summary: after taking dragonstone, aegon demands answers from his favorite of its inhabitants. none of which from questions his council would approve of.
pairing: aegon ii x reader
warnings: angst, arguing, kissing, post rooks rest! aegon, reader is meant to be loyal to Rhaenyra in some way, but no familial relation is specified, no use of y/n
wc: 4.4k
The soothing cream maester Geradys had concocted for Aegon was to be applied nightly. Distributed evenly on damp, clean skin.
To aid him in this task, Aegon typically enlisted Geradys himself. It’d be debasing to allow any of his men see him in such a vulnerable state, let alone tend to him in it.
You should not see him in such a state, either. Tonight, however, it was you who administered to him.
Since he had taken Dragonstone, Aegon normally left you to yourself.
However, two nights ago, Ser Mallen of his kingsguard had caught you in the midst of an attempt to send a message to Kings Landing. To reveal to Rhaenyra his condition and your knowledge of the size of his force, no doubt. Aegon now scant allowed you to leave his side.
It was quite surprising, when you offered to take Geradys’ place in performing the nightly ritual of applying the cool, pale colored substance to his skin.
You did not speak to him the first night. Staying mute, but not sparing him from your glares when he inquired about just exactly how long Rheanyra had left you to your lonesome to keep watch over Dragonstone.
It is a shame you are left apart from your family, with no one to keep your thoughts in check. It takes all your might to suppress the thought of how domestic this moment would be if under different circumstances.
“If Rhaenyra’s entrusted maester has incorporated some form of poison in this paste, how long do you believe it would take until my skin begins to peel from my flesh?” He spoke his first quip of the night, looking down into the jar.
You do not believe some slow acting poison is what Gendrys concocted. He'd been in your life since childhood. You doubted he'd risk his head, leaving you completely alone in a castle with no friendly faces.
Unsure of how much longer you will be able to ignore him without retaliation, you allow him to hear your voice for the first time in half a week.
"Gendrys has aided you, as I do now. Even whilst I am trapped here, as your hostage," you say simply, dipping your fingers into the small container for the last time before placing it on the edge of your night table.
He is almost laughably compliant with your constant adjustments of his body. "My hostage? You are far from it, which you very well know." Aegon stifles a groan as the cool of the cream hits his marred skin. He sits barely upward, slumped against the large pillows that had been propped to allow for elevation. You sit on the bed with him, one leg hanging off of its side.
"You certainly seem to believe that to be so.” Your brows raise. “But it is how I will be painted. One of the many captives passed from side to opposing side, undoubtedly stripped of my virtue somewhere along the way. Surely you know that. By historians and bards alike.”
Aegon could not bring himself to argue on that point with you yet. He did not currently feel like it, either. He'd have to convince you of where you truly stood with him before anyone else.
Aegon winced a bit at one stroke up his forearm, causing your hand to stutter for a moment. When you resume your movements, it is slower, as if that will solve the issue. “I did not think the truth of the matter would wound you so" you murmur in an experimental half jest. Your touch was certainly different from Geradys’. Lacking the expertise, but possessing the care he imagined you tried so adamantly to suppress in its stead.
"It is your insistence of that thought that wounds me," he voices. The idea of some scholastic clad in a drab, ill fitting robe believing that he imprisoned you, robbing you of your virtue and poise made him feel as if he was holding down sick. The level of consciousness you held toward the opinion of people who you would never speak to was something he understood. He even shared it. To an extent. Only when you reflected the idea to him, in truth.
You pull his arm further into your hold. He's pliant, watching your face as you work. As you care for him.
"It is the way of things" you say quietly, more focused on smoothing the remainder of the concoction into his arm. “With no witnesses of importance here, it is what will be thought, or at least accepted.”
“Even by you?” He nearly hissed, more out of a lack of patience now than the discomfort of so much attention on his burns.
The mixture has managed to serve his purpose, Aegon is hesitant to admit. Though the scars looked the same, for the most part, they were less of a searing concern whilst he tried to find sleep. The regimen was perfectly timed, it seemed. As he never once jostled in discomfort as you slept beside him.
You respond too quickly, fingers on his bicep. “Well, you have not robbed me of my virtue yet.”
The sentence does not even have the opportunity to hang in the air.
“That is shit!” Your name leaves his mouth as he thrusts his arm away from you. You barely manage to hold in a gasp as you stand from the bed.
“I love you! That is not ever something that I have left room for you to contest. You wish to now only because it is how you choose to ensure your loyalty.”
Your face sours in annoyance. Whether or not his words held truth was not something you allowed yourself to think about. Your overactive mind would try, on the frequent nights you were unable to find rest. Your mind had tried even harder now that you were sleeping next to him.
It was how things must be, you would quickly dismiss before moving to the next matter. You ventured that your head would start to ache if you began thinking about the true reason behind your feelings. “That is not true. Even if it were, you should be thanking me for attempting to keep space. I always have had to think for the pair of us.”
He ignores your last couple of statements completely. “Am I being aggrieved? Do you truly think that I cannot see it? We might as well be the only two people in this cobweb laden castle! You hardly ever look at me, you cannot even-”
“You cannot neglect the circumstances of our proximity simply because we have been devoid of it for so long!” You defend.
Aegon stands now, causing you to move about your chambers. To keep space. He wished to. He wished to ignore the notion that every decent interaction between the two of you since his arrival has been a farce. You, on your best behavior, to keep him at bay.
The last time Aegon had seen you, he could not will himself to speak to you until he was drunk enough to ensure he would not remember any regrettable words the following day. The last time before that, years ago, had been much the same. It should not surprise him, then, that he's been demoted so fiercely in your now diminished line of confidants.
That fact does not encourage him to give you the space you so rightly deserve, however.
“We dreamt of this, when we were younger. Being alone, unbothered by the consequences of quarrels that began before we were born.” He limps slowly to where you've paced near your desk, thankfully not yet disobeying your wish of distance completely.
“We dreamt of leaving, Aegon! Isolation is the only part of that fantasy we have been granted, and even that is temporary. Now, you instead desire to pretend when the sky grows dark.” It surprises you that the thought even leaves your mouth. You are surprised neither of the guards stationed outside your door have made an appearance with how substantially both of your voices have grown. That shock, regrettably, is what brings you to continue. “You wish for me to ignore what will happen to me when Rhaenyra returns. You ignore that you have made me a traitor, and you expect me to appease you by playing along.”
If Aegon were selfless, he'd treat you the way any noble hostage ought to be. Seclusion, small meals to keep you sane, and two guards at your door to prevent your escape. To be afforded no conversation or connection to anything aside from the walls that kept you trapped. You were selfless, or at least feigned it well. That is why you've kept your true feelings hidden until your tongue had betrayed you tonight. If Aegon were selfless, he would reciprocate your apprehension.
But Aegon is a selfish man, and so the idea that you could in any capacity set your feelings for him aside solely because it was what you ought to do, even as the two of you were unsupervised, was unfathomable.
“The way you feel about me does not make you a traitor. If you would like, I will assure my half sister of your loyalties to her. I will even be sure to include your attempt to steal away and send her warning of my presence. The only person you have betrayed is me. Mayhaps yourself as well.”
“I would have to stand with you in order to betray you, Aegon. I do not. I did not think that was a statement that had to be made.” You blink, unamused.
He continues anyway. “You are certainly not against me. I cannot count the number of times you could have killed me and ended this war for everyone. It must torment you. After everything, you still cannot bring yourself to consider harming me. Do you allow yourself to think about why?”
No. And I needn't, you think. “You think I do not consider harming you?” You try to combat.
It only serves to fuel him, judging by the look on his face. The slight twitch of his lips, as if you've said exactly what he'd expected you to. “I know that you could, and yet you do not. I can hardly stand from the tub without assistance some days, I do not doubt you could easily neutralize any threat I proposed granted you were truly called to.”
You scoff, a distraction from the fact that you must think about your next words. “...It is not what she would want. Rhaenyra wishes to enforce her own punishment upon you, it would be near treason to take the opportunity myself.” The words slide so easily off your tongue, considering the reasoning had never before crossed your mind.
“Ah, I see.” He nods in mock understanding. “That must be so incredibly difficult for you. I believe I can feel just how much so when your face finds the crook of my neck just before you fall asleep.”
Your ears feel hot as he continues, and you have half the mind to turn and haul whatever is closest to you at his head. Halfway through reaching behind you to do so, however, you remember that your chambers have been stripped of most of the things that could be used to cause any damage to him; and your cyvasse board, along with the pieces that filled it, had been set on the small table on the other side of the room.
“I cannot believe I ever thought you to be corrigeable. Even now your mission remains what it has been since we were children. To prod at and provoke me at the expense of everything else. The kingdom is at stake now, you do realize? Not just your dessert?” You huff.
He doesn't try to hide the amused smile on his face, likely because your attempt to grasp something was less subtle than you'd planned. You're surprised that what leaves his mouth next is an actual sentence, instead of a bark of laughter.
“If you wish to feign apathy toward me then I will allow it. I find it entertaining. But it will not go without comment. Surely you hear how ridiculous you sound.” It takes effort for him to continue standing. He crutches the foot of your bed, relieving the pressure from his leg.
Your stare moves to the hand he uses to steady himself. The wounds there stare back at you. “Well I am not here to serve as your entertainment, am I? Your council and kingsguard have found the term prisoner more befitting amongst themselves.”
