to.

He was dressed for court rather than the yard today, a tunic of deep green, the Hightower sigil embroidered at the breast in silver thread, his hair neatly combed, his posture impeccable.

One hand rested at his belt as he listened with a look of courteous endurance, the expression of a man who had heard this particular speech before and was merely waiting for it to conclude.

Before good sense could advise you otherwise you lifted your voice.

“Ser Gwayne.”

The name carried cleanly through the garden air, clear as a bell tolling in still weather. You did not raise it unduly, but there was a specific clarity to it, a refusal to be ignored.

His head turned almost at once.

The very instant your voice crossed the gravel and the hedges and the soft murmur of the fountain, his attention came to you, direct and unguarded.

You noticed. You tucked the knowledge away like a coin slipped into a pocket.

So did Daeron, judging by the quick, sideways glance he gave you.

“Perhaps you might come and soothe your favourite nephew’s spirits,” you continued, letting amusement thread through your voice, “The maesters have made a martyr of him.”

Daeron straightened beside you, a flush rising to his cheeks. “My lady—”

“Oh, hush. I said martyr, not rebel. There is dignity in martyrdom. Surely they have taught you that much.”

He closed his mouth, half-protesting and half-pleased.

Gwayne said something brief and polite to the lord before him and bowed his head in farewell with the easy grace of a man accustomed to extricating himself from tedious conversations.

You watched him approach with an expression of mild innocence, as though you had merely done him a kindness by providing an excuse to withdraw. He stopped at a perfectly respectable distance. Far enough to satisfy propriety.

He inclined his head.

“My lady. My prince.”

Perhaps it was inconsequential. Perhaps it meant nothing at all. Still, you noted that he addressed you first.

Daeron brightened at once, some of the earlier tension easing from his face. “Uncle.”

“Have your lessons grown so unbearable already?” Gwayne asked, his mouth curving faintly. His expression was warm, genuinely fond, “I had thought you more resilient than that.”

“I did not say unbearable,” Daeron protested.

“No,” you said, before he could gather a proper defence. “He merely looked as though he might fling himself into the Honeywine.”

Daeron turned to you in open horror. “I did not.”

“You did a little.”

Gwayne’s eyes flicked to you then. There was caution there now. A guardedness that had not been present before supper, before the training yard, before he had learned that your attention was not always accidental.

“I am certain the prince suffers nobly,” Gwayne said, his voice even.

“Thank you, uncle,” Daeron replied, gathering what dignity he could manage.

“And if your tutors become too terrible,” Gwayne added, “you may always inform them that your uncle has recommended idleness as an essential part of princely education.”

Daeron blinked, then smiled. “Would you truly?”

“No,” Gwayne said. “But you may imagine it with comfort.”

You laughed softly despite yourself.

Gwayne looked at you again.

“You see?” you said, glancing between them, “Ser Gwayne understands you. He has spent a lifetime surviving Lord Ormund’s instruction.”

The change in Gwayne was slight. Almost nothing. A tightening around the eyes. A subtle stillness in his shoulders, as though he had braced himself against something unexpected.

But you saw it.

Daeron, sweet enough to miss the sharper thing beneath your words, only looked between you and his uncle with polite interest.

“My cousin has always been generous with his wisdom,” Gwayne said carefully.

“How delicately put.”

“It is a delicate subject.”

“Is it?”

“With you, my lady, I suspect most subjects may become so.”

There was no impropriety in the words. None that could be named. You smiled at him, slow and without hurry.

Daeron glanced between you both again, visibly uncertain whether he had missed some small jest. “You are both speaking strangely,” he said slowly.

“Are we?” you asked, still smiling.

“Yes.”

Gwayne’s mouth softened. “Then it must be your lessons, nephew. They have made you too perceptive.”

Daeron accepted that with a faintly pleased look, though he tried not to show it. The boy’s hunger for approval was a tender thing, easily assuaged by a scrap of recognition.

You let your hand rest lightly over the prince’s arm, “Come,” you said. “Walk with us, Ser Gwayne. Unless the nameless lord we stole you from was saying something terribly important.”

Gwayne glanced back once towards the man he had abandoned, still standing alone near the cypress walk, looking vaguely confused.

“He was explaining the superiority of his family’s kennels.”

“Then we have rescued you.”

“So it would seem.”

He fell into step on Daeron’s other side, close enough that the three of you moved together like a single, unhurried current beneath the long shade of the garden walk.

Daeron began asking him some earnest question about training yard drills and Gwayne answered with patient attention, his tone easing as he spoke to the boy, the guarded edges softening into something simpler.

You listened in silence for a few moments, allowing the rhythm of their voices to wash over you, the low murmur of his explanations blending with the fountain and the bees.

Then, without turning your head, you let your gaze drift towards Ser Gwayne from the corner of your eye.

He was already looking at you.

This time, he did not look away quickly enough.

You allowed yourself to notice it with only the faintest turn of your mouth, careful not to give him the satisfaction of being caught too plainly.

Gwayne, for his part, seemed to realise his mistake a breath too late. His attention shifted towards the hedges, then towards Daeron, as though the garden had suddenly become full of urgent things to observe.

Fortunately, the fates proved generous. Only a few minutes later, one of Ormund’s guards appeared at the end of the walk.

“My prince. Lord Ormund requests your attendance. The maester is waiting.”

The small measure of ease Daeron had gathered vanished at once, dissolving like frost touched by sun. He did not complain. He was too well-bred for that, too accustomed to obedience. But the look he gave you was helpless enough to make your heart pinch.

You squeezed his hand where it rested against your arm. “Courage,” you murmured.

Daeron attempted a smile. It was a brave attempt, if not entirely convincing.

Gwayne’s expression softened as he looked at him. “Farewell, nephew. I shall see you after, should you survive.”

It was a small jest, dryly delivered, but it did what it was meant to do. Daeron’s mouth curved, and some of the dread left his face before he inclined his head to you both and followed the guard back along the path.

You watched him go until the turn of the hedge took him from sight.

Then there was only Gwayne. Perfect. For a long, suspended moment, neither of you moved. The garden seemed to hold its breath without Daeron between you, the air growing heavier, warmer, as though the afternoon had drawn closer to listen.

You turned to him with a slow, playful smile, letting it unfurl across your lips like a secret shared too late to recall.

“So,” you said, your voice carrying the lightness of discovery, “you can be amusing.”

Gwayne’s eyes dropped for the briefest fraction of a heartbeat to your mouth before returning to meet yours. The movement was subtle, almost imperceptible, but you caught it.

“Does that surprise you, my lady?” he asked.

His voice remained courteous, polished to a fine, untouchable sheen. But something in it had changed. Only slightly. Enough.

“Indeed it does,” you said, and began to walk again.

You did not ask him to follow. He did anyway. Gwayne kept to your side, not too close, not distant enough to be rude. Every inch of him arranged according to propriety, every muscle held in careful alignment.

How tiresome. How interesting.

“You are always so formal with me,” you said, looking ahead rather than at him, “One begins to wonder whether you have any other manner at all.”

There was a pause before he answered, as though he was choosing each word with care. “You are my cousin’s wife,” Gwayne said. “And Lady Hightower of Oldtown.”

You gave a quiet sigh. “Yes. You do enjoy reminding me.”

“I would not presume you had forgotten.”

“No?” You glanced at him then, turning your head just enough to catch his profile. “How generous. For a moment, I feared you thought I required instruction in the shape of my own life.”

Gwayne’s jaw shifted, a muscle tensing along its edge, but he said nothing.

“I am aware I am Lord Ormund’s wife,” you continued, your voice mild, unhurried, as though you were discussing the weather. “I have borne the man a son. I sit at his table. I listen to his thoughts on taste and virtue and the failings of lesser men, night after night, until the candles gutter and the wine runs dry. Believe me, Ser Gwayne, I have not misplaced the fact of my marriage.”

His steps slowed by the smallest measure, a falter in the rhythm of his stride. You did not slow with him. After a moment, he caught up, his boots crunching against the gravel as he fell back into step beside you.

“That was not my meaning,” he said.

“Was it not?”

“No.”

You looked at him again, long enough to make him feel the full weight of your attention. There was discipline in him, certainly. Faith too, perhaps. Honour arranged about him so tightly that you wondered how often it chafed against his skin, how often he wished to loosen the bindings.

“Then what was your meaning?” you asked.

Gwayne’s eyes moved once across your face, and again they paused too near your mouth. The moment stretched, before he pulled his gaze away.

“My meaning,” he said at last, “is that respect is owed to you.”

Respect. A pretty word. A useless one, in that moment. You smiled as though pleased by the answer, and turned your attention back to the path ahead. “How very dutiful of you, Ser Gwayne.”

He did not answer immediately. But beside you, his hand flexed once, the fingers tightening briefly before releasing.

You allowed him the mercy of another subject, though not entirely out of kindness. The game required patience, and you had learned long ago that too much pressure would cause a man like Gwayne to retreat entirely.

“Was King’s Landing much changed?” you asked, your tone light, conversational. “You have been away long enough that we nearly began to forget you.”

“Nearly?”

“You must not ask for too much flattery. It becomes unbecoming.”

The corner of his mouth moved, a ghost of a smile that seemed determined not to fully form. “King’s Landing is as it ever was. Loud. Crowded. Restless.”

“Vile, then.”

That drew his attention more cleanly. He turned his head to look at you, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. “You dislike the city?”

“I dislike most cities that mistake stench for importance.” You brushed your fingertips along the head of a rose as you passed, careful not to catch your fingers on the thorns hidden beneath the leaves. “My father thought the Red Keep a wretched place. A painted skull upon a hill, I believe he once called it.”

“A severe judgement.”

“He had a gift for those.”

“And do you share it?”

“For severity? Frequently.” You glanced at him, your eyes meeting his. “For judgement? I suppose that depends on the object.”

Gwayne’s eyes narrowed faintly, not in displeasure but in caution, as though he had heard the soft shift beneath your words and did not yet know whether he was meant to step over it or step around it.

You continued before he could decide.

“I have always thought the Red Keep must be suffocating,” you said, your voice thoughtful. “All those ambitious men pressed together in one place, each certain his own desires are better hidden than they are, each watching the others for signs of weakness. A city built on whispers and half-truths.”

Gwayne looked ahead, his gaze fixed on the path before you. “Men at court are not known for modest ambition.”

The garden path narrowed, forcing him closer beside you as you moved beneath the arbour. The space did the work for you, his sleeve brushing near yours, the warmth of him briefly more present than it had any right to be.

“Did you enjoy it?” you asked.

Gwayne inhaled quietly. You had the impression of a man choosing between several safe answers and finding all of them insufficient. He settled, eventually, on honesty trimmed to an acceptable shape.

“There are moments of honour to be found there,” he said. “And many more moments of inconvenience.”

“How diplomatic.”

“It is often safer than truth.”

You looked at him then, and this time he did not immediately look away. The sunlight shifted through the leaves overhead, breaking across his face in brief gold fragments.

He really was irritatingly pretty. The kind of beauty that seemed almost unfair, a face that belonged in a tapestry or a song.

“Do you prefer safety, Ser Gwayne?”

His gaze held yours.

For a moment, the garden seemed to contract around you, the air thickening with the scent of lavender and heated stone.

Then his jaw tightened, just slightly. “When it is wise.”

You did not let the silence sit for too long. You paused near a low wall where the roses climbed thickly over pale stone, their blossoms heavy and overripe in the afternoon heat.

One had drooped beneath its own weight, petals dark at the edges, bruised almost purple where the sun had touched it too long.

“This one has spent itself,” you murmured, touching the bloom with the pad of your thumb. The petal was soft, the velvet surface dimpling beneath your pressure. “It has given everything to the sun without thought for the consequence. Now it hangs there, open and past its prime, waiting for someone to notice it before it falls.”

Gwayne’s eyes followed your hand.

“Do you know much of roses, Ser Gwayne?”

His expression had gone very still.

“No, my lady.”

“No?” You let your thumb trace the edge of the petal, dragging slow and idle across the bruised flesh. “A pity. They are not unlike women in that regard. They require a firm hand, not rough, but certain. They must be guided, or they climb wild, tangling with whatever brushes against them. And if handled carelessly…”

You pressed until the petal dimpled deeper beneath your thumb, the bruise spreading like an ink stain in water. “They bruise so easily.”

You looked up at him then, your lashes low. “The secret is knowing exactly how much strength a stem can bear before it breaks.”

Gwayne’s throat moved as he swallowed.

“Perhaps I should ask the gardeners instead,” you said, letting your hand fall from the rose. “They seem to understand the practical application of pressure.”

“That would be wise.”

His answer was controlled, but thinner than before, as though the words had to press past something tight to reach the air. He looked at you as though you had at last said something plainly enough to leave him no comfortable place to stand.

You waited. His hand flexed once at his side.

“You should take more care with your words,” he said. The voice was stripped bare, scraped of all the courtly veneer he had worn so carefully all afternoon.

You felt your smile soften into something far less polite. “Should I, Ser? How considerate of you to advise me.”

“This is not advice.”

“No?” You tilted your head, letting your gaze trail down his form with slow, appreciative leisure, then back to his eyes. “What is it, then? A plea? A prayer?”

Gwayne’s mouth parted, then closed again. You watched the truth he wanted to speak rise to his tongue, watched him force it back down. At last, he managed, “You know very well what you are doing.”

For one brief, clean moment, satisfaction moved through you like honey.

“I know many things, Ser Gwayne.” Your voice lowered, soft as a touch against his skin. “You will have to be plainer with me.”

The muscle in his jaw jumped. A vein pulsed at his temple beneath the pale auburn of his hair.

A distant laugh rose from somewhere beyond the hedge, bright and careless, a sharp reminder of the world that existed outside this charged pocket of air.

Gwayne blinked once, as if waking from a fever dream. He stepped back with the abrupt control of a man yanking his hand from an open flame. “I should return.”

“To what?”

“To anything else.”

You laughed then, the sound escaping before you could temper it. It was absolute delight. His eyes snapped to yours. For the first time, you saw irritation there. Not the measured discomfort of a man offended for honour’s sake. It was irritation at you.

It suited him. It made him human.

“Of course,” you said, smoothing one hand over your sleeve. “I would not keep you from your many duties.”

Gwayne bowed his head, but the gesture was stiff, a jerk of the chin rather than a fluid courtesy.

“My lady.”

“Ser Gwayne.”

He turned to leave. Then stopped. You watched his spine stiffen as he fought with himself. When he looked back, his face had recovered its composure.

“You should not seek to provoke what you would not wish answered.”

The warning slid through you like a blade wrapped in silk.

“Then perhaps you should take care with your answers.”

You were irritated. Unbelievably, utterly, exhaustingly so.

Ser Gwayne Hightower had taken to avoiding you now. Not merely keeping a respectful distance, no, that would have been proper, expected, even comfortable.

He had begun avoiding you with the single-minded dedication of a man preserving himself from a plague he had already seen ravage whole cities.

His gaze would slide over you, past you, around you, as if your presence were a piece of light too bright to be borne. It would have been a rich jest, a game to be savoured, if the sting of it had not run so deep.

In the last several days, you had seen him only at supper, and even then it took Ormund’s rigid insistence upon family ritual to trap him in the same room as you.

He kept his gaze fixed on his plate, the fine silver catching the candlelight, or on Daeron, or on Ormund whenever your husband felt compelled to expound on whatever subject had presently devoured his interest.

Never you. Not a single glance. The first night, you had nearly laughed at the absurdity of it.

By the third, you had found your fingers tight around the stem of your wine cup, an image of the dark red liquid arcing across the table to splatter against his chest blooming so vividly in your mind that you had to set the cup down entirely to resist the urge.

He would converse with Daeron gently enough, turning towards the boy with a soft curve to his mouth, asking after his lessons in a voice that held none of the clipped edge he reserved for the world.

He would answer Ormund with his usual, weary patience, enduring long-winded correction, tedious commentary, and the occasional thinly disguised insult without so much as a flicker of his composure.

But you might as well have been an empty chair at the far end of a long, abandoned hall.

At one point, during the fourth course, you had reached for the salt at the same moment he had. Your fingers had not touched. They had only approached the same small silver dish, drawn by the same need.

Gwayne had seen your hand coming and had withdrawn his own as though the metal had glowed red-hot.

Across the table, Daeron’s eyes flickered between you both, swift and confused, before dropping to his plate.

Ormund, naturally, had observed nothing.

When the meal finally, blessedly ended, Gwayne rose from his chair with a controlled haste that it became a spectacle in itself. His bow to Ormund was a little too stiff.

He murmured some careful excuse about the early hour required of him in the training yard, and was gone before you had even finished setting your cup down upon the linen.

You said nothing. You pressed your tongue against the inside of your cheek, tasting the faint, and decided that Ser Gwayne Hightower had become far, far too pleased with his own suffering.

He was preening in his little cage of honour. It was time to rattle the bars.

The following afternoon, the insult remained with you, a stone lodged beneath your ribs. You stood in the watery light of your solar while you fastened a narrow chain of delicate silver around your throat. Letters laid open on your desk went unread; the words blurred and swam before your eyes.

The Hightower moved around you as it always did, breathing and turning and obeying the immutable currents of its own existence.

Servants passed through the corridors with soft footsteps. A steward waited just beyond the solar door, his ledger tucked under his arm, patient for your attention. Somewhere below, Olyvar’s septa was drilling him in his letters. The whole of Oldtown lay at your fingertips, a stone-and-wood body waiting for your will.

Your Hightower. And Ser Gwayne thought he could hide from you inside it.

Did the man truly not understand who you were? Did he imagine that blood alone made a fortress? Yes, he was a Hightower by birth, carried the name like a shield. Yes, his position in this house was not insignificant, second-in-line after your son.

But you, at present, were Lady of Oldtown. Wife to its lord. Mother to its heir. Mistress of its pantries, its keys, its schedules, its gardens, its chambers, its wine cellars, its very breath.

There were very few doors in this tower that would dare remain closed to you. There were even fewer people inside it willing to deny you anything you might ask of them.

If Ser Gwayne wished to truly and irrevocably escape you, he would need to leave Oldtown entirely. Better still, the Reach altogether. He would need to put the whole of the realm between his conscience and your smile, if he wanted any real and lasting certainty.

You took your seat behind the desk, arranging your skirts with a practised hand, and waited. The knock came a short while later, two crisp raps against the oak door.

You let the silence stretch, counting the seconds, letting the weight of it settle into the space between you. Only when the pause had grown long enough to become a small, pointed statement did you speak.

“Enter.”

The door swung open. Ser Gwayne Hightower stepped inside, and the quality of the light in the room seemed to shift.

He looked, unfortunately, as handsome as ever. More so, perhaps, because irritation sharpened your appreciation rather than dulled it.

His eyes found you. For a heartbeat, they rested on your face, on the length of your throat where the silver chain lay.

Then, with an effort you could almost feel in your own chest, he moved his gaze to some respectful, neutral point near your shoulder, fixing it there as though the stone of the wall behind you held absorbing interest.

“My lady,” he said, his voice low and even. He bowed his head. “You sent for me.”

“So you do remember how to come when called.” Your words came out silken, touched with just enough of a serrated edge to catch.

You sat behind your desk, one hand resting lightly over the stack of unread letters, the other lying palm-down on the polished wood. You did not invite him to sit. You did not gesture towards the chair that stood opposite.

The door, you noted, had been left ajar behind him, wide enough to preserve propriety, narrow enough to feel like a cage. You had already ensured that your maid had departed on some errand that would keep her away for the better part of the hour.

“I was not aware I had given offence,” he said carefully, each word chosen with care.

“No?”

His mouth tightened

You leaned back in your chair, the wood creaking softly beneath you, as you studied him. If he wished to behave as though you were invisible then you would make a generous, thorough effort to correct that misapprehension.

You traced the line of his brow, the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw that suggested he had not shaved as closely that morning as he usually did.

“For several days now,” you said, letting the words fall slowly, “you have looked at everyone in this household except me.”

Gwayne grew very still. The stillness of a man who has been caught in a trap and is calculating whether there is any graceful way to extricate himself. He lowered his eyes, in a retreat from the challenge of your gaze. “I meant no disrespect,” he said, his voice quieter now.

“Of course not. Men rarely do when they are being insulting.”

His jaw shifted once. A quick, involuntary clench, quickly released.

You smiled faintly, letting the expression touch only your lips, not your eyes. “Tell me, Ser Gwayne. Have I become difficult to look upon, or have you merely developed some sudden, consuming fear of my face?”

“My lady—”

“You may answer plainly. I assure you, I will survive the blow.”

For a long moment, he said nothing. His hand rested at his side, the fingers perfectly still, but you had begun to recognise the effort it cost him to keep them so. At last, he looked at you properly.

“My conduct has been improper,” he said.

You lifted your brows, letting the silence draw the words out of him.

“My attention,” he said, and the word came out halting, “has been improper.”

Ah.

You let the words settle between you, turning them over, tasting them. When you looked up again, his expression was taut.

“How pious,” you said softly.

You rose from your chair. The wood of the desk was warm beneath your fingertips as you pushed yourself upright, and you saw the change in him at once.

Gwayne’s posture shifted. Almost imperceptibly, a knight bracing himself for movement, for danger. His gaze tracked you, as you came around the corner of the desk.

You moved slowly, your steps unhurried. You stopped at a proper distance. Close enough to feel the warmth radiating from his body, to catch the faint, clean scent of him.

“You are in my husband’s house,” you said, your voice pitched low. “At my husband’s table. Beneath my husband’s roof. If you are determined to behave as though that makes me impossible to see, then I must warn you, Ser Gwayne, you have chosen a very poor place in which to be blind.”

His eyes snapped to yours.

And there, beneath all that honour, all that careful, excruciating virtue, you saw it. Irritation. It warmed his face, brought a flush to his cheekbones, made his eyes glitter with something that was not quite anger and not quite desire. 

Beautiful, you thought, with a flicker of cruel delight.

“You should not have sent for me,” he said. The words were ground out through clenched teeth.

You smiled. “And yet you came.”

His mouth pressed into a hard, flat line. “You must cease this.”

Your hand stilled over the correspondence. Slowly, you turned your head back towards him. “Cease what, Ser Gwayne?” Your voice was soft, almost curious.

His eyes sharpened. The green in them caught the light, flinty and hot. You watched the calculation flicker behind them, the risk of naming what he dared not name.

You let your face arrange itself into mild confusion. A little concern, even. It cost you nearly nothing, and the effect on him was immediate. His nostrils flared once. “You know very well.”

“I assure you, I do not.”

Gwayne looked towards the open door, then back to you.

The gesture was brief, but you caught it. He was measuring propriety, servants, the thin safety of appearances. He could not raise his voice. He could not accuse you too plainly. Not with the door open.

And most of all, he could not bring himself to say it. Stop looking at me. Stop calling me to you. Stop standing too close. Stop trying to make me want you.

You almost pitied him. “If I have offended you,” you said softly, “I would prefer to understand how.”

Gwayne’s gaze dropped to your mouth.

You could see the war in him, the desire to look away, to retreat, to salvage what remained of his composure. But his eyes lingered on the curve of your lips, on the slight, inviting part of them, before he wrenched his gaze back to yours with an effort that was almost violent.

The fury in his restraint was far more gratifying than any confession might have been.

“You are making sport of me,” he said.

There. As close as he could come.

You tilted your head, letting your hair slide across your shoulder. “Am I?”

He wanted to rebuke you. He wanted to leave. He wanted, perhaps most of all, for you to have enough mercy to stop forcing him to name the thing neither of you were supposed to know.

But mercy had never been among your favourite virtues.

“I had thought,” you said, letting the words drift, “that I merely summoned my husband’s cousin to ask why he has begun treating me as though I carry some illness. As though proximity to me might stain his honour.”

“You should not summon me at all.” His voice was low, threaded with something that might have been desperation.

“Because you dislike my company?”

He did not answer. He could not say yes. It would be false. He could not say no. It would be ruinous. Poor, pretty Ser Gwayne.

At last, he said, “Because it is unwise.”

Unwise. Not wrong. Not forbidden. Only unwise, as though the sin lay in the risk of discovery rather than in the act itself.

Then, very slowly, you smiled. “Then I shall try to be wiser,” you said. The softness of your voice made the lie almost beautiful.

Gwayne stared at you. He stood there, caught between the door and the desk, between duty and longing, and you could see the precise moment when he understood that you would not relent.

You turned away first, breaking the spell. You returned to your desk, the wood smooth and cool beneath your palms, and picked up the folded letter as though the matter had reached its natural conclusion.

Only then, having taken what you wanted from him did you permit him the dignity of escape. “You may go now, Ser Gwayne.”

He remained there for another moment. You did not look back, but you felt him. His anger. His restraint.

Then he bowed. “My lady.”

The words were courteous. His voice was not. You listened to his steps recede. Then the quiet pull of the door as he closed it behind him. Only once he was gone did you allow yourself to smile properly.

So.

He could be made to beg.

Gwayne had come to the conclusion several days ago that the Lady of Oldtown might be the wickedest woman alive.

It was a monstrous thought to have about his cousin’s wife.

It was also becoming increasingly difficult to disprove.

He had known you for years in the vague, ordinary manner of family by marriage. Lord Ormund’s wife. Lady Hightower. The mother of the heir. A woman of excellent birth and composed manners who inhabited the Hightower as naturally as the old stone itself.

You had been beautiful, certainly. He had never been blind. But your beauty had belonged to the room in the same manner as polished silver, carved marble, costly tapestries, and all the other fine things arranged around Ormund’s life.

A pleasant, distant ornament, admired without being touched.

Months ago, before he left for King’s Landing, you had treated him as little more than another ornament in your husband’s household. A kinsman to greet. A knight to thank. A man to whom courtesy was owed and nothing more.

Now, when you looked at him, the world tilted.

It vexed him. You vexed him.

Worse still, he could not escape you.

You were everywhere.

In the training yard, seated beneath the arcade with wine and fruit at your side, watching him as though he had been placed there for your private amusement.

In the gardens, walking slowly beneath the cypress shade. The way you said his name, Gwayne, drew out the syllables like honey, letting them rest on your tongue a moment longer than necessary. The way you touched your own throat when you spoke to him, fingers trailing along the column of your neck as though you were showing him where you wanted his mouth.

At supper, beside Ormund, where you did not need to speak to him at all.

That was perhaps the worst of it.

By day, he could at least remove himself. By night, he was made to sit across from you at his cousin’s table and endure the unbearable intimacy of being observed in plain sight.

Ormund would speak. Daeron would listen with patient attention. Olyvar would lean sleepily against his mother’s side, his small hand resting on your breast without any of the meaning that haunted Gwayne’s own thoughts.

And you would look at Gwayne.

You looked rarely enough that each glance struck him cleanly. A slow lift of your eyes while reaching for your cup. The deliberate arch of your back as you leaned forward to set down your glass, the fabric of your gown tightening over the curve of your breasts.

Except he always felt it.

He began drinking less at supper. Wine softened resolve. Wine made men slow and foolish. Wine allowed thoughts to loosen from the places where discipline had bound them.

So he watered his cup more heavily, ignored Ormund’s amused remarks about moderation, and kept his hands folded or occupied with his knife whenever you were near.

It did not help. Sobriety only made him more aware. He noticed everything with painful clarity, the colour of your mouth, red and full and slightly parted, as though you were always about to speak, or to kiss.

The measured grace of your hands as you fed some small piece of fruit to Olyvar, and he could not stop imagining what they might feel like wrapped around something else. The faint perfume that followed when you passed behind his chair, a blend of jasmine and something warmer, something that made his mouth water and his groin tighten.

There were evenings when he left the table feeling as though he had survived a battle no one else had seen.

His cock would be half-hard, aching against the seam of his breeches, and he would have to walk carefully, slowly, to keep his body from betraying him.

He would retreat to his chambers and pour cold water from the basin, splashing it over his face, his neck, the burning length of his arousal, praying for relief that never came.

And sleep, which should have offered mercy, became another place where you found him.

In dreams, you were less careful. In dreams, your lips brushed his ear as you whispered things no honourable woman would ever say aloud. 

I want you inside me, Gwayne. I want to feel you stretch me, fill me, ruin me. 

Your hand rested over his bare chest, palm warm against the hard, uneven beat of his heart, and then slid lower, down the plane of his stomach, past the trail of auburn hair, until your fingers curled around the rigid length of his cock.

In dreams, you stroked him slowly, your thumb circling the slick head, your breath hot against his throat while you whispered that you had thought of this, of him, every night since he returned.

Sometimes he saw only fragments, the red tint of your mouth, which left marks all over his body like a brand. The dark sweep of your lashes as you looked up at him on your knees, your lips parted, your tongue tracing the tip of him before you took him into the wet heat of your mouth.

A place no man had any right to imagine you.

And yet he did. He imagined you swallowing him, your cheeks hollowed, your eyes glazed with want, your hands gripping his thighs as you took him deeper, deeper, until he spilled down your throat with a groan that tore from his chest.

He would wake before dawn with his breath unsteady and his body burning with the evidence of thoughts he had not permitted himself while conscious.

The sheets would be tangled around his legs, damp with sweat, and his cock would be painfully hard, slick with the evidence of his shame. He would lie there, staring at the dark ceiling, and feel the phantom warmth of your mouth still lingering on his skin.

Desire had made a traitor of his flesh, and no amount of cold water splashed across his face, no amount of silent, bitter prayers muttered into the dark, seemed able to make it loyal again.

So he went to the Sept.

He went more often than duty required.

In the grey hush before morning, when the candles had burned low and the air smelled of wax, Gwayne knelt before the Seven and forced discipline into himself one prayer at a time.

The chill of the floor seeped through the wool of his breeches, a grim penance against the warmth still lingering from his dreams.

To the Warrior, he prayed for strength, the strength to wrestle his own nature into submission, to look at you without hardening. To the Father, for just judgment, though he knew any fair verdict would condemn him. To the Mother, for mercy, though he did not think he deserved any measure of it.

And to the Maiden, he found himself unable to pray without shame curdling thick and bitter in his throat.

The statue regarded him with downcast stone eyes, her hands folded in a gesture of perfect innocence, and every image of purity she offered turned, wickedly, inexorably, back towards you. The fall of her marble gown became the drape of your silk. The modest curve of her mouth became the full, parted softness of your lips, red and wet and waiting.

The purity of her form dissolved into the memory of your body moving beneath candlelight, the shadow of your nipples against the fabric, the sway of your hips as you walked past his chair.

That was when he knew he was in danger.

Not when you smiled at him across the training yard. Not when he woke hard and aching from dreams of your mouth on his cock. Not even when he began avoiding the very corridors of his own kin’s house like some green boy frightened of the cook’s daughter.

No. He knew he was truly lost when sacred things began to bend around the shape of his temptation.

When the flicker of candle flames recalled the heat in your gaze. When the scent of frankincense mingled too closely with the memory of your perfume.

When the word sin no longer frightened him quickly enough, because it had become inseparable from the thought of you.

He confessed in fragments. Not to a septon. He did not trust his own mouth to form the truth where another man might hear it. Instead, he knelt with his head bowed, and spoke only inside himself, where the gods could see what he was too cowardly to name aloud.

I have entertained impure thoughts. I have looked too long. I have wanted what is not mine.

Even that was not honest enough. Because the whole truth was uglier, heavier, more damning.

He did not merely want a woman who belonged to another man. He wanted you. And some part of him, some shameful, resentful, deeply buried part he had spent years mastering, knew exactly whose wife you were and wanted you more because of it.

Ormund’s ring on your finger. Ormund’s name on your tongue. Ormund’s bed you shared, the sheets where you lay bare and willing for a man who did not deserve the half of what he possessed.

That was where guilt turned into something heavier.

Ormund, who was arrogant, impossible, vain in the way only highly cultivated men managed to be. Ormund, who had corrected him since boyhood, bested him when he could, raged when he could not, and carried every triumph as though it had been written into the order of the world.

Gwayne had learned early how to yield.

A boy could only endure so many games ruined by Ormund’s wounded pride before he understood that victory was not always worth the cost. Let him win. Let him speak. Let him stand taller if standing taller kept the peace.

Cousin. Lord. Blood.

And yet at supper, Ormund sat beside you and spoke as though everything in the room existed by his possession of it. His tower. His table. His wife.

And you looked at Gwayne over the rim of your cup.

That was the thought that made him feel most wretched. Not merely that he wanted you.

That he reveled in being wanted by you. That when Ormund’s attention was elsewhere and your gaze found Gwayne’s across the table, something low and disgraceful in him answered with a surge of savage, possessive triumph.

Not yours, cousin. Mine.

He closed his eyes, and the taste of the communion wine on his tongue was not enough to wash away the imagined sweetness of your mouth.

Gwayne bowed his head and swallowed hard, his hands clasped so tightly before him that the knuckles ached.

He prayed for deliverance, knowing he would not recognise it if it came. He prayed for punishment, knowing he deserved nothing less than the fire of seven hells.

He prayed, most of all, for the strength to stop wanting the very thing he feared, with every desperate, traitorous beat of his heart, he would not refuse if it ever came close enough.

He prayed for a grace he knew he did not possess, while his body, his treacherous, aching, unredeemed body, prayed silently for you.

Supper, again.

There was nothing unusual in that. And yet Ormund, for reasons known only to himself and whatever dark humour had taken root in him that evening, had chosen his cousin as his entertainment tonight.

It had begun lightly enough. A remark about Gwayne’s return from King’s Landing. Some comment on how the capital seemed to drain the vigour from men who were not careful of it.

Gwayne had accepted it with a faint smile and a lowered gaze, giving the answer expected of him.

Then Ormund had continued. That was always the danger with him. A single barb was never enough if the first found flesh.

“I only say it out of concern,” Ormund said, turning his cup slowly between his long fingers. “There is a certain manner men bring back from the Red Keep. A taste for ceremony over substance. They stand straighter, speak less, and begin to mistake silence for depth. Or emptiness for self-control.”

Gwayne’s expression did not change. He sat with one hand resting near his knife, the other pressed flat against his thigh, as if grounding himself in the solid weight of his own bones.

Only the faint colour along his cheekbones, deepening towards his jaw, suggested the words had landed anywhere at all.

“You find me changed, then?” he asked mildly.

“I find you quieter,” Ormund replied. “Though perhaps that is mercy. A man who speaks less reveals less of his want. It is a useful discipline.”

Daeron glanced down at his plate. You remained silent, your hand stroking Olyvar’s back in slow, absent circles.

There were many things your husband enjoyed, but few so much as the sound of a room carefully adjusting itself around his temper. He had a talent for creating discomfort without ever raising his voice.

Ormund looked to Daeron then, drawing the boy in with the careless confidence of a man who knew refusal would feel like disrespect. “You noticed it as well, surely. Ser Gwayne has returned to us a model of piety.”

Daeron’s fingers tightened around his cup. “I had thought my uncle much the same as he was,” he said carefully.

“A loyal answer,” Ormund said, smiling faintly. “Not a perceptive one. But a boy cannot be expected to read the hunger a man hides behind his prayers.”

Daeron’s face warmed.

Gwayne looked at him then, not at Ormund. The look was brief, steadying, almost protective. It seemed to say that none of this mattered, that the boy need not trouble himself trying to answer well.

Ormund leaned back, pleased with himself. “Come now, my Prince. You have spent enough time under my roof to know that affection does not require blindness. Even kin may be assessed honestly.”

Daeron swallowed. “Ser Gwayne is an honourable knight.”

“Honourable, yes,” Ormund allowed, the words falling like a judgement from a high bench. “But honour is a beginning, not an accomplishment. Many dull men are honourable because they lack the imagination to be otherwise. Or the appetite for the pleasures that require a bolder nature.”

Daeron persisted. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the table’s hush like a stone through still water. “I do not think Ser Gwayne dull.”

Ormund’s eyes slid back to him. The boy seemed to regret speaking the moment the words left him, but he did not take them back. You saw the effort it cost him to remain seated properly, to meet Ormund’s attention and not shrink from it.

Gwayne saw it too.

“My prince is kind,” he said, before Ormund could answer. His voice was calm. “But your lord is not wrong to say I am not made for the games of court and chamber. I have always been a simpler instrument.”

Ormund smiled. The smile of a man who had seen his opponent lay down his sword.

“No,” your husband said. “You were always more suited to sword and saddle. There is use in that, of course. Every house requires bodies that can be aimed. Strong hands and a willing back. A sword has no need of pride, only a hand to wield it.”

The servants continued moving as though nothing had happened. A dish was replaced. Wine was poured. Somewhere beyond the windows, the evening wind moved faintly against the stone.

Gwayne gave a small inclination of his head. “As you say, cousin.”

The words were old. Worn smooth from years of use. You looked at Gwayne and wondered how many times he had said them as a boy. How many times he had decided that yielding was simpler.

How many little contests Ormund had been allowed to win so the household might be spared his wounded pride.

Your husband turned to you then.

There was a glimmer in his eyes, subtle but unmistakable, the satisfied gleam of a man who had performed precisely as he wished and now sought the most particular witness.

His wife. Beautiful, silent, seated beside him in green silk that caught the candlelight in slow, liquid shifts, watching with an expression he had not yet managed to read.

“What say you, my love?” Ormund asked. “Am I too severe?”

He wanted you to admire him.

He had taken a man apart in small, polished pieces and now expected you to praise the elegance of the blade. You looked at him for a long moment. Long enough for the silence to grow heavy with the weight of what he was not hearing.

Ormund waited, his mouth faintly curved, ready to be indulged.

Across the table, Gwayne did not move. He stared down at his cup as though your answer had nothing to do with him.

Daeron’s gaze remained fixed on his plate, a flush creeping up from his collar.

You stroked Olyvar’s hair once, the soft strands slipping through your fingers like silk, then lifted your wine.

“I think,” you said at last, “that you always know precisely how much severity a room will tolerate.”

Ormund’s smile sharpened, pleased before he understood you fully. Then something in his expression cooled by a fraction, a tightening at the corners of his mouth, a flicker of recognition that he had not been praised but measured.

You took a slow drink. The wine was warm on your tongue.

Gwayne’s eyes lifted.

They met yours across the table, and for a breathless instant, the room fell away. There was only that look, before he lowered his gaze once more.

Ormund studied you over the rim of his own cup, some private irritation passing like shadow behind his face. But there were servants in the room, and Daeron at the table, and his sleeping son tucked against your side. So he did not press you.

Instead, he gave a soft, dismissive hum.

“A wife’s answer,” he said.

You lowered your cup, the ceramic clicking softly against the wood. “Naturally. I am told I am very accomplished at being one.”

Daeron did not dare look at you.

Gwayne did. This time, he failed to hide it.

You held his gaze across the table, your face calm, your pulse strangely awake beneath your skin. There was no smile this time. Only the plain, silent acknowledgement that you had seen what Ormund had done to him. And that you had not partook.

Ormund resumed speaking before the quiet could thicken beyond his control, turning the conversation towards the rebuilding of some minor sept outside the city.

And supper ended without further incident.

That was to say, no one raised their voice, no cup was overturned, no servant was sent scurrying from the room with instructions to summon anyone of consequence.

Ormund rose from the table satisfied with himself, as he so often did, and excused himself to attend to some letters that apparently required the grave intervention of his intellect.

Daeron slipped away soon after, his shoulders dropping as he crossed the threshold. Olyvar had long since been carried to his bed, heavy-eyed and half-asleep against your shoulder before his nurse came to collect him.

You remained a little while longer.

Only when the servants began clearing the last of the cups, did you finally rise and leave the solar. The halls of the Hightower were cooler at night, the old stone holding the memory of the sea wind even when the windows were shuttered.

You had nearly reached the turn towards your personal chambers when you saw him.

Ser Gwayne stood near one of the tall arched windows, half in shadow, his hand braced lightly against the stone ledge as he looked out over the city below. Beyond the glass, the lights of Oldtown glittered like scattered embers, and the distant spire of the Starry Sept rose against the dark sky.

For a moment, neither of you spoke.

Then he straightened.

“My lady.”

You looked at him carefully in the dim torchlight. The humiliation from supper had not left him. His face was composed, but there was a tiredness around his eyes, a thinness to his mouth. A man who had endured insult after insult without allowing any of them the dignity of visible injury.

“You do that often,” you said.

Gwayne’s gaze moved to yours. “My lady?”

“Allow him to make sport of you... to bully you.”

Gwayne went still, the last of his polite greeting draining from his face like water through sand. “My cousin does not bully me,” Gwayne said.

You nearly smiled at the choice of denial. The way he said it, the lie worn smooth by repetition.

“No. Of course not. Lord Ormund is far too cultivated for anything so plain.” You let your eyes drift towards the dark window. “He merely cuts, and waits to see who is polite enough to bleed quietly.”

Gwayne’s mouth tightened. The muscle in his jaw jumped once, a small betrayal of control. “You need not defend me.”

“I did not.”

His eyes narrowed, exhaustion and something sharper. “Then why—?”

“My husband asked me a question,” you said, your voice soft and even. “I answered.”

Gwayne looked away first.

In profile, the resemblance between him and Ormund was clearer, the same noble blood shaped differently, Ormund severe and ornamental, Gwayne cleaner, warmer, made dangerous by the very effort he took to be good.

After a moment, he gave a quiet, humourless breath.

“Why do you care?”

There it was. Not accusation at first. Weariness. Frustration. Something close to embarrassment that you had seen too much.

You took a step nearer, unhurried. “Because I prefer you.”

Gwayne’s head turned back to you. For one suspended moment, the words seemed to pass through him without finding a place to settle. And you watched the slow process of their meaning sinking into his skin like water into thirsty ground.

Then weariness hardened into anger so quickly you almost felt the air shift with it.

“You should not say such things.”

“Why?”

“You know why.” His voice was low, rough at the edges. “You are married.”

“I am aware.”

“This is not some idle game.”

“No?” You let the word linger, arching your brow just enough to catch the torchlight.

“No.” He stepped closer then, not enough to threaten, but enough that you felt the heat of his temper more keenly than before. “Whatever amusement you find in this, whatever pleasure you take in provoking me, it is sin. It is dishonour. It is adultery.”

You watched him, unmoved. The word hung in the air like a bell that had been struck and was still trembling.

“We have committed no adultery,” you said softly, your voice dropping to a murmur that seemed to brush against his skin. “Not yet.”

Gwayne stared at you.

The silence after that was almost violent. His breath came shallow, his chest rising and falling beneath the fine wool of his doublet.

His throat moved once, and you had the sudden impression that every prayer he had ever spoken had risen in him at once and found no answer strong enough to silence the want curling in his gut.

He looked appalled by you. By himself. By the fact that you had taken the ugliest word he possessed and handled it as though it were merely a door neither of you had opened.

“Do not,” he said, but his voice cracked on the second word.

He was angry. Humiliated. Aroused. You could see each one warring through him, as they bled into each other, staining his composure, making his breath come faster.

“You should return to your chambers,” he said, but the words were barely audible now.

“You should stop telling me what I ought to do.”

His breath left him through his nose, a sharp, frustrated sound that was almost a groan. Anyone might turn the corner. A servant, a guard, Ormund himself. Gwayne was surely thinking the same thing. Still, he did not move.

You lifted your hand and touched his chest. Your palm settled over the front of his doublet, light enough to be refused, deliberate enough that refusal would require movement.

The fabric was warm from his body, fine and smooth beneath your fingers. Beneath it, you felt the solid wall of his chest, the hard muscle tensing at your touch.

His breath caught.

Beneath the fine cloth, his body went rigid. You felt the hard shape of him, the held breath, the living warmth beneath all that piety. The heat of his skin seemed to seep through the layers, reaching for yours.

His eyes dropped to your hand. Then, suddenly, his fingers closed around your wrist.

It was the first time Gwayne had touched you as a man rather than a courtier offering courtesy. His grip was firm and warm, the calluses of his palm rough against the soft skin of your inner wrist.

You looked up at him.

His face had changed. The anger was still there, but it had been overtaken by something more dangerous. Want, stripped of all its polite disguises.

His pupils had dilated, the torchlight catching the dark gleam of his eyes. His lips parted slightly, and you saw the quick movement of his tongue wetting them.

He was looking at you now as he had fought not to look for days, with his restraint pulled so taut that one more breath might snap it entirely.

Your wrist remained caught in his hand. Neither of you moved.

Then his gaze fell to your mouth. This time, he did not pretend otherwise. His eyes traced the curve of your lips, the slight parting of them, the shine of moisture where your tongue had touched.

You felt the smallest shift in him before it happened. His grip tightened, his fingers pressing into your pulse point.

His body leaned nearer by a fraction, the space between you shrinking until you could feel the warmth of his breath on your skin. His eyes lifted once to yours, as though searching for some last warning, some final scrap of sense.

You gave him none.

For one wild, breathless instant, you thought he would kiss you.

He would kiss you as the man who had sat across from you at supper and endured your husband’s insults while your gaze rested on the bruise of his pride. He would kiss you as the man who had prayed against wanting you and failed.

His mouth came close enough that you felt the warmth of his breath, the faint brush of air across your lips. His chest pressed against your hand, the rapid beat of his heart hammering against your palm.

Then he stopped.

A muscle jumped in his jaw, tight and hard as a bowstring. His eyes closed briefly and when they opened again, something cold and brutal had returned to them. The hunger was locked away, and in its place stood a fortress.

He released your wrist as though it had burned him.

You remained very still, your hand falling slowly back to your side, the memory of his calloused palm scorched into your skin.

Gwayne stepped away, putting cold stone between you.

“You shame yourself,” he said, his voice low and rough, “And you would have me drown in that shame with you.”

The words struck cleanly, a blade drawn across the softest part of your pride. For a second, there was no sound but the faint hiss of the nearest torch and the ragged sound of his breathing, quick and shallow as a hunted thing.

Then heat rose beneath your skin, not the sweet warmth of desire, but the bitter burn of humiliation. You had offered him the victory of your nearness, the scent of your skin, the softness of your mouth beneath his.

And then he had chosen to rebuke you as though he had not been one breath from proving himself no better than the rest… as though his own cock had not been stiff with the very sin he now condemned.

“Do not flatter yourself, Ser Gwayne.” Your voice emerged smooth and cold. “Do not mistake a moment’s curiosity for a need I am desperate to repeat.”

His expression flickered. Shock. Shame. Something raw and wounded beneath.

“You must not speak to me so again,” he said, but the authority had drained from it, leaving only a plea and a warning tangled together.

Your smile vanished.

Something in Gwayne’s face shifted when he saw it, some belated understanding that he had passed from guilt into insult.

And that you, unlike the gods he prayed to every night, were not inclined towards mercy. You stepped back. This time, he was the one who looked unsettled, his hand lifting an inch as though to reach for you before he caught himself.

“Then you shall be relieved to know I have no reason to remain here.” Your voice had gone cool enough to frost the stone between you, to freeze the very heat you had stoked between his thighs. “I ought to return to my husband. He will not turn from what I offer.”

Gwayne flinched. The mention of Ormund, a lash across his conscience.

You gathered your skirts and turned from him, anger carrying you before pride could be made to limp behind it. You did not look back. Not once.

Let him stand there with his honour. Let him pray over the taste of almost. You had offered him the edge of something exquisite, and he had chosen to bleed himself on restraint rather than fall into the sweetness of your body.

Very well, you would return to Ormund.

And Ser Gwayne Hightower could choke on whatever holy comfort he found in that.

For the first three days, Gwayne told himself he had been granted mercy

He woke each morning with the ghost of your scent still tangled in the linen and the shameful, persistent stiffness of his cock beneath the sheets. The remnant of dreams so vivid they left him breathless and aching. Dreams of your mouth. The weight of your thigh over his hip.

He punished his body to quiet his mind.

He rode until his thighs burned and the saddle rubbed him raw, forcing exhaustion into his bones so that sleep might come without your face behind his eyelids.

He sparred until sweat darkened his tunic and the ache in his shoulders became something pure, something that had nothing to do with the memory of your skin beneath his hand.

He prayed in the sept until his knees bruised on the cold stone, begging the Mother and the Maiden to scour your image from his thoughts.

It did not work.

By the fourth day, the truth cracked through his ribs like a splintered lance. Your silence was not mercy. It was the most exquisite punishment you could have devised against him.

Because he had spent every hour organising himself around the task of resisting you. The war had given his days shape. 

Do not look at her mouth. Do not imagine the weight of her breast in your palm. Do not let your voice soften when you speak her name. Do not think of her cunt… warm, wet, waiting for a husband who does not deserve it.

Every moment had possessed its own private battle. Then, suddenly, the siege was lifted. The enemy had withdrawn behind her walls. And he was left standing on the empty field with his sword drawn, looking like the greatest fool in the Seven Kingdoms.

He became a hound scenting the air for a master who had locked him out.

At supper, you starved him. When courtesy compelled a greeting, your voice emerged smooth and cool as river-stone.

“Ser Gwayne.” No honeyed edge. No secret sliding of your gaze down the length of his body.

“My lady,” he answered, and the effort of keeping his voice level made his jaw ache.

It made his throat tight with the effort of pretending he did not want to drag you from that chair and take you against the nearest wall.

Then you turned away.

You looked at Ormund. You laid your hand on Ormund’s arm. You smiled at him. It should have relieved him, this withdrawal. Seven above, he had begged for it.

Had he not gone to the sept with his hands clasped too tightly, praying for the strength to remove you from his thoughts? Had he not rebuked you in the corridor with every scrap of honour left to him?

You were doing exactly what decency demanded.

And it was ruining him.

By the third supper, he felt the absence of your gaze like a physical deprivation. He had condemned that gaze so fiercely when he possessed it. He had called it temptation. He had called it wickedness.

Now, without it, he felt like some poor living thing dragged from the sun, withering in the cold. That thought shamed him nearly as much as the dreams.

You were cruel, Gwayne decided. No woman could do what you had done by accident.

No woman could spend weeks drawing a man’s desire out from beneath his armour, teaching his body to answer yours like a well-strung lute, and then step back into the safety of cold courtesy as if she had merely been practicing a dance.

As if his prayers, his shame, his despair had been nothing more than an entertainment that had briefly failed to please you.

But the true poison in the cup was Ormund.

Gwayne had endured his cousin all his life. Ormund’s pride. His theatrical displeasures. The exquisite little humiliations dressed as wit. That was familiar territory. Irritating, yes. Often humiliating. But known.

Now, however, he found himself aware of Ormund in ways he had never permitted himself before.

Aware of how often Ormund addressed you, seeking your ear. Aware of the way your husband’s hand rested at the back of your chair. Aware of how Ormund sought your approval with a subtle, wheedling persistence that should have been laughable.

It was not laughable.

Because Gwayne watched you lean into that touch. Watched you offer Ormund the attention that he was dying for. He imagined Ormund in your chambers. He imagined your husband’s hands on your skin, his mouth on your throat, his body moving over yours in the dark.

One evening, Ormund spoke at length about some carved screen he had commissioned for the lower hall. He described the quality of the wood, the way the artisan had coaxed the figures from the surface like peeling back a lover’s gown.

He praised the cleverness of the design, the interlacing vines and hidden beasts, and then, with that familiar curl of his lip, dismissed the inferior works of other houses. He performed. He always performed.

And though half the room might have been spared by a merciful collapse of the ceiling, you listened. Not with affection, Gwayne could see that plainly enough. You did not adore Ormund. But you indulged him.

You tilted your head at the correct moment. You gave him a faint smile over your wine, lips parting just enough to wet the rim of the cup. You offered, in that smooth voice, exactly enough admiration to satisfy him.

“It is finely chosen,” you said. “You have always had a good eye for ornament.”

Ormund’s face warmed with pleasure, his chest puffing slightly as he reached for your hand where it rested near his plate. He lifted it to his lips, a slow kiss to your knuckles.

Gwayne wanted to be the one holding your hand. He wanted to feel your pulse beneath his thumb, wanted to taste the salt of your skin on his tongue. He looked down at his plate instead. He hated himself for that too. Hated, most of all, the vile little thought that came again before he could stop it, curling through his mind like smoke from a censer,

She does not want him.

It brought him no peace. Only more shame. Because you might not want Ormund, but you sat beside him. You wore his house colours. You bore his name. You had borne his son, had given that smug, undeserving man a child from your own womb.

When the household looked at you, they saw Lady Hightower, Lord Ormund’s wife. And still, when you laughed softly at something Ormund said, a throaty sound that made Gwayne’s sack ache, he felt betrayed.

By the next supper, he was no better.

You arrived late, though not so late as to be remarked upon. Ormund looked up first, displeasure prepared and then softened, as it often did, by the sight of you. His eyes trailed over your gown, the low cut of the bodice, the way the fabric clung to the swell of your breasts.

Olyvar brightened at once and reached for you when you passed behind his chair, and you bent to kiss your son’s head.

Gwayne looked at his cup. He told himself not to look again.

Then Ormund said your name.

Not sharply. Merely summoning your attention to some matter beside him. You leaned closer to your husband, one hand resting lightly against the table, close enough that your fingers brushed his. Gwayne saw the way his cousin’s hand turned, palm up, inviting yours to rest within it. He saw you place your hand in Ormund’s.

He felt the movement like a hand closing around his throat.

He looked up despite himself. Then, as though feeling Gwayne’s gaze across the table, your eyes lifted. At last.

For one breath, you looked at him. Only a cool acknowledgement, as one might grant a man whose presence was expected and uninteresting. Then you returned your attention to your husband.

The pain of it was so precise it almost steadied him. A clean, sharp blade slipped between his ribs. Yes, he thought, staring down at his untouched wine, his jaw tight, his throat dry.

Wickedest woman alive.

Your existence must have driven him to madness. There was no other sensible explanation. No other defence for why, after a week of praying against you, he had written a note with his own hand and left it in your solar.

He had not trusted a servant with it. The thought alone had sickened him. No. If disgrace was to be invited, he had at least possessed the miserable dignity of delivering the invitation himself.

The note had been brief. Painfully so.

My lady, If you would grant me a private word after supper, I shall await you in my chambers. Ser Gwayne Hightower

A private word. What a cowardly phrase. What a polished little lie. What he wanted was not words.

He did not know what he wanted from you. Explanation, perhaps. Some answer for why you had made a ruin of his thoughts and then withdrawn as though he had ceased to amuse you. Or comfort, though the shame of desiring comfort from you nearly made him crush the parchment in his hand.

Perhaps he wanted you to look at him. That was the worst possibility. That he had summoned his cousin’s wife to his chambers after supper because he could no longer bear being deprived of her gaze.

By the time the meal ended, Gwayne was certain he had made a catastrophic mistake. By the time he reached his chambers, he was certain of very little.

He paced like a condemned man. The room was orderly, as it always was. Nothing in the chamber suggested sin. Nothing in it looked capable of holding you. And yet the air felt altered because he was waiting for you inside it.

Gwayne stopped before the small polished mirror and immediately despised himself for doing so. Still, he adjusted his collar. Then smoothed his hair. Then did it again. The ridiculousness of it struck him with almost physical force. He was a grown man. Years your senior, no less.

He turned away from the mirror. Then turned back once more, his fingers brushing the front of his breeches where the fabric had begun to tent, pressing himself flat in a futile attempt at composure.

“Seven preserve me,” he muttered.

A knock came at the door.

His heart stilled. For one absurd moment, he thought of not answering, of letting the note remain unanswered and the shame remain private. But his body moved before cowardice could complete the thought. His hand found the latch.

He opened the door. And for a moment, Gwayne forgot every carefully prepared word.

You stood in the corridor, dressed for the night, or near enough to it to undo him utterly. A pristine pale nightgown showed beneath a robe fastened at your waist, the fabric modest in shape and devastating in implication.

The thin linen clung to the swell of your breasts, and he could see the dark shadow of your nipples beneath, the way the cloth dipped to follow the curve of your ribs.

Your hair was loose over your shoulders, freed from the pins and ornaments that usually made you Lady Hightower before the court. In the softer glow, you looked less like an apparition than something far more tempting.

Your brow lifted slightly. The movement drew his eyes to the arch of it, the line of your jaw, the soft parting of your lips. “You summoned me, Ser Gwayne.”

The coolness in your voice bit deeper than accusation might have done.

He stepped aside without trusting himself to speak.

You entered with a calm that felt obscene given the hour. Your eyes moved once around his chambers, taking in the bed, the devotional candle burning low near the window. A slow, faint smile touched your mouth, and he watched the way your lips curved. “How improper.”

The words were quiet. Almost idle.

Gwayne closed the door. The sound seemed too loud, a thud that echoed, sealing the two of you inside.

“You came,” he said. His voice was rougher than he intended.

You turned towards him, the loose spill of your hair shifting over your robe. “You called.”

His hands closed briefly at his sides before he forced them open. He could see the outline of your thighs through the linen, the shadow between your legs where the fabric fell in a soft V.

“I did.”

Gwayne could feel his restraint fraying in real time. The fabric of his breeches grew damp at the tip as a bead of precum leaked out.

You looked at him for a moment, then allowed your gaze to drift once more to the devotional candle. “Did I interrupt your prayers?”

That was when something in him finally broke. “You should not mock prayer.” His voice came out harsh, the words bitten off.

Your eyes returned to him, mild as ever. “I merely asked a question.”

“You know what you asked.” He took a step closer, then stopped himself, his fists clenching at his sides.

“And you know why you sent for me,” you replied.

Gwayne stared at you, and all at once the week rose inside him… every sleepless night, every wet dream, every prayer he had tried to drown you in. It surged up from his gut, and hardened his voice into something ragged.

“You are cruel,” he said.

Your expression barely changed, but something sharpened, a glint of satisfaction. “Am I?”

“Yes.” The word left him too quickly, too raw, and with it came the rest. “You have made a sport of me from the moment I returned. You looked at me over the supper table, and every look was a promise you never meant to keep. You smiled, knowing exactly how it tightened my breeches. You whispered your little meanings beneath every harmless word, and when I would not give you what you wanted, you withdrew as though I were nothing.”

You watched him with a stillness that made him angrier. The quiet composure of a cat watching its prey exhaust itself.

“You do not get to look surprised,” he said, his voice trembling now with the effort of restraint. “Not with me. You know exactly what you have done to me.”

“I have done very little, Ser Gwayne.”

The title, in that voice made something in him snap.

“Little?” He stepped away from the door, unable to remain still, his boots heavy on the stone. “You have bewitched my mind. You have tainted every prayer I offer until the words turn to ash on my tongue. You have brought shame into the sept with me. I kneel before the Mother and the Maiden and find your face, your body, beneath the robes of every goddess.”

Your lips parted faintly. The smile on your face brightened. Your nipples pressed visibly against the thin fabric of your gown. In interest.

Gwayne saw it, and it unsteadied him worse than outrage could have. “You are pleased,” he said, the words hollow. “Gods help me, you are pleased to hear this.”

You lowered your lashes for a moment, but not quickly enough to hide the triumphant glimmer there. “I am listening.”

“No. You enjoy tormenting me.”

You took one slow step closer. Gwayne went still. His whole body locked, every muscle taut.

“My poor Ser Gwayne,” you said, so gently it felt like mockery wearing silk. “Have I truly made you suffer so?”

Your gaze dropped deliberately to the front of his breeches, where the straining fabric left nothing to the imagination. A slow, knowing smile touched your lips. “It seems you are suffering even now.”

His jaw tightened hard enough to ache. “Do not.”

Your face softened into innocence. “Do not what?”

He looked at you then and hated how beautiful you were. Hated that his fury had brought a glow to your face and pleasure to your eyes. “You know.”

“I am afraid you must be plainer.”

He could hear the provocation in it, the demand for more.

“You want me to say it?” His voice rose before he could stop it. “You want me to stand here and confess that I have thought of your mouth wrapped around my cock for nights on end? That I have woken with your name caught behind my teeth and my seed hot on my belly? That I cannot hear Ormund speak of you as his wife without wanting to silence him with my fist and and bend you over the nearest surface?”

He took another step, then stopped himself, fists clenched so hard the tendons stood out. “You have made me faithless. You have made me resent my own blood. You have made me want sin, and worse, you made me miss it when you took it away..”

For the first time, you did not immediately answer. The quiet pleased him and terrified him in equal measure. You stood close enough now that the heat of your body reached his. Then you smiled.

Triumphant.

“You missed me.”

Gwayne stared at you. That was all you had taken from it. Not his guilt. Not his horror. Not the vile, glorious wreckage he had laid at your feet. You missed me. His anger returned so swiftly it nearly steadied him. “You are impossible.”

You came nearer. Slowly, as though approaching something wounded enough to bite. “You hate that you want this,” you murmured.

Gwayne’s breath altered. He felt it betray him, the way his chest rose and fell too quickly.

“Say I am wrong,” you whispered, your lips so close now that he could almost taste the words.

He said nothing. The denial died in his throat, strangled by the sight of your lips. You lifted your hand. It trembled, a tiny flaw in your perfect composure that sent a thrill through him.

Gwayne caught your wrist before you could touch him.

His fingers closed around the delicate bones, the soft skin. Your pulse hammered wildly against his thumb. He felt it. You looked down at his hand around you, then back up at him. The satisfaction simmering in your face became unmistakable.

He had meant to stop you. Instead, he was holding you.

Your voice came low, a velvet knife against his raw nerves. “There you are.”

Gwayne released you as though waking from a fever. He stepped back, and the cold air that rushed between you was a cruelty he had not deserved but accepted like penance. You remained where you were, unmoved, unashamed. Your eyes were bright with victory.