His smile finally falters. He seems more annoyed you've brought it up again than deterred from his point. Good, you think. Mayhaps he will stop attempting to make a jest out of your every sentence now.
Your brows furrow when he actually scoffs at you. The sound redirects your attention to his face immediately. You always see some of his mother, when he is vexed. You've never told him, the fact would have annoyed him at any stage of his life. You're completely unsure what emotion the statement would evoke now.
“You know that I would never harm you. So much so that you take advantage of my affections toward you. Tell me, when you tried sneaking into the rookery, what was the worst you thought would happen?” He asks. The answer is known to the both of you. Total seclusion at most, though it'd serve as more of a punishment for Aegon than yourself.
Aside from a few instances of poor wording choices in your youth, you'd never known Aegon to be cruel. In all fairness, though, you had never considered yourself to be, either.
“Well, you are king now. I am sure you've gained the respect of all these men that fight for you somehow. I did not fail to consider the possibility that you might make an example out of me as you did whoever you crawled over to stand before me now,” you bite out.
“You could have been successful.” You cannot hide your surprise at the harsh change in his tone. He does not seem to notice, though. “That letter could have been halfway to Kings Landing and I still would never have laid a finger on you. I would never lay a finger on you, nor would I allow anyone else to.”
A clear droplet glides down his marred cheek. You watch it fall forthrightly, and you wonder if he is beginning to believe your words. Though you cannot imagine he will be fully convinced until you force yourself into believing you yourself are.
“And what is that meant to prove? That you risk less than I do, letting your affections be known?” You wonder if honesty will do anything to deter him. Vulnerability may produce the opposite of your intended outcome. Showing him that you still can be, with him, was more dangerous than putting a blade to his throat would have been.
He chokes out a laugh, “Out of everything you've conjured thus far, that may just be the most untenable.”
His laughter brings you offense that you struggle to keep off of your face, “How so?”
“You would deliver me to her as if it were nothing if given the opportunity. I risk everything. I do it in an effort to show you that you are safe with me. That I intend to do you no harm. A message you are set on rejecting. A message I would allow you to reject, if I had any discretion. She,” the word leaves him bitterly, “has punished you for far less.”
You had not vented to Aegon in years. The notion that he had any idea what Rhaenyra’s punishments looked like, or why she administered them, was absurd.
You can recall a time he said something similar, however. A time you'd been sent to the capital, the only of Dragonstone's then-current inhabitants to do so.
“If it is your wedding to which you are referring-” your eyes shut in apprehension.
“That was surmised quickly. Mayhaps because it had been the only time we have been allowed to see each other in-”
You find no pleasure in speaking over him. You do not find pleasure in any of this back and forth. You're unsure if he can say the same. “It was a show of diplomacy-”
“To send you?”
Aegon did not know you would be a witness to his marriage. Hardly anyone had known, until three days prior. Any sooner and his mother or grandsire surely would have found a way to bar the motion. You'd been placed as far out of sight as deemed possible before rumor of disrespect toward the future queen’s representative could brew. To no avail. Once Aegon’s eyes found you, they scarcely wandered elsewhere during the ceremony.
You thought it was callous, his stare on you as he recited vows he would never be able to give you.
You tried leaving halfway through the feast that followed, not without stopping to visit the chambers you'd resided in for the earlier part of your childhood. A very upset, very inebriated Aegon met you there soon after.
He'd started an argument, then passed out drunk on your former bed before any true resolution could be reached. Without proper place to put your frustration, you released it into the air on the journey back to Dragonstone, and never spoke of it again. Your writings to Aegon had ceased entirely, and Rhaenyra hadn't even needed to instruct it.
“How is this relevant, Aegon?” Your voice is desperate, strained.
“I am not the one who has toyed with you! Who has sent you into situations with impure intentions simply so that you will look to me for comfort.” His fingers jab into his chest.
“And that is it, you expect me to believe. Your exposure of your fondness towards me has naught to do with any other emotions. There is nothing else you wish to evoke from me?”
“Say what you mean to say” his voice lowers.
You hesitate, “You've already made my bed yours, and forced me back into it. Mayhaps if you make me comfortable enough I will finally indulge you. All you must do is strip me of my inhibitions first.”
After a moment, and a suck of his cheeks, Aegon nodded once, a rough breath of air escaping him. The words felt truer now. Every time you'd touched him had been subconscious. Just before you fell asleep, or in the unconscious hours before you awoke.
It'd be wrong to inquire about your attraction to him. It'd be insulting to you, to ask if the reason for your hesitance had anything at all to do with the wounds you tended to so carefully mere minutes ago.
It was not impossible for him to believe part of you would hold that the all encasing lust he unveiled to you so early in your adolescence would always find a way to uncage itself, no matter how much war may have seemed to mature him.
“No.” Is all he wills himself to say anyway.
“No?” You parrot, “No, you're not expecting any affection to come out of your efforts in ensuring my comfort? That I am a pampered prisoner?”
“My love for you is not transactional. It is p- it is the only pure thing that courses through me. The only thing that has kept me sane, some nights.” He tried, releasing your footboard and taking a few steps nearer.
“And you expect nothing in return, save for my trust? What would you do with it? Break it, inevitably, when you realize it may be one of your most useful instruments?” Your voice fights to keep from breaking.
“Why do you think me so callous toward you, of all people? Do you truly believe that any part of me is eager to hurt you?” He should not be so close to you. Not during a conversation such as this one.
“You cannot satiate the desires of your court, me, and yourself synchronously, Aegon. There will come a time where hurting me will be the only option that remains for you.” Instead of backing away, you tell yourself the closeness may be what finally causes him to hear you.
In truth, you do not think he's ever hurt you deliberately. It was often something he had little control over, aside from the heartbreaks that came from his actions with nameless women you'd never met. As king, little would be out of his control as far as what would happen to you. Still, you had good reason to believe he would be against claiming control if the most practical options were unsavory.
“My court? I would give you any keep, castle, or parcel you asked for. The words of men I can hardly tolerate hold no weight where you are concerned.”
“And you believe that is wise?” You retort. Though it does not seem to deter him.
“You want Dragonstone, correct? You said that you could, that the people liked you well enough.” As if it were his to offer.
You had said that, years ago. It was true, but not something you could entertain. You are now only appreciative that he has not offered to make you his queen. That conversation, you supposed he knew you were both much too tired for.
He seems to realize the absurdity in this offer as well, eyes closing before he changes direction. “If you can tell me, now, that you do not love me. That everything has been strictly for your survival and for the good of Rhaenyra’s reign,” his hands are warm on the upper part of your arms, you hate how the action does its job to keep you still, “I will leave you be. I will not sleep in your bed, I will not dismay you with promises you believe to be false…”
A measly, broken sound escapes you as you try to fleer. Likely the last attempt to inhibit him you have the fight for. He does not allow you to turn your head away. A tear forces itself out your eye when he brings his forehead to rest against yours.
“Say it.” He whispers. “So that we may both be free of this.”
You have trouble saying anything at all. You have trouble thinking with how close he has insisted on moving himself. The only thing that your mind can comprehend is how desperately you need him away from you. It would at least be possible to lie then.
You move a hand to his good shoulder, every intention set on pushing him away. Your eyes squeeze shut as he speaks again.
“I will not treat you any differently than I have, if you can manage it.”
You wish to point out how he has, again, dismayed you with a promise you do not believe him able to keep, but when your eyes open, you cannot seem to move them away from his mouth.
A weak fist bunches the fabric of the sleep tunic he sports in your grasp.
You would say you couldn't, instead. Or plead for him not to make you say it. He'd oblige, of course. From what you remember, he does not do well with seeing you cry.
You've never allowed yourself to study the left side of his face so closely. He sleeps in a way that conceals it from you, and you've fallen asleep before him the past two nights.
In your distraction, you wonder if he thought of you at Rook’s Rest, or on his journey to Dragonstone. You think about the tears you shed over the death of Rhaenys, and the weeks’ worth of tears you shed for him that you pretended came from the same cause.
In her first letter to you after taking King’s Landing, Rhaenyra told you Aegon was dead. Likely the wisest way to handle it, admittedly. How could she have known that after such a defeat he would be able to find you again. It was best to let you mourn, destroy the threat he posed to your loyalties definitely after trying with varying levels of success for years.
You always crumbled when you saw him again.
In evaluating all of the responses you could give him, you are uncertain if you have settled on the worst until it is too late. Until you have already allowed your lips to close the already unbearable distance, brushing faintly against his.
Aegon does not give you the opportunity to pull back, connecting your lips fully. His efforts to keep you close are needless. You make no move to pull away from him, even when he pulls you closer. You imagine it took everything in him to allow you to move in first. That restraint does not go unrewarded, you ensure, fist clutching the fabric of his adornment tighter.
He kisses you as if your time is limited, nonetheless. You're unsure if it is because he expects the moment will be short lived, or because of the years that have passed since the last time your lips have graced his.
His head jerks at the feeling of your fingers on his nape, mistakenly biting down on your bottom lip before his neck pulls fully away from you.
You quail instantly, not registering the faint taste of blood in your mouth until you've evaluated his face entirely. “Aegon, what is-” Your hands move to cup his cheeks to examine his expression, but that only results in him taking a small step back.
After the initial hurt that rings through your body, you are able to recollect yourself, a small “oh” leaving you involuntarily before you let your hands drop to your sides.
“I did not mean,” you start, though you believe your tone to be far too full of pity to register correctly in his mind.
Astoundingly, he does not seem to cringe at the affliction your words are laced with.
Mayhaps only to assure you that you have not hurt him, he moves closer once more. “I know,” he smiles. It's a weak, sad thing that does not reach his eyes. He connects your lips again in a short peck, before pulling away to press his lips to your temple. He lingers there, but does not touch you again.
The air is thicker than before, if possible. Worsened by the emotional distance you've kept so adamantly being replaced by a physical distance you want nothing more than to break.
A/N: heyyyy...how is everyone...
I'm working on everything that has been promised😭if it's not done it's bcs I don't have motivation for it...trying to combat that before college starts back up and my biggest stressor will be midterms. In other news, finale was tonight and it was a finale! For sureee
Apparently house Mollen is mentioned in GoT, Ser Mallen is notttt a typo guys it just came to me in a dream
CW: explicit but gentle smut, dirty talk, bj, cumplay, Targaryen cockiness, quick read
Summary: Your prince of choice wakes up stiff.
You’re enjoying a slow morning in bed with your favorite Targaryen prince. Your gaze snags on where he’s tenting the blanket. When he catches you eyeing his morning wood, his eyes darken. He smirks and tosses the covers back, revealing his stiff, bare cock.
The sight of him rock-hard makes saliva pool on your tongue. You consider pouncing on him. He beats you to it.
He kneels, shaft looming above your head. His tip inches closer with each pillow he props you up on. Your dragon prince grabs his thick length and taps it on your lips. It’s hot and heavy against your skin. His manly scent is half-human, half-dragon—musk tinged with smoke.
“Today you’ll take your breakfast in bed.”
You lick a slow stripe from base to head. “Good thing I’m craving sausage.” You wrap your slippery lips around the tip. Bob once. Your blood sings when a breathy moan tumbles out of him. “Want to be full of it.”
His fingers squeeze your jaw until you open again. He stares at your mouth with wicked intent. Sensing his desire, you slide your tongue out. He brushes the length of it with a milky smear of precum. “Save some room for dessert.” He grinds his blunt cockhead against your tongue until you’re drooling all over your own chin. “The cream is to die for.”
how do Yandere targaryen men react to their beloved running away and when they find her years later she is with another man
ANON!!! I'm so sorry it took me such a long time to write this, but ignoring my "little" hiatus.... You can see why LMFAOOOO and don't worry, there will be a part two with the other tagaryens!! Also i hate how daemon come out, it's just so... Poetic for no goddamn reason compared to the others it just makes me mad 😭but yeah you can see when i started writing this back in the old days and now lol im so sorry... I failed you all......... (i also added smth to your request anon, hope that's ok but it was too yummy to pass lol)
⋆°｡⋆♡ TW/CW: DARK CONTENT, 18+ (MINORS/AGELESS/BLANK BLOGS DON’T INTERACT), Bad English, Toxic Relationship, Yandere/Dark Characters, AFAB Reader (pregnancy and implied birth, she/her pronouns), Jealousy, Murder, Manipulation, Classicism, Dehumanization, OOC?, Specifics TW/CW under for each character, let me know if I need to add more TW/Tags ♡ My blog contains dark content, be careful when interacting/following!
°˖➴ Characters: Daemon Targaryen, Aemond Targaryen, Aegon Targaryen, Jacaerys Velaryon
₍^. .^₎⟆ TW/CW: Sex, Daemon, Attempted Child Murder??? He doesn't really try dw, but he picks his sword, Sexism (calls you a whore etc). Body?
Daemon is a man known for his anger and chaos. So when you successfully manage to escape, part of him is proud, the other part is fuming. How could you? How dare you?
He doesn't search for you immediately, his anger is too much in that moment it almost completely tears down your entire room, screaming, and demanding to know where you are, who helped you, what the servants know. He's a mess, but everyone is too terrified to say something wrong and are all hoping they won't be near his sword soon, but it takes him a while to “calm down”… Once he does however, he goes immediately to ride Caraxes and start to search for you. Daemon will use his influence to seek out help to find you, but there is something that tells him that he is going to find you. Oh, when he does find you… And he will search for you for hours, days, weeks, months, Daemon will not give up. He will find you one way or another, no matter how much it takes. It takes him longer than he will ever admit and it angers him even more, when he finally gets his hand on you... Oh, when Daemon finally finds you.
Have you been laying in another men bed? Like a common whore? Do you perhaps even have his babe in his belly, instead of his like you rightfully should? Daemon doesn't give you the luxury to explain or plead for your "lover” life, he's already gone. Your lover's head falls right in between your feet, and your screams are loud enough to be heard even deep in the North. Daemon does care about your screams, your sobs, your pleas, and your poor attempt at resistance; he will fuck you right there, near the poor body of your now death lover, his head in front of you but all you can see is the back of it and the cut of Daemon sword. And he is making sure you are watching the dead body, reminding you who you belong to and what will happen to those who dare to ruin you and defy him.
When Daemon is pushing you by your arm to go back where you belong, a cry interrupts the moment. A baby cries, awoke maybe by the rumours from before. How did he not hear it before? But no matter, he will saddle this soon as he draws his sword out once again, ready to kill the bastard babe in his own cradle but, maybe he should have noticed it before, you aren't begging to let the child live, you are begging him to not take it with you. To leave it here, where that bastard of a lover's family lives.
Only when he looks at the babe it becomes clear why: a babe too old to belong to that other man, silver hair comes out of her little head, and violet eyes full of tears stare back at him, his, and your feature mixed into what he considers one of the beautiful sights in the word.
“Daemon please, let her live here. Do not take her back, I will give you another. I will give you a boy Daemon please” you try to beg, his hands on your arm not even trying to push him. All you can do is look at him while Daemon gazes in fixated on his daughter, almost like an animal sensing his kin.
Daemon goes to pick the child in his arms, still staring at her maybe surprised, maybe appeased, and she stares back, still sniffling but curious of the new stranger.
“Her birthright” Daemon starts, staring at you with a smirk on his face and you feel your heart sinking. "Is to be near her father, being taught the greatness of her house, and having a dragon. I will not allow some filth to touch her anymore wife. You have disrespected my child for far too long" He looks at his daughter and his whole face softens, gently caressing her face with his free hand, his sword long forgotten. All you can do is stare at your daughter laughing and swallowing your sob, not wanting her to become stressed.
You tell yourself that you tried, you tried with all your might and force.
“Let's go back home. Caraxes will have that bastard meat, at least he will be useful for something. We have plenty to catch on, my dearest.”
₍^. .^₎⟆ Aemond Targaryen
₍^. .^₎⟆ TW/CW: A bit of Delusion, Mean Aemond kind of
You were Aemond strength and anchor. In a way, you kept him sane while everything in his life was going on and destroying itself. But at night, being with you was enough to keep the stress away and keep doing his job. But that day, when he finally came back to his chamber later than intended, and you weren't there? It's not a day he will ever forget.
He doesn't believe it. He can't believe it. He was careful, he was thoughtful. He made sure that… His only eye watery as he screams for the guards to come, not once a tear fall down his pretty eye. Aemond will call everyone who was around you; your guards, your maids, the other servant, his mother, and sister as well demanding to know what happened, what they did, who helped you, everything you did the moments prior of your escape. He needs to know everything you did, your plan, before he runs to Vhagar to follow his most promising trial. You can't possibly have gone so far that he can't reach you with Vhagar, he made sure that all possibilities were gone just in case.
It seems however that you managed to do it regardless. Since no matter how hard he tries Aemond cannot find you. All his clue turn out to be either wrong or you are too far gone now, and he has a dragon. You were clearly studying this for a long time down to all minimal details, but it won't matter because he will find you. He's a prince, he has the means; the money, the spies, the dragon, if he cannot find his lover what good does those things do?
And Aemond finds you one day, after being separated for far too long... He will ride Vhagar towards the small village you have found your “peace” in, a village so little it hardly appears in the map of the kingdom. One small enough that he probably passed by when he has flying with Vhagar and didn't even notice it. You were always so clever, so attentive to what he did. You were truly the love of his life.
If it wasn't for Larys telling him that they saw a woman who clearly looked like you in poorer and ruined clothes, with two purple eyed babes in your arms. It made him even more furious. Hiding his children? In this... Horrible place? Maybe he did spoil you too much like his brother said, because here he is now. A prince finding his escape wife in some dirt place, with his babies that he has never met.
Aemond is no fool; if he comes with Vhagar right away you and your entire village will notice, he might be forced to kill most of them and you will use this excuse to escape him once again. Taking only more time and prolonging this useless cat and mouse escape. So, he comes at night, and makes to sure to hide Vhagar near the village, coming to your house like he is another filthy peasant.
The man who opens the door confused makes him sick. You dare someone like him to touch, be near his children? How you have fall down. But Aemond choose to ignore him and goes immediately to you, staring at you holding one of yours babies.
“I have come to collect you, my wife. You ought to come back, where you and my children deserves to be.” his violet eye stares at you with his usual look; calm, collected, a small smile on his face.