He hated you then. The hatred was a hot, venomous thing in his chest.

“You should leave,” he said.

For a moment, you only stared at him.

Then the pleasure left your face. Like a curtain drawn back from a colder room. Your mouth settled into a hard, disdainful line. Whatever warmth had gathered between you curdled instantly into something proud and wounded, and Gwayne knew that he had struck not your conscience but your vanity.

“How tedious you are,” you said, the words dipped in vitriol.

His breath remained uneven, ragged.

“You summon me to your chambers like a man half-mad with rut,” you continued, voice low and cutting, your gaze dropping deliberately to the hard outline straining against his breeches. “Accuse me of bewitching you, speak of sin and ruin as though I held a knife to your cock, and now I am to leave because your courage—”

You let out a soft, cruel laugh.

“—has failed you again.”

His jaw clenched so hard it ached. “You should never have come. I made a mistake.”

You laughed softly then, but there was no amusement in it.

“Yes,” you said. “you made a mistake. You thought you could look upon the fire and not be burned.”

Then you turned.

You let your hair spill across your back, let the silk of your robe drape over the curve of your hip. At the door, your hand touched the frame. You paused. Without looking back, you delivered the killing stroke.

“My husband awaits me in our bed, Ser Gwayne. He does not pray for permission. He does not tremble. If you do not want me, Ormund surely will.”

The words hit him like a blade sliding between his ribs. Then something in him snapped. It was the last thin thread of his obedience. His piety. His honour. His fear of the Seven. All of it fell away in a single, hot rush.

Gwayne crossed the room before sense could catch him. His hand closed around your arm and he wrenched you back towards him with such force that you stumbled against his chest.

Then he was kissing you.

There was no gentleness in the first collision. None. Only the brutal, devouring hunger he had been choking down since the first night you looked at him across Ormund’s table.

For half a heartbeat, you went still. Testing him. Then you yielded. A soft, satisfied sound, a hum of pure approval, escaped your throat and went through him like a razor dipped in honey.

Your mouth opened beneath his, warm and eager, and Gwayne felt the last of his restraint shudder out of him in a ragged groan against your lips. Your arms rose around his neck, drawing him closer with such shameless welcome that he actually did groan, a broken sound of pure, animal relief.

You did not resist. Your tongue swept against his, you let him plunder your mouth and then answered it as though you had been waiting for him to stop pretending he was anything better than this.

A sinner and a thief of another man’s wife.

His hands found your waist. The silk of your robe was smooth beneath his palms, but the body beneath it was no dream at all. He slid one hand lower, gripping the curve of your hip, then the full swell of your ass, pulling you hard against the aching length of him.

You gasped into his mouth and pressed closer, your fingers tangling in his hair, nails scraping against his scalp, your thighs pressing together against his.

Gwayne lost the ability to think in anything but fragments of pure, burning sensation, the wet heat of your mouth, the taste of wine, the soft, pleased catch in your throat when he kissed you harder, when his teeth grazed your tongue, when his hips pressed forward in an involuntary thrust, grinding himself against the soft cradle of your thighs.

He had imagined this too many times and not once had imagination been merciful enough to prepare him for this. Reality was a thousand times worse.

He could not stop. Even when some distant, horrified remnant of himself commanded him to pull away, his body refused. His mouth moved over yours again and again, harder, wetter, more desperate, as though if he devoured you thoroughly enough, he might pass the torment back into you and be free of it.

But you only held him closer. You moaned against his mouth, your nails digging into his shoulders, your body arching into his. You accepted his ruin like tribute.

He kissed you until he seemed to remember, all at once, that breathing was required of mortal men.

Only then did he break away. Barely.

His forehead came to rest against yours, the bridge of his nose brushing the tip of your own, his breath hot and uneven against your damp, parted lips.

For several moments, neither of you spoke. The only sounds were the ragged pull of his breathing, the soft rustle of silk as your body shifted against his.

Your lips were flushed from him. The sight of them, of his work upon your mouth, nearly undid him all over again. “Why?” he asked.

The word came out rougher than he intended. He closed his eyes briefly, his forehead still pressed to yours, his hands still gripping your waist.

“Out of every man who would fall over himself for one smile from you. Every knight, every lord, every fool at court who would crawl if you asked it of him.” His voice roughened further. “Why me?”

You lifted one hand from his neck and touched the side of his face, your thumb resting lightly near the sharp line of his cheekbone, tracing the faint stubble there with a slowness that made his breath catch.

He held utterly still beneath it, a hawk frozen by the weight of a gaze.

It was almost tender. Almost.

“Just to see if I could.”

Gwayne opened his eyes. For a moment, the words cut so cleanly he could not feel the wound. To see if I could.

Not because you had suffered with wanting him. Not because you had prayed against him, dreamed of him, hated yourself for the shape of him in your thoughts. Not because you had lain awake at night, hand between your thighs, imagining the weight of his body on yours. Not because he was good. Not because he was loved.

Because you had looked at him and wondered whether he could be made to break. And he had.

The pain of it should have steadied him. It should have returned his anger, his dignity, some sharp fragment of self-preservation.

Instead, he looked at you and thought, with a despair so complete it nearly became peace, that he would cut his own heart from his chest and lay it in your hands if you asked him sweetly enough.

How cruel you were. How plainly, exquisitely cruel. And still, beneath your gaze, he felt chosen. Blessed, almost. The blasphemy of that thought should have driven him to his knees before the Seven. Instead it kept him standing there with you in his arms.

“I knew it,” you whispered, your voice a low, velvet purr. A faint smile touched your swollen lips. “I knew you wanted me.”

Gwayne’s grip tightened at your waist, his fingers digging into the silk of your robe. “You are wicked.”

“Yes.”

“You are vain.”

“Yes.”

“You are faithless.”

Your smile softened, but only at the edges, a flicker of something almost tender. “And yet.”

And yet. And yet he wanted you. And yet his cousin’s wife stood in his chambers with her arms around his neck, looking at him as though all his honour had only made the conquest sweeter.

Gwayne closed his eyes for one brief, agonised moment.

He despised you. He loved you.

The two truths struck together inside him until he could no longer tell which was meant to save him and which was meant to damn him.

His mouth crashed against yours with a force that drove you back a step, his hand sliding from your waist to the small of your back, pressing you hard against him so that you could feel the full, aching length of him, pressed against the soft cradle of your belly.

His hand rose to your jaw, fingers splaying along the delicate bone, thumb pressing against the hinge as he angled your head and kissed you with everything he had tried to bury.

He felt your smile against his lips, the way it softened the kiss even as his tongue plunged deeper. And yet somehow that seemed to upset him more.

His hands slid down your sides, over the curve of your hips, then lower still, palms flattening against the backs of your soft thighs. Without a second thought, he gripped the soft flesh and hauled you up against him, lifting you clean off the floor.

A delighted squeal escaped your throat, quickly swallowed as you wrapped your legs around his waist, your ankles locking behind him.

The shift of your weight pressed the damp, heated core of you directly against his stomach, and he groanedd as the sensation shot a jolt straight to his cock.

The laugh you let out against his lips was breathless, almost musical, “How wild you are with your lady, Ser Gwayne.”

In response, he kissed you rougher. His tongue tangled with yours, wet and demanding, as he walked backwards, one hand gripping the curve of your ass, the other flattened against your spine.

He broke the kiss only to mutter against your mouth, “I wished for respite. And you have granted me none.”

You broke out in an evil smile, your fingers threading through the hair at the nape of his neck, tugging gently. And yet how domestic the two of you must have looked, you cradled in his arms, your thighs locked around his hips. He held you as though you were precious, even as he carried you with long strides toward his bed.

“You cannot blame me for every wicked thought in your head.”

“I can blame you for putting them there,” Gwayne murmured.

Despite his rough handling, he sat you down on the edge of his bed with surprising gentleness. The mattress dipped beneath your weight. He stood over you, chest heaving, hands flexing at his sides as though he was restraining himself from simply tearing the clothes from your body.

You shrugged out of your robe, letting the silk fall from your shoulders in a whisper of fabric. Beneath it, your nightgown clung to every curve, the thin material barely concealing the peaks of your breasts, the sweet swell of your hips.

You looked up at him through your lashes, lips still slick and swollen from his kisses, and he had to resist the urge to drool over you.

“You flatter me,” you hummed.

“I condemn you,” he said.

And yet despite his words, his hands moved to the laces of his vest, pulling them loose with rough, impatient tugs. His chest was bare now, the muscles tensing and relaxing with each ragged breath.

His eyes roamed over you as though this would be the only time he ever saw you like this, as though he was memorising every curve, every inch of skin the candlelight touched.

“With your hands on me?”

Your wit was beyond him. You seemed to take great pleasure in angering him, in mocking him, in watching the war wage behind his eyes. All he could do was lean toward you, his hands finding the soft warmth of your thighs, fingers sinking into flesh as though he meant to anchor himself.

You leaned up to meet him, close enough to feel the heat of his breath.

He murmured, almost hypnotised by your lips once more, his gaze tracing the curve of your mouth, “I have prayed against this.”

“And have the Seven answered?” you whispered, mockingly sweet, your voice a velvet taunt.

Gwayne’s brows furrowed. A muscle twitched in his jaw. The prayer had gone unanswered, of course. And now, with your thighs warm beneath his palms, he knew there was no salvation left for him.

Then, suddenly, he moved.

His hands hooked behind your knees, dragging your legs to the edge of the bed with a rough, decisive pull. You let out a surprised noise as your back hit the mattress, your hair spilling across the pillows. You bent your knees instinctively, parting them slightly, and without prompt, Gwayne’s fingers found the hem of your nightgown.

He began to slide it up your beautiful bare legs.

The silk whispered against your skin, inch by inch, revealing the soft swell of your calves, the tender flesh of your inner thighs. The more skin exposed, the more excited and nervous he became. His eyes moved to lock with yours, pools of warmth, and he wanted to drown in them.

He dragged the nightgown higher, baring your hips, the dip of your belly, the shadowed apex of your thighs. And then he dropped his eyes. Oh gods above. You were bare there as well.

No shift, no smallclothes, no linen between him and the glistening, mouth-watering sight of your cunt. The folds were slick and swollen, and wet, the lips parted as though they had been waiting for him. The candlelight caught the sheen of your arousal, a dewy trail that glistened in the nest of dark curls above.

His throat went dry. His tongue felt thick and useless. What could he say now? He stared, utterly transfixed, his hands frozen on the bunched silk at your waist.

“Say something, Gwayne,”  you breathed, your voice a husky murmur, your hips shifting slightly, an invitation, a taunt. “The Seven have struck you dumb?” 

He swallowed hard, his eyes never leaving the sight of you. When he finally spoke, his voice was a hoarse rasp, “I have no prayers left for this.” 

His thumb moved, almost of its own accord, tracing a featherlight line up the inside of your thigh, stopping just short of where you ached for him. He closed his eyes, a low, tortured groan escaping his lips. Is this what his cousin got to smell every day? 

The thought fanned a flame of dark jealousy in his chest. Ormund was spoiled beyond measure, and he never even knew the treasure he had, the altar he neglected.

He opened his eyes, lifting his gaze to you. You were watching him, bated breath, lips parted, eyes heavy with a hunger that matched his own. You gave him a subtle nod, a silent command that brooked no argument. Your fingers threaded through his hair, a gentle but firm pressure urging him forward.

And who was he to deny his lady?

He dipped his head, and the first stroke of his tongue was a revelation. A slow, flat stripe from the slick, fluttering entrance of your cunt, all the way up to the tight, swollen pearl hidden in its hood. The taste of you flooded his senses, he groaned against you, the vibration making you gasp and arch into his mouth.

“Do you taste it?” you taunted weakly, your voice a broken whisper, pleasure bleeding through the mockery. “The sin on your tongue?”

He pulled back just enough to answer, his lips brushing against your slick inner thigh. “I taste nothing but you. Only you. I have tasted nothing so divine in all my life. This is the only altar I will ever kneel at again.”

He went back in, ravenous now. He licked and sucked, his tongue circling your pearl before flicking it sharply, before flattening and pressing broad, wet kisses against your entire cunt.

He learned you quickly; what made you cry out, what made your hips buck, what made your fingers tighten painfully in his hair. He drove his tongue into you, fucking you with it, lapping at your opening like a man dying of thirst.

Your taste coated his lips, his chin, his cheeks. He was utterly lost, a drowning man who had finally found the ocean he was meant to perish in. He needed more of you. He needed to be inside you in every way possible.

His thumb found your pearl, pressing and circling in time with his tongue, while his other hand fumbled down his own body, his cock aching and hard beneath his breeches, but he denied himself for now.

He needed to taste your peak. He needed to feel it on his tongue. He slid one thick finger into you.

“Oh, fuck…” you moaned, your head thrown back against the pillows.

The heat of you wrapped around his finger, clenching tight, gripping him as if begging him not to leave. He gasped against your cunt, his eyes rolling back. 

“Gods, you are so tight, my lady. How will I ever…” He pushed a second finger in, stretching you carefully, feeling your walls flutter and grip. “How will I ever fit my cock inside you when you squeeze my fingers so sweetly?”

“You will make yourself fit, Gwayne,” you insisted, your nails raking his scalp. “You will fill me until I cannot remember my own name. You will stretch me until I forget the feel of my husband’s cock.”

He groaned, a sound torn from the depths of his chest, and curled his fingers inside you, finding that rough, secret spot that made you scream.

“That’s it, my sweet knight,” you purred, your voice a velvet whip. “Drink from me. This is what you starved for while you knelt in the sept and begged for deliverance. There is no deliverance here. Only me.”

He pulled his mouth away just long enough to answer, his lips slick. “I have never wanted anything the way I want to be buried inside you. To feel you clench around me. To hear you scream my name until your voice breaks.”

He returned to his feast with a desperation that bordered on madness. His fingers pumped steadily, while his tongue was a relentless, flickering fire on your pearl. He was utterly consumed. The world had narrowed to the space between your thighs.

“Gwayne…” you gasped, your inner walls beginning to flutter and clamp around his fingers. “I am so close… I am going to… oh, gods, I am going to—”

But he did not stop. He could not stop. He was drunk on you, starving for you, and the thought of your release flooding his tongue was the only thing that existed in the universe.

Your first peak crashed over you like a wave of fire and lightning. Your body locked up, a sharp, keening cry tearing from your throat as your release gushed over his fingers and into his waiting mouth.

He drank it greedily, his tongue lapping at your pearl, swallowing every drop of your pleasure as though it were the holiest of sacraments.

But he did not relent.

The pleasure was blinding, a sharp, sweet agony, but his tongue kept moving, laving at your oversensitive pearl, his fingers still thrusting inside you, milking you for every last shuddering wave.

“Gwayne!” you gasped, your hands clawing at his hair, trying to pull him away. “Too much… it is too much…!”

He was deaf to it. He was drowning. The overstimulation was unbearable, a fire that burned too brightly, and yet his mouth was relentless, chasing more of your taste.

You had to shove him, your body arching away on the bed, your thighs snapping shut around his head to block him.

“Stop! Please, stop, I cannot—!”

He lifted his head, finally, lips slick and swollen, cheeks flushed, chin glistening with your wetness. His eyes were wild and dark, pupils blown wide with a hunger that was far from sated.

“Did… did I hurt you?” His voice was hoarse, confused, as if he was just waking from a fever dream.

“No…” you panted, your chest heaving, your thighs still trembling from the force of your release. “No, just too much…”

He blinked, realisation dawning slowly. A slow, sinful, utterly satisfied smile spread across his glistening lips.

“Forgive me, my lady. I was lost in you. I could not bear to let you go. I did not know you had crested until you pushed me away.”

He crawled up your body, his hard length pressing against your slick thigh, leaving a trail of your own wetness on your skin as he moved. The rough wool of his breeches scratched against your oversensitive flesh.

“But now…” He lowered his mouth to yours, letting you taste yourself on his tongue. “I fear I must taste that relief for myself. Inside you.”

He pulled back just enough to meet your eyes, his forehead resting against yours, his breath mingling with your ragged pants.

“Tell me you want it. Say the words, my lady. Give me the sin I have prayed against, and I will worship you until the sun rises.”

Once again, that feline smile formed on your lips, slow and wicked, as you drank him in. His flushed state was a masterpiece… sweat beading at his temples, his lips still slick and swollen from his feast, your wetness glistening on his chin like a sacred anointing.

His pure blue eyes stared at you with such naked devotion, that it made your cunt clench around nothing, hungry for the fullness only he could provide.

“I shall never deny you, my love.” 

The words slipped from your tongue like honeyed poison, and you watched the effect take hold. His breath hitched. His pupils, already blown wide, seemed to shatter and reform. That single endearment struck him deeper than any blade.

His pretty blue eyes welled with sudden, unshed tears, glistening in the candlelight. He was trying to master himself, throat working as he swallowed down the emotion that threatened to break him.

You almost pitied the man.

Your hands moved while his heart was still reeling, fingers finding the laces of his breeches. He was so lost in the storm of your words that he did not even notice until your warm palm wrapped around his cock.

The sound he made, a surprised and strangled grunt, was muffled against your mouth as you claimed his lips briefly.

His hips jerked forward, thrusting instinctively into your grip, his breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps. You slid your hand slowly down his length, feeling every ridge, every throb of his pulse against your palm. He was thick, heavy, slick with need already.

Your thumb traced the weeping slit at the tip, spreading the bead of pre-cum across his crown, and he let out a low, guttural groan that vibrated through his entire body.

“Tell me,”  you purred, hand still stroking him, “how often have you dreamt of me?” 

Your finger slid over his slit again, pressing just enough to make him shudder. His words came out rushed, tumbling over each other like a confession torn from a dying man.

“Every night.”  His voice cracked. “Every night you have haunted my dreams. I wake hard and aching, my sheets soaked with the memory of you, my hand wrapped around myself. I have fucked my own palm more times than I can count, imagining it was your cunt, your mouth, your hand…” 

“Every night?” you mocked gently, your grip tightening just enough to make him gasp. “And what did you do in these dreams, my sweet knight? Did you worship me properly? Or did you take me like the hungry beast you pretend not to be?” 

“Both,”  he admitted, his voice raw, his hips twitching as he fought the urge to fuck your fist. “I have been gentle. I have been rough. I have kissed every inch of your skin and I have bent you over every surface I could imagine. But always, always, I end with my cock buried inside you, spilling my seed where it does not belong.” 

You laughed, and began to guide him. Your hand left his cock, and you reached down, spreading your slick folds, positioning the flushed head of his length at your entrance.

“My poor, sinful knight. So full of honour, and yet here you are, ready to defile your cousin’s wife. Tell me, Gwayne, does this make you a traitor? Or a true believer?” 

“I am whatever you want me to be,”  he breathed, his voice pleading. “Just let me in. Please. I beg you.” 

“Beg me,”  you whispered. “Beg me to let you fill me.” 

“Please, my lady, my love, let me inside you. Let me feel you. Let me—” 

But you did not let him finish. You pressed the head of his cock against your entrance, just barely breaching the first ring of muscle, and you held him there, torturing him.

Your words dripped with mockery, each one a sharp barb, “You are so eager to defile me, aren’t you? To spill your seed where your lord has planted his. To claim what is not yours. You are nothing but a common thief, stealing pleasures that were never meant for you.” 

He flinched. The words hit their mark, striking something. His eyes, those beautiful, tear-filled blue eyes, flickered with a flash of pain,and then something darker snapped.

He did not intend to be rough. He had sworn to himself he would be gentle, would worship you, would make love to you with the love you deserved. But your mockery clawed at the raw, bleeding edges of his guilt and his desire, and before he could stop himself, he drove forward.

There was no gentleness to be found.

He slammed into you in one brutal, desperate thrust, burying himself to the hilt in a single, shuddering motion.

The air left your lungs in a sharp, shocked moan, your body arching beneath him, your nails digging into his shoulders as you were stretched and filled beyond anything you had anticipated.

He was thick, and he was deep, and the sudden fullness of him made stars burst behind your eyes.

He froze immediately, horror dawning on his face. His eyes were wide, his breath coming in ragged pants, his body trembling as he realised what he had done.

“I—I am sorry—I did not mean to—”  His voice was a wrecked whisper, his hands gripping your hips, holding himself still, afraid to move. “Forgive me, I swore I would—” 

But you were already clenching around him, your walls rippling and gripping his length, and the sound you made was not a cry of pain.

“Don’t you dare stop,”  you gasped, your legs wrapping around his waist, pulling him deeper. “Don’t you dare be gentle now, Gwayne. You wanted to claim me? Then claim me. Fuck me like the thief you are.” 

He blinked, confusion and relief warring on his face. “But I—” 

“I said fuck me,”  you snarled, your hips grinding against his, your nails raking down his back. “Do not temper yourself. I want to feel you in my bones tomorrow. I want to limp when I walk past my husband.” 

A low, guttural groan rumbled from his chest.

The last shred of restraint crumbled, and he pulled out almost entirely, only to slam back into you with a force that made the bed frame groan.

You cried out, a sound of pure, unadulterated pleasure, and he drove into you again, harder, faster, his hips finding a brutal rhythm.

“Is this what you wanted?”  he rasped, “To be taken like a common whore?” 

“Yes,”  you moaned, your head thrown back, your body bucking against his. “Yes, yes, yes… give me more, Gwayne. Give me all of it.” 

His hand found your throat, pressing just enough to make your vision swim, and he leaned down, his lips brushing your ear, his breath hot and ragged.

“I will ruin you for any other man. I will brand myself so deep inside you that you will feel me for the rest of your life. And when you lie beside your husband, you will think of me. You will clench around him, dreaming of my cock. You will be mine, even if only in these stolen moments.” 

“Yes,”  you breathed, your voice breaking on the word. “Make me yours. Make me forget his name.” 

And he did. He drove into you with a fervour that bordered on madness, his hips slamming against yours as he chased the oblivion of your combined release. He was in absolute heaven, lost to the world, lost to everything but the feel of your cunt gripping his cock.

“I cannot get enough of you,” he gasped against your mouth, his voice ragged. “I need—I need to be closer—”

His hands slid down your flanks, gripping your thighs, pushing them up and back until your knees pressed against your own chest.

The new angle opened you completely, and you gasped at the devastating stretch, the length of him reaching depths you had never felt before, the ridge of his cock scraping against every sensitive inch inside you.

“Seven Hells—Gwayne—” Your voice broke on a moan as he drove deeper, his hips meeting the backs of your thighs with a wet, obscene slap.

“I know,” he groaned, his forehead dropping to yours. “I know. I cannot help it. I need to be inside you. I need to fill you.” His pace quickened, became animalistic. “I need to breed you. I need to leave my seed so deep inside you that you will feel me for days. That he will know what I have done.”

The words sent a thrill through you, “Yes,” you breathed, your nails raking down his back. “Yes… breed me. Fill me. Make me yours.”

He was absolutely lost.

The pious knight, he was nothing now but a creature of pure, ravenous instinct. He fucked you as if he were trying to imprint the shape of his cock into your very flesh. The bed groaned beneath you, the headboard knocking against the stone wall in a frantic rhythm.

And through it all, he could not stop kissing you.

Every thrust was punctuated by a kiss. He kissed your lips, your chin, the corner of your mouth, returning always to your lips as if he was drawing breath from you.

His tongue swept into your mouth, tangling with yours, the kiss deepening as his hips drove harder. He kissed your throat, your collarbone, the swell of your breasts, always returning to your mouth, unable to stay away.

You felt the peak approaching for a second time, the familiar coil tightening low in your belly. “Gwayne,” you gasped against his mouth. “I am going to—I cannot hold—”

His eyes flew open, and the panic in them was raw, “Neither can I,” he grunted, his rhythm stuttering. “I must—I should not—”

He tried to slow, to pull out, his muscles tensing against the instinct to bury himself deeper. The thought of spilling inside you, of leaving the physical proof of his sin, terrified him even as it drove him wild.

But you would not let him. Your legs tightened around his waist, your heels pressing into the small of his back, locking him inside you.

“Do not dare pull out,” you insisted, “I want your seed. I want it deep inside me. Give it to me, Gwayne. Give me everything.”

A broken sound escaped his throat, “You will carry my bastard. Ormund will know. The whole world will know what I have done.”

“They won't,” you whined, your hips grinding against his. “Let Ormund look at the child in my belly and think it his. Let him see me swell with your sin. I want it. I want your child. I want to carry you inside me.”

His control shattered completely. The last frayed thread of restraint snapped. “You will be mine, then. In every way that matters.”

He drove into you one last time, burying himself to the hilt, and you felt his release.

It flooded you, pulsing deep inside your womb, and the sensation of him spilling inside you pushed you over the edge with him. You cried out against his mouth, your body arching, your inner walls clenching around him, milking him.

It felt like an eternity, the two of you locked together, trembling, whispering each other's names into the dark. When it was done, he collapsed against you, his full weight pressing you into the mattress.

His breath was ragged, his body trembling. He felt emptied, exorcised of every demon that had haunted him since the moment he first laid eyes on you.

The silence stretched, broken only by the sound of your mingled breathing. After a long moment, he stirred, lifting his head to look at you. His beautiful blue eyes were wet, his cheeks flushed, his lips swollen from your kisses. He looked utterly undone.

“I did not mean to be so rough,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.

You smiled, tracing the sharp line of his jaw with your fingertip. “I did not want gentle. I wanted you. The beast you hide behind your prayers and your honour.”

“I have no honour left,” he said, but there was no regret in his voice. Only wonder. “I have damned us both.”

“Then let us burn together,” you murmured, and leaned in to press a soft, lingering kiss to his brow.

[lizjournals]

𑣲⋆ modern Maekar Targaryen dating hcs; younger fem reader

cw/tags: mostly fluff, slight angst, no proofread, might be ooc, english isn't my first language

𑣲⋆ maekar would be yearning for a long time before you two start dating and even then, you'll have to take the first step and confess your feelings. Because no matter how much you try hitting on him, he genuinely will be clueless about your actual feelings and think there's no way a young, pretty girl like you would want anything to do with a single father who won't be able to keep up with you. So he won't see the point in asking you out and embarrassing himself and creeping you out.

𑣲⋆ his favorite love language is spending time with you. maekar is a busy man and sometimes fails to find a balance for everything in his life, but being with you gives him some type of motivation that he hadn't realized he was lacking before. He suddenly has more patience for dealing with his children, does actually try to be healthier and takes more breaks from work.

𑣲⋆ . I like to think Maekar was a fan of many rock and alternative bands in his youth (with his no. 1 fav being deftones.)‌ so he'll love taking you to concerts. He'll accuse every other young person who's also there of being posers tho. If your music taste is different from him and you like pop girls, he's gonna be SO annoying about it at first. But after some time and seeing how much you love that type of music he'll get used to it AND even enjoy it a little bit (although he'd never admit it)

𑣲⋆ even if you already know his family, he's still gonna be afraid of you being freaked out by seeing how REALLY chaotic they are. He thinks of himself as a bad father and he doesn't want you to have to deal with his mistakes as a dad when you're so young. He'll try letting you know that you don't have to interact with his kids and you'll have convince him that you don't think he's a failed father and you like spending time with his children, especially with the younger ones. ♡

𑣲⋆ He kinda enjoys pda. He doesn't want others thinking you're his daughter or whatever because of your age gap, so when you're outside together, he always makes sure to either hold your hand or wrap an arm around your waist. He won't do anything too much like a full makeout session in public, but he likes giving you small pecks on your face or lips. He also likes having you on his lap. That's literally one of his favorite things. He wraps an arm around your waist and occasionly kisses your arms or shoulders.

𑣲⋆ his insecurities are gonna be a problem. Maekar truly doesn't understand why you like him and belives he is just a phase in your life and you are gonna get over him sooner or later. He'll be very hesitent to meet your friends and family, for the first few times that you bring up the topic of introducing him to them, he'll find a way to be evasive about it. He's scared that if they met him they'll be weirded out by the age gap and talk you out of dating him.

𑣲⋆ Sharing your location with him is non-negotiable. He'll never stop you from going where ever you want and he trusts you to not put yourself in danger, but still, he's the type of person who's constantly worried and wants to make sure you're safe. He'll also share his location with you if you want

𑣲⋆ dry texter! He's a busy guy and doesn't have much time for texting anyway. He would rather call you instead so he can hear your voice. But after some time and noticing that it makes you happy he starts sending your random selfies but thats also because he likes your compliments.

𑣲⋆ he really really loves being complimented by you. He huffs and puffs and rolls his eyes but he just loves them. If you sit on his lap and call him your handsome man as you kissed his cheek and he immedietly popped a boner. He also loves being called a pretty boy, he'll blush heavily and tell you he's not pretty nor a boy and whole time he's just tuened on.

𑣲⋆ He's a brat. He'll notice it accidentally once that your grip on his arm tightens and you press yourself closer to him when a lady is giving him unnecessary attention and it unlocks something new in him. He won't take it too far but sometimes he'll let ladies give him that extra attention so he can have you act possesive and clingy.

𑣲⋆ he's kinda perfect for gossiping. He doesn't really care about anyone that much but he likes talking to you no matter what the topic is. He says the funniest stuff without realizing and with a straight face

[ratgirl300]

If you are still doing requests

Akotsk guys in an arranged marriages when would they first know that they’re in love and/or when they would say the first ‘I love you’

Do You Love Me?

18+ MDNI

Summary: How would an arranged marriage with the men of AKOTSK start? How do they know they love you?

AN: This was so fun! I love the idea of love growing over time. I want to give credit to @freezedive and their ideas in the comments of this post, inspiring the ideas in Baelor’s part! Also sorry these are taking longer than usual I just moved! and started a new job lol we will be back to my regular posting soon. Anyway please enjoy <3

Warnings: Miscommunication, insecurity, allusions to smut, obsession (mostly Aerion lol)

3.9k Words

Daeron:

Daeron is not excited with the prospect of a wife. It doesn't really have anything to do with you, you’re lovely and bright and everything a lady of your stature should be, but the idea of letting someone else down terrifies him. It's a thousand times worse if he actually likes you. You lean in to whisper a joke about the ostentatious silk doublet of the Lannister heir, and he has to hide his laugh in his goblet. You grab his hand at a particularly violent turn at a tourney, and he can’t help but feel just a little bit stronger.

He goes out of  his way to sabotage your relationship; why would he let you get close if you'll only run when you discover his true nature? Daeron finds himself in brothels, not because he’s interested but because it might make you angry with him. He drinks himself to sleep in taverns, coins and boots stolen off his body. Maybe if you find him repulsive, think him a craven, he won’t have to ever see the look of horror on your pretty features when his insanity comes to light. 