You try to fight back, you try to plead him to not take you back, but it's all in vain. Your lover, who immediately understood what was going on, tried to leave before Aemond anger focuses on him and maybe even kills him. Aemond does notice him leaving, but he lets him, a cruel smirk forming on his face.
“So, is that the type of man of your choosing? A pathetic, scared man, who cannot even look at me in the eyes? Not even try to fight me with words?” he amuses, his hand gently caressing your cheek with fondness that scares you. He's too calm, far too calm.
Aemond picks his boy you have in your arms, and with a moment of his head, tells you to pick his brother who is still asleep. His eye is now full of love and care you never thought he would have.
You thought it was over. He would take you, the kids, and leave. But no. Aemond easily finds your, ex?, lover and demands a fight, for honour, to give him a "chance". But you knew how able he is with a sword, so the poor man had no real chance, it was just a show off of power, of strength. You decided to not watch and distract your babies, only hearing the screaming and the begging. Aemond at least gives you the possibility to not watch it.
For Jacaerys everything was going well. Your marriage was fine, and you were getting used to the royal life, Dragonstone, his family, everything was fine! So why? Why did he wake up without you near his side? Why, when he simply thought you woke up before him and went to do your things, everyone told him they haven't seen you?
He thinks, at first, someone might have kidnapped you. He can't phantom the possibility that you might have "escaped" because why would you? Everything is fine. Sure, he might be overbearing and paranoid, but he has his reason! The royal court, the highborns, everyone can be and will be a danger to you that he has to protect you from. He is used nowadays for the awful chatting of the ladies of the new gossip about him, the men talking about his bastardly... But you? You are so pure, he has to keep you separate, forcing you in your shared room or to be only with him or his family.
“How can one kidnap a royal and not send anything? No ransom?” Rhaenyra tries to give some senses to her eldest son, looking at him. “Has love clouded your senses that you cannot see what's in front of you?”
“Why would she leave then Mother? I haven't... No one has treated her badly. Everything was, is, perfect! I see no reason for her leaving.” He responded before leaving, going back to ride his dragon Vermax once again, after coming back home in his research for you. Jacaerys did not care if his mother didn't agree on it, believing that you were gone and left for dead, wishing for him to marry for a political advance this time. He will not move on so easily and marry the first woman to give her mother a new alley, money, or whatever.
In his heart he knew. Jacaerys knew that you were alive, possibly being kept prisoner and the sole idea made him tear up, his heart hurting.
But he is his mother son after all. He’s determined and will not bulge no matter what. And, while it takes him a while unfortunately, Jacaerys does find you one day. In a remote village you stayed for far too long for your liking, since your idea was always to go to the free city in Essos. But your lover, that idiot, never thought too much about Jacaerys and his dragon “they are both young” “they will never found us in this village, it’s so remote. Why would a noble stay here?”
Idiot. Complete idiot.
That’s what you think when you see Vermax over you, gliding down over there to let Jacaerys down and run to you with a happy smile on his face, and you can swear he’s already crying.
“My love! I have finally found you!” he screams, and Jacaerys doesn’t even seem to notice the man right near you trying to protecting you from him. Or, if he does notice, he simply doesn’t care. But Jacaerys isn’t an idiot, he has noticed how much that man was too close to you, and you were too comfortable around him. Like you knew each other, and you weren’t kidnapped.
“My love? Who is this?” he says, his hand already going to his sword, staring at you in a way you never saw. Jacaerys with you was always so gentle, so kind, you never would have guessed he had a death glare or his angry voice, though you hear it from servants and his mother to never “saw his bad side”. But you always laughed at them mentally, now you wonder if this is what they meant.
You don’t even get the possibility to explain who your lover is that he was already dead. He tried to attack Jacaerys with a hidden knife but all he managed was a very weird and easily dodge able attack, making it too easy for Jacaerys to respond with his sword and give a the poor man with a swing. He doesn’t even look twice at the dying man and immediately goes to hug you tight, and only then he noticed the big belly you have since you were wearing bigger, buggy clothes.
“Is it mine?” it’s all he asked in an icy tone, staring at you. You nod, terrified, but it was the truth. The maester himself confirmed and you are surprised that he did actually kept his promise and didn’t tell him, maybe paying that such large sum was worth it.
“Why did you leave when you are pregnant!? It could have been dangerous! It is dangerous!” Jacaerys shouts, but immediately calms down and kisses you on the cheek with a sad look on his face. “I’m sorry for screaming at you my love. I’m just worried. Come on, let’s go home.”
₍^. .^₎⟆ Aegon Targaryen
₍^. .^₎⟆ TW/CW: Alcoholism (so yk, the usual), Throwing Stuff and Hurting ppl, Dragon!!
No matter what the others might say, Aegon was no fool. Especially when it’s about you. He noticed you were getting anxious around him, scared that he might found something. And he wasn't delusional enough to hope it was something good. Whatever you were hiding, it was bad. And so he gives you even more guards to control you, afraid of what your little surprise might be.
He’s so very careful and attentive when it’s about you. Way too careful and attentive.
But when he found you were able to escape, even after all the worry and precautions, leaving him confused, angry, sad, and most of all: lonely. The walls even feel colder and big without you there, and everything seems much, much worse, and more stressful than ever. Aegon alcholism gets worst too; it’s basically impossible for him to be seen without a glass of wine in his hands, even when doing his job as a king no matter how much his mother and grandfather scream at him, he will just globbed down a glass and order another one right away.
The poor guards are the ones who sees most of his anger and, if it wasn’t for Alicent and Otto, they could be already dead with their hands on a pike for all to see. Instead, they luckily just get his anger in screaming, threats, and him throwing stuff around if not directly aimed at them, no caring if they get hurt, maybe he’s hurting them on purpose since he can’t kill them. Aegon is so incredibly pissed off with his small council; how come no one knows where the fuck you are! How come he has the best spy in the kingdom but they can’t do shit like finding a single lady who escaped from the most protected place?!
Your finding is a top priority for everyone, even the smallfolk. Who are encouraged to find you thank to a huge reward, but not if you have any type of bruises. You must be perfect, as have you left the Red Keep. Aegon also started to ride Sunfyre more often, even if everyone tells him not to, what if someone sees you milord? What if someone tries to hurt you, milord? All stuff he doesn’t listen to. He is the fucking king for the sevens! He will do as he pleases.
But that’s exactly how Aegon finds you. Riding Sunfyre without a destination.
You aren’t even sure how he fucking saw you, up in the sky with his dragon but you are sure he did. Maybe it’s that fucking bond everyone always adores with their dragons or something. Sevens, you feel stupid now.
You don’t even get to run that he immediately lands in front of you, and Sunfyre doesn’t take kindly to you having someone else near. Sunfyre is used to you and even likes you, but your poor, poor new boyfriend? No. Absolutely not. Maybe he can sense Aegon anger and fury seeing a man so close to you, but Sunfyre immediately starts howling and some fire comes out of his mouth, it’s only because he senses his own rider blood within him that he did not burn him at sight you guess. Only because he was holding Aegon son.
Aegon, unlike his dragon, did not share the same contain. He took his sword and immediately used to hurt your poor boyfriend in the face, making him loose force on his legs, and he falls, while still gripping your son in his arms, in front of Aegon.
“Let my child go and I’ll think about sparring your life.” Aegon says while his sword is pointing right in front of your boyfriend. But you know him; his life wouldn’t be spared. Not when he will know that you were together, if he doesn’t know it already, not when he holds Aegon sons.
That’s what exactly what happens. Sadly, since your now dead boyfriends last words were “take them! Take her! Just… Just let me live your majesty! Please!” you don’t feel that bad now, but still… Seeing his body all bruised and with blood coming out makes you sick, and sad. Aegon picks up your son from the ground and looks at him more clearly, a small smile appearing on his face.
“There, there my little prince, everything is alright… Daddy saved you from that beast, don’t worry.” he says, coddling your son that was crying over what just happen. “Mommy will be good now and not let any filth touch you no more, daddy will make sure of that. He will also make sure that mommy won’t run off this time for good.”
You sighed, trying your best to not start crying in fear of making your sons even more distressed, but you feel like you already failed them.
This work belongs to @/sapphireis, do not repost, translate, copy, rewrite, use for AI, or share on tiktok without my permission. Reblogs/interaction are appreciated and encouraged♡
Aegon has spent so long treating affection as something bought, earned or performed that even being chosen by you cannot quiet the suspicion that he has merely arranged another convincing imitation of it. What begins as an evening built around your desire gradually exposes how little he trusts his own ability to recognize love when it is freely given, and how quickly pleasure becomes another thing he must provide correctly in order to deserve your care.
Continuation of Each bite overwhelms, in Aegon's PoV
Word Count: 10.2k
Warnings: 18+. Smut, femdom/sub!Aegon, blindfolding, praise kink, edging, orgasm denial, masturbation, vaginal sex, sexual roleplay, brothel setting, emotional distress during sex, aftercare, hurt/comfort, references to prostitution, references to emotional neglect and parental abuse, no infidelity.
A/N: I have so many thoughts about the impact of going to brothels and sleeping with sex workers on his psyche. Hope you like it, please let me know what you think! I know I've been posting a lot of Daeron lately, but I hope to get back to writing more for Aegon soon, I just need to know if people are interested in reading, otherwise things sit in my drafts without getting polished/edited
Title is from the quote "After decades of starving and yearning, when love and affection has finally been bestowed upon you, how do you bear the delightful intensity of its taste? Each bite overwhelms me to the bone. I did not even have a tablecloth laid, I was never prepared." by mun-dane.
Your hand closes around his throat.
Not tightly. There is no pressure against his breath, only the warmth of your palm and the possession of your fingers curved beneath his jaw, your thumb resting where his pulse beats too quickly beneath the skin.
Aegon feels you notice it. His chin lifts before he decides to move, the blindfold leaving him with nothing to follow but the shape of your hand and the quiet shift of your breathing somewhere close before him. He leans into the hold, waiting to discover whether you will tighten your grip or draw him nearer.
You do neither.
For several breaths, you simply keep him there.
Your thumb moves once against his pulse. The small stroke makes him conscious of how plainly his body has betrayed him: the quick beat beneath your hand, the tension through his stomach, the fact that he is already hard before you have done much more than look at him and cover his eyes.
He smiles faintly.
If you are admiring the result, he wishes he could see it.
Instead, you release him.
The absence of your hand is immediate. He hears the small movement of your dress as you step away, then another sound to his left, and turns toward it only to find nothing. Without sight, the air seems to move with you, warming when you pass near enough to disturb it and cooling again when you retreat.
Your fingers settle upon his shoulder.
They travel slowly across the line of it, following the muscle toward his neck before disappearing again. Aegon waits for the next touch, but you leave him standing without one for long enough that he begins to wonder whether you have stepped back to look.
The possibility pleases him, and he straightens slightly beneath the blindfold, shoulders settling back, chin still raised from the hold you have abandoned.
Then your fingertips press against the centre of his chest.
Aegon laughs softly.
You trace downward before stopping over the beat beneath his ribs. His breathing deepens. You keep your hand there long enough to feel the change and perhaps long enough to enjoy causing it, then take it away again.
He listens.
A footstep behind him. The soft movement of fabric. Your breath nearer his right ear.
He turns his head, and your mouth touches the opposite side of his neck.
The kiss is brief and warm, placed precisely where he was not expecting it. His hand rises toward you before he has considered whether he has permission.
Your fingers close around his wrist.
Aegon laughs again, quieter this time.
“I was only looking for you.”
You return his hand to his side.
The lie does not earn an answer. Your grip remains around his wrist for another moment, firm enough to establish where you expect it to stay, and the correction sends a sharper pull of want through him than the kiss did.
When you release him, he opens his hand deliberately, showing you that it is empty and still.
He cannot see whether you notice. He knows that you must be looking, however, and finds himself holding the pose a little longer than necessary: palm open, body exposed, waiting for whatever judgment your silence contains.
You circle him again.
At first he tracks you easily through the whisper of your dress. Then the sound disappears beneath the music rising through the floor, and he loses you somewhere behind his left shoulder.
He waits.
The waiting becomes its own sensation. His skin seems to anticipate you before you arrive, tightening at every faint movement of air, his body preparing for touches that do not come. He guesses shoulder and is wrong. Guesses the back of his neck and feels nothing.
Your hand returns lower, travelling over his ribs and stomach with unhurried curiosity.
His body tightens beneath the descent. You pause when you feel it, fingertips spreading against the tense muscle as though you have found something worth examining.
Aegon remains still while your nails graze lightly downward.
The touch reaches his hip, passes across it and disappears. He has barely begun to resent the withdrawal when your hand closes around his cock.
The grip is brief but certain.
His hips move into it on instinct, and a sound catches in his throat, too open and immediate for him to disguise. Your thumb passes once over the head, gathering the wetness already there, before the warmth of your hand is gone again.
Aegon swears beneath his breath.
The loss of contact leaves his cock hard and aching against his stomach, and he has to stop himself from reaching down to replace your hand with his own.
You make a quiet sound that might be amusement.
He turns toward it with a smile he cannot quite suppress.
One hand settles at the back of his neck while the other finds his waist, and you guide him backward. He follows without resistance, though each step asks him to place more of his weight and balance in your hands. The floor beneath his feet offers no indication of how far you intend to move him. He knows the bed is somewhere behind him only because he saw it before you covered his eyes.
Your hand remains steady at his neck, and he follows it.
The movement reminds him, not in any complete thought, but in the easy way his body answers yours, of being directed through crowded halls with your hand against his back, of your fingers closing around his sleeve when he begins wandering away from a conversation you have not finished, of allowing you to steer him around a servant carrying an overloaded tray because he is too busy watching your face to look where he is walking.
You have moved him through half the Keep this way, though ordinarily he can see where you are taking him.
Now he has only your palm and the sound of your dress.
It is still enough.
When the backs of his knees meet the mattress, the surprise draws a brief laugh from him. He reaches instinctively toward your waist for balance, but you are already pressing him downward.
Aegon sits.
The edge of the bed sinks beneath his weight. His feet remain on the floor and his knees fall apart before you, leaving room for you to step between them. The fabric of your dress brushes one thigh as you move closer, and some of the restlessness leaves him at the contact.
You do not touch him immediately.
He can feel where you stand from the faint pressure of your skirts against his knees, but nothing else. The silence stretches while you look at him.
Aegon imagines the sight offered to you: the ribbon across his eyes, his hair already disturbed, the red marks your mouth has begun to leave upon his neck, his cock hard between his spread thighs.
There is nowhere for him to hide anything. He finds that he does not want to.
Your fingers move beneath his jaw and tilt his face upward. The gesture is slow, almost considering. You turn him slightly to one side and then back again, as though the angle matters to you.
His mouth curves.
He has felt that hand beneath his jaw in brighter, less private places. In a deserted gallery when you pulled his face down and kissed him before the approaching steps of a servant forced you apart. In the shadow of a doorway after supper while voices continued beyond the wall and you told him to hold still because there was wine at the corner of his mouth. Once in the stables, after he had said something deliberately offensive and you had seized his chin to make him look at you while you decided whether to be angry.
He had kissed the inside of your wrist that time. You had lost the argument shortly afterward.
The same hand holds him now, though there is no corridor to watch and no servant likely to interrupt.
Your thumb passes over his lower lip.
“Touch yourself.”
His hand closes around his cock at once.
The first stroke draws a rougher breath from him than he expects. He has been too aware of your hands, too caught in their unpredictable progress across him, and the direct pressure arrives with enough force that his shoulders tense.
You do not step away.
One hand remains beneath his jaw while the other travels across his chest, following the rise and fall of his breathing. Your fingertips circle one nipple, testing the response before pinching with just enough pressure to make his grip tighten.
Aegon’s head tips back into your hand.
If he could see you, he would be watching your face. He would be looking for the change around your mouth, the direction of your gaze, the smallest sign that the sight of him pleased you. He had spent most of the evening doing precisely that.
The ribbon leaves him only your hands, your mouth and the knowledge that you have chosen to stand between his knees and watch.
For now, that is enough.
His hand moves again, slower this time because he is conscious of your attention upon it. He feels the drag of his palm along the length of his cock, the pressure gathering at the base and travelling upward, the brief concentration of pleasure when his thumb follows.
Your mouth touches the line beneath his jaw and travels slowly downward. Each kiss is distinct from the next, with enough time between them for him to wonder where the following one will fall.
Throat.
Collarbone.
The center of his chest.
The contrast between his own hand and your mouth makes restraint difficult almost immediately.
You feel the change in him.
“You like being watched, hm?”
The words move against his skin.
Aegon does not bother denying it.
“By you.”
The answer comes without hesitation.
Your hand tightens beneath his jaw. It is the only reply you give him before your mouth returns to his chest, but the pressure sends his hand moving faster.
At first, you allow it.
He hears your breathing alter when his thumb passes over himself and feels your fingers pause against his throat whenever pleasure catches visibly through his body. Each response makes him want to give you another one.
He wants you to see his stomach tighten and his hips move before he can prevent them. He wants you to see what happens when you touch him and know that it does not happen merely because he is naked in a warm room with someone’s eyes upon him, that it happens only because the eyes are yours.
He has been watched by people who wanted something from him, people who despised him, people who expected him to become someone else while they looked. He knows those gazes well enough that he can feel them even with his back turned.
Yours he knows differently.
He knows it from dinners when he catches you looking at him over the rim of your cup and watches you pretend you had been studying something beyond his shoulder. From long rides when he turns in the saddle and finds your eyes already upon him. From council feasts and family suppers where the brush of your knee beneath the table tells him that you have noticed his restlessness before anyone else has.
He cannot see you now, but he can feel the same attention in the hand holding his jaw and the breath warming his skin.
His hand moves faster.
Your fingers close around his wrist.
“Slower.”
Aegon obeys.
The reduced pace is almost worse. Each stroke becomes more distinct, the pressure easier to follow from beginning to end. You continue kissing him while he struggles to maintain the rhythm you have chosen, your mouth passing over his chest and returning to the hollow beneath his throat.
He can feel your amusement when his breathing stutters.
“You enjoy this too much.” He murmurs.
You pinch him again.
The answer pulls a low sound from him, and his hand accelerates before he can prevent it.
“Stop.”
He stops.
The effort travels through his entire body. His hand remains closed around his cock but motionless, his thighs tense and his breath coming quickly while the pleasure he had been pursuing continues to pulse without relief.