Oh you’re angry all right. He wakes in an alleyway, sun in his eyes and the toe of your boot pushing against his temple. You've got your arms crossed in a huff, brow furrowed, but he can’t help but see you as a deity, a jewel glimmering in the scum of King’s Landing. He’s pleased to see a guard with you, he’s well aware of what can happen in the places he frequents. You kick him again, gentle but enough for him to know he needs to rise. You take him back to the palace, berating him with every step. Does he know how dangerous it is for a Prince to be out on his own? Does he have no respect for you? What would you do if something happened to him? Daeron can’t seem to find it in him to be upset; he can almost see the steam coming out of your ears, but your voice is so captivating and your glare is so beautiful and you care. Care for the dirty, disheveled, drunk of a Prince, enough to stomp out into the city to find him when he didn’t come home. His heart hurts. How is he supposed to let you go now? 

You drag him back to your chambers, slamming the door and ordering the maid to draw a bath. Daeron listens when you tell him to strip, sinking into the hot water. It surprises him when you sit beside the tub, scrubbing his hair and rubbing the soap into his skin. His voice is quiet, hoarse, the first words he’s spoken since you found him:

“You should go.” 

You pause momentarily, hands on his shoulders.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” 

It's your tough love that grounds him. He’s not perfect; he continues to drink, he’s certainly not the Prince he thinks you deserve, but he does try. When you tell him he will join you at tea, he’s pulling himself together enough to find you in the gardens. He's got dark rings around his eyes and a splitting headache, but you look so pleased that he’s there that he finds it in himself to ignore the pain. It's in these moments he forgets he's trying to distance himself. It's selfish, but his heart won’t let him part from you. 

One night in bed you tell him you’ve fallen in love with him.

Daeron’s in your arms, your lips mumbling against his shoulder. He can’t see your face, his back tucked against your chest, but he can feel your soft smile on his skin. Tears well in his eyes, but he wills them to stay put as he turns over. Nose to nose, he searches for any sign of discomfort, of an untruth in your words, but you're looking at him with kinder eyes than he deserves. He kisses you desperately, starving and grabbing at you. He whispers his confession back against your mouth, tears finally falling and wetting your cheeks.  

Maekar:

Maekar is decidedly against the notion of taking a wife. The rebellion is over, he’s come back a hero, and a different man than he was before: physically and mentally. His back aches when he sits for too long, his skin is laced with more scars than he left with, and he carries himself with the weight of a man much older than he really is. So when his mother insists on a political match, he decides he won’t be sugarcoating himself for some prim lady. The crassness, the brutality, the cold stare and hard set of his brow; they'd given him the esteem of his fellow soldiers on the battlefield, surely they would give him an advantage in his marriage. 

Cut to him seeing you across the garden for the first time; you’re speaking earnestly with Myriah, sparkling in the afternoon sun, and he forgets, momentarily, how to breathe. It's not until Baelor claps him on the back with a laugh that he realizes he’s staring. He quickly squares his shoulders, tilting up his chin in an attempt to seem, what, princely? Maekar doesn’t really know, but his feet are moving him toward you and he’s hoping to the gods that his face isn’t red. Baelor watches with a fond laugh and a shake of his head. 

Maekar has prepared himself for the usual way conversations with ladies go. Polite, formal introductions, curtsies and clipped smiles, eyes lingering on the pox marked skin of his jaw, and then peering around him to eye his oldest brother. You are polite, but not in a way that feels forced for royalty. You curtsey, and offer your hand for him to kiss. You smile, and it's so bright he can barely look at it for too long. You do eye his face, the crease between his eyebrows, the scowl, and the pox scars too, but your eyes don’t linger; it's like you’re taking him all in. not once do you look to see if the older Prince is near. Maekar knows his brother is behind him, well within eyesight, but you seem genuinely interested in his short answers to your questions, you watch him closely when you’re looking for a reaction, and you seem pleased when he awkwardly asks you if you’d like to take a turn with him. 

Maekar, to his unyielding surprise, finds having a wife wholly delightful. Someone he can speak his mind with, who listens to his ranting and calls him out on his attitude. A hand on his shoulder when he feels himself getting angry, a grin and a wink when a lord says something stupid and he needs to know someone else heard it. Warmth in his bed- not just for making love, though he does wholeheartedly- but to throw an arm around, tuck under his chin, and keep safe. There is no doubt that he enjoys spoiling you. Often you don’t even ask; he’s already anticipating you needing something, or you liking something, and it appears on your vanity like magic. A fur-lined cloak when the weather turns, a tawny horse when you mention your love of riding, a book on the intricacies of flowers; the glee on your face is worth the gold, the searching, the orders. 

He does this all believing you do not feel the same. There is duty in what he does, he’s good at taking orders, especially from his mother. There are also his own growing affections. Though to some, he’s still the same callous Prince, those that know him cannot deny how smitten he is. Maekar is willing to give you whatever you desire, jewels, castles, dragons (he swears he’ll find a way, if you wish it), without ever thinking you’d return his desire.

When you do tell him you love him, and you’ll have to do it first, it's careless and offhand and sweet as anything. He’s complaining about something a lord said to him in a counsel meeting, lounging on the settee in your chambers. You have your head in his lap, in a way that has him sitting very still, watching him speak through your lashes with a grin. Maekar pauses to take a breath, intent on launching into another tirade about trade disputes, when you laugh, reaching up to pat his cheek and scratch at his stubble.

“Oh, my dear, I love you.” 

There’s no grand declaration, no perfect moment, just you, there, close enough to feel the warmth of your body. He’s suddenly reinterpreting every interaction you’ve shared in the months you’ve been married. It's very much a “We share a bed and take baths together and eat meals sitting beside one another and have no secrets but what are we?”

You immediately know what he’s thinking from the look on his face, and you sit up to wrap your arms around his neck. In an instant, his mouth is on yours, firm and desperate, mumbling something you’re certain is his frantic revelation of his love to you. After all, he’s been saying it through his actions since you met. 

Aerion:

When your marriage to Aerion is announced, the murmurings at court spoke of the terrible fate that had befallen you. A gentle, tender-hearted soul, kind to everyone you met and as lovely as a rose. Surely, they said, the dragon Prince would eat you alive. To the gentry’s astonishment, Aerion takes to you immediately. 

His eyes follow you about the room, piercing lavender through the crowds. He’s never far, a possessive hand gripping your hip, plastered to the small of your back, or, when he feels particularly possessive, gripping the nape of your neck. His family are bewildered by the pair of you; you’re giggling and smiling softly as Aerion whispers in your ear at dinner. What has come over the boy? Maekar turns his head with a grumble when he spots his son’s hand dangerously far up your thigh under the table. 

Some think he’s finally turned a corner, that this genteel, pleasant lady has finally pulled Aerion from the brink. 

That is not the case.

If anything, he has only fallen deeper into his compulsion. You're at a hunt, walking with your hand tucked into his elbow, smiling at confused passerby. You mumble something, softly, about walking so far, the stress of the day, the fatigue in your feat. Immediately, he stops, bending his head down close to your mouth. 

“Tell me, sweetling, shall I find you somewhere to rest?” 

Before you can finish nodding, he’s already snapping his fingers, commanding for a chair to be brought forth for you. He’s adjusting the seat, making sure the pillows are just so, extending his hand for you to sit and straightening your skirts. If you tell him it's too much, that people are staring and it's unprincely to dote on your wife, he’s scoffing. A dragon protects what's his, and what are you if not the dragon’s hoard? 

The day you met, Aerion knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that nothing would come between him and having you. You’d met at a tourney, a celebration of your betrothal to some sniveling Tarly boy. With the exception of knocking other men off their horses, Aerion had been wholly uninterested in any of the fanfare, until the announcement and introductions of the bride-to-be. The Prince perked up on his horse. You stood on the dias, draped in your house colors and smiling to the crowds. He pulled the dragon helm from his head, urging his horse forward and trotting up to you. At his approach, you gave a curtsey, with all the courtly flair fit for a Princess. He bowed his head, extending a hand for you to take. You did, though not without looking back to your parents with confusion. 

“Fair lady, it would be an honor to accept a favor from you.” 

No question, no permission, no asking for a gift, just the careful demand of a Targaryen. You were unsure of what to do; you were to wed another man, but to refuse a Prince would be treasonous, surely. Slowly, you pulled the bow from your hair, releasing the ribbon. Aerion leaned forward, giving you his arm to tie the satin around. The Prince’s voice echoed across the dirt of the field. 

“After I win this tournament, I will take this lady as my bride. Any man who dares to challenge that, can meet me at the lists.” 

It's easy, of course, to fall for a man who treats you like the world was built for you. There's no question that Aerion feels his emotions fully, intense and all-encompassing. 

It's not that he’s kind- he’s not- but there is a tenderness that comes from caring so deeply for someone. 

Dunk:

Dunk never, in all his life, thought he would ever be in a situation where he was given a wife. He’d dreamed as a boy of finding someone, kind and strong and beautiful, to share the work of a hard life, to take care of, to love. The reality of his situation is no shock to him; a poor hedge knight, nary a penny to his name, who sleeps under the stars and travels where the work is needed. 

He saves the heir to a minor house, a young boy with more courage than sense, who’d stepped into a fight he wasn’t prepared for. If not for Dunk, the poor boy would be nothing but a trampled mess, but his Father is so relieved to have his son back that he offers Dunk a wife. His youngest daughter, soft and sweet from years spent in a castle, and suddenly the hedge knight can barely form a sentence. He tries to stutter out a reply, something about being undeserving, his journey no place for a lady, but it’s clear the lord has far too many daughters and is pleased to rid himself of you. 

You’re trepidatious at first, clever and educated but having no idea how to survive in the world. Dunk doesn’t blame you; why would you be happy to hastily wed a destitute traveler? Your hands had shook in the Sept, and he couldn’t help but feel how soft they felt in his larger ones. 

Dunk resolves that he will do everything he can to make you comfortable. Wrapping his ratty cloak around your shoulders when the wind blows hard, sitting you on a log while he builds a fire, only touching you to help you from the horse or tie your boots. He thinks this is him being helpful, a good husband, but it’s honestly driving you crazy. Does he think you can’t figure out how to tie a horse to a tree? Or wash bedding in the river? You try your best to do things for him, reading to Egg, picking berries, mending his trousers; each time, he looks so positively startled you can’t help but giggle. 

He is completely bewildered. Why are you helping him? He’s dragged you across the Realm, a lovely lady who has no wish to be with him. You can’t understand him, either, never giving you inclination of wanting you closer. 

Finally you break, so fed up with his belief in your incapability to survive. He’s got you sat on a bed roll; you’ve asked him twice if he wants help cooking dinner, but he’s brushed off both attempts with a shrug and a mumble of, “S’no trouble, m’lady.” He’s attempting to shift the pot over the fire, which really should be done by two people, when you snap. 

“Gods above, let me help you. I problemise I’m not as stupid as you clearly think I am.” 

Dunk is utterly shocked, looking up at you with wide eyes and mouth agape. You look angry, your brows furrowed in a way he’s come to find endearing, but he doesn’t understand. Why would he think you’re stupid? You’re far better educated than he is, and you’re certainly better with your words. 

“I- why would I- I’d never think to call you that!” He sputters out. You shake your head. 

“No? Then why won’t you let me do anything? Do you think I can’t learn how to build a fire? Or cook a rabbit?” You reply, exasperated. Dunk stays kneeling, watching you. 

“I- I only thought, well, that a lady ought not worry herself over such tasks,” He bows his head, “I cannot give you what you deserve, but I can ease the trouble of traveling with me.”  

You pause, staring a moment before walking to him and taking his cheeks in your hands. His pretty blue eyes are cut low, focused on the dirt, and you have to tilt his chin up, hands cupping his cheeks. 

“Dunk, my love, listen. I could not have asked for a better husband. You care so much for me, but you must let me help you.” 

You punctuate your confession with a featherlight kiss to his chapped lips. The dopey grin that spreads across his face, and the ruddy pink of his cheeks, are worth the miscommunication. 

“Besides,” You say, brushing the hair from his forehead, “what would I do in that stuffy old castle anyway?”

Baelor:

As the heir to the throne, Baelor is deftly aware of his duty to wed a noble lady and give her sons. He’s respectful to a fault, following the careful rules of society, and how to treat a wife. Offering a hand to you on the stairs, dancing with you at feasts, and gentle intimacy to ensure the continuation of his line. He’s dutiful to your pleasure; making certain you’re comfortable and well cared for. It is all very much like a song, a pretty poem about a valiant knight and his lovely lady, but it's not exactly romantic. At least not yet. 

Baelor is a good man; he’s courteous and humble, polite and gentlemanly, but he’s devoted to his role as the Hand of the King in a way he’s not willing to part with. It disappoints you, at first, to think the perfect Prince you’ve married is uninterested in you. You know it's a blessing, to have a husband who is kind, who keeps his hands gentle and his words soft, but you wish for more. Deeper conversation, secrets only shared between the two of you, a proper ravishing. 

At first, you think you’ve done something wrong. Had you offended him in some way? Were you not clever or graceful or pretty enough? He’d never given you the idea of him being displeased in any way, but he spent so long in that damned tower of the hand that you couldn't help but feel like he was avoiding you. 

The truth, however, is that Baelor doesn’t know how to be anything other than the perfect son. Doing what is asked, going above and beyond, showing the realm that the Dornish-borne Prince is deserving of the crown. If he’s not penning ledgers or reading over correspondence, he feels like he’s not doing enough. If he’s not waking up with the sun, he’s losing precious time he could be trying to fix the many problems that face the Realm. He’s never more pleased than when he’s listening to you talk, or holding you in his arms, or kissing your neck, but there's the ever-looming sense of dread that he can’t seem to shake. 

You have to be the one to reach for him. He finds the note tucked between the pages of a reference book. The flower pressed alongside it immediately tells him it's from you, and the careful script makes him smile. It's short, a few words on missing him at breakfast, but he’s reading and rereading what you’ve given him. Baelor keeps it in a box on his desk, meticulously placed so as not to smudge the ink. As the weeks go by, his collection of little gifts grows. A heart shaped stone, an embroidered ribbon, silly musings about your day, he cherishes each trinket like it's made of gold. When he’s feeling particularly tense, ramblings of the day pressing down on his shoulders, he opens the box and slowly goes through each item. He knows them all by heart, has memorized the words you’ve written for him. 

You’re giddy the first time you find something from him. A ring, glittering gold and studded with a ruby, tucked between your perfume bottle and your hairbrush on your vanity. There's a note, too. Wear it and think of me, my love. A book on the histories, a bird made of folded paper, notes on how lovely you looked when you woke up that morning. Neither of you talk about the gifts when you’re together, neither of you want to break the precious balance, but you can feel the two of you growing closer through the exchanges. 

Instead of immediately rising from the bed in the morning, Baelor lazes in bed after you wake, kissing your forehead and petting your hair. No longer does he take his meals in the solar, you’ve coaxed him into spending a little time away from the dread of work throughout the day. At night, he comes to bed a little earlier, content in tucking his head between your thighs and murmuring his confessions of love. 

Lyonel:

Lyonel is disinterested in having a wife, someone he’s supposed to devote himself to. Why keep yourself from the pleasures of life just because your parents say you must marry? His opinion changes slightly once you meet, not demure and genteel but bright, feisty, interesting, immediately dazzling him. The two of you are fooling around even before you’re wed. kissing in dark hallways, grasping at each other's clothes and biting throats, grinding on thighs and groping flesh. You’re eager for him- who wouldn’t be? So tall and handsome and exciting- and he takes you in his arms every chance he gets. 

It's all fun and games until he realizes just how far he’s fallen. He’s been clear with his intentions. You’re husband and wife to the Realm, but he has no inclination to have you tucked away in a dusty old castle, pushing out heirs. He insists on the two of you staying casual, why ruin what you have with the complications of love? Nevermind that he hasn't looked at another woman for more than a moment since you met, or that the thought of you with another makes him so angry he has to go swing his sword at something. 

One evening, your relationship takes a turn. You’ve planned a lovely feast, lighting up the gloom of Storms End with the grace and power needed for a lady Baratheon. He’s watching, he’s always watching, when he sees you speaking with a handsome young knight across the hall. You’ve been making your rounds, addressing your guests with a smile. Lyonel sits up straighter in his chair when the man bows to you, kissing your hand. His hands grip the table in front of him, willing himself unaffected as you laugh at something the knight says. It's Lyonel’s job to make you laugh like that. He’s up before he knows it, stomping through the crowds and brushing off lords who try to speak with him. You look surprised when he takes your waist, leaning down to press a kiss to your cheek. His hands don’t leave you again that night, following you closely as you continue to speak with the gentry. 

You don’t mention it, but he knows you can sense his shift. He goes out of his way to spend more time with you; not just in your bed (or on his desk or in front of the fireplace), but sitting with you when you read, trying-and failing- to help you with your embroidery, and insisting on clipping your necklaces and pinning your hair. He knows he’s smitten, there's no denying how wrong he’d been about the notion of tender affections. 

It's a night in his tourney tent that his feelings come out. He sat at the head of the table, bruised but grinning wide from his wins in the day’s tilts. The music is jolly, and sweet Arbor gold graces his tongue. You’re out on the floor, where he can see you, hair wild as you spin with your ladies. Your gown, so lovely at the start of the day, is mussed, with mud on the hem and a winestain on the sleeve. Your forehead is sweat-lined and your feet grow wary from dancing, but you're smiling so wide and he swears you’ve never been so beautiful. If anyone was to look to the high lord, they’d see his face soft, doe-eyes wide and grin like a man so completely bewitched. When the song ends, you find him, slinking up to the dais and bending to give him a kiss. You giggle when he pulls you into his lap, pecking your cheeks as you squirm. 

“Gods above, I love you, woman.”

[lizjournals]

Older brother Daeron letting you smoke with him but since it's your first smoking weed you keep coughing. He can clearly see it in your eyes that you're slightly scared too and he makes a joke about you chickening out and since you're stubborn, that only makes you want to prove yourself to him more. When he sees you aren't giving up, he pulls you into his lap so he can comfort you and instead of letting you smoke it directly he just shotguns it into your mouth. Eventually as you both get high the shotgunning turns into making out and ends with you dry humping each other and him groping your tits till you both cum in your pants

[lovebugism]

✶ — THE WRONG THING !

summary: on the eve of your arranged marriage to baelor targaryen, your childhood best friend, daeron, indulges you in one final night of defiance before he loses you for good - and baelor does not take kindly to learning that his nephew has taken his future bride to a brothel. (6k)

characters: daeron targaryen / fem!reader, baelor targaryen / fem!reader, maekar targaryen

contents: friends to lovers, arranged marriage, angst, implied age gap, so much yearning, depressed!daeron (fork found in kitchen), also baelor would absolutely talk you through it cw for vague mentions of ocd and smut 18+ (MDNI): public sex kinda, fingering, dry humping

( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )

You were to be wed on the morrow, and Daeron sank into his cups.

He had long lived in the folly that he would marry you someday — his first ever friend, and the only girl he ever dreamed of. But then the crown fell into great debts to your father, who managed all the gold mines from Oldtown to Summerhall; and the only way the king saw to foot the bill was to wed the man’s daughter to his own heir.

By all accounts, you were taking your betrothal far easier than your best friend. You had no other choice but to keep your wits about you, to plaster an artificial smile on your face and mindlessly agree to everything everyone ever told you to do, or to think. Even now, you let Baelor Targaryen — the husband you did not ask for — give you a tour of the newly decorated throne room where you would have your reception — which you had no say in.

The orante sea of Targaryen red and Highgarden gold blur together, along with Baelor’s words, as you avert your gaze to your hands, where you scratch fresh marks to your already raging nail beds.

“What do you think about it, princess?”

You only vaguely hear Baelor’s words through the metaphorical cotton in your ears. You blink hard and whip your head to face him, smiling before you’ve even registered his question. “I think it’s beautiful, Your Grace— Your mother did a wonderful job decorating.”

“While I appreciate the compliment, my lady, I was referring to our… arrangement,” Baelor corrects with a polite smile, half-hidden behind his greying beard. He slows to a stop in front of you, and you catch a whiff of the musky oils he’d bathed in — a stark contrast to your much lighter, floral aromatics.

“Oh. Right. I think— I think that it’s…” You stumble over yourself to find the words; not the ones you want to say, perhaps, but the ones you’ve been groomed to. Baelor ducks his head to flash you a patient look, and your cheeks flare with embarrassment. “I think that it is wise, Your Grace. If our marriage can ease the crown’s debts, I’m glad to be of service.”

“Is that you speaking, my lady?” he presses with a soft squint in his blue-brown irises. “Or your father?”

Your breath stutters. “I— I’m not sure what you mean, Your Grace.”

“What is it you want, princess?”

Your mouth parts to answer him. But, before you can stutter out a response you only halfway mean, the sound of chair legs scraping the cobbles rings through the expansive room. Your heads whip in tandem in the direction of the raucous noise, where you find Daeron trying and failing to catch himself on a table by the door.

He’s well drunk despite the early afternoon, wearing the ale in his wild golden hair, glassy blue eyes, and flushed red cheeks. He struggles to readjust the ornately decorated bench he’d run into with sloppy hands. It takes him several seconds too long to notice the looks he’s getting in response.

“My apologies…” he slurs, pink lips curling into a sloppy grin that doesn’t match the solemn look in his light eyes. “I seemed to have— Lost my way…”

“Aye. That much is quite clear,” Baelor sighs, much too used to his nephew’s antics by now.

The boy had always favored his ale, but never quite this much. He’s been haunting the halls of the Red Keep for some weeks now — the Kingsguard once found him in a ditch off of Flea Bottom the day it was announced Baelor would be wed to you, all bruised and bloody from the fighting pits. He hasn’t been fully sober ever since.

“Apologies, princess,” Baelor murmurs to you. “Do forgive my nephew.”

“No forgiveness needed, Your Grace—”

There’s another grating scrape, followed by a dull thud of a heavy body hitting the ground as Daeron trips over his graceless feet. He groans when he hits the unforgiving ground, writhing with only his long legs visible from your view of him.

Your features crumple with a mixture of annoyance and sympathy as you look on at the drunken boy. “I should take him to his chambers before he hurts himself—”

“The knights can escort him, my lady,” Baelor tells you.

“He’s much too fragile for that,” you quip with a tender smile. “And as I said— I don’t mind helping, Your Grace.”

Daeron doesn’t make it easy for you.

He never has, in truth, but least of all now.

He smells of musk and sweet ale as he falls heavily to your side, forcing you to carry the brunt of his weight as you help him back into bed. He falls heavily onto the feathered mattress, limp and unmoving. You exhale an exasperated breath and reach for his legs to situate him properly on the unmade sheets.

“Why must you make everything so difficult?” you huff.

Daeron’s head lolls against the pillows, golden hair sitting wildly around him.

“Why must you wound me so?” he argues in indistinct slurs. His glassy, red-rimmed eyes blink slowly up at your towering figure. He musters a trembling grin at the confused look you give him in return. “We both know it is not my uncle you want, petal…”

His eyes flutter shut as he lifts a sloppy hand to his face, trying and failing to find the rogue strand of hair clinging to his lashes.

“What I want doesn’t matter, Daeron,” you sigh and help him brush the golden tress back behind his ear.

Your breath catches in your throat when the boy’s warm hand wraps suddenly around your wrist, fingers warm and gentle as they linger on your wild pulse. He peers up at you with a pair of wet, ocean-colored eyes and murmurs quietly, “I don’t matter?”

“You know that isn’t what I meant,” you whisper and jerk your hand from his grip. “The decision is already made. The hall is already decorated. I’m getting married whether I like it or not—”

“You could always change your mind,” Daeron lilts, as if it were so simple. “And it would all be done with…”

“Not all of us are allowed to be so selfish, my prince,” you mutter bitterly and turn on your heel, heading the short distance for the pitcher of water and bowl of dates left on the table by the balcony. “Some of us actually have to think about other people from time to time.”

Daeron scoffs sloppily, folding his lanky hands across his lean stomach. “I think about other people,” he argues like a child.

“Do you?” you hum with a palpable lack of enthusiasm, beneath the sloshing of water you pour for him in a chalice.

“Aye, my lady… You,” he answers, smiling lazily when you glare at him over your shoulder. “I dream only of you— My Flower of Highgarden.”

“The Flower of Highgarden,” you correct him of the silly nickname that’s haunted you since birth, and walk the water and dates back over the drunken boy. You leave both at his bedside, with an air of distance about you that makes his chest ache. “I am getting married on the morrow, Daeron. It’s happening. So please, get a hold of yourself— if not for your sake, then for mine.

The evening air outside the Red Keep swells with the scent of sage and fresh flowers. A silken breeze rushes through the skirt of your dress as you lean over the balcony, bathing in the sweet scent down below, where the smallfolk leave bouquets and handmade trinkets by the castle’s entrance.

“I don’t understand,” you murmur to the man beside you, with your gaze still lingering on the shuffling crowd. “We don’t do this in Highgarden.”

“It’s custom for people to leave their blessings the night before a royal wedding,” Baelor explains. “Though, to be true, I have never quite seen it like this… They have taken quite a liking to you, it would seem.”

The kind smile he gives you makes your cheeks flare red-hot. You despise his attention as much as you crave it, desperately so. You fake a smile and swallow hard, picking again at the scarred skin of your nail beds from where your hands rest on the balcony. “Well, I am— pleased that the realm is, Your Grace—”

Your breath catches in your throat when Baelor’s wide hand splays suddenly over both of yours, effectively ceasing your assault on your delicate fingers. You peer timidly at him from beneath your lashes and cower at the warmth in his mismatched eyes.

“You are the most comely girl at court,” he tells you, gutwrenchingly gentle, as his fingers smooth over the red marks on your skin. “Why must you destroy yourself this way?”

“Apologies, Your Grace,” you murmur shyly, clearing your throat as you slide your hands from his grip, clasping them behind your back. “It’s a habit I haven’t quite been able to break, it would seem…”

Baelor softens and takes a step closer, pervading the scent of the late evening with his mixture of leather and musk. “I understand that… that I am not the husband you wished for,” the man starts slowly, calculating each word from his mouth. “But I will do right by you, princess. I can assure you of that.”

“I know you will, Your Grace. You’re a good man,” you say with an honest smile. “Even if it was not what I desired, I am no less pleased that it turned out to be you, Your Grace—”

“Baelor,” he corrects with a soft grin, taking a step closer and swiping an eyelash for your cheek. Your skin flares when his hand lingers there. You wonder if he notices.

“Baelor…” you repeat, far more timidly in comparison.

His mouth parts to speak, but he stops himself short. A flicker of confusion dances over his scruffy face before he wonders aloud. “Pardon my forwardness, my lady, but… Have you ever been kissed?”

Thoughts of Daeron flash instantly across your mind at his question. He’s always there in some way or another, stashed somewhere within each of your fondest memories — how he held you when you were younger; how he kissed you, how he touched you.

But that was all make-believe, you figure, a game of house you knew was always bound to end.

So you shake your head against the man’s softly calloused palm and answer, half-truthfully, “Never in a way that mattered, Your Grace…”

The answer seems to please him as his kind smile slowly returns.

“May I?” he offers vaguely.

You know you can’t say no. You’re not sure if you want to. So you nod and whisper back, “Of course…”

You tilt your chin to meet him halfway when he ducks down to kiss you. His beard tickles your delicate skin, a rather foreign sensation compared to Daeron’s shaven face. His lips are thinner than his nephew’s, too, tasting of sweet mint leaves and bitter whiskey. It’s different — good different — and you finally forget to be nervous as you reach suddenly for his bearded jaw.

Baelor freezes against you when you lick into his mouth, with far more expertise than someone who had never been kissed before. It surprises him as much as it excites him; the notion that there is still so much he doesn’t know about you. You catch him smiling softly to himself about it when your kissed lips part with a quiet click.

Your glassy eyes widen into a not-so-subtle look of shock at yourself. You bring your trembling hands back down to your sides again. “Forgive me, Your Grace. I— I forget myself—”

“No. Don’t apologize,” the man murmurs in an achingly gentle voice that does not match the fire in his blue-brown irises. “If you apologize every time I kiss you from now on, you’ll be spending a lifetime doing so, won’t you?”

His words, the solemn promise in them, make your stomach do a backflip.

“Aye,” you nod on bated breath. “I guess so…”

You’re still reeling from the adrenaline rush of kissing a somewhat stranger — both your soon-to-be husband and future king — when you return finally to your chambers. Your heart lurches to a fluttering stop at the shadowy figure you find lying in your bed, bathed in a golden sea of flickering candlelight. You exhale a relieved sigh when you find it’s only Daeron making himself at home in your bed, but you are still no less aggrieved to see him this way.

“What are you doing here?” you snap and quickly close the door behind you.

“Waiting for you, of course,” the now mostly-sobered boy responds through a groan, stretching out his tired limbs as if he’d just been sleeping. His thin chemise rises up his torso when he folds his arms behind his wild head, revealing his pale skin and the tuft of golden hair trailing down into his trousers.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” you argue. “What would people think if they saw the two of us in here like this?”

“Who cares?” he scoffs with all the carelessness of a young prince, smiling wider when you scowl at him. “We know the truth of it— What anyone else has to say on the matter doesn’t concern the two of us.”

“That’s because no one ever taught you that it’s not about the truth of it,” you spit and storm his way, yanking your silken sheets from beneath his dirty boots. “It’s about perception. And you know your father would be cross if he found you in here—”

“My father is always cross,” Daeron scoffs.

“Only because you make him so.”

“Tell me, petal…” the boy begins, swinging his long legs off the mattress and peering up at you with a pair of glittering blue eyes. “Have you ever done the wrong thing?”

Your eyes narrow. “I’m looking at him,” you deadpan.

“Ouch,” he grimaces, grabbing at his heart over his baggy tunic. “But I presume I deserve that…”

“Aye. You do.”

He reaches for your hand when you try to turn away, wrapping his warm fingers around your smaller ones to keep you in place. “Come with me. To Flea Bottom.”

“Flea Bottom?” you repeat with an incredulous twist to your features, scoffing out a faint laugh. “Why would I go to—”

“To do the wrong thing,” Daeron finishes for you, tender with a lingering hope. “With me.”

You shake your head and try to pull your hand out of his, but he only holds you tighter. “I can’t, Daeron…”

“Live for yourself for a change,” he tells you, begs you. “Just once. And I will never speak to you of my heartache again, I swear it.”

By all accounts, you probably should’ve known by the subtle glimmer in his soft blue eyes that he only met trouble. Maybe that’s why you went with him in the first place, you think, for a bit of trouble — god knows, that’s all he’s good for. But, even still, you let him dress you in his trousers and baggy shirt, removing any remnants of your status, before stealing you away to the labyrinth that is Flea Bottom.