You do not release his wrist immediately.
Aegon waits beneath your hand. Your mouth remains at his throat, kissing him there once and then again while his body strains against the stillness. The kisses are soft enough to make the denial worse. You seem in no hurry at all, untroubled by how badly he wants either your hand or his to move again.
He laughs weakly.
“That is c-…”
Your teeth catch lightly against his skin, and the complaint becomes another breath.
You release his wrist but do not tell him to continue.
He keeps his hand still.
The stopped pleasure settles into a deep, persistent ache. His cock twitches once inside his unmoving grip, and he feels your attention sharpen at the involuntary movement.
For several breaths, neither of you changes anything.
Your thumb moves beneath his jaw. Your lips pass over the place where his neck meets his shoulder. His hand remains where you ordered it, every muscle in his arm held taut by the effort not to take what is already within his grasp.
You know how close he is. You can feel his grip and the tension running through him, and still you expect him to remain where you placed him.
He does.
The waiting becomes difficult enough that smaller things begin to matter: the slow movement of your breath against his chest, the quiet sound your mouth makes when it leaves his skin, the way your dress shifts between his knees each time you lean closer.
Your fingers travel down his forearm.
They close around his hand and remove it from his body.
Aegon lets you guide it away. You place it against the bed beside him, palm open against the covers.
Then your hand replaces his.
The first stroke nearly undoes him.
His shoulders pull back, his free hand gripping the edge of the mattress as his head falls slightly to one side. The pressure moves over his cock at a pace he cannot predict. He no longer has to decide when to accelerate or ease away, and the relief of surrendering that decision passes through him alongside the pleasure.
You know how to touch him.
Not only how to make his body answer, but when to refuse it the easiest answer. Your grip changes before he can grow accustomed to it. Your thumb circles slowly, then your hand tightens on the downward stroke and loosens again just as he begins trying to follow.
His hips lift from the mattress.
You let him have the contact for another heartbeat and then draw your hand away.
Aegon exhales sharply.
In a heartbeat, the room expands into the absence.
His own breathing has been loud enough to cover most of the house until now. In the pause, the sounds below return: music pressing faintly through the floorboards, laughter rising and falling without words, and somewhere beyond the room, a door opening.
The house grows suddenly louder.
A man’s voice carries down the corridor, followed by another laugh and the quick passage of footsteps. Someone answers from farther away. The sounds overlap for several seconds before the door closes again and everything becomes muffled.
Aegon knows that change in volume.
His body knows it before thought catches up.
A closed room briefly opened to the rest of the house. Voices swelling and disappearing. Footsteps beyond a bed while someone gathers discarded clothing. A laugh from the corridor, followed by the quiet after the door shuts.
For one heartbeat, the mattress beneath him could belong to any room.
He could be lying with his eyes closed because opening them would mean discovering who remained. Someone might be fastening a shoe beside the bed. Someone else might already be gone. The pleasure might have ended minutes ago or hours, leaving only the heavy air and the sour knowledge that he had returned to himself too soon.
His hand leaves the mattress.
He reaches toward where he last felt you.
Your fingers catch his wrist.
The contact shocks the room back into shape.
You return his hand to the bed as though he has tested the rule again, and Aegon lets you believe it. His smile comes a fraction later than before, but he makes certain you can hear it in his voice.
“Caught me.”
The words sound easy enough. You do not know that he was not reaching to disobey you.
Your hand leaves his wrist and rises to his face. You cup his jaw, turning his head first one way and then the other beneath your palm, the movement slow and appraising. He imagines your gaze travelling over the flush on his skin and the marks your mouth has begun to leave.
His chin lifts slightly under your inspection.
Your thumb passes once beneath his jaw, and your mouth touches his clavicle.
The kiss brings with it the faint scrape of your hair against his chest and the press of your body between his knees. Your hand turns his face again before your lips move higher, as though you are deciding which side of him you prefer.
Aegon has felt you inspect him like this after a ride on Sunfyre, your fingers turning his face toward the light because soot had collected along his cheek. He has endured the same grip at supper while you examined a bruise he insisted was nothing, and in narrow hallways where you pulled him down for a hurried kiss before someone rounded the corner.
Once, during an especially tedious feast, you had rested two fingers beneath his jaw while speaking to someone else, not even looking at him, as if keeping hold of him required no more thought than holding the stem of your cup.
He had remained beside you for the rest of the evening.
The same hand holds him now. His own eases against the bed.
The corridor becomes only a corridor.
Your lips move along his throat while your fingers remain beneath his jaw, holding him open to each kiss. He rests more of his weight into your palm without deciding to.
You kiss the corner of his mouth.
He turns toward you, but you retreat before he can catch you, and his smile returns.
Then your hand closes around his cock again.
Pleasure cuts through what remains of the other room so quickly that he almost resents having thought of it at all. You bring him close again -not as close as before, but enough that his breathing roughens and his hips begin to follow your hand.
He concentrates upon the warmth of your palm, the press of your dress between his knees and the thumb beneath his jaw whenever his head begins to turn toward some sound beyond the room.
You are here.
He does not need to see you to know that.
Eventually, your hand slows.
Aegon braces for another withdrawal, but instead you press against his chest.
He yields backward. The mattress receives his shoulders first and then the rest of him, his blindfolded head meeting the bed as his hair spreads beneath it. The change in position makes the room tilt strangely around him, but your hand remains against his chest until he is settled.
You do not move on at once.
Your palm stays over his heart while his breathing begins to ease. He feels the subtle transfer of your weight through the mattress as you lean over him, the brush of loosened fabric against his side, your hair trailing briefly across his shoulder.
Aegon turns toward the sensation and finds your mouth.
The kiss is poorly aligned because he cannot see you. It lands partly against the corner of your lips, and he follows when you begin to withdraw, catching you properly the second time.
You allow him that much.
His hand starts to rise toward your face, but your fingers press more firmly into his chest.
He leaves it on the bed.
The kiss deepens for several breaths before you break it, and he hears the movement of your dress: fabric drawn upward, your knee pressing into the mattress beside his hip, the bed sinking beneath your shifting weight.
Aegon’s hands tighten once against the covers.
Then you climb over him.
Your thighs settle on either side of his body, the loosened fabric of your dress brushing his stomach and your skin warm where it meets his. He feels your hand close around him again, guiding the head of his cock against you.
His breath catches.
You do not take him immediately.
You move against him once, slowly, the wet heat of you passing over the head and making his hips lift before you have given him anything more. Your hand remains around him, controlling the angle and holding him still when he tries to follow.
Aegon makes a strained sound beneath his breath.
You repeat the movement.
He feels your body open around only the first part of him before you rise again, leaving him with the briefest pressure and nothing he can hold on to.
His fingers twist in the covers.
When you lower yourself again, you take him farther.
The first full press of your body around his cock drives every sound beyond the bed out of reach.
Aegon knows you.
He knows the way you pause after taking the first part of him, the breath you draw through your nose and the slight shift of your hips before you lower yourself farther. He knows the weight of your hand upon his chest and how your fingers spread there when the sensation catches you.
He knows the pressure of your thighs and the small sound you try to keep behind your teeth. He has heard it in your rooms, but not only there. He has heard the quieter versions of it when he kisses you unexpectedly in a corridor and feels you remember, half a moment too late, that anyone might turn the corner. He has felt the same sudden tightening of your fingers when he places his hand at your waist during a dance, or when his knee finds yours beneath a crowded table and remains there.
His hands rise toward your hips.
You allow them there.
His fingers close around the familiar shape beneath the loosened dress, and memory arrives through his palms in scattered pieces: guiding you through a feast where too many people pressed close, steadying you as you dismounted after a long ride, pulling you backward against him while you stood at a window and pretended not to notice his approach.
There are mornings too, your hips beneath his arm while you try to escape the part of the bed he has claimed, but they are only one part of it. He has found this shape beneath his hands in halls, gardens, carriages, doorways and every room where the two of you have stood too close and refused to move apart.
Aegon smiles beneath the blindfold.
Then you begin to move, and for several moments there is nothing else.
You move slowly above him, and Aegon understands the choice of pace without needing it explained. He had been close before you took him, closer than he might have admitted if the evidence were not already plain in his breathing and the tightness of his hands around your hips. You are taking your time because you want to feel him, because the evening is yours and there is no reason to hurry through something you have decided to enjoy.
The thought pleases him almost as much as the movement itself.
Your body rises around him until only the head of his cock remains inside you, pauses there, and then lowers with the same unhurried pressure. Each time you settle fully against him, a tremor passes through your thighs beneath his palms. His fingers tighten in answer.
He cannot see your face, but he hears the breath you release near the end of each descent and begins to follow it. At first, he lifts his hips only enough to deepen the movement, meeting you rather than altering the pace you have chosen.
You do not stop him.
The next breath leaves you more sharply, and Aegon smiles beneath the blindfold.
His hands move from your hips to your waist, tracing whatever the loosened dress allows him to reach. Fabric has gathered somewhere above his stomach; beneath it, your skin is warm and slowly growing damp under his palms. He follows the curve of your side until the dress catches around your ribs, then returns to your hips as you lower yourself again.
You make the same sound.
He gives you the same movement in return.
The rhythm settles between you without discussion. You remain in control of it, but he meets you easily, learning each small change through the weight shifting above him and the pressure of your hands against his chest. When you lean forward, your hair brushes his stomach before your mouth touches his. He misses the first kiss and catches the second again, following your lips until you allow him to deepen it.
Your hips continue moving while you kiss him.
Aegon groans into your mouth, and you swallow the sound. His hands close hard enough around your waist that he knows you will carry the marks later, but you do not correct him. Instead, you press down more firmly, and the movement pulls another sound from him before the kiss has ended.
He is too close already.
The knowledge waits beneath the pleasure, neither frightening nor unwelcome. He can hold himself back. He has done it before when you wanted the night prolonged, when your own pleasure gathered more slowly than his, or when you simply enjoyed making him wait.
For now, he wants to wait.
He wants more of your weight above him and the little sounds you make when he meets you correctly. He wants to hear how they change when he shifts beneath you, to remain where you have placed him until the pleasure becomes unbearable and discover how long you mean to keep him there.
You rise again, and he follows.
Your fingers flex against his chest.
Something in him eases at the response. He does it once more, a little harder, and feels your breath falter.
Aegon knows that sound. He has heard it when your composure begins to loosen in the privacy of your rooms, and in hurried encounters elsewhere, when you press your face against his shoulder because servants remain somewhere beyond the door. He has heard quieter versions during stolen kisses in passages where either of you might be discovered.
He chases it before he realizes he has decided to.
His hips rise more firmly into your next descent. Your body tightens around him, your nails pressing into his chest, and he repeats the movement because he wants the reaction again, louder if he can have it.
You slow.
The change is small enough that he nearly moves through it. Your hips settle against his while you adjust your knees upon the mattress, and Aegon waits for your breathing to sharpen again.
It does not.
The music beneath the floor becomes audible in the pause, a low rhythm with no clear melody. Somewhere in the corridor, someone laughs and another voice answers through the wall. He cannot understand the words, though he knows the careless rise and fall of them, people speaking too loudly because doors such as this one are always closed.
You begin moving again, more slowly than before.
Aegon lifts beneath you, trying to restore the rhythm that made you gasp.
Your hand presses firmly against his chest.
“Let me.”
He stills.
The command sends a pulse through him, sharp enough that the obedience is pleasurable. He loosens his grip upon your hips and lets his body settle against the mattress while you resume at the pace you have chosen.
There is relief in yielding it back to you. He no longer has to decide how much force you want or whether to slow before you ask. You use him at your own rhythm, taking what pleases you, and his cock throbs inside you at the thought.
You feel it. Your body tightens once around him, drawing a rough breath from his throat.
Aegon smiles again.
You continue without hurry, your hand remaining upon his chest, his own resting at your hips without directing them. He concentrates on the pressure of your body, the slow drag of you around his cock, the changes in your grip whenever the sensation catches you.
For a time, the house recedes.
Then you become quieter.
He can still hear the faint break in your breathing when you lower yourself fully and the soft movement of the bed beneath you. Yet the reactions he has been following grow smaller, less frequent, and without your face he cannot tell whether you are concentrating, drawing nearer to pleasure, or simply receiving less of it.
His own body gives him little room to consider the difference calmly.
Each movement brings him closer. He begins holding his breath through the deepest part of your descent, tightening his stomach and thighs as though effort alone might keep the release away. When pleasure rises too sharply, he thinks of the cold floor beneath his feet earlier, the walk through the city, anything that might draw him back from the edge without pulling him away from you entirely.
You are moving slowly because you want to prolong it. He knows that. It means you expect him to last.
There is nothing unreasonable in the thought. He has no intention of finishing before you have taken whatever you want from him.
Your hips change angle, and pleasure cuts through his restraint with enough force that his hands close around you again.
You inhale sharply.
Aegon lifts into you, and your next breath breaks.
He does it again, harder, the mattress shifting beneath the movement, and your gasp covers the sounds below.
Satisfaction loosens something beneath his ribs.
He moves once more before you have fully lowered yourself.
Your palm presses him back.
“Aegon.”
There is no anger in your voice, only correction, but the use of his name catches him. He stills beneath you while your body remains wrapped around him, warm and close, every small contraction suddenly distinct in the absence of movement.
“I can do better.” He says. He isn’t sure where the words come from, pulled from his throat before he can choose them.
He gives the words a smile, letting the familiar confidence settle over them before you can hear anything else.
Your thumb moves once against his chest.
“I did not complain.”
“No,” He says after a moment. “You did not.”
The answer is simple. He waits for something else in your voice and finds nothing he can name. There is no displeasure in it, though without your face, the absence of displeasure does not feel quite the same as pleasure.
He keeps the smile anyway.
You begin moving again.
The answer should settle him, and for a while it nearly does. Your body continues taking him at the same slow pace, your hand remaining against his chest as though to remind him that this is what you chose.
Aegon concentrates on obeying.
He does not lift into you again. His hands remain at your hips without guiding them, and whenever his body threatens to follow yours, he presses his heels into the mattress and holds himself down.
At first, the effort folds easily into the pleasure.
Gradually, he becomes conscious of how little remains for him to do. He lies where you placed him while you move above him, while you draw your pleasure from a body that has only to stay hard, stay still when you ask, and last until you have had enough.
You told him to let you. He is letting you.
Still, when your breathing grows quieter again, unease gathers beneath his ribs.
He listens for every reaction: the tightening of your thighs, a change in the rhythm of your breath, the smallest sound you fail to hold back. Each one eases him, and every silence leaves him waiting for the next.
Music continues below. The boards creak beneath footsteps in the corridor. Somewhere nearby, another bed strikes faintly against a wall in an irregular rhythm and then stops.
Aegon tries not to hear it.
He concentrates on you instead, on the pressure of your hand and the warmth around his cock, but the house has become too familiar to disappear entirely. It waits in every pause, filling whatever space your voice and body leave unoccupied.
You lean forward.
Your hair falls against his cheek, and your mouth finds his throat. The kiss should be enough. The weight of you above him should be enough.
Aegon turns toward you, searching for your mouth.
You give it to him.
He opens beneath the kiss with more hunger than the movement requires, one hand leaving your hip to find the back of your neck. You let him keep you there. Your tongue meets his, your lips parting against his, and for several breaths he has the sound of you close enough that nothing else enters.
When you lift your head, he follows.
Your hand presses him down again.
The loss of your mouth leaves him listening.
Your hips continue moving, and pleasure gathers steadily, unavoidable now. His cock feels too sensitive inside you, each slow stroke threatening to carry him farther than he intends. His hands tighten around your hips and then loosen when he remembers himself.
Not yet.
You are still enjoying him. You are still taking your time.
His body begins to follow yours despite the decision, a small and helpless lift that he suppresses almost immediately. His breathing roughens. He turns his face against the mattress as though the change might make the pleasure easier to withstand.
Your movement slows.
You remain seated fully upon him, your body pulsing faintly around his cock while your fingers move across his chest.
He waits for you to begin again.
You do not.
The house seems to draw nearer around the bed. A voice passes outside the door, the music below changes into another song, and a woman moans somewhere far away enough that it should not matter.
Aegon thinks of your face and cannot see it.
He imagines you looking down at him, perhaps pleased by the sight, perhaps waiting for something more.
He shifts beneath you.
Your hand moves to his hip, stilling the attempt before it becomes a thrust.
“What are you doing?”
“Being still.”
“You are not.”
“I am trying.”
A small laugh escapes you.
Relief passes through him so quickly that it almost hurts.
He has made you laugh. You are still here with him, still pleased enough to find him amusing.
Your body tightens around his cock with the sound, and the sensation nearly takes the choice from him. His breath stops. His hands clamp around your hips.
You feel it immediately.
Your mouth comes near his ear.
“You may come, my love.”
For one instant, the permission empties everything from him.
His body begins to obey before thought returns. Pleasure gathers violently at the base of his spine, his cock pulsing inside you as his hips lift from the bed.
Aegon forces himself still.
The release retreats only slightly, leaving him trembling beneath you.
You stop moving.
“Not yet.” He refuses. The words emerge more breathlessly than he intended.
Your hand slides from his hip to his stomach, feeling the strain there.
“Why?”
Aegon swallows.
You have had him in your mouth, beneath your hands, inside you. You have spent the evening choosing exactly what you wanted from him.
Yet when he places all of that beside what he offered downstairs, it seems too easy.
Anyone you wanted. A room for the night. The freedom to send him away while another man or woman gave you something he never had.
You chose him, and he has spent much of the time lying beneath you while you did nearly everything.
The thought is absurd enough that he almost laughs.
He makes the attempt.
“You have hardly had anything from me.”
The smile feels strange upon his mouth, too deliberate, but perhaps the blindfold conceals enough of him that the rest does not matter.
Your fingers become still against his stomach.
“I have had what I wanted.”
Aegon waits.
The words should settle the matter. He wants them to.
He repeats them to himself, trying to fit them over the uncertainty, but music continues beneath the floor and voices pass through the unfamiliar walls, and the answer sounds perilously close to kindness.
He knows how easily kindness can be offered when someone sees exactly where it is needed.
“You paid for more than this.” He attempts.
He puts the game back into his voice because the coin and the room are simpler than explaining why your answer has failed to reach him.