He keeps your hand clutched in his larger one as he leads you through the unpaved streets of twisted alleyways, reeking of stables, mud, and baked bread. You laugh like a pair of children as you chase gracelessly behind him, forgetting for a fleeting moment that you are to be wed on the morrow — that you will soon be expected to become a wife and a mother before the season is through.

Eventually, the loud chatter and swirling smoke from flickering fires gives way to something quieter, dimmer; smelling of sweat, sex, and soft perfume. Daeron tucks you into his warm side as you duck into a narrow hall, where moans and cries of pleasure bounce off the cobblestone walls. Your footsteps stutter in shock.

“You didn’t tell me you were taking me to a pleasure house—”

“Aye. I didn’t,” Daeron hums with a lazy grin. “Because you wouldn’t have agreed to come otherwise…”

The brothel is dark, lit only by rogue torches growing slowly dim on the walls. The naked bodies surrounding you on either side are bathed in shadow. The hand not clutching the back of Daeron’s cloak rises instinctively to cover your eyes, shielding them from the lurid sight of sex that sits everywhere you look.

“No. Don’t,” Daeron says and reaches for you with his free hand, curling his lanky fingers around your wrist to gently urge your hand from your face. “I want you to watch— To see what it looks like when you take what you want…”

Your eyes are slow to part from his lighter ones. You glance tentatively all around you — at the woman riding the face of a man on a nearby couch, of another man sandwiched between two masculine bodies by the wall, of two women caressing their naked bodies with gentle touches. It’s completely and utterly scandalous. And you can’t bring yourself to look away.

“No princes, no thrones…” Daeron whispers with his mouth pressed to your ear, and his chest against your back. “No debts, no weddings… Just—”

“Fucking?” you tell him.

“Pleasure,” he corrects. “So, ask yourself, petal, and be truthful… What do you want?”

It’s a simple question. One you couldn’t answer if you wanted to.

You want to be queen, like your father always groomed you to be — you want to marry Baelor, to be rich and powerful and idolized. But another, not-so-distant part of you yearns to be without responsibility and consequence — you want to be with Daeron in some far-off place by the sea, you want to fuck and drink and travel the world and never stick around long enough to learn anybody’s names.

You want all of it. And even though you know you cannot possibly have it, you try hard to take it anyway.

You reach out for Daeron and cradle his shaven jaw like you’re holding the sun in both hands. You drag him to you and press a searing kiss to his mouth, wasting little time in tasting him as your tongue licks suddenly between his parted lips, entwining with his own like velvet twisting with velvet.

Daeron grumbles a moan against you. He slides his warm hands beneath your borrowed shirt, up your stomach, and over your ribcage. He leaves faint trail marks along the skin of your back when he scratches his dull nails down your spine. You shiver against him, and he smiles into your kiss — inhaling your gasped breath when he pushes you suddenly into a cobbled wall, breaking the impact with a hand behind your head.

His mouth pulls away from yours with a low smack, lips swollen and rosy and shining with your spit. His eyes are heavy-lidded as he traces the bridge of your nose with the tip of his.

“What do you say, My Flower of Highgarden?” he slurs, panting hard against your mouth. “Are you going to take it?”

“Depends,” you challenge on bated breath. “Are you going to give it to me?”

The blonde boy nods, with a pink smile blooming lazily on his mouth. “Aye… I am.”

He ducks down before you can blink, kissing you hard enough to bruise. He swallows each of your quiet moans as his fingers creep toward your borrowed trousers, loosening the knot there with eager hands. Your fingers wrench the thin fabric of his tunic into fists to keep him impossibly close while his sneak beneath the hem — past your stomach, over a tuft of coarse hair, and down towards where you need him most.

You coat his middle finger in a thin layer of honey when it slots between your velvety folds, whimpering when he nudges softly at your sensitive clit.

“I can feel you throbbing,” he slurs against you. “’S like a heartbeat…”

“Please…” you sigh, though you’re not sure exactly what you’re begging for — please don’t tease me, please make me feel good, please fuck me.

“I’ve got you…” Daeron murmurs, panting against your mouth and swallowing your moans when his long finger slips finally inside you. His lip quirks into a crooked smile at the pretty noise you make for him.

You only vaguely feel him rutting against your thigh, pressing his stiffening cock against you to ease his own ache while he continues to pleasure yours.

“I’ve got you… Let me have it…”

Your moans fill the shadowed hall, and entwine with all the others.

You scrub the remnants of the sinful night from your body and prepare to become a dutiful bride by early morning. You’re still buzzing from the adrenaline rush as you writhe restlessly beneath your silk sheets. You can almost still feel Daeron’s fingers inside of you, if you think about it hard enough, as well as the outline of his hard cock pressed against your outer thigh, from where he’d gotten off humping your leg like a hound.

You revel in the night as much as you mourn it — pleased to have experienced it at all while simultaneously grieving that you’ll never be that girl again; and still a little surprised that you got away with it at all.

Almost.

A quiet knock from a delicate hand echoes through your expansive, pitch-black bedroom. Your heart lurches into your throat — a fleeting horror that turns into ice-cold panic in your veins a second later. You rise slowly, propping your weight on your elbows, and gazing wearily at the shadow looming beneath your door.

You swallow hard and pray your voice doesn’t shake as you call out, “Come in.”

The heavy door creaks open. A sliver of golden light from the torches in the hallway fills the room as one of your handmaidens shuffles in, gaze averted and hands clasped together. She curtsies and clears her throat, “Pardon me, my lady— but the Lord Hand has requested your presence in his study.”

You hope it’s still too dark for her to see the look of fear that flashes across your features. “The hour is quite late…” is the only thing you think to say, with an audible waver in your voice.

“Aye, my lady,” the young girl nods with an apprehensive gaze. “But he said he was urgent.”

“…Alright, then,” you nod once and hold your breath until the maid scurries off back the way she came. She closes the door behind her with a dull click, and the room returns to a velvet black darkness, with only your trembling breath to fill it.

You’re still in your thin white slip when you make the long trek to Baelor’s study, weaving through the candlelit maze of the Red Keep with two knights flanking you on either side. They work for your father, sworn to protect you and you alone, yet you can’t help but feel a bit like they’re leading you to a slaughter now.

They open the double doors of the expansive study for you and remain just outside of it while you saunter slowly in — slippers scuffing the cobbles like your feet are made of bricks, sweaty hands picking at your worry-worn nailbeds. You wear the guilt all over, like a bad dog with blood on its muzzle.

The fear in your stomach blossoms something fierce in your chest when Baelor’s eyes meet yours from across the way, sitting at his desk with Maekar and Daeron standing just before him. The older men are still in their day garb, made of Targaryen red and black, while the blonde boy remains in the baggy tatters he’d taken you to Flea Bottom in.

Daeron wears the sin all over still, hardly bothering to wash it off his skin, lest some of you go with it.

You cower on instinct when their gazes snap suddenly in your direction. You know you’ve long been caught, even when Baelor gives you a kind smile as you approach him.

“Thank you for coming, my lady,” he says in a gentle voice and sets his quill into the inkpot at his side. “I know the hour is late. I hope I did not disturb you.”

“Of course not, Your Grace,” you assure him and clear your throat when the words get stuck there.

“I thought it prudent to make you aware of some rather… troubling accusations,” the man continues with a knowing glint in his brown-blue eyes, flickers of candlelight dancing in his gaze. “You and my nephew were spied, some hours ago, beyond the walls of the Red Keep, engaging in behaviors that were… unbecoming of a woman of the court…”

“So we snuck out and drank a bit of wine,” Daeron laughs at your side, not yet showered and still reeking of sex and ale. He glances at you with glassy eyes and a lopsided grin before turning back to Baelor. “It’s hardly enough to warrant such arbitration, wouldn’t you say, uncle?”

“You were seen defiling the princess the day before her fucking wedding,” Maekar spits from the boy’s other side, jaw clenched tight behind his silver beard. “You’re lucky I’m not shipping you off to the Free Cities to make a man out of you.”

“Right,” Daeron scoffs. “Punish me for going to a brothel by sending me to the sex capital of the Seven Kingdoms— Ow!”

Maekar’s ringed hand slams hard into the back of the boy’s wild head. He grimaces, rubbing at the crown of his golden tresses with a pale hand.

“Do you not deny it?” Baelor asks you, with a suspicious squint in his gaze, as if he were distantly hoping you would.

“No, Your Grace,” you mutter with an averted gaze, etching new marks onto your delicate fingertips. “I did sneak out—”

“She lies,” Daeron blurts before the words have properly left your mouth. “She did not leave of her own volition, uncle. I forced her out… Wouldn’t take no for an answer…” Daeron’s drunk slurs trail off as he turns to flash you a lazy grin and a pair of squinted eyes. “Better a liar than a whore, right, petal?”

“Watch your tongue,” Maekar scolds from his other side.

“But there was no defiling, father, of that I’m sure,” Daeron continues anyway, head swiveling as he turns to face the other man. His smile widens beneath the strands of blonde hair hanging over his eyes. “I only used my fingers—”

“You idiot,” the father hisses, scooping his son up by the collar of his shirt and dragging him back towards the entrance.

Daeron’s stumbled footsteps echo in the otherwise silent study as he staggers behind him on graceless feet. He’s all but thrown out the door when Maekar swings it open again, only to slam it shut behind him with a booming thud a second later.

The sound rings through the suffocating quiet that you and Baelor are soon left alone in — the kind of quiet that snatches all the air out of a room; the kind of quiet that makes it suddenly very hard to breathe.

“Does he speak the truth of it?” the man wonders after a few long moments, with one arm propped along the arm of his chair and the other folded along the table’s edge.

You inhale a wavering breath.

“He does, Your Grace,” you murmur, lacking the courage to meet his eyes. “I had not planned it— Nor did Daeron, I think— It was simply the circumstances of the moment in which we found ourselves in that—”

“Did you like it?” Baelor interjects your rambling, which he knows is only full of the words you’ve been conditioned to say, and not the ones you truly mean.

You falter at the simple question. “I-I’m not entirely sure what you mean, Your Grace—”

“I’m entirely sure that you’re entirely sure what I mean,” the man hums with a kind smile, chair creaking under his weight when he slouches further into it. “Did you like being undone in a pleasure house like a common whore?”

His words, foreignly brash, and his eyes, foreignly hardened, make your stomach do a backflip.

“I… I don’t know—”

“You never do, do you?” Baelor mutters with a sympathetic squint to his mismatched eyes. “You’re always so concerned about what everyone else wants— What everyone else thinks of you— That you never learned how to form your own opinions…”

You shift uncomfortably before him, feeling utterly dissected under his prying stare and grimacing when you dig a fresh mark onto the skin of your pointerfinger.

“So I’ll ask you again, princess,” the man continues, leaning forward in his seat and never once taking his eyes off you. He peers at you over the flickering candles and repeats, more slowly this time. “Did you… like it?”

You swallow hard and nod once.

“Yes,” you hear yourself say on bated breath. “I think I did…”

“What about it did you like?”

You struggle to catch your breath, more so to find an adequate answer.

“I think that I— I just spent so much time worrying about my duties as the… the wretched Flower of Highgarden,” you laugh bitterly at the stupid nickname. “That I forgot what it meant to feel good. That I was allowed to feel good, and suddenly I was surrounded by people just taking what they wanted, and I felt so…”

“Free?” Baelor finishes for you, brows raised to his hairline.

“Powerful,” you correct, squinting like the word is half-foreign on your tongue.

Something flickers in his brown-blue eyes, something more than just the candlelight, as if he were finally seeing you for the first time.

His chair legs scrape the cobbles as he rises slowly to full height, rounding the table in measured strides, ambling towards you like a predator stalking its prey.

“Is Daeron who you want?” he asks with lowered brows. “Is that where your loyalties lie?”

“My loyalty is to the crown, Your Grace—”

You clear your throat and tilt your chin to meet the man’s gaze when he towers over you, smelling of leather and the old books he spends most of his days studying. Your breath stutters when he suddenly reaches for your face.

“Don’t answer from here,” he murmurs lowly, tapping gently at your skull. His pale pointer finger trails down — past your cheek, over your jaw, and down your thrumming pulse — until it rests along your sternum, just over your racing heart. “Answer from here.”

You inhale a wavering breath, glassy eyes darting back and forth between his unblinking ones.

“In a… In a perfect world…” you start in a trembling voice, struggling to keep the man’s gaze as you turn instead to your reddened nail beds. “Daeron and I would take off for Sunspear or Casterly Rock— Somewhere by the sea, where the sun is always shining— And the world would just be the two of us, fucking and drinking and loving all we want…”

Baelor’s brows perk at your sudden brashness. “Then why don’t you?”

“Because this is not a perfect world,” you answer plainly, half-morose. “And I’m not so selfish as to pretend that I don’t have my own duties here…”

Baelor’s lip quirks in a gentle smile beneath his greying beard as he exhales a laugh through his nose.

“A trait rather befitting for a future queen, perhaps…” he hums and points his mismatched gaze to the silk bow sitting at the chest of your slip, tracing it with the tip of his pointerfinger.

“Despite my… regrettable actions…” you trail off, just barely able to meet the man’s gaze as you peer up at him from beneath your lashes. “My racing mind did inevitably run into thoughts of you, Your Grace…”

“Really?” he hums. “Pray tell.”

“Daeron asked me what I wanted, and I thought first of you,” you confess. “And I realized I had grown quite attached to the thought of becoming your wife. Of ruling beside you— some many years on, of course, but— The sheer thought of it made me… It made me feel like I could conquer worlds.”

“Aye,” Baelor nods, with a fire in his brown-blue gaze that matches your own. “We will.”

He’s kissing you before you can blink, pressing his mouth to yours and cradling the back of your neck in a calloused hand, urging your jaw upward with his thumb. He steals the breath from your lungs under the weight of his searing kiss, as fierce and merciless as taking a bite out of an apple. It’s all tongue and teeth and spit — a passion you weren’t sure a man as wooden as Baelor was able to give, or otherwise cared to.

A string of saliva connects your mouths when he pulls away from you. Baelor smiles softly to himself when you try hopelessly to chase his kiss, swiping the thread of spit away with the pad of his thumb when it clings to your chin.

“Did you cum?” he asks you, then follows quickly at the look you give him. “When my nephew fucked you with his fingers at a whorehouse— Did you cum?”

His prying gaze darts rapidly between your glassy one as you struggle to answer — unsure of whether to be honest or to tell a feeble lie in hopes of placating his ego. You decide, finally, to tell the truth.

“Yes,” you answer and nod once into his hand.

“And I trust it will be the last time?”

“As you command, Your Grace—”

“Baelor,” he corrects.

“As you command, Baelor.”

There’s a twinkle of subtle mischief in your gaze that makes his lips curl into a quiet smile. He leans down again, and you think he’s going to kiss you, but he only traces the bridge of your nose with the tip of his.

“You are not as soft as the tales would tell it, are you? Flower of Highgarden,” he hums in a melodic voice, breath fanning over your mouth. “Gentle, yes. But not soft.”

“What’s the difference?” you whisper, and he feels the breath of it over his bearded chin.

“A soft person wouldn’t dare touch a knife, would they? But you… You’d kiss my forehead before pressing a blade to my neck— That’s gentle,” he explains, walking you backward with meandering footsteps that rhyme with your own.

Your breath catches in your chest when the backs of your thighs collide suddenly with the edge of the table. It scrapes once on the cobbles, and then again when Baelor urges you suddenly around with a firm hand on your elbow. He spins you away from him and presses you further into the wooden edge with his chest flush against your back.

“And I am— The idiot who would thank you for slitting my throat…” he mutters in your ear, scruff scratching at your neck as his calloused hands crawl up your thighs, pushing up the hem of it as they go. “As long as it meant you touched my skin…”

His wide palms trail over your hip bones, up your stomach, and past your ribcage. They settle finally under your breasts, just lingering there, and you wonder if he can feel the way your breathing stutters beneath them — if he can feel the way you fight the urge to grind your ass against his cock.

“Is this wise, my lord?” you whisper, nose brushing his bearded jaw when you peer hesitantly over your shoulder. “Our wedding is at dawn— They’ll be expecting a bedding ceremony—”

“Aye. They will. And you can pretend to be the sweet, virgin wife for the people on the morrow all you want,” Baelor hums, reaching for his belt with one hand to undo the buckle there. “But there’s no use in pretending when we’re alone, is there?””

Excitement stirs in your flaring chest and down into the pit of your swirling stomach, throbbing somewhere in the depths of your loins the same way you had for Daeron. You keep his stare when he pulls his half-hard cock from the confines of his trousers, mouth watering for a taste of him.

“No… I suppose not,” you say on bated breath and let Baelor fuck you stupid in the middle of the candlelight study — moaning his name within the cobbled walls, mere hours before you recite your sacred vows before the gods.

[lovebugism]

BOTH HANDS AND A GENTLE MOUTH ! ─── baelor targaryen

summary: baelor takes in a naive handmaiden out of kindness, but soon finds himself developing feelings for her that he knows neither rank nor crown would allow. (4k)

characters: baelor targaryen / fem!handmaiden!reader

contents: yet another fix it fic, forbidden romance, power imbalance, angst, hurt/comfort, so much yearning, pre and post trial of seven, canon divergence cw for mentions of injuries, smut 18+ (MDNI): ring/hand kink, fingering, finger sucking, post-injury sex, cockwarming

( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )

Baelor could not quite place when his profound admiration for you turned into a desire he could hardly stomach.

You came to him, a year or more ago, as a young handmaiden who had only served ladies in Dorne — sunkissed, sparkling, and shockingly naive. The nobility you’d arrived with had inherited the more highborn Targaryen servants, upon her marriage to the Crown Prince’s nephew, Aelor.

Baelor was at the feast on their wedding eve when they discussed what would come of you — of whether they should ship you back to Sunspear or leave you to your devices in King’s Landing and hope you landed on your feet.

It weighed endlessly on his conscience for a reason he could not name. His father always told him that he was much too soft for his own good, and he didn’t truly understand what that meant until he found himself taking on an inexperienced handmaiden as part of his staff.

You doted on him like you would the ladies back in Dorne instead of like a future king, because it was the only thing you knew how to do. You dressed him, pampered him, managed his chambers when he was away, and kept him company when he was alone. Baelor had not the heart to correct you — he was endeared by your naivety, and grew to long for it whenever you retired to your chambers for the night.

You nicked him once, while trying to place his Hand pin on his coat, and it felt strangely like a kiss.

“You’re very kind, Your Grace,” you’d said, voice still trembling, even after he’d dismissed your rambled apologies. “I’ve been beaten for less back in Dorne.”

Baelor’s chest flared with anger at the thought, but he covered it quickly with a gentle smile, half-hidden behind his greying beard. “It was only an accident… It would be ungallant for a prince to beat someone for a mishap— or at all, in truth.”

“As I said,” you hummed, bowing your head to hide your smile while you adjusted his silver pin with more careful fingers. “You’re very sweet, Your Grace.”

“Sweet, am I?” Baelor scoffed. “I fear you would be the only one to think so, my girl.”

The term of endearment spilled effortlessly from his mouth, and had for some moon turns since. You were too lowborn for any real titles, but the absence of such in conversation felt strange to him. He did not mean for it to sound as possessive as it did, though your stomach warmed at the thought of belonging to him in some way.

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m the only one that matters, then, isn’t it, Your Grace?” you’d quipped with a wider grin and a sparkling look in your squinted eyes.

Baelor got the feeling that it was custom for you to joke with your ladies in such a manner, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that your words were a prophecy of some kind. Like you knew, as well as he did, that you were going to become a much bigger part of his life than he’d planned.

“Aye,” he grinned. “That you are, my girl…”

Somewhere between now and then, the veil had slipped, and he could no longer distinguish his want for you from his need. He found himself tethered to your very existence, bending to your gravity like the tide and the moon. It sometimes felt like he lived only to be touched by you; the uncertainty of the rest of the world slipped away whenever your fingers brushed his skin.

Even now, he has to fight back a shiver as you slide his rings on one by one — with far more gentleness than should likely be allowed, in the very most literal sense.

Baelor watches you in the long mirror propped in the corner of his chambers while you stand at his side, plucking the silver jewelry from the small table beside you with a precision that feels almost methodical.

His eyes fall over your messily fixed hair, as if you’d done it in a hurry or slept in it the night before; then to your dress sleeve, which threatens to slip down your shoulder, that you make no move to raise again; and to your heeled shoes, peeking beneath the skirt of your dress, which you had kicked off to rest your feet and think he doesn’t notice.

But there is nothing about you, he’s found, that would not capture his immediate attention.

“This is a new arrangement,” Baelor observes as he peers down at his hand, now adorned in a different array of silver than he’s used to. You’ve switched the usual pattern of them; added a couple new ones and a few he’d forgotten that he had.

“Aye, Your Grace,” you nod with a proud, sheepish smile as you slip the dark dragon insignia ring — which belonged to his grandfather many years ago — down the middle finger of his left hand. You cradle his wrist gently in your free one and absentmindedly trace the ridges of his knuckles with your thumb. “I dreamt of it last night and wanted to see how it looked…”

Baelor grins, and with a teasing squint in his brown-blue eyes, wonders aloud, “Dreaming of my fingers often, are you?”

Your wide eyes snap to his glimmering, mismatched ones in an instant. He watches your shy smile fade in a flash, ebbing into a frightened sort of look — because he has had a way of plaguing your dreams, for a while now, really; and his sudden inquiry on the matter makes you feel nothing short of utterly caught.

“Sorry, Your Grace. That was— That was inappropriate of me,” you stammer and turn away. Baelor mourns your touch when you drop his hand to face the table on your other side. You go to pick up one of the rings there, but have since forgotten which one you’d had in mind, and how to use your hands. “I shouldn’t have— I just meant that—”

“I only jest, my girl, I assure you,” Baelor says with a breathy laugh. “I am not much to dream about, I know.”

You roll your eyes at his self-deprecation, which turns into a squinted look when you glance at him over your shoulder.

“Of course not, Your Grace,” you answer drily, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Because the Crown Prince of the Iron Throne isn’t the most eligible bachelor in the Seven Kingdoms, after all.”

Baelor flares hot under his all-black grab while you pluck another ring from the table — a dark silver paired with a Targaryen ruby in the center. He hopes the embers tingling suddenly in his skin don’t show as red on his face when you turn back to face him.

“Well, most women aren’t exactly searching for an old widower with two kids, are they?”

You shrug, with your lips thinned into a tight line, as you reach again for his left hand. You cradle his palm with your own as you slide the ring onto his barren pointer finger.

“Well, I presume many old widowers with two kids aren’t future kings, Your Grace,” you hum. “And most future kinds aren’t usually so handsome.”

“You flatter me,” he dismisses with a shake of his head.

“Isn’t that my job, Your Grace?” you giggle and turn away again.

Baelor’s eyes narrow at your profile.

“Is that it, then?” he wonders aloud, then smiles at the confused look you give him in response. You try hard not to cower under the weight of his crooked smile and the suspicious glint in his brown-blue eyes. “Are you only so sweet to me because you feel it is your job to do so?”

Your eyes widen, caught again.

You swallow and calculate your next words carefully. “Well, anything otherwise would be… inappropriate, Your Grace, would it not?”

“Aye,” he nods. “It would be…”

You avert your gaze and fumble with the weighty Hand pin left on the silver tray in front of you. Your clammy fingers tremble faintly when you turn back to him, weaving the needle through his black coat.

Baelor watches you with an unwavering gaze, silently praying that you’ll nick him with it like you did the very first time — so that he can be coddled by you, maybe, or so he can bleed and feel an ounce of release.

“’Tis a shame, is it not?” he hums distantly. “A king is allowed only two things: his lady wife and his whores. Anything in between could start wars, history proves. If you were highborn, no one would think to look at us twice…”

The gravity of his words — the confession that lies within them — hits you like a punch to the stomach. It threatens to steal your breath the same way.

“Would you, Your Grace?” you hear yourself ask, voice trembling, as you press the silver pin to his chest. Baelor’s brows raise in an expectant look, and you struggle to find the courage to repeat yourself for several long moments. “If I had been born a lady, I mean… Would you look at me twice?”

“I do already,” Baelor confesses with a gentle smile and a tender look in his mismatched eyes, tilting his head towards the door. “It is only out there that I cannot.”

“So…” you trail off and swallow hard. “If we’re alone, in here, then…”

“Then I presume what the rest of the kingdom doesn’t know wouldn’t hurt it.”

You try to meet his smile with one of your own, though in your sudden stupor, the corner of your lip only flickers faintly upward. “Aye. I guess you’re right, Your Grace.”

Your fingers freeze on the silver sword on his chest when he lifts a ringed hand, reaching slowly for your face. Your breath hitches when his fingers, warm and softly calloused, meet your burning skin. He swipes an eyelash from the apple of your cheek with a touch far gentler than you thought any man could possess.

He lingers there, just against you. Your heavy breaths entwine as the anticipation crescendos within the cobblestoned bedroom.

“Are you going to kiss me, Your Grace?” you ask, already made breathless and heavy-eyed by the thought alone.

Baelor shakes his head.

“No. I’m not,” he mutters, though the heavy look in his glimmering eyes says otherwise. “Not until you say so, anyway…”

You flare hotter when his fingers trail slowly down your cheek and over the curve of your jaw, like he’s memorizing how your skin feels under his touch.

“Nothing happens until you say so,” the older man assures. “If you want me to stop, give me the word, and I will speak naught of this ever again.”

You swallow hard.

“And… If I don’t want this to stop?” you wonder on bathed breath, as the pad of his thumb traces gently over the curve of your bottom lip. Baelor’s lidded eyes train there, and his mouth waters for a taste of you.

“Then you need only give me a sign… And I will give you whatever you want…”

Your mouth parts gently. You go to say something, but the words get hung in your throat. You tilt your chin and press a chaste kiss to the pad of his thumb, instead — peering up at the man from beneath your lashes as you test the newfound waters.

Baelor’s brown-blue eyes turn glassy under your touch in an instant, and your stomach swims with a warmer feeling. With a bit more confidence than before, you wrap your lips slowly around the tip of his thumb — which you had trimmed and buffed for him the night before. You can still taste the sweet oil you’d rubbed onto his nail beds when you suck gently at the digit, without ever once taking your eyes off the man in front of you.

You pull away a moment later with a low pop, wearing a spit-slick mouth and a mischievous half-smile. “Is that enough of a sign, Your Grace—?”

His wide palm smooths across your jaw and around the back of your neck before you can properly get the words out. He pulls you closer with a suddenly firm hand, pressing his lips to yours before you can blink and kissing you like he’d swallow you whole if he could.

You moan when he licks into your parted mouth. His tongue feels like velvet against your own, and tastes of mint leaf, blood oranges, and flat cakes from an early breakfast. Your trembling hands reach for the silver chain keeping his cloak in place and tug at the chain to pull him closer. You exhale hard through your nose when his greying scruff scratches at your delicate skin.

Your lips click faintly when Baelor pulls away, far too soon for your liking. He smiles with your spit on his mouth when you try hopelessly to chase his kiss.

“When I asked, earlier, if you had dreamt of my fingers…” he trails off through labored breaths, nudging the bridge of your nose with the tip of his. “You looked frightened… As if I had caught you in some secret… Is that a fair assessment, would you say?”

You nod, not trusting your voice enough to speak.

“And what was I doing with them?” he asks, eyes darting back and forth between both of yours. “In those dreams of yours?”

Your kissed mouth opens to answer him, but nothing comes out for a long, embarrassing beat.

Baelor’s lips curl slowly into a sympathetic grin.

“Show me,” he commands; he pleads.

Your hands shake when they reach for his ringed one, still cradling gently at the back of your neck. Your fingers wrap around his wrist right before you step away from him, just to tug him with you across the expansive room. Your boots slip from beneath the skirt of your dress as your bare feet pad across the cobbles to the made bed against the wall.

You tilt your chin to keep his gaze as you sit gingerly on the edge of it. The feathered mattress, topped with silk and velvet made of Targaryen red, dips under your weight. You lift the thin skirt of your dress to your thighs with one hand, while your other guides Baelor’s between your legs. He smells of leather and something sweet when he towers over you, peering down at you from the chiseled bridge of his nose as his fingers near your warmth.

Your mouth parts with a gasped breath when his middle and forefinger trails over the velveteen edges of your cunt, now blanketed in the thin layer of silk you leak for him. He traces slowly down your labia and up again. You twitch on instinct when he nudges your sensitive clit, and his mouth lifts into a slow half-smile.

Your grip on his wrist tightens as the pad of his middle finger dips into your pulsing entrance. “Please…” you hear yourself beg. It fades into an airier breath when he pierces you slowly with the digit. You coat his skin in a layer of honey that allows him to slip inside you with ease.

He exhales hard through his nose, in what you think is meant to be a laugh, as he smiles lazily down at you.

“Look how easily you open up for me…” he murmurs in a soft, melodic voice. A whimper sounds in your throat when he slides his finger out and back again. “Imagine how well you’ll take my cock…”

Your lip flickers into a dazed sort of smile. “Do you imagine me taking your cock often, Your Grace?” you tease despite your audible breathlessness.

“Aye,” Baelor nods once. “I do.”

He presses his thumb hard to your swollen clit, bending at the waist to swallow your moan with a searing kiss before the guards outside can hear it. He presses you back into the mattress, which feels like it might swallow you whole, and cages you beneath his broader body while he pulls an orgasm from your body with nothing but his fingers.

You have to change the sheets again when he’s done with you.

And he attends the following council meeting with his fingertips pruned and smelling of you.

When Baelor needed help donning his armor that foggy morning before the Trial of Seven, he called upon his trusted handmaiden, as he had done for many years. You dressed him with all the obedience of a hired servant, but carried an air of stubbornness with you that came with loving him as deeply as you had come to.

You were more than his maid by the time you arrived in Ashford — you were the woman who shared his bed when the nights were quiet and empty, the woman who caused the future king to refuse to ever court another. You loved him like a wife, even though you knew the title would never be afforded to you. Baelor always joked that you were as stubborn as one, too, which is precisely why you heavied the room with your silence as you dressed the man in steel armor a size too small for him.

“You’re trembling,” he’d observed as you loosened the clasp on his dragon-crested chest plate.

“Apologies, Your Grace,” you said in a detached monotone.

Baelor only grinned, because he knew you only saved such formal titles for when he’s gotten himself into trouble. “You don’t have to fear for me, my girl— I’m fighting my brother and the King’s Guard; neither will bring harm to me, I assure you.”

“And what if they do?” you’d asked with venom coating your every word. “If you get hurt— If you die on that field— What will come of me?”

“Well, there are plenty of highborns in need of handmaidens—”

You shoved him hard by the shoulder — perhaps the only lowborn in the entirety of the Seven Kingdoms that could do so without punishment — and met his furrow-browed look of confusion with a hardened scowl.

“Do not patronize me, Baelor— Don’t assume that I’m only worried to be out of a job when you know…”

You trailed off with a gasped breath, not entirely sure of what words should follow.

Baelor heard you anyway, even in your silence.

“Aye. I know,” Baelor nodded, soft eyes glittering in the orange candlelight. “And that is why I’m coming back when this trifle is through— You’re not getting rid of me that easily, my girl.”

You could not save him from the stands when the trial commenced and the battlefield turned into a blur of merciless blows; nor were you permitted into the barracks when Aerion yielded and the opposing sides received treatment in separate camps.

You created quite a stir with your cries, and the hysterical curses you spat at the knights keeping you out. You know it’s bound to be discussed in whispers on the morrow, but you can’t quite bring yourself to care about it now.

You and Baelor don’t share a word upon his return — because you don’t think you can open your mouth without crying, and his distant shock is still slow to wear off. You undress him with numb hands that tremble at the sight of crimson blood, and the blooming, plum-wine colored bruises that decorate his pale skin.

You prepare a scalding bath with healing oils and ease the man slowly into the steam. You have to change the water twice before it finally runs clear, untainted by swirls of pink-red blood.

You kneel beside the tub and press a warm cloth to his spine, where a dark bruise turns black at the very base of his neck. Baelor shivers at your gentleness, and at the droplets of silken water that rush down his back. You watch the tendons in his freckled shoulder twitch under the skin. The carnage painted like watercolor along the canvas of his back and ribs makes you feel like crying all over again.

Baelor’s heavy head lifts at the sound of your sniffling. He grimaces at the ache in his neck when he turns to look at you. The pained look etched across your features stings physically at his chest — like a lance to the sternum times a thousand.

“Oh, my love,” he coos, voice laced with exhaustion. “Don’t cry, my girl— Don’t cry.”

He lifts his hand from the water to reach for the one bracing yourself on the edge of the tub. You notice his knuckles are bruised when he cups your fingers in his palm, dragging them to his mouth to press his lips over the delicate skin — not kissing you there exactly, just feeling you.

The rag in your other hand splashes when it falls from your fingers and into the water. You splay your hand over his freckled shoulder to coax him closer before pressing your cheek to the crown of his head. He smells of tea tree oil and clean soap, but the scent of blood still lingers in the grey-black strands.

“I’m sorry,” you whimper in quiet sniffles.

“Don’t apologize, my love,” he whispers against your knuckles.

“I was— so frightened for you,” you confess through gasped breaths. “I thought for certain that your brother’s mace had—”

“Do you feel this?” Baelor mumbles against you, right before he presses a chaste kiss to your knuckles, and smooths his grey scruff over the delicate skin when he turns to look at you. You sit back on your haunches with your features contorted in a confused look, which he meets with a tired smile. “I am here. I’m alive. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Do not do that to me again, Baelor,” you tell him, suddenly hardened.

His quiet smile grows.

“I do not plan on it, my girl, I assure you,” he hums in a melodic voice.

He tilts his bearded chin in a silent plea for you to kiss him. You bend over the tub’s edge to meet him halfway, and fight the urge to cry when your lips lock with his chapped ones. You kiss him once, twice, and then a third time until you lose count. Baelor speaks through each of them.

“I plan on— Returning home with you— And marrying you— In front of the prettiest weirwood tree in King’s Landing— And letting all the rest of it fall where it may—”

Your mouth is softly swollen from his kisses when you part from him. Your heavy eyes flit back and forth between his brown-blue ones, lidded and glimmering with fatigue and contentment. Your brows lower in a worried sort of look — because he had told you, not too long ago now, that marrying anything lower than a lord’s daughter could start a rebellion across the kingdoms.

“Is that wise, Your Grace?” you murmur with an audible waver in your voice.

“No,” Baelor hums with a shake of his head. “But let’s do it anyway.”

Warm water stains your skin when his wide hand smooths across your cheek, dragging your mouth back to his. He kisses you harder this time, deeper, sliding his tongue between your lips like tasting you removes the remnants of war from his mouth. You cradle his jaw and neck in gentle hands while his free one curls around your shoulder, dampening your dress as it reaches down your back to unknot the tie in your corset.

You rise from your kneeled position to loosen it the rest of the way. You slide your arms from the sleeves and let the thin fabric pool at your feet with a soft thud when it hits the cobbles. You try not to cower at the glint in Baelor’s mismatched eyes, as if he were seeing you for the very first time in that moment — discovering something new within your naked body that he had seen a hundred times over.

You take his hand and step gingerly into the bathtub with him. The steaming water feels like satin against your cool skin as you sink down into it. Baelor’s palms splay over your ribcage to keep you steady when you straddle his scruffy thighs. You keep the bulk of your weight on your knees when he tries to pull you closer.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” you tell him, cradling his neck in gentle hands.

“You couldn’t,” Baelor whispers.

You brace yourself on his shoulders, careful to avoid his bruises there, as you reach into the silken water and between your bodies. There’s a dull cut on his ribs, likely from where his armor had dug into his skin from a blow from an enemy lance. You’ll have to fight him to let you tend to it later, you know; but for now, you cup his half-hard cock in your gentle palm and massage him there until he’s fully stiff in your grasp.

Baelor’s grumbled sigh fills the quiet bathroom. He tilts his head back and struggles to keep his eyes open as you shift on top of him. Your breasts rise from the top of the water and press against his scruffy chest when you pierce yourself with the bulbous head of his cock. Your quieter whine fills with his soft groan when you sink fully on top of him.

You go to rock your hips over his thighs, but his hands on your hips tighten to keep you still.

“Stay like this…” he pleads through bated breaths. “Just for a little while…”

Your cunt flutters around him at the thought, though your chest still tightens with worry. “What if someone comes in? What if they see?”

Baelor just grins, dizzy with love and the evasion of death. “Let them see.”

[honeyroots]

18+. tw incest, mentions of abuse/grooming. this is sad. DEAD DOVE.

winchester!sister!reader who has a complicated relationship with sam and dean because john sheltered you. winchester!sister!reader who had a codependent and obsessive relationship with john that sam and dean didn’t know about. when john dies and you’re forced to hunt with sam and dean, it’s clear just how badly their father did a number on you. when they’re on a hunt and you’re trying to do your own thing, dean is strict— john’s little soldier, “i’m dad now, you understand that? he’s not here anymore so i’m the next best thing, and when i give you orders, you follow them.”

this command flips something in your brain, and later when they’re in the motel while sam is out grabbing them dinner, you take it as an opportunity to sit on your big brother’s lap. dean is confused at first, where did this sudden affection come from? when you starts pulling at his belt buckle, he’s stilling your hand by grabbing it with his own. “woah— hey, hey! what’re you doing?”

“thought you said you were dad now?” you look at him with a perplexed gaze. why is he stopping her?

“yeah, i did say that but… did dad let you do this?” dean’s stomach turns. the thought of his father and his sister nearly makes him sick, but the rejected look on your face is putting him in a tough position.

“uh huh,” you mutter, whining gently as you squirms your hand in his, “dad loved me so much. i was his special girl! just like mom.”

guilt consumes dean. the fact that this seems so normal to you, that in order to feel your brother’s love, you need to cross these boundaries is absurd. but dean isn’t a psychiatrist, dean isn’t a therapist, and dean has only ever been a big brother to sammy, which means he only knows how to put his siblings first. he went to hell for sammy, after all.

“what do you need from me?” dean questions, letting his sister’s hand go as he brings his other hand to caress her cheek. “tell me.”

[lizjournals]

Older bf! Baelor cleans the melted ice cream drop that runs down your chin with his finger. He almost always wakes first and prepares breakfast, making it a personal mission to make sure you eat something before going to work or school. shopping with Baelor is the best experience ever, doesn't matter if it's grocery for your apartment or just clothes and stuff, he buys you everything that you look at and carries everything and spend as much time as you want. He's busy most of the time but if it's decided that the day is gonna be spent with you he won't rush you for anything. He's a super healthy person so if you have unhealthy habits such as smoking, he won't force you out of it or shame you about it, But he will try to get you to quit one way or another.

[lizjournals]

moden! Jace would be spoiled in a rich family that is deeply corrupted and enables his every action. He's be slightly neglected because his mother is busy with business and stuff.. the perfect bully

[lovebugism]

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ DEVIL'S LAND ─── baelor targaryen

summary: when your father loses the war for the iron throne, you're shipped to the red keep and married to the future king to keep the peace. while you waste away in a gilded cage, baelor tries to convince you that you're more than just a hostage. (4k)

characters: baelor targaryen / wife!reader, maekar targaryen, aerion targaryen

contents: arranged marriage, enemies to lovers, power imbalance, angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort, a lot of yearning, canon divergent (almost blackfyre rebellion-esque except it takes place much later and w different house) cw for mentions of war, death, grief, blood and gore, brief mentions of suicidal ideation smut 18+ (MDNI), slightly dubcon because of power dynamics

( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )

The feasting hall is filled with the lack of you. 

Your ghost sits in the empty chair next to Baelor’s; an absence he should be used to by now, but one that still weighs on his chest like steel all the same. He cannot remember the last time you supped with him, now that he thinks about it, or the last time you broke your fast with him at sunrise. You hardly ever leave your chambers, and when you do, you’re either alone in the study or hidden in the farthest edge of the expansive gardens out back.

You live your life in King’s Landing in solitude. Baelor can’t quite figure out if that’s what you truly want, or if the isolation is what you think you deserve.

“Do we know if the girl has taken so much as a bite since she came to us?” Baelor’s father, the king, asks from the head of the long table.

“Do we know if the girl is even aware that the war is over?” Aerion scoffs from the opposite end, with his mouth still full. He wipes the salty juice of meat from his chin and jokes aloud, “She spent so long eating nothing but grass and horseflesh, perhaps she no longer has a taste for real food— Ow!”

He winces under his father’s harsh hand, when Maekar reaches around to slap at the back of his silver head.

“That’s because she was actually fighting a war,” the older man deadpans with a heavy scowl. “Not simply playing at one in drunken jousts.”

Despite your family’s treason, the Targaryens couldn’t help but feel a strange sort of sympathy for you — Maekar and Baelor mostly, along with Daeron, who, in his drunken rambles, said he often dreamt of you bathing in dragonfire (“That’s just because you’re a pervert, brother,” Aerion had said.) 

It was not you who waged the war after all, but rather your father; and you were all that was left to pay for his sins. No one else seems to see it that way, though.

“She lost her home. And her family with it…” Baelor’s soft voice cuts through the tension in the candlelight dining hall. He slices through his steak with a knife and fork, if only to perform the act, because he had long lost his appetite waiting for you. “Surely, we can’t expect her to feel at ease here so soon.”

“She’s been here for five moons turns and married to you for four,” his father argues, soft but still strikingly stern. “Your mother was pregnant in half that time.”

Maekar makes a noise of disgust in the back of his throat. “Please, father, continue talking about bedding my mother at the feasting table— I wanted to lose my appetite anyway.”

Baelor is sent to fetch you a moment later, not under his father’s command, but the king’s. 

“Make her understand that she is not just your wife, but the Realm’s future queen. And that certain duties are required of her,” he’d said, firm but not entirely unkind. “We have been gracious hosts, yes, but she was brought here to be made an example of. Surely she knows by now that our courtesy is not a kindness she is owed.”

He finds you in the gardens, where he’s learned that you spend most of your evenings, on the farthest end where the tiger lilies grow. It was the sigil of your house, of which you are now its only remaining member. 

You’re already awaiting his arrival in the center of the wooden gazebo, having heard his footsteps on the cobbles and the greetings he shared with your handmaidens around the bend. You stand at the center of it with a large book clasped to your chest and smile when you see him, though it doesn’t quite reach your eyes. 

“Your Grace,” you greet with a bowed head.

“I think we’ve moved past the need for such courtesies, princess. Call me Baelor,” the older man hums with a tender smile. The steps of the wooden structure creak under his weight as he rises to meet you — a pretty girl donned in a dress of black velvet, as if you were waiting for another funeral. “Did the handmaidens summon you for supper?”

You nod once and tilt your chin to keep his gaze when he stands before you, weathered hands clasped behind his back. 

“They did, Your Grace.”

He tilts his chin and gives you a stern look, made of raised brows and glimmering brown-blue eyes.

You clear your throat and correct yourself. “They did, Baelor.”

“Then why are you still hiding yourself out here, my lady?”

His mismatched eyes soften around the edges as they flit back and forth between both of yours. A kind smile hints at his mouth beneath his greying beard. The one you give him in return is much sadder in comparison.

“We both know nobody wants me there, Your Grace,” you tell him.

He flinches slightly, chin jerking, as if your words have offended somehow. “Surely you know by now that isn’t true. It was my brother who was asking after your whereabouts, actually— As was my father.”

He doesn’t tell you that that’s only partially true.

He thinks you already know, besides.

“Well, it was your nephew who stole my clothes in the shower this morning,” you confess with a cynical grin and something sad swimming in your eyes, as your fingers fidget on the leather-bound book between them. “I heard him laughing as he ran off down the hall with them. And since no one would retrieve a fresh dress for me, I had to walk back to my quarters naked.”

Baelor swallows through the anger that rises like bile in his throat. “I will see to it that he is properly reprimanded, princess, I promise you—”

“And what of the cook who spat in my oaten porridge this morning before handing it off to me, Your Grace?” you ask with a dry laugh. 

“Who?” Baelor blurts, features hardened in a flicker. He smells of leather and musk and a freshly cooked meal when he takes a slow step closer to you. “Tell me who it was, and I will have them punished—”

“It won’t change anything,” you shrug. “I come from a family of traitors, Your Grace. I will be sneered at wherever I go until the day I die—”

“I will protect you from them—”

“If you punish one of them, you’ll just create a thousand more,” you say with a laugh, though there is very little humor inside it. “I know this marriage was arranged to make you seem merciful, but you really should’ve killed me with the rest of them— It would’ve been kinder, Your Grace.”

Baelor softens again at your confession and fights the urge to comfort you physically. The hands behind his back tighten into trembling fists instead.

“I don’t expect you to feel at home here so soon, my lady, but I do hope with time—” He cuts himself off when you scoff a humorless laugh. His brows lower in confusion; his lip flickers upward in a faint half-smile. “What is it?”

“Don’t pretend like I’m anything other than a prisoner here, Your Grace,” you tell him.

“You’re our guest,” Baelor corrects, firm but strikingly tender. “My wife—”

You laugh like he’s said something funny. 

“Well, excuse me, Your Grace, but the three of those seem to be mutually exclusive in my experience.”

Baelor falters. His chest flares with a white-hot feeling, like a sword shoved into his chest and twisting. The war has already taught him what that sort of carnage feels like, and he feels his hurt pooling like blood in his mouth just now. 

He doesn’t know why your words hurt him so, only that they do — only that they shred any remnants of hope that he could have a somewhat happy marriage here with you; that he could have learned to love you as he did his first wife.

His softness slips away just as his silly daydreams do. His kind features harden in an instant as he tells you in an unfeeling monotone, “Your food is getting cold, my lady. There’s a plate waiting for you in the feasting hall— where the king is eagerly anticipating your arrival. It is not wise to keep him waiting.”

He leaves without another word.

You stay in place and try to catch your breath when he’s gone.

Dinner goes about as well as any feast surrounded by your captors possibly could. 

You stomach a small bite of steak, if only to please the king sitting to your right, but start to feel sick almost instantly. 

The charred edges remind you of the bodies they burnt on the battlefield, piled on top of each other, far too many to bury. The savory juice pools warm on your tongue, and you can’t help but think of the blood, which sat heavy in the air the early morning your father lost the war he started.

You sit silent, clouded by thoughts of war, between the men who saw your family slaughtered. No one addresses you for the majority of the dinner, not until the king sucks cabbage from his teeth and wonders aloud: “Is it not past time you gave your prince another son, my lady?”

You think he says it to be polite, or to start a cordial conversation with you, though it only makes you feel sicker.

Baelor huffs a faint laugh. “Let us not spoil our meal with such talks, father—”

“I pray for it every day,” you answer in a quiet monotone, always so meek in your way, but never once taking your eyes off the older man at the head of the table. “In the Godswood outside of the Keep.”

Baelor’s head snaps in your direction. A palpable look of confusion twists his scruffy features as his mismatched eyes dart over your profile. “Truly?” he hears himself ask.

You nod once. “Just as I pray for the king’s long, healthy reign, Your Grace.”

The quiet venom in your words does not go unnoticed.

You turn away without another word, and no one bothers to speak to you for the rest of dinner. 

You think you’ve gotten away scot free until you’re summoned later that night, after you’ve long traded your heavy black dress for your cream night gown. You’re tying the silk lace at the chest of your slip when your handmaiden knocks and slips inside — a young girl from Lorath, who had also lost her family in the war. She is, perhaps, the only person in the entirety of the Seven Kingdoms who doesn’t look at you like you’re a total traitor.

“Princess?” she greets in a low, accented voice.

“Yes?”

You turn to glance at her over your shoulder and find the girl fidgeting awkwardly in the entryway. “It’s Prince Baelor. He has requested your presence in his chambers.”

Your heart stops and does a backflip as it plummets to your stomach, where it sits like a leaden weight and makes it very suddenly hard to breathe. 

Baelor requesting your company in the feasting hall, or in the study, or in the gardens was one thing — but him requesting your presence in his quarters was entirely another.

You clear your throat and turn away, hoping that your handmaiden doesn’t notice the flicker of fear that passes over your features in the mirror. “At this hour?” you ask, voice trembling.

“He insisted, princess,” she tells you.

You do as requested and make way to his chambers. You are in no position to turn him down — you are his property, after all, in more ways than one; as his wife, in the eyes of the Seven, and as his prisoner, but the rule of Targaryen law.

Baelor had been nothing but kind to you, to be sure. By all accounts, you got lucky in receiving him as husband, instead of any other Targaryen heir or your head on a pike next to your father’s. You’re still alive, yes, but not quite living; still alive, but not quite free.

You’re escorted down the cobbled corridor to his quarters by your handmaiden and a white-cloaked knight. The oak is hard against your knuckles when you knock on his chamber door; the golden knob is heavy in your fist when you swing it open following his muffled command. You find Baelor standing at the round table by an open window, pouring two goblets of wine, still clad in his all-black day garb.

“You weren’t sleeping, were you?” he asks in lieu of greeting.

You shake your head as you walk to his side, white slip flowing behind you. “No, Your Grace.”

“Baelor,” he corrects with a kind smile and a pair of glimmering eyes. He’s already had a few cups before you got here; you can see it in his glassy gaze, smell it on his breath. 

Your fingers shake when they reach for the chalice he passes you.

“No, Baelor,” you say.

You bring the golden-rimmed cup to your mouth. You still haven’t quite gotten used to the taste of Tagaryen spirits — they’re far too bitter, you’ve found, too dull. But even still, you tip your head back and down the contents in three swift swallows. 

You feel the burn trail from your throat, to your chest, and down into your stomach. You revel in the way it prickles at your skin as you set the cup back to the table, wiping your slick mouth with the back of your free hand.

Baelor watches in silence as you head for the made bed across the room. You reach for the tie in your nightgown in a movement that looks utterly mechanical — like you already know what’s about to happen, like you plan to get it over with as soon as possible. 

His stomach ripples with excitement while his chest flares with hurt.

“Could we not have a decent conversation first, princess?” he wonders with a quiet smile, that he hopes covers the pain in his eyes. “I don’t see any reason why this cannot be cordial.”

You glance at him over your shoulder. Zero emotion graces your features as the edges of your slip inch down your collarbones. The urge to cry was beaten out of you some moons ago; not by Baelor’s command, or even the king’s, but you were tortured for it nonetheless. This is what your lord husband doesn’t seem to understand — just because he has been nothing but kind to you, does not mean the rest of the world has been.

“There is plenty reason, Your Grace,” you tell him in an unfeeling monotone, moments before your nightgown pools around your bare feet with a quiet thud, leaving your form utterly bare and kissed by candlelight.

You try not to feel dirty when his hands are on you. You try not to think about how many people he’s killed with them — how many of your brothers and cousins died under his sword before they lost the war. You try not to think about how utterly gentle Baelor is with you despite such carnage, as he guides you slowly into the center of his bed. 

His body is lean and muscular when it presses on top of yours, burying you further in the crimson silk and cashmere blankets below. You can feel every inch of him on top of you, and you hate it — you hate how much you like it. 

His scruffy legs slot between yours before he pierces you with his long cock, of which you can feel every ridge and vein as he fucks slowly into you. You can feel the minimal pudge of his belly as it presses into yours, and his heart drumming wildly behind his hairy chest when he smothers your breasts against his sternum. His fingers are warm and calloused as they trace up your arms and wrists and palms, entwining with shorter ones and pressing them into the pillow on either side your head.

He’s in you, on you, and all over you.

It’s maddening.

So much so, that you struggle now to distract yourself as you normally would. Usually, you’d add up all the stars you could see through the window across the room, or the cracks in the cobbles in the ceiling. You lose count quickly now, though, through Baelor’s whispered grunts in your ear, which fan warm across your skin and leave chills pebbling in their wake.

“Gods,” you hear him grumble. “You feel so good around me—”

He buries all of his moans into your neck, as if he were ashamed of them; as if he were ashamed of how good he feels. Something about it makes your stomach swirl with a newfound warmth. You can feel it leaking out of you now, and drenching the sheets below. You can hear it, even — in the faint schlick, schlick, schlick sounds every time he punches into you. 

Your hips jerk when the coarse hair above his cock presses harder against the most sensitive part of you. Your breath catches and leaves in a high-pitched yelp before you can stop it. You burn red-hot with embarrassment a second later.

“Sorry,” you squeak out, chest heaving. “I’m sorry.”

Baelor halts his thrusts and pulls his head back for the first time in several minutes. His brown-blue eyes are glassy and heavy-lidded; his scruffy face is flushed and glowing with sweat; his thin lips are rosier now from the sloppy kisses he’d pressed absentmindedly to your neck. 

You didn’t know he was so beautiful before now.

“Don’t apologize,” he assures through panted breaths. He brushes a rogue hair from your temple and softens when you flinch on instinct, as though surprised by the sheer tenderness of his touch. “You can feel good, princess— It’s supposed to feel good.”

No, it’s not, you want to say. I shouldn’t like this. I shouldn’t like you.

“Do you want to keep going?” Baelor asks.

You nod wordlessly despite yourself; not because you’re his wife or his property but because, for the first time, you want to feel him.

You squeeze your eyes shut when his hips roll back again. You can still feel his stare on you when he pushes back into you, watching your features crumple under the sheer weight of your pleasure. 

The pressure on your clit is unrelenting and only builds in time with the speed of his measured thrusts. A foreign feeling rises in the pit of your stomach accordingly, until you can feel yourself choking on it, like you’re moments away from bursting entirely.

“Stop—” you hear yourself say, though the word gets lost in a gasped breath. You repeat, louder this time, “Stop! Stop.”

Baelor abides without question. He stills on top of you as his pleasure-stricken features flood with panic almost instantly, worried he might’ve hurt you in some way.

“What?” he pants. “What is it?”

“It’s—” you start but cut yourself off a moment later, unsure of what to say, or why you had even stopped him in the first place. “It’s… It’s too much.”

“What is?”

You shake your head against the pillow, eyes wide and wild as they dance between his mismatched ones. “It feels… too good…”

Baelor exhales a heavy sigh of relief.

“Aye, my lady,” he nods with a quiet laugh. “It’s supposed to. I want it to feel good for you.”

You say nothing, just tighten your fingers around the ones still holding his.

“I can tell that it does. Feel good for you, I mean…” he confesses, voice low and melodic, as he tilts his hips back again. “You’re getting so much tighter around me—”

He clenches his jaw and grunts quietly when he pushes back into you. A quiet whine sounds in the back of your throat as your head jerks against the pillow, an involuntary motion spurred on by your pleasure.

“—Can barely move for how tight you’re squeezing me,” he moans through a breathy chuckle. His heavy eyes dart wildly over your blissful features, screwed together in a pained look that he knows is anything but. A lopsided smile quirks the edges of his mouth. “I think you’re already close for me, aren’t you, my lady? I think you’d cum for me the second I commanded it of you, wouldn’t you?”

You swallow hard, not trusting yourself to speak, or to otherwise form any intelligible turn of phrase. You hold tighter to his hands and clench your thighs around his hips, nodding wordlessly in response.

“Do it then,” Baelor tells you, so low it sounds almost like a growl. “Let me have it— Let me feel you.”

A squeal gets lost in your throat when his thrusts pick up speed again. The merciless pleasure begins to suffocate you, almost terrifyingly so. You couldn’t run from it now if you tried, not pressed beneath his body like this. The only thing you can do now is take it.

Baelor holds you while you cum, coos softly in your ear the entire way through the twitches of your orgasm: “That’s it,” he praises, choppy between his thrusts. “That’s it. So good for me— No, no, don’t stop— Give me all of it, sweet girl. Yes… That’s it…”

You’re left trembling beneath him as your high comes and goes. You hardly realize that you’ve slipped your hands out of his larger ones to wrap them around his pale shoulders — digging crescent shapes into the freckled skin, keeping him pressed impossibly close to your shuddering form.

You only vaguely feel his fingers on your buzzing skin as he wipes a tear from your temple that you hadn’t realized was there. You blink the burning haze from your eyes as you peer up at the man above you. Your heaving chest warms at the smile he gives you, quiet and utterly tender.

“See?” Baelor hums, petting you softly by the hair. “This doesn’t have to be all bad… We can be happy here, can’t we?”

The urge to cry wells suddenly in your throat. And it’s strange, because you don’t feel all that sad at the moment. Instead, you feel quite hopeful — for the first time since the war started, you finally feel like your life is one worth living.

“I don’t know…” you answer on an exhaled breath, leaning into his calloused hand when he presses it gently to your burning cheek. Your wet eyes dart back and forth between his brown-blue ones as you confess, “But I think I want to be…”

[goldenhoneyedwine]

Wrapped around your finger...

The events of this blurb take place after "In the palm of your hand..." but this can also be read as a standalone blurb. Content tags are canon divergence, reader uses she/her pronouns, no physical description of reader, smut, fluff, pet names, unprotected sex, yearning!!!!, loss of virginity, reader continues to walk him like a dog, dry humping (aint nobody dry), p in v, cream pie, hyperspermia thank you for reading <3

It's hours later when you return to the castle. Even though your body feels weary, still you buzz from the feeling of accomplishment and practically bounce down the halls to your bedchambers. Gwayne paces in front of your doors, and follows on your heels into the room. When you said "later" he must have took your words as gospel, faithfully making himself available hours later. "How was your meeting with the Septons?" He asks, as the door closes behind you. You notice his hair sticks up wildly in some places; either he was raking his hands through it while he waited or never bothered to fix the traces you left earlier.

"It was wonderful. Very productive." You beam at him. "On behalf of House Hightower, I pledged five thousand gold dragons to be sent monthly to aid the poor. The Septons were so pleased!"

Gwayne’s mouth hangs open, rendered speechless.

"And I met some of the orphans that directly benefit from our donations. Such little angels!" You set your prayer book down on your desk, and prompt him, “You did say I was allowed to pledge five thousand, husband?" You raise your eyebrows expectantly waiting his answer.

He sputters. "I said five hundred."

An airy laugh escapes you. "Oh, I must have misheard you. But it’s no consequence to House Hightower, being one of the wealthiest in the realm." You shrug innocently. "Right?"

Your husband’s eyes bulge in shock. How is he going to explain to his Master of Coin the tenfold influx of charitable giving leaving the Hightower coffers? That his wife cares too much for orphans and he could never tell her no? That's the truth of it, as pathetic as it sounds, but the Master of Coin would understand if he saw her.

You sit on the chair next to the fire, and begin to unlace your boots. This pulls Gwayne from his self pitying stupor. His wife must be assisted, doted on, even now. He eases onto one knee in front of you, batting your hands away from your muddy boots. "Here, let me." Reverently, he pulls your skirt up over your knees, taking care to linger his palms over your calves. Then, he works the laces, gently loosening them so your boot can slide off your foot. He switches to the left boot, repeating the actions dutifully.

"You don't seem angry at me." You comment. Like earlier, you rake your fingers through his auburn hair to fix it, moving it away from his face, pulling ever so slightly at the scruff of his neck.

His head hangs, lulled by your ministrations. He presses a soft kiss to your bare knee. "I can't imagine ever being angry with you." His large hands knead into your calf muscles, easing the strain you felt from walking around the Oldtown today.

"Never?" you challenge, smile tugging at your lips.

"Could I ever be angry at those huge doe eyes looking at me?" He muses, hands moving higher slightly to massage into your knee, savoring each second you allow him to kneel before you "No, I don't believe it is possible."

You hum in approval. "Gwayne?"

His gaze flies up to meet yours, and you can see him holding his breath, hanging on to your every word. Blue eyes widened expectantly at the sound of his name from your lips.

"Would you help me with something?"

"Anything" he breathes.

"Will you help me undress? I walked through the mud earlier, so I need to change."

Gwayne nods his head harder than he ever has in his life. Lost for words, he leans back on his heels, to give you space to stand and step away from the chair. You turn your back to him, so he can access the ties down the length of your spine. Like the boots, he works the knots patiently, savoring every contact that his fingers make with your back. He feels like he is opening a gift that he has been waiting his whole life for, and doesn't intend to rush the precious packaging.

Once the laces are loosened down your back, you turn, lifting slightly on tip toe to peck the side of his mouth. "Thank you, husband. That would have taken me twice as long to wrestle with by myself! Now I need change and prepare for dinner with my ladies."

Gwayne feels as if he has been wounded, slapped, or perhaps stabbed. Pain shoots through his chest, but all he can do is whimper, "No." His head hangs against your shoulder. "No, you cannot leave again. You just can't." The blood has rushed to his cock, leaving nothing for his reeling brain. Gwayne is at the end of his rope, tormented by your smell of sweet rose soap and wide eyes. Every time he believes he has you, you manage to dart out of his grasp at the last possible second. It’s not eloquent, or particularly convincing, but he must do something to slow you down. He kisses your neck, pressing fast, open mouth kisses. Grabbing blindly at your backside, he paws at your body without the restraint usually possessed by a knight of the realm. "Dove, I will die if I have to wait any longer."