Above him, you go completely still.
“Aegon.”
Concern has entered your voice now, or irritation, or some mixture of the two. He cannot tell which without seeing you, and the inability has become suddenly unbearable.
“What?”
“Look at me.”
A breath that might have become a laugh leaves him.
“You have made that somewhat difficult.”
Your hand leaves his stomach. He feels you lean forward, your weight changing above him while your fingers reach behind his head and find the knot in the ribbon. The movement presses you more tightly around him, pleasure cutting through the confusion sharply enough that he nearly asks you to leave the blindfold where it is.
Instead, he lies still.
The silk loosens.
Cool air reaches the damp skin around his eyes before you draw the ribbon away. For a moment, the room is only blurred light.
Then he sees you.
Relief reaches him so quickly that he almost closes his eyes beneath it.
Your face is flushed, your hair fallen loose around it, the careful arrangement from earlier ruined by his hands and the movement of your body. Your lips are parted and reddened from kissing him, your breathing still unsteady. The dress hangs low around your shoulders and gathers at your waist, leaving your skin bare where his fingers have marked it.
There is a faint line between your brows, the same one that appears when he says something at supper that troubles you more than you wish the rest of the table to notice, but desire has not left your face. Your pupils are wide. Your thighs tremble faintly around his hips.
You look at him as though you want him.
Of course you do.
The certainty returns all at once, so obvious that shame follows it. He had frightened himself over nothing. You are still astride him, still joined with him, your palm spread across his chest as though you mean to keep him beneath you.
Aegon’s fingers tighten around your hips.
His body responds to the sight before he decides what to do with it. He lifts into you once, and your breath catches.
The sound gives him the answer he had been searching for.
Then his gaze slips beyond you.
The curtains around the bed are not yours. The walls are too dark, the carved posts unfamiliar. Wine waits upon the low table, beside the gold dragon he placed there, and his coat has been arranged over the back of a chair as neatly as though an attendant expects him to dress and leave when the allotted time has ended.
The room settles around you piece by piece.
You remain flushed and breathing hard above him, but now he sees everything framing the sight.
Aegon has seen desire in rooms like this before. He has asked for it.
Of course I missed you.
A voice without a face. He cannot remember whether the woman offered the words herself or whether he told her what to say.
Stay if you like.
No. He had paid her to stay. He remembers the extra coins left on the table because waking alone had seemed unbearable until morning made the company worse.
Yes, my prince. I wanted you too.
He had believed that one for nearly an hour.
Perhaps less.
He cannot remember her face either.
“Aegon?”
Your voice reaches him from above, carrying the concern he noticed before his eyes wandered.
He looks back at you.
You are his wife. He knows the shape of your mouth when you are worried, the particular furrow between your brows, the way your fingers press once against his skin whenever you are deciding whether to question him or wait for him to speak.
He knows how different you are from anyone who has waited in a room for his coin.
You chose him downstairs. You put the gold back into his hand. You told him that you loved him.
He had wanted all of it so badly that there had been no hiding the fact.
He had brought you here, watched your face at every turn, and nearly broken with relief when you chose him. By the time you placed the coin in his hand, you already knew exactly which answer he hoped you would give.
Perhaps you had chosen him because there was no other choice that would not wound him. Perhaps you followed him upstairs because his delight had been too immediate and too naked to punish with refusal. Perhaps you accepted the game because he had offered it with such desperate pleasure that denying him afterward would have felt cruel.
You are looking at him with desire now.
But he has asked women to look at him that way before.
Coins had made agreement easy. Sometimes he had supplied the affection too, laying out the words and waiting for them to be returned in a softer voice.
Aegon moves beneath you.
The action comes before any decision, old and familiar. When his thoughts begin turning against him, there has always been something capable of drowning them for a while: wine, a mouth, a body, pleasure strong enough to break the question apart before it finishes forming.
His hips drive upward.
You gasp.
The sound goes through him like confirmation.
He does it again, one hand tightening around your hip while the other catches at your waist and pulls you down to meet him. Your head falls back slightly, your lips parting upon another breath.
He knows that sound. He felt your body make it.
Aegon lifts again, harder.
Your fingers dig into his chest, and for a heartbeat the room disappears beneath the sight of you reacting to him.
Then certainty bends beneath the same thought that summoned it.
He had wanted the sound, and he had produced it.
He changed the angle, tightened his grip and gave your body something it could not help answering. The gasp proves that he knows how to move beneath you. It says nothing about why you came upstairs or what you wanted before he began.
He moves once more, trying to force an answer from your body before you can give him one in words.
Your body answers exactly as he wanted it to, and certainty slips away again. He had drawn the reaction from you himself; now he no longer knows what it proves.
And because he caused it, he cannot believe it.
He moves again before the thought has time to settle, reaching for the same reaction with the old certainty that, if he can only make the pleasure strong enough, everything else will be forced out. Your body answers him. Your breath catches, your thighs tighten around his hips, and for the length of that sound there is no room left for the curtains, the coin or the unfamiliar walls.
Then he looks at your face.
You are watching him now, the line between your brows deepening as his movements break away from the rhythm you had chosen. He drives upward again before you have settled from the last thrust, one hand fixed at your hip while the other pulls you down to meet him, trying to keep your breath loud enough that nothing beyond the bed can reach him.
“Aegon.”
Your palm presses against his chest.
He feels it without attending to it and moves once more, harder than before. Your breath leaves you sharply. The response goes through him with a rush of satisfaction that is already fading when he searches your expression for proof of what it meant.
Concern has begun to replace the pleasure there.
“Aegon.”
You say his name more firmly, and this time your hand holds him against the mattress.
He stops.
The effort leaves him breathing hard beneath you, his body still taut with everything he has refused to allow it. You remain astride him without moving, and the room gathers itself again around the silence: the bed curtains tied back from carved posts he does not recognize, the low table beside the wall, his coat waiting over the chair and the untouched wine catching the light beside the coin.
He drags his attention back to you.
“What?”
You study him for another moment before your hand leaves his chest and moves toward his face. Your fingers pass into the hair damp against his temple, smoothing it back from his forehead with a care that makes his stomach tighten.
He catches your mouth before you can speak.
The kiss begins too quickly, his hand closing behind your neck to keep you near while his lips part yours. You answer him without hesitation. For several breaths, the familiar shape of your mouth almost gives him what he was searching for. He knows the small sound you make when he kisses you without warning and the way your fingers tighten in his hair before you decide whether to slow him or follow.
You follow at first.
Then the kiss changes.
Your mouth softens against his, and your hand cups his cheek, your thumb passing beneath his eye. The urgency eases from you because you have noticed something is wrong, and that gentleness enters the kiss until he can feel it in every careful movement of your lips.
He remembers asking for this too.
The memory arrives without a face.
Slower, he had ordered. As though you mean it.
He cannot remember the woman, only the perfume clinging to the bed curtains and the way her mouth had obeyed. Perhaps he laughed when she did it properly. Perhaps she had laughed first and made it sound affectionate because he had paid enough to be indulged.
Aegon pulls you closer, trying to deepen the kiss until it becomes something else, but your palm remains against his cheek and the care in your touch follows him into it. You are no longer simply kissing him. You are trying to settle him.
The previous night returns with sudden, humiliating clarity: your arms around him, your hand at the back of his head, your body moving closer after he loosened his hold because he thought you wanted to leave. The same concern had been in your face then, though he had been too relieved to ask what else might have been there.
His stomach turns.
He breaks the kiss.
Your mouth follows his for the smallest moment before you stop. You remain close, your breath warm against his lips, your fingers still threaded through his hair.
“Love?”
He tries to look at you and finds his gaze slipping past your shoulder to the tied curtain and the edge of the table where the gold dragon catches the light.
“Just-…wait.”
The words leave him quietly, almost beneath his breath.
You become still at once.
Music continues below the floor. Someone passes in the corridor, footsteps slowing near the door before moving on. Your hand remains against his face, though you do not move your hips, kiss him again or ask what he means.
Aegon closes his eyes.
The room does not disappear with them. He knows where everything is now, and the knowledge has entered the touch of your body around his cock, the weight of you above him, the warmth of your palm against his cheek. He tries to breathe until the certainty returns. You are his wife. You chose him. You said you loved him.
He knows all of that.
He had wanted all of it before you gave it to him.
His breathing refuses to settle.
You shift carefully, lifting enough to ease some of your weight without moving away. The consideration in it makes something twist beneath his ribs.
He opens his eyes.
You are still watching him.
“It is fine,” He says. You do not answer. Aegon makes himself smile, though the expression feels wrong as soon as it reaches his mouth. “I only needed a moment.”
His hands return to your hips. He tries to guide you into motion before either of you has time to examine the interruption too closely, but you catch his wrists and lower them to the mattress again.
He looks down at your hands around his.
“I can continue.”
You keep hold of him for another moment, studying his face rather than answering. The silence begins to feel like refusal, and frustration rises quickly enough to cover some of the shame beneath it.
“It was only a moment,” He attempts. “There is no reason to make more of it.”
You are looing at him like that again, like he is a bug in one of Helaena’s glass jars.
“You asked me to wait.” You say.
“And now I am telling you that I can continue.”
“I heard you.”
You release his wrists but make no move above him.
Aegon waits, expecting you to resume once he has made himself sufficiently clear