You can't help but laugh at his dramatic claim. And the jerky way that his hands, callused from the sword, clumsily pull at your dress and every handle of your body tickles. Coordination, and his sense, have been tossed out the window. The poor man looks ready to be put out of his misery, you decide. Also, the pulsing in your center is getting hard to ignore, likely spurred by the way his pretty eyes twist in agony. So your slender fingers begin to work the buttons of his shirt. "Husband, there's no need for tears." You tease. "If you wanted me, why didn't you just say so"

He laughs, but it sounds more like a choked sob. Were you a deer in the forest, luring him blindly on a hunt he was never meant to complete? Or maybe he had been the prey all along? It was starting to feel that way. But if this position he finds himself in leaves no cause for complaints, as you tenderly open the fastenings of his shirt. You lift on tip toe to kiss him, to soothe the torture of your honorable husband. He groans in approaval, stepping forward so your backside bumps against your desk. He tastes like salty tears, and cloves, which you've noticed he ocassionally chews to sweeten his breath. Gwayne kisses you hungrily, nothing like your lips meeting for the first time in the Starry Sept, tongue scraping against your teeth, claiming your mouth as his own. When you finish the last button of his shirt, you run your fingers up and down his bare chest. Your touch sends shudders down his spine, causing him to involuntarily buck his hips towards yours. Desperately, he undresses you next. His hands work the chemise up your torso, and only breaks away the kiss to lift it over your head, before meeting your lips once more.

His hands hold your lower back, pulling your form into him as close as possible. One callused palm holds your arse, allowing him to roll his hips against your cunt. It's impossible not to feel his erection straining against his pants, brushing against your center again and again. The fabric grows damp, the combination of both your arousals mixing, filling the space. Gwayne shudders a shaky breath into your neck, mouthing at the underside of your jaw, mummering "Oh my sweet girl, thank you." You chase his motions, locking your ankles to hold him flush against you. Something strange, a new feeling, hooks behind your belly, as he snakes a hand in between the tight space between you. "Let me, please dove." His fingers fumble, then find his target to circle your clit. The feeling sends a jolt through you, a small suprised hiccup leaves you.

The sound encourages him to pet into your bundle of nerves, his callused fingers dutifully slipping over your slick folds. The pressure to your sensitive cunt, and the friction of his cock against your center swirls into an intoxicating combination. His fingers are coasted with slick, and his pants are beyond soiled now, the dampness spreading with each passing drip from his leaking cock.

"Inside." you choke, voice coming out hoarse, wrecked, and totally surprising to your usual composure.

"Inside? Have you ever-?" he asks.

"No" you confess. "But it doesn't matter. I want you." Your fingers fumble at his pants, tented by his cock.

Never had three words ever brought him so much relief. Gwayne nods dumbly, convinced by nothing other than your hands loosening the ties of his pants- a sight he feared might only exist in his own imagination "Inside, yeah.” He confirms, and hastily shucks them down, only enough to let his cock spring free. He sighs as it finally hits the cool air, soothing the angry heat that builds at the head. He pulls your arse closer, angling your hips better for him to meet them.

His cock slaps against his bare stomach, smearing the skin with precome, and you press against it. The feeling of your sensitive folds brushing the hardness pulls the string even tighter in your belly.

"I won't let it hurt, I promise" He mumbles against your neck, guiding you to grind up against the velvet skin of his erection. His cock slides easily against your folds, pressing against your entrance. When Gwyane finally presses in, a choked groan rumbles through his core. He chases the feeling, swallowing your mewls, and letting your wet heat envelop him inch by inch. Slowly rocking his hips, not pulling out too much, just letting your bodies stay connected.

"Is that good, dove?" He kisses your ear tenderly.

"Yeah" you squeak, fullness leaving you lost for words. You hook your chin onto his shoulder, threading your fingers into his long hair, pulling your husband even closer into you.

As your fist tightens in his hair, he cannot help his eyes rolling back in his head. "Gods, you're so perfect." As Gawyne's rutting quickens, he once again presses his fingers to your clit, drawing quick figure eights. His pelvis knocks against yours clumsily, chasing the quickly approaching orgasm threatening to spill. He is so deep inside you, the head of his cock knocking repeatedly into your tender walls, sending shivers down to your toes. "Come for me, sweet girl. Please come.” He begs, and a final press against your clit brings your peak crashing over you. Your legs tremble around him, as heat floods your veins. The thought crosses your hazy mind to question why you were so insistent to run from him, to torment him? The answer was so obvious before, but now it escapes you.

Your stomach muscles clench and spasm, tightening the vice-like clutch your body holds over his cock. "Huh-uh- thank you-fuck" his dampened forehead leans against your neck as Gwayne spills. You feel his cock jerking deep inside you, flooding warm heat nearly up into your ribs. His fingers hold you, almost tight enough to bruise, to stay sheathed on him as his cock sputters, threatening to fill you past the point of overflow. He pants, as his breath slowly comes back to a normal pace. Tenderly, he kisses your jaw and corner of your mouth, nudging your face up to look at him, instead of at his cock leaving you, and come leaking onto the desk. "My perfect wife."

You roll your eyes at his fawning compliment, but still wrap your arms around his shoulders. Gwayne's cock gives another twitch at the sight of you blinking your huge eyes up at him. Your eyes are glassy, blissed out from your peak and exertion, and framed by doe-like lashes.

"Must you leave for dinner now?" He pleads, blue eyes widening in hope that you stay.

Whatever plans arranged with your ladies could be easily rescheduled, but you wrinkle your nose as if deep in deliberation.

Gwayne's mind is already hastily planning his next move, for when you reply that you must leave. He will offer to help you clean up, bathe, as any doting husband would. He will touch you, eat your cunt, draw peak after peak out of you. Keep you in this pliant, placated state so you lose track of time and forget about every obligation you committed to and-

"I can reschedule" You chirp, swinging your legs from where you perch on the desk.

The answer suprises him, and sends a melting sensation of relief down his spine. Still, he thinks, he'll probably just go with his original plan just to be safe.

[imnotcryingyouare1]

If it's not too much can we get more of the marry me fic? Did reader and aerion actually got married i've been thinking about it since reading it 🤧🩷

The dragon

Italics is high valyrian

Less cracky! Peak lover boy! Kinda short and thank you for the ask 🩵🩵🥰🥰 marry me

“We shall have a valyrian wedding, with red and black flowers lining the aisle and your dress will be blue with yellow accents to represent Stormfrye.” Aerion says the day after you arrive at Summerhall. The king agreeing a wedding would be a good idea, he wasn’t the keenest on you marrying Aerion but valarr already being married and Aerion begging made the decision for him. “What type of cake do you want?”

“I don’t mind, my prince.” You say sat in the gardens with him and stormfrye, the girl napping in the sun on her back loving Aerion scratching her tummy. The dragon taking to him quicker than anyone else.

“Call me Aerion, husband or my dragon.” He says wanting you to call him your dragon, just as you are his.

“I’ll call you Aerion.” You say still waiting to get to know the man it’s been decided you’re marrying. He does seem a bit crazy but a nice crazy.

“Is there anything you want for the wedding?” He ask having planned the whole thing in only a few hours, you getting married in a moons time.

“I don’t want a bedding ceremony.” You say, the thought of it making you uncomfortable.

“That’s fine you’re mine anyway.” He says simply kissing stormfryes large tummy while hugging her. “Are you looking forward to muña and kepa getting married my little dragon?”

-

“What are you doing?” Aerion asks when you meet in the hallway, him wanting to take you on a date. The wedding happening in two days time.

“I’m going for a quick fly, stormfrye is getting stressed with all these people arriving.” You explain, also finding the amount of people overwhelming looking forward to when it just you and Aerion, the both of you moving to dragonstone soon so Sormfrye has somewhere safe to live.

“Give me a few minutes and I can join you.” He says excitedly kissing your cheek before running off, to get ready so you can still have your date just with stormfrye also present.

“Um, ok?” You say watching him run off towards the kitchens. “I’ll meet you in the gardens.”

-

“I’m ready, I’ve packed us a picnic.” He says dressed in his riding gear, giving Stormfrye a scratch and talking to her in high valyrian. “Are you excited my little princess?”

“That’s sweet of you.” You say smiling at him as he joins you on stormfrye, wrapping his arms around your waist kissing your shoulder as he does so. “You ready? Fly Stormfrye.”

-

“Thank you.” You tell Aerion as he rests his head in your lap, looking like a happy cat as you scratch his head. Stormfrye playing by throwing something before going to fetch it.

“For what?” He asks never having felt so content and happy. You not having left his side since you arrived at summerhall, him teaching you high valaryan and just spending time together.

“Being so kind.” You say smiling down at the man who’s practically purring in your lap, loving attention.

“Huh, I’ve never been called that before.” He muses giggling when Stormfrye drops her toy onto his chest for him to throw.

-

“We look so hot.” Aerion says coming up behind you as you’re stood looking at yourself in your wedding dress his arms around your waist. “We’ll have beautiful hatchlings.”

“What if our children’s eggs don’t hatch?” You say, having worrying about it since the king brought up your future children and marrying your daughter to Valarrs son. Nether children even existing yet.

“They will, but if they don’t we’ll still have Stormfrye and I’ll still have you, my dragon queen.” He says placing a necklace on your neck, kissing your shoulder as he does so. The necklace having a dragon charm on it with an A engraved on a charm next to it. “You’re my everything.”

-

“What are you doing?” You ask half asleep seeing Aerion sneak out of bed to grab something, him only so visible because of the fire. Him turning quickly holding something close to his chest before slowly making his way back to the bed.

“This is brightflame.” Aerion say showing you the old toy dragon who’s red and clearly well loved. “Mother made him for me and I can’t sleep properly without him.”

“Hello brightflame.” You say to the toy, happy he’s opening up to you even more as this dragon is obviously very important to him. But also feeling guilty as he only told you because you found him. “Why isn’t he in bed with us?”

“You don’t mind?” He asks anxiously playing with the dragons wings.

“Why would I mind? You can cuddle both of us.” You say holding your arms out to him so you can cuddle. The both of you having gotten even closer over that last few moons of marriage. “I’m falling in love with you, my dragon.”

[lizjournals]

Gwayne is such an abuse bait it's not even funny

[lizjournals]

Aerion x twin sister! Reader makes so much sense cause i genuinely belive a twin would be one of the few people that Aerion would consider as his equal. He'd still be mean and horrible to you of course cause you refuses to be what he wants you to be and it angers him.

He might not admit it, but the fact that you seem to have inherited all the goodness of the world, while he's trapped within his own madness and cruelty angers him. He wants you to be just like him and belives your kindness is facade, no matter how many times you prove him wrong.

He won't admit it even to himself, but all of this comes from a place jealousy and insecurity and a sense of betrayal. You're his twin, his sister and his other half. You should be the person who understands him most and yet you couldn't be more different from him. It breaks his heart. Makes him resentful and angry. Makes him want you to tear you in two peaces, just to seek shelter in between your ribs so maybe he can feel an ounce of your peaceful soul.

[breesfics]

WHY IS HE HERE?

pairing: modern!aerion targaryen x fem!reader

summary: there were many things you expected when you got into a relationship with aerion targaryen. of course, none of those included his youngest brother, aegon — or egg, as he liked to be called — and how he began interrupting any sort of alone time you had with your boyfriend, all because he ended up liking you so much.

w.c.: 3,6k

c.w.: no use of y/n, aerion is always two seconds away from kicking egg's ass bc he doesn't leave you alone, probably (definitely) ooc aerion and ooc egg, egg is an ipad kid, not rlly a serious fic I wrote this for gits and shiggles

a.n.: first fic on tumblr so im intimidated lol. english is not my first language so forgive any mistakes and typo. not proofread.

THE MOMENT YOU GOT INTO A RELATIONSHIP WITH AERION TARGARYEN, you knew what it would involve, more or less. More than one of your friends and acquaintances — some of his, even — had reached out to you to ask if you were sure of what you were doing, and saying he wasn't exactly... well, the most gentle person.

As much as you appreciated their worry, it was unnecessary, something even they had come to realize after seeing how Aerion was with you.

He was as loving to you as he was not to everyone else, and though you somehow tamed the rushes of anger that always coursed through him, he still had a rather minimal tolerance for the rest of the world. Including his brothers. Especially his brothers.

Especially Aegon.

The youngest of his brothers had become an issue neither of you had expected prior to him meeting you.

It had taken some time before Aerion decided to introduce you to his family, and seeing as you weren't one to push, the most his brothers knew of you for exactly four months after you officially got together was your name — after Aerion accidentally left his phone on the table, and a notification from you revealed your name to Daeron, who saw no appeal in protecting his brother's privacy.

And when Aerion texted you one night, asking if you'd be okay with meeting his family — so they'll finally get off my ass about this, he had said —, you saw no issue with it, and thus a dinner was planned.

The instant the two of you entered his dining room, your eyes had gone over each attending member of his family: his three brothers, his two sisters, his father, his uncle, and his two cousins. And the air was knocked out of your lungs.

They all had an unnatural kind of beauty to them. Most of them shared Aerion's silver hair and purple eyes, but even those that didn't appeared to come from another world.

Aerion had cursed under his breath, muttering about how if he had known half the family would be called, he'd have bailed on this whole thing. But you had maintained your composure, painted a smile on your face, and met his family with forcibly-steadied hands and a thumping heart in your chest.

In retrospect, there really had been no need for you to stress over this so much. As intimidating as the Targaryens were, they were all mostly nice and very charming to be around, and in the blink of an eye, you'd found your place among them.

But credit must be given where it was due. If it hadn't been for the youngest boy, Aegon, you would have taken a lot longer to get comfortable.

His seat had been directly to your left, and he had chatted your ear off all through dinner. All the names, relations and little fun facts you knew about the Targaryens came from him. He had even ended up pulling his iPad beneath the table to show pictures of the events he was telling you all about.

Aerion hadn't shied away from expressing his annoyance at the extravagance of the dinner, which nobody showed any surprise to. He mostly stuck to your side, chatting with you in the brief moments Aegon's attention was elsewhere.

Regardless, the dinner had gone well, and with this particular milestone out of the way, the two of you could finally relax and enjoy each other's company the way you so loved: privately and without shame.

However, Egg didn't seem to have gotten the memo.

"Oh, not this again —” Aerion hissed as he returned to the large living room of the Targaryen home — castle felt more accurate to you, but oh well — with a bowl of popcorn in one hand and two drinks in the other. He stopped in his tracks right at the doorway, when his eyes found the little figure sitting next to you, which had not been there when he left five minutes ago. "What the fuck is he doing here?"

Your eyes widening at his words, you opened your mouth to scold him for swearing in front of the nine year old, but said nine year old merely perked up at his brother's voice and turned his head around to look at Aerion from where he sat on the couch.

"Did you bring my chips? I left them in the fridge."

"No! Get out!"

Even you flinched at the volume and tone of his voice, so it was no surprise when Egg leaned back in his seat, his arms crossed over his chest, a sad pout twisting his young features. And in spite of how much you enjoyed being alone with Aerion, you felt a tug at your heartstrings from the sight of the expression on his face.

Wincing, you glanced at your boyfriend, a pleading look in your eyes. "Well..."

"No."

"Just this time."

"You said that last time."

"He's already here."

"He's always here!"

"Aerion."

"No. Not happening."

Silence fell upon the living room, your eyes meeting Aerion's purple ones with determination. Obviously, you understood where he came from, but you couldn't help it. Egg was such a sweet little boy, and he was always so nice and adorable that you couldn't help but cave to his every wish.

And five minutes later, the three of you sat in front of the TV, Egg in the middle happily munching on the popcorns from the bowl on his lap, often turning to you to share his thoughts about the movie.

"Why Egg?"

"It's short for Aegon," he nodded vigorously and looked away from you.

"Yeah, I figured that part out —”

Like any normal person with a functioning brain, you loved making out with your boyfriend. He was hot, and you were in love with him, so it wasn't like it was a chore for you. Nor was it for him, based on the blurry, heated memories that suddenly came to mind.

Maybe doing it out in public was less understandable, though. But after he had placed all the shopping bags you'd handed him over the afternoon in the backseat of his car, he had pulled you into short kiss, which then became a long one, and somewhere between that and now, it had turned into something else.

Neither of you noticed when Aerion's phone began vibrating in his pocket for a couple of minutes. And when he finally did realize, he had to pull his hands out from under your shirt to declined with an irritated huff.

Then he paused, glanced at his screen for a few seconds, huffed again and answered the phone.

"No fucking way," he ended up spouting after a few back and forth between him and whoever was on the other side of that call.

"He'll be fine there for a few hours." He argued again, "There's all the teachers, and toys, and all the shit kids play with."

Oh, it had to be about Egg.

“Dad —! Can’t you ask Daeron—?” He paused again, listening to his father, and without another word hung up the phone and shoved it in his pocket once more.

Holding back a laugh at the sheer rage painted on his face, you leaned against the car and cocked an eyebrow. “So? What was all that about?”

“My father’s meeting ran late. He’s asking me to pick Aegon up from school.”

“Okay, then.” You nodded, your body shifting to reach for the handle of the passenger door, but Aerion grabbed your wrist before you could do so.

“It’s Aegon.” He insisted, as though it would somehow change something about the situation.

You frowned, slowly nodding. “Tiny nine year old boy, silver hair, purple eyes, looks a lot like you? Yeah, I know the one.”

Rolling his eyes at your tone, Aerion let out a breath filled with annoyance. “I don’t have time to drive you home before picking him up.”

“I know.”

“So he’ll be in the car… with us… for the whole journey back home.”

“I also know that.”

And then his patience ran out, and he groaned, narrowing his eyes at you. “I’m saying the little shit will be glued to your ass.”

Which… yeah. True.

You didn’t mind, because Egg was still as sweet as he was when you first met him. Aerion did mind, however, since he was the one left out whenever the two — three — of you hung out together.

“You’re not jealous, are you?”

“Of him?”

“Yes, Aerion, of your nine year old brother.” You giggled, crossing your arms over your chest. “Seriously, though, you don’t have to be so mean to him. We’re always together. What’s the issue with him sometimes crashing with us?”

To this, he had no answer. He just rolled his eyes to the sky in this irritating yet charming way he did and released your wrist. He opened your door without a word, closing it behind you before walking to his side of the car.

“If it hadn’t been for that bastard, I would’ve won the game.”

Choking on your water, you turned to Egg with wide eyes, “Aegon!”

“What? The bastard cheated! All facts.”

“Oh, do you think they have the lemon sweets? You know the ones.”

Aerion frowned, briefly glancing at you before looking back at the road. “I don’t know, I’ll check when we get there.”

“Ooh, can I come?” Egg peaked his head in between both of yours, eyes sparkling with excitement. “Please?”

“No.” Aerion grumbled before using his hand to press against Egg’s face and push him back in his seat. “Shut up.”

Relentless, Egg turned to you. “Please?”

“No.” Aerion answered in your place.

“I didn’t ask you!” Egg scoffed from the back, glaring at the back of his brother’s head.

“I’m driving, and if I have to drag your puny little ass home by the ear, I will. Now shut up.”

Perhaps the whole reason the Targaryen house sat surrounded by gates and greenery was so strangers wouldn’t witness Aerion dragging Egg by the arm across the driveway, the young boy having planted his feet in the ground and screaming bloody murder for the whole world to hear, the way you did right now from the passenger seat of Aerion’s car.

You hadn’t gone to Aerion’s house in quite some time, you realized. There was no need to ask Aerion why he suddenly insisted on sleeping over at your place, or going home to yours, or him crashing over in your bedroom whenever he was free.

Were you complaining about your Egg-free life? Not really. Or at least, not right now, when Aerion lied on top of you, stealing your words with his mouth, barely letting you come up for air.

Definitely not right now.

You could've stayed there, in this situation, until the world imploded on itself. Nothing could bring either of you out of this bubble you'd formed around yourselves; that was how good you currently had it.

But right as his touch left flaming paths on your flesh as his fingers mapped out every inch of your skin, your phone began vibrating.

Not once.

Not twice.

But repeatedly, until you couldn't discern one notification from the next.

"Damn it," you sighed, closing your eyes as the moment between the two of you slipped right through your fingers. Aerion didn't raise his head higher than an inch above yours, but the annoyance coming from him was almost palpable.

You reached your arm out towards your nightstand, where you could vaguely remember having dropped your phone on some time ago. The light that suddenly blinded you as you lifted it from where it sat face down made you wince, and you used your free hand to rub your eyes.

do you want to play with me?

i'd ask daeron but he's asleep on the rug

he's boring also

you're nto

not

are you sleeping?

you haven't been at the house in a long time

did you breka up with aerion?

break

"Why the fuck do you have his number?" Aerion breathed out, exasperated at the texts. "Since when does he even have a number? He's nine."

Shrugging, you began typing a reply on your phone. "He got my number from your phone. And he just likes telling me about his day. He complains a lot about the kids in his class. Doesn't like them much."

With widened eyes and a raised eyebrow, Aerion sat up on your bed, letting the coldness of the room rush to you now that he wasn't acting as your personal blanket.

"What? So this is a common thing?"

"It's not that bad. He FaceTimes me on his iPad mostly, then he'll talk about his day while I do my homework, that's all." You told him, lifting yourself up on your elbows.

"Does my dad know about this?"

Nodding, you shrugged again. "Yeah, Egg's iPad uses your dad's phone number. He doesn't mind, so long as Egg doesn't uses it too much. He even says it's safer that way, since he doesn't have to watch him to make sure he doesn't sneak out again."

“I... don't know how I feel about this whole thing.”

“Well it’s not just him. I play online scrabble with your dad sometimes. and Aemon sends me book recommendations every other day.”

Aerion paused, "What?”

"Why is he bald, by the way? Can I ask?"

"Daeron drunkenly shaved off half his head one night. Then it looked awful, so we had to shave off the other half. Look."

Unsurprisingly, the boy displayed in the 0.5x pictures didn't seem to car about the admittedly horrifying hairstyle he currently had. With Maekar looking exasperated in the background, Egg smiled and gave a thumbs up to the camera.

Aerion woke up to find your half of his bed empty. No sound came from the bathroom, and with the sheets being cold, he assumed you must've been out of bed for some time.

While part of him felt something akin to relief from how comfortable you were with his family and in his home — sometimes too much, he thought to himself as he remembered you admitting to playing online scrabble with his father —, it also came with the borderline hatred from how comfortable they were with you.

People usually don't have to share their girlfriends with their families, do they? Why does it feel more like they tolerate him just so they can spend time with you.

Especially the youngest, insolent rat whose face had brightened up when Aerion had asked if you could spend a week here while your building was being fumigated. He hadn't even cared when Aerion roared at him to stay the fuck away.

As expected, it had been hard to find some alone time with you, because wherever you were, your shadow was not far behind. You didn't mind, of course, because the little rat turned into the sweetest, most innocent boy that's ever lived whenever you were in the vicinity, which immediately made Aerion out to be the bad one of the story.

The tiny fucker was a manipulative little shit, and Aerion will find a way to prove it to you.

After a brief shower to wash the night away, Aerion made his way down to the kitchen, hoping you'd be there. Fortunately for him, the first thing his eyes latched onto upon entering the room was your figure.

You sat at the counter, back to him, eyes on your phone.

Approaching, he hummed and wrapped his arms around you, leaning down to bury his nose in your hair. "How long have you been up? I thought you'd be worn out after —”

Eyes going round, you jammed your elbow into his gut, immediately shushing him. Aerion groaned, one arm flying to press against his stomach, where he'd taken the brunt of your strength. "What the fuck?"

Without a word, you nodded towards the fridge, and he could only follow your gaze. The fridge was open, which he hadn't noticed, and —

"Ugh, why is he here?" The words came out in unison from the two boys as soon as Egg peeked his head from behind the fridge's door and met his gaze.

Pinching your lips to hold in a laugh, because surely Aerion would hate you if you pointed out just how similar the two were, you merely lowered your phone to watch whatever was about to unravel.

"I was here first!" Egg countered, closing the fridge with a pie in hand. "Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of."

"I will stab you—"

"You can't keep letting him stick to you. Be on my side for once. Otherwise he'll never leave you alone."

"He just likes me because I play video games with him and I buy him food. He's not a bad kid," you laughed, but made a mental note to try and be less indulgent to the young boy.

As good as your relationship with Aerion was, it was bound to come to an end. You had been broken up for a week when the knock at your door came.

A week of lying in bed with a gaping hole in your chest.

A week of scrolling aimlessly through the pictures of the two of you on your phone.

Mostly a week of mourning how good it had been, and how good it would've been if only the two of you didn't argue so often.

The idea of interacting with a Targaryen for the time was so far out of mind that you didn’t expect the sight that befell you upon opening the door. Though, maybe you should have.

“Egg? What are you —”

“You can’t break up.” He hurried out, as though if he didn’t say everything at once, he’d never be able to. “Please, you have to come back. The house is so boring without you, and Dad says I’m not to contact you because Aerion is my brother and I have to stick by him. But I don’t want to stick by him!”

“Honey, it’s one in the morning, how did you get here?”

“I took a cab.” He panted, swallowing his saliva.

Later on, he gulped down his second glass of water as he sat on your couch. Your eyes hadn’t strayed from him at all, except for the brief moment you had used to text his brother. Of course, you knew he enjoyed your company and he thought of you not as his brother’s girlfriend but as his sister. But to come knocking at your door in the middle of the night to beg you to stay with his brother…

Yeah, you hadn’t fathomed he’d ever consider doing that. And yet.

“I didn’t think you cared so much about Aerion and his feelings.” You let out, part of you wondering if you should ask Egg how Aerion has been this past week, though you decided against it. You weren’t about to pull a nine year old boy into your issues, no matter how hard he tried,

But Egg just frowned, confusion filling his features, “Aerion? What are you talking about?”

No, you were the one frowning. Thinking back to his rapid little speech when you opened the door to find him, you questioned him again. “What were you talking about?”

Egg raised both hands as he shrugged, the way he always used his entire body to react. “I don’t care about Aerion. I just don’t want you to leave the family. But don’t worry about it. Even if you don’t want Aerion back, I’ve got a plan. What do you think about Daeron?”

Somehow, you were even more confused than you thought could be possible.

But independent as he was, Egg didn’t need a reply from you to keep the conversation going. “Father said I have to take my brother’s side now that you’ve dropped him. But if you got with Daeron, then I wouldn’t have to choose Aerion, because you’d still be in the family. Get it?”

Again, no reply from you apart from the gaping expression you gave at his words.

“If the drinking bothers you that much, I’m sure I can set you up with Valarr.”

And thank God for the sudden, incessant knocking at the door. Aerion was here, evidently, and he seemed pretty pissed.

“You fucking rat!” Aerion roared when his eyes found his brother sitting on the couch. “How did you even get out of the house? How did you get here?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

Wrong thing to say, because Aerion’s eyes widened before he started making a beeline for the couch.

As the boy screeched and jumped behind the couch, you grabbed Aerion’s arm to pull him back, wincing at the situation. God, you should be sleeping right now. “No violence inside, please.”

“My dad’s livid!” Aerion added loudly, anger seeping through his voice. “His room was empty, and the window was wide open. He thought someone had taken him. Unfortunately not!”

Egg peeked his eyes from behind your couch, glaring at his brother. “Hey, I’m doing you a favor! I was trying to get her back for you!”

“What?” He turned to you, but you only shrugged. Though you did notice how Egg’s explanation wasn’t entirely truthful, you didn’t point it out to Aerion. He was mad enough at him already without the knowledge he was trying to set you up with other people.

Growling, Aerion reached out and grabbed Egg’s collar, dragging him towards the door while mumbling an apology to you under his breath. The only thing you could hear as you closed the door was the two boys arguing.

But truth be told, if the young boy hadn’t found his way to your place and forgotten his jacket, you likely wouldn’t have called Aerion again, which led to the two of you sitting down and talking about your relationship, and if you got back together some time later… well, Aerion didn’t like the reminder it was all thanks to Egg.

this idea was stuck in my head for so long I'm just glad I got this out lmao. I also had no idea how to end it so the ending is lowkey rushed sorry

please let me know if you enjoyed this, I rarely post the fics I write so I'd love some feedback!!! and also let me know if you can see that my knowledge of how romantic relationships work is limited lmao

thank you for reading!!!!

[roxxmo]

ormund hightower who vehemently opposes every marriage prospect that is proposed for his sweet, innocent ward. who scares off all potential suitors and berates you if he even catches a glimpse of you talking to one. who shames you, forces you to recite scripture from the holy books until you’re in tears, begging for forgiveness. ormund hightower who insists he performs pussy inspections weekly to ensure your maidenhead is intact and will reward you for being so faithful with his tongue.

SEND TWEET

[catbayunthestoryteller]

Good Intentions

Pairing: Maekar Targaryen x f!reader

Summary: Maekar is trying to provide a good life for his new wife by removing himself from her company and offering alternatives. He fails. Warnings: a bit of angst because of pining, a bit of smut.

The morning light cut through the high, narrow windows of Summerhall with a pale, wintry insistence, and Maekar Targaryen, prince of the Seven Kingdoms, found himself staring at the ceiling of a room that was not his own. It was decorated with painted vines, a delicate feminine touch he had never bothered to notice before. The bed linens smelled of lavender and something else, sweet and warm. The weight on his arm was the source of the latter.

You were curled against him like a dormouse seeking warmth, both your hands wrapped around the corded muscle of his forearm as if he were a lifeline in a storm. Your cheek was pressed to his shoulder, lips slightly parted in the ease of deep, trusting sleep. A strand of your hair had escaped your night braid and lay across his tunic.

Maekar did not move.

He was a prince, a warrior, a man who had crushed rebellions beneath his mace and watched men die without flinching. But this, the soft, contented curve of your mouth, the way your breath puffed in tiny, even waves against his sleeve, paralyzed him. He cast his mind back, desperately trying to remember when exactly his careful, honorable plan had crumbled to dust. It was the previous night. It had been a fool's errand, a mission of pure and unparalleled idiocy disguised as magnanimity.

For months, he had constructed a cage for you, gilded and sprawling, and called it a marriage. After the death of his first wife, the mother of his children, the very concept of a new bride had felt like a betrayal, a picking at a wound that had barely scarred over after years. His brother, King Aerys, had insisted. The match was politically sound. You were from a fine lineage, a daughter of a loyal house, and your dowry was a collection of trade agreements and land rights that made the court accountants rub their hands with joy.

And you. You were a pretty thing: young, sweet, blinking up at him at the Sept with your big eyes, he had noted absently, and a slight pout on your mouth. He recognized that pout now, not as petulance, but as a sign of deep concentration, an unconscious expression you wore when you were trying very, very hard to be brave.

At the wedding feast, you had tried to engage him in conversation, your voice a soft, hopeful melody against the droning noise of the hall. He had grunted in response, complaining about the seasoning on the boar. You had blinked, then smiled, a small, tentative thing, and said, "Perhaps the kitchens will do better with the lemon cakes, my prince. Would you like me to ask them to bring some?" Deflecting his rudeness with a kindness so artless and sweet it had made his teeth ache.

He had taken you to Summerhall, the seat of his power and the monument to his own complicated legacy. He gave you servants who curtsied low, spacious rooms filled with sunlight and tapestries you seemed to admire, and a generous allowance that could have purchased a small fleet of ships. He had daughters, Daella and Rhae, who were delighted with you, finding in you a new playmate, a doll who could speak and laugh and teach them new embroidery stitches. His sons were a different matter. Aerion was a burning star of chaos somewhere in Essos, Aemon was at the Citadel, chaining himself to books, and Daeron…Daeron was usually never counted. The thought of his eldest, a dissipated dreamer, brought a familiar, leaden weariness to his gut. But the girls were happy, and you were occupied.

He thought he had it all handled.

Everything was provided, he had reasoned, watching you from across the courtyard one afternoon as you and Rhae chased a butterfly. You were a young maiden. His idea of a comfortable existence was good service, a sturdy roof, a well-stocked armory, and a couple of friends with whom to share a flask of strongwine. He had assumed, in his colossal, self-absorbed ignorance, that your needs were the same.

Until he started to see it. The quiet sigh you suppressed when he answered your sweet inquiry about his wellbeing with a noncommittal grunt at the dinner table. The way your eyes, those big, expressive eyes, would track a young knight in the yard as he laughed with his comrades, not with lust, but with a kind of wistful, academic curiosity. You were studying a creature you had never encountered. Daella, his sweet daughter, was already starting to enter that phase of mooning over singers and sighing at sunsets, a phase he dreaded with every fiber of his being. And you, his wife, a lively girl not much older than his own children, were saddled with a grumpy man whose range of communication with her was limited to tactical assessments of mutton and grunts about the weather. You were drowning in comfort and starved of life.

He could commission solutions. Jewelry? A cascade of sapphires appeared on your vanity. New dresses? Bolts of lace and silks in hues of deep green and amethyst filled your wardrobes. Rare books? He had a first-edition history of the Rhoynar, bound in pale leather, delivered to your solar. You had been effusive in your thanks, your pout melting into a radiant smile, but the smile never quite reached your eyes. The problem, he realized with a cold, hard jolt, was not resources.

The problem was romance. He couldn't morph himself into a handsome young knight with a carefree disposition and light humor, the kind of man who would compose a song for you, who would bring you a wildflower he’d picked on a reckless morning ride, who would whisper sweet, foolish nothings in your ear. He was Maekar Targaryen, a blunt instrument, a man of duty and gristle and a simmering, constant irritation at the world.

His poor wife. You were left to smile and giggle quietly at his dry, caustic remarks about a visiting lord’s speech. And you seemed genuinely amused by them, your laughter a soft, surprised ripple of sound that made him pause, mid-chew, in confusion. You were so deprived of pleasant company that you took what you could get from him, poor sweet thing. The realization had made him want to kick himself.

So, he had formed a plan, a scheme that, at the time, had seemed the pinnacle of rational, self-sacrificing genius. He went through his guards the next day under the guise of a brutal, unforgiving drill. He had them running siege patterns, sparring until their padded armor was dark with sweat, watching them like a hawk. He found the one he was looking for: Ser Elyas, a bastard from the Reach. He was honorable, sharp as a blade, and handsome in that sun-kissed, broad-shouldered way that maidens were supposed to swoon over. His laugh was easy, his temperament unruffled.

"Ser Elyas," Maekar had rumbled, his voice a low thunder. "You are being reassigned. You are now the personal guard to my wife, the princess. You will see to her safety at all times. You will accompany her on walks, attend her in the gardens, and ensure no harm befalls her."

He had made it clear to you on your wedding night that he had no intention of bedding you. It was a statement of fact, delivered not out of cruelty but out of a misguided sense of honesty. He had seen the flash of hurt in your eyes, quickly masked by a composed, brittle acceptance. So, naturally, he reasoned, after some time spent in the company of the charming Ser Elyas, you would come to love him. It was a natural, tragic story. A handsome knight and a neglected princess. He had practically gift-wrapped a discreet, passionate affair for you. It was the least he could give it to you, a substitute for the husband you had probably imagined, a way to satisfy that aching, youthful urge for romance that he, a man carved from stone, could never fulfill.

Yet, from what he observed over the following weeks, the plan had failed with spectacular precision. He would watch from a high balcony as Ser Elyas, in his gleaming plate, offered you his hand to help you over a damp patch of grass. You took it with polite, distant courtesy. You would exchange a few words, an occasional jest that made the knight chuckle, but your expression remained serene, unmoved. Maekar, a veteran of countless campaigns, knew the look of a soldier performing a duty. And your nights, as the quiet reports from your maids confirmed, were spent solely in your rooms. No secret knocks, no furtive shadows slipping from your door at dawn.

He was at his wits’ end. What did you want then? He had given you everything your station and age could desire. What would wipe off that pretty, unconscious pout off your face? Perhaps, he had finally conceded, if he talked to you. A novel concept for a marriage, he knew. He would go to you, and perhaps, in a moment of unguarded frustration, you would let your grievances slip.

The previous night, he had gone to your chamber. Your maid, a timid wisp of a girl, nearly dropped her mending box when she saw him at the threshold. "Leave us," he had commanded, and she fled. You had been seated by the fire, a book open on your lap, and you looked like a startled doe at his unexpected presence, your body going rigid, your eyes wide.

"My prince," you had said, your voice a breathless question.

He had felt like an intruder in his own wife's space. "I…I came to see how you were faring," he had managed, the words feeling foreign and clumsy on his tongue.

You recovered quickly, your innate grace taking over. You poured his wine yourself, and offered him a plate of fruit and honey cake. "I am well, my prince. Truly. The book you sent is fascinating. The accounts of the Rhoynish are almost unbelievable." You were making conversation. You were making it easy for him. And so you spoke for a while. It was surprisingly pleasant.

He found himself relaxing into a chair, debating the tactical blunders of the Valyrian conquest of the Rhoyne, and you had listened with rapt attention, asking pointed, intelligent questions that surprised him. You had a mind, he realized with a start. A sharp, curious mind hidden beneath the pout and the big eyes.

But he didn’t catch any clues. No lamenting a lack of knights, no forlorn sighs about the gardens, no veiled complaints about his absence. Just you, being…pleasant. So, eventually, he rose to leave. "It is late. You should rest."

The change was instantaneous. The spark of animation in your eyes died, replaced by a stricken, hollow look, as if you were wondering what you had done wrong. Your fingers tightened imperceptibly on the spine of your book. "Of course, my prince. Thank you for your company."

He hesitated. He was a man of military precision, and the sudden, palpable drop in your mood was a tactical variable he hadn't accounted for. He was already in your bed chambers. What kind of husband left his wife's bed chamber right before going to bed himself? A churlish one. A neglectful one. The servants would talk, of that he was certain. The walls of Summerhall had ears and mouths. But he did not care what servants would see or say. Their gossip was the chaff of court life. The thought that stopped him cold, that made his feet feel nailed to the floor, was simpler. He owed you basic courtesy, did he not? He had denied you everything else. He could not deny you the simple, public dignity of a husband who shared your bed for a night.

Before he could overthink himself out of it, he gestured to the bed. "Move over, then."

Your eyes, if possible, grew even wider. "My prince?"

"I will not sleep in my boots," he said gruffly, sitting on the edge of a chaise and beginning to unlace them. "I will stay. Just to sleep." He made a promise to himself then, a sacred oath. He would lie down with you, and he would speak to you until you fell asleep, so you would not be insulted by a silent, rigid vigil. Then, he would leave. He had been insulting you for months by refusing to do his duties as a husband, and this small act of presence would at least be a temporary salve on a wound he had no intention of healing.

He lay down atop the covers, fully clothed in his tunic and breeches, a stiff, awkward pillar of a man. You slipped under the furs with a rustle of linen, lying rigidly on your back. The silence was deafening. Maekar cast about for something, anything, to say. "Tell me more about the Rhoynar," he commanded, his voice a little too loud in the quiet room.

And so you did, your voice soft and hesitant at first, then gaining strength. You spoke of the legends, the songs of the Mother Rhoyne, the giant turtles that were said to be gods. He listened, inserting a dry comment now and again that made you giggle, that beautiful, rippling sound he was growing dangerously accustomed to. He stayed, and continued speaking to you about the defensive layout of river cities, the logistical challenges of moving a legion through marshland, until your words began to slur, your breathing deepened, and your face went slack with peace. He had done it. He thought he would leave when he was sure you were deep in sleep. He would just wait one more minute. Just to be certain. The fire had burned down to embers. The room was warm. The scent of lavender was soporific. And that was the last thing he remembered.

Now, it was morning. The maid’s insistent knocking on the door was a relentless, chipper assault on his senses. He was still fully clothed, his tunic creased. And you were curled up next to him, clutching his arm as if it were the most natural, obvious thing in the world. The knocking roused you. You stirred, a small hum of contentment escaping your lips before your eyes fluttered open. Your gaze, hazy with sleep, traveled up his arm, over his chest, and settled on his face. The reaction was not one of surprise, or at least not the kind he expected. It was pleasure. A deep, luminous, bone-deep pleasure that transformed your features. You were smiling. A shy, pleased smile, as if you had just woken from a beautiful dream and found it still real.

"Good morning, my prince," you murmured, your voice thick and honeyed with sleep. There was a newfound confidence in it, a possessiveness that hadn't been there before. "Are you to have a busy day? I thought I might join you, if it were permitted. Perhaps I could assist you with your letters?"

Maekar found himself staring. The words were simple, but the meaning behind them was not. His plan, the handsome guard, the neglected lady, the grand affair, it all crashed down around his ears in a shower of broken, idiotic pottery. He realized his mistake with the force of a warhammer to the chest. You thought your husband was finally coming around. The gift, the miraculous, improbable gift you had wanted all along, was not a surrogate. It was him.

You wanted this. Him. His presence. His attention. His dry, sarcastic remarks. His tactical critiques of ancient river warfare. His grumpy, unyielding, solid self.

All this time, you had wanted him.

He felt a strange, tight sensation in his chest, a feeling he hadn't allowed himself to entertain for many, many years. It was a seed of warmth, cracking through the cold, hard stone he had meticulously built around his heart. He cleared his throat, his voice emerging as a low, rusty rumble.

"You can join me," he said, the words a surrender. "If you wish."

The pout was completely gone now. The smile that remained in its place was brilliant, a sun emerging from behind a lifetime of clouds. It was a smile just for him. And for the first time since he had been forced to take a new wife, Maekar Targaryen didn't feel saddled. He felt, with a terrifying, exhilarating certainty, that he was about to be completely, irrevocably unhorsed.

The days that followed that first, accidental night established a new rhythm in Summerhall, one Maekar found himself falling into with a disquieting ease he refused to examine too closely.

You had asked to assist him, and Maekar, a man who had never refused a direct request from a lady in his life out of sheer, blunt propriety, could find no reasonable grounds to deny you. You appeared in his solar the next morning, freshly dressed in a gown of pale yellow that made you look like a spring daffodil, and settled yourself in the chair across from his great oaken desk. He expected you to be a distraction. Instead, you proved infuriatingly useful. Your handwriting was elegant where his was a cramped, soldierly scrawl.

You sorted his correspondence into neat piles: urgent, routine, and the one you tactfully labeled "probably insincere flattery from lords who want something." He had let out a surprised bark of laughter at that, and you had beamed at him as if he'd just crowned you Queen of Love and Beauty.

This became your habit. Mornings in his solar, you with your neat piles and your quiet, intelligent questions about the running of the lands. Afternoons, you would walk with him along the battlements, your hand resting lightly on his arm as he pointed out the defensive improvements he was making to the eastern wall. You listened with genuine interest, asking about murder holes and arrow slits with a curiosity that was wholly unfeigned. Evenings, you dined together, and your sweet inquiries about his wellbeing were no longer met with grunts. He found himself actually answering you, describing the frustrations of a dispute between two minor landed knights or the irritating news from court. You would nod, your brow furrowed in thought, and offer observations that were often startlingly perceptive.

And every night, the same delicate, unspoken negotiation occurred.

The first time it happened outside of your own chambers, you had been in his rooms. It was late, the fire burning low, and you had been reading aloud to him from a treatise on dragonlore while he sharpened his dagger. Your voice had grown hoarse, and he noticed the way you rubbed at your eyes with the back of your hand. He could not, in good conscience, send you shuffling down cold corridors to your own chambers. The very idea was absurd. What kind of husband kicked his own wife out into the night like a stray cat?

"The hour is late," he had said, sheathing his dagger with a decisive click. "You will stay here."

You had looked at him with that expression again, the one that was half hope and half caution, as if you were afraid of misinterpreting his words. "Here, my prince?"

"In my bed," he clarified, the words coming out more gruffly than he intended. "I will take the chaise."

But you had looked so stricken at that suggestion, your face falling in that way he was growing to dread, that he had found himself amending the plan. "Or I will join you. The bed is large enough. It is not seemly for a prince to sleep on a chaise in his own chambers."

It was a flimsy justification, and he knew it. But the way your expression brightened, the shy, pleased smile that curved your lips, was worth the internal grumbling. He lay beside you that night, a careful distance between your bodies, and spoke to you about the properties of Valyrian steel until your breathing evened out into the soft rhythm of sleep. He awoke to find you pressed against his side, your head on his shoulder, one of your hands resting over his heart as if counting the beats.

This, too, became your habit. You clinging to him in sleep like a limpet to a rock, and Maekar waking each morning to the scent of your hair and the warm, trusting weight of your body against his. He told himself it was for your dignity. He told himself it was a small kindness, a basic courtesy. He told himself many things, and believed none of them.

Then there was the incident with the lamprey pie.

A lord from the coastal holdings had sent a gift of lampreys, and the kitchens had prepared them in a rich, heavily spiced pie. You had eaten only a small portion, politely complimenting the flavor, but within hours you were taken ill. Maekar was in the yard overseeing a drill when your maid came running, her face pale as milk.

"My prince, it is the princess. She is unwell. The maester says it is the lamprey, that it has irritated her stomach something fierce."

He did not remember crossing the castle. He only remembered the cold spike of fear that had lanced through him, the way his heart had hammered against his ribs with a violence that had nothing to do with exertion. He found you in your chambers, curled on your side in the great bed, your face waxen and beaded with sweat. The maester was there, a fussy old man who was doing far too much hand-wringing for Maekar's liking.

"She will recover, my prince. It is a mere gastric disturbance. But she must eat to keep her strength up, and she refuses. The princess will not touch the porridge."

Maekar looked at the tray on the bedside table. A bowl of plain, unappetizing porridge sat there, cooling and congealing. You were facing away from it, your eyes closed, your pout firmly in place.

"Leave us," Maekar commanded. The maester and the maids scurried out like mice before a dragon.

He sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. Your eyes fluttered open, and you looked at him with such a mix of misery and embarrassment that it made something twist painfully in his chest.

"I am sorry," you whispered, your voice thin and reedy. "I am being foolish. It will pass."

"You will eat," he said, reaching for the bowl.

"My prince, I cannot. The very thought..."

"You will eat," he repeated, and this time his voice was gentler, an unfamiliar softness creeping in despite his best efforts. He scooped a small portion of the porridge onto the spoon. "Open your mouth."

You stared at him, those big eyes glassy with discomfort, and for a moment he thought you would refuse him. But then you parted your lips, a tiny, obedient gesture, and he carefully slid the spoon into your mouth. You swallowed with visible effort, your face scrunching up, and he immediately had another spoonful ready.

"Good," he said, the praise awkward on his tongue. "Again."

He fed you the entire bowl that way, spoonful by painstaking spoonful, his large, calloused hands surprisingly steady. He did not rush you. He waited between each bite, murmuring gruff words of encouragement that felt foreign and strange, like a language he had never been taught. When the bowl was empty, he set it aside and reached for a cloth, dabbing gently at the corner of your mouth.

Your eyes were wet, but you were smiling. That smile. The one that made him feel like a hero from a song, when all he had done was feed you porridge.

"Thank you, Maekar," you breathed, using his name without his title for the first time. It hit him somewhere deep, a blow he had no armor for.

"Rest now," he ordered, his voice rougher than he intended. "I will stay."

He stayed. He lay beside you, fully clothed, and let you curl into his side. He stayed until your breathing steadied and the color slowly returned to your cheeks. He stayed even after that, watching the firelight play across the ceiling, feeling the steady rise and fall of your chest against his, and wondered what in the seven hells he was doing.

But still, still, he put off the matter of bedding you.

It was not that he did not want to. The realization had crept up on him with the slow, inevitable force of a rising tide. He wanted to. Gods help him, he wanted to. The sight of you in your thin nightdress, the way your hair spilled across the pillows, the warmth of your body pressed against his each morning, it was testing the limits of his resolve, which had never been particularly strong where matters of the heart were concerned. He had simply never had his heart involved before.

But to bed you would be to open a door he was not certain he could close again. He had built his life around duty, around the cold, hard certainties of obligation and honor. He had loved once, and loss had carved a hollow in him that he had believed was permanent. You were filling that hollow, day by day, smile by smile, and the sensation was as terrifying as it was intoxicating.

He was a coward. Maekar Targaryen, who had faced down rebel lords and laughed at the prospect of single combat, was a coward when it came to his own wife.

Then came the night of the kiss.

It was an evening like any other. You had spent the day in his solar, helping him draft responses to a particularly tedious batch of petitions. Dinner had been a quiet affair, just the two of you, and you had made him laugh, actually laugh, a deep, surprised rumble of sound, with a wicked impression of a pompous lord who had visited the previous week. You had retired to his chambers, as had become your custom, and he had told you about the Dragonknight's campaigns in Dorne until your eyes grew heavy.

"Goodnight, Maekar," you said, your voice soft and drowsy.

And then you kissed him.

It was not a forceful kiss, not a demand or an invitation. It was a brief, gentle press of your lips against his, as natural and unthinking as a breath. A goodbye. An act of simple, uncomplicated affection. You pulled back, your eyes already closing, and nestled into your pillow with a contented sigh, as if you had done nothing of any particular note.

Maekar lay frozen, staring at the canopy above him, his heart thundering in his ears.

You had kissed him.

This was his fault. The thought careened through his skull like a loose cannon on a ship's deck. This was entirely, unequivocally his fault. He had done this. He had planted this notion in your head, watered it with his attentions, and now it had bloomed into something he could no longer ignore.

A fortnight ago, you had been helping him remove his heavy outer tunic after a long day of inspections, your small fingers working deftly at the clasps. It had been such a wifely gesture, so intimate and so natural, that before he had known what he was doing, he had leaned down and pressed his lips to your brow. A brief, chaste kiss. A thank you. He had not even realized he had done it until he saw the way you had frozen, your eyes wide. He had cleared his throat and muttered something about the fire needing more wood, and the moment had passed.

But you had taken that kiss, that single, thoughtless gesture, and drawn a conclusion from it. You had decided, in your sweet, hopeful way, that your husband wanted you to initiate affection as well. That he was too reserved, too gruff, too locked within his own silences to ask for what he wanted. And so, with that gentle, trusting kiss, you had reached across the chasm he had placed between you and offered him a bridge.

Did he want you to? The question burned in his mind, insistent and demanding. Did he want you to kiss him goodnight, as if it were the most normal thing in the world? As if you were truly husband and wife in every sense?

He certainly was not complaining. The ghost of your lips still tingled on his, and his body was reacting in ways that were entirely inappropriate for a man who was supposed to be letting his wife sleep. He was not complaining at all. That was the problem.

He should be complaining. He should be panicking. Because this, this sweetness, this trust, this quiet, domestic intimacy, led inexorably to one conclusion. You would expect children now. The thought hit him like a splash of ice water. Of course you would expect children. A princess, a wife, a woman who had been raised to understand that the bearing of heirs was a fundamental part of her duty. And you would want them, he realized with a jolt. You would want his children. Not out of duty, but out of genuine desire. You would want a babe with his silver-gold hair and your eyes, a child you could hold and nurture and love.

Gods be good.

He turned his head on the pillow to look at you. You were already asleep, your face peaceful, your lips still curved in that small, contented smile. You had no idea of the earthquake you had just set off in his chest. You had kissed him and promptly fallen asleep, trusting him completely, utterly unaware of the crisis you had left in your wake.

Maekar stared at you for a long time, watching the steady rise and fall of your breath, the way your lashes cast delicate shadows on your cheeks. His mind was a whirlwind of duty and desire, fear and longing, the cold echoes of past grief and the warm, insistent pulse of something new.

He could not keep putting this off. He could not keep lying beside you, night after night, pretending that this was a mere courtesy. He could not keep telling himself that he was doing this for your dignity, when in truth, your dignity was the last thing on his mind when he felt the press of your body against his in the dark.

But not tonight. Tonight, you were asleep, and he was a coward still. Tonight, he would lie here and listen to you breathe and feel the warmth of your kiss still burning on his lips.

Tomorrow, perhaps, he would be braver.

Or perhaps, he thought grimly, you would kiss him again, and the choice would be taken out of his hands entirely. The thought was not as unwelcome as it should have been.

The kisses continued.

Every night, without fail, you would bid him goodnight with that same gentle, fleeting press of your lips against his. It was never demanding, never lingering. It was a question posed in the softest possible terms, a door left slightly ajar, an invitation he could accept or decline as he saw fit. And every night, for the first several nights, Maekar accepted it the same way: by remaining perfectly, rigidly still, a statue of a man enduring a pleasant but bewildering assault.

He felt you withdraw each time, felt the tiny, almost imperceptible slump of your shoulders as you settled back onto your pillow. You never said anything. You never complained. But he knew. He was a dull rock, an unresponsive lump of granite, and he was hurting you with his passivity. The knowledge gnawed at him, a persistent, guilty ache that followed him through his days and haunted his waking hours.

The fifth night, something in him snapped. Simply, as you leaned in to press your customary kiss to his lips, he found himself moving. His hand came up, rough and calloused, to cup the back of your head. And he kissed you back.

It was not a passionate kiss. It was not the kiss of a man swept away by desire. It was a careful response, a returning of pressure, a silent acknowledgment. He felt your startled inhale against his mouth, the way your body went taut with surprise. When he pulled back, your eyes were wide, your lips parted, and there was a look on your face that made his chest constrict.

Expectation. Hope. A question that had been waiting, patient and trembling, for an answer.

Maekar looked at you, at your big eyes shining in the firelight, at your kiss-swollen mouth, at the delicate line of your collarbone visible above the lace of your nightdress. He thought of all the nights he had lain beside you, rigid with restraint. He thought of the way you smiled at him, the way you laughed at his dry remarks, the way you clung to his arm in sleep as if he were the only safe harbor in a storm.

He resigned himself. The decision came not with a sense of defeat, but with a strange, liberating clarity. He did not want to become the object of your resentment. He could not bear the thought of those eyes looking at him with bitterness, with the slow, corrosive realization that your husband was a man who denied you not only his affection but the most basic experiences of womanhood. You were young and full of life, and he had been keeping you in a gilded cage, feeding you porridge and kissing your forehead as if you were a child rather than a wife.

"You deserve pleasure," he said, his voice low and rough, the words feeling as if they were being dragged from some deep, hidden place within him. "I have been remiss in my duties."

Your breath caught. "Maekar..."

He moved before he could lose his nerve. His hands found your waist, and he lifted you as if you weighed nothing, settling you onto his lap with a decisive, careful motion. You were warm through the thin fabric of your nightdress, your body soft and pliant against the hard planes of his chest. He could feel the rapid flutter of your heart.

"I will not take what I have no right to claim," he said, the words a rough murmur against your temple. "But I can give you this. Let me give you this."

His fingers found the hem of your nightdress, and he pushed it up slowly, giving you time to object. You did not object. You only watched him with those enormous eyes, your hands resting on his shoulders as if you did not quite know what to do with them. He touched you gently, so gently, his battle-roughened hands moving with a delicacy that surprised even himself. He explored the soft skin of your thighs, the curve of your hip, the dip of your waist. He learned the shape of you by touch alone, his gaze fixed on your face, cataloguing every flicker of expression.

When his fingers found the center of your heat, you gasped, your head falling back, your fingers digging into his shoulders. He moved with slow, patient circles, learning what made you sigh, what made you shudder, what made your hips buck involuntarily against his hand. He was methodical in his attentions, as he was in all things, and he brought you to the peak with the same focused determination he might apply to a siege.

You shattered against him with a cry that was half surprise and half relief, your body arching, your hands fisting in the fabric of his tunic. He held you through it, his free arm wrapped securely around your waist, anchoring you against the storm of sensation. When the tremors subsided, you slumped against his chest, breathing hard, your face buried in the crook of his neck.

He gave you a moment. Then, with the same gentle efficiency, he rearranged your nightdress, lifted you from his lap, and placed you back onto the bed. He drew the furs up to your chin and pressed a kiss to your forehead.

"Sleep now," he commanded, his voice a low rumble.

You blinked up at him, your expression dazed and soft and so full of something that looked terrifyingly like adoration. "But you..."

"This was for you," he said, cutting you off with a firmness that brooked no argument. "Rest."

You slept. He did not. He lay beside you in the darkness, his body aching with unfulfilled need, and told himself that this was enough. He had done his duty. He had given you pleasure without complicating matters with his own involvement. It was a tidy solution, a clean, surgical strike. You were satisfied. There was no need to get himself fully involved.

This, too, became a habit.

Every few nights, when the expectant look in your eyes grew too pronounced to ignore, he would pull you onto his lap and touch you until you came apart in his arms. He learned the rhythms of your body. He knew the spot just below your ear that made you whimper when he pressed his lips to it. He knew the pace that made you clutch at him desperately, the slower, teasing touches that made you gasp his name like a prayer. He gave you pleasure as a general might distribute supplies to a besieged city: regularly, efficiently, and with a steadfast refusal to partake himself.

He thought you accepted this. He thought you understood the unspoken terms of this arrangement. He was a fool.

It was a quiet evening, the fire burning low in the hearth, the castle settling into the deep hush of night. He had just returned from a grueling inspection of the eastern watchtowers, his muscles aching, his mood as dark as the storm clouds gathering over the mountains. You were waiting for him in his chambers, a book open on your lap, a cup of warmed wine already poured and waiting on his desk.

You were always waiting for him now. The thought should not have warmed him as it did.

The night's ritual had been completed. You were nestled against him, your body still humming with the aftermath of pleasure, your breathing slowly returning to normal. He was preparing to settle you back onto your pillow, to pull up the furs and press his customary kiss to your forehead, when you spoke.

"Maekar." Your voice was soft, hesitant, but there was a thread of steel beneath it that he had learned to recognize. "May I ask you something?"

"You may," he said, his guard instinctively rising.

You were silent for a moment, your fingers tracing idle patterns on the fabric of his tunic. Then, you lifted your head to look at him, and the expression in your eyes made his heart stutter.

"Why do you not want anything for yourself?"

The question hung in the air between them, simple and devastating. He opened his mouth to deflect, to offer some gruff platitude about duty and obligation, but you did not give him the chance.

"Every night," you continued, your voice still soft but gaining strength, "you give me such pleasure. You are so gentle, so careful, so attentive. But you never…" You hesitated, a flush creeping up your cheeks, but you pressed on with the same determined courage you had shown since the day you arrived at Summerhall. "You never let me touch you. You never seek your own release. It is as if you believe you do not deserve it, or as if you think I am not capable of giving it."

"You are capable," he said, the words escaping before he could cage them.

"Then why?" Your pout was there, that unconscious, pretty pout that he had come to know so well. But it was accompanied by a look so loving, so open and earnest and full of desperate hope, that it struck him like a blow. "I could learn. I could learn how to please you, if you are willing to teach me. I am not afraid. I want to be a true wife to you, in every sense."

He felt something cracking inside him, the carefully constructed walls he had built around his heart beginning to crumble. "It is not a matter of teaching," he said, his voice strained. "There are…consequences. You are young. You should not be burdened with..."

"Children," you finished for him, and he was stunned into silence. "You are worried about children."

It was not the only thing, but it was the easiest to admit. He nodded stiffly.

You took a deep breath, and he watched as you gathered your courage, your hands clasping together in your lap. "If you do not wish for children," you said, your voice steady despite the tremor he could see in your fingers, "I can drink moon tea. We can postpone the idea. I have spoken to the maester, and he has assured me it is safe when used sparingly."

Maekar stared at you. You had spoken to the maester. You, his sweet wife, had gone to the old man and asked about moon tea. The image was so absurd, so unexpectedly bold, that he almost laughed.

But you were not finished. "I would like to have a child someday," you continued, and now your voice grew softer, more wistful. "One child of my own. No matter a boy or a girl. And I would raise it with the best of my ability, with all the love I have to give. But…" You reached out, your small hand coming to rest on his cheek, your thumb brushing the line of his jaw. "I would like to have a life first. A marriage. A husband who does not treat me like a delicate piece of glass that might shatter at his touch."

Your eyes were wet, but you were smiling. That smile. The one that had undone him from the very beginning.

"I want you, Maekar," you whispered. "I want my husband."

The walls crumbled. The last defenses fell. Maekar Targaryen, prince of Summerhall, breaker of rebellions and terror of his enemies, looked at his young wife and realized he was only a man. A man who had been fighting a losing battle against his own heart for longer than he cared to admit. A man who loved his wife.

He loved you. The truth of it was a physical thing, a weight in his chest, a fire in his blood. He loved your laugh, your pout, your clever mind and your gentle hands and your infuriating, wonderful habit of clinging to him in sleep. He loved your courage, standing before him now and baring your soul with nothing but hope to shield you. He loved you.

"Gods be good," he breathed, and then he was moving.

His hands found your waist, and this time there was nothing careful or clinical about the touch. He pulled you against him, crushing you to his chest, and his mouth descended on yours in a kiss that was nothing like the chaste, hesitant presses of lips you had shared before. This was a surrender. A desperate, hungry admission of everything he had been too stubborn to say.

You gasped against his mouth, and then your arms were around his neck, your fingers tangling in his hair, and you were kissing him back with an enthusiasm that made his head spin. When he finally pulled back, you were both breathing hard, your faces inches apart.

"You foolish, stubborn man," you whispered, but your voice was thick with tears and joy. "I have been waiting for you to understand."

"I understand now," he said, his voice a low, wrecked rasp. "Forgive me. For all of it. For the neglect, for the distance, for the guard I foisted upon you like a fool..."

"You gave me Ser Elyas?" Your eyes widened, and then a surprised laugh bubbled up from your throat. "Oh, Maekar. I thought he was just a very attentive guard. I wondered why he kept trying to recite poetry at me."

Maekar groaned, dropping his forehead to yours. "I am an idiot."

"You are my idiot," you corrected, and the possessive warmth in your voice was his final undoing. "My husband. And I believe you owe me a proper wedding night."

He looked at you, at the mischievous glint in your eyes, at the loving curve of your smile, and he felt something he had not felt in many, many years. Hope. Joy. A future unfolding before him that was not merely duty and endurance, but something bright and warm and achingly beautiful.

"I owe you much more than that," he murmured, and he lowered his mouth to yours once more.

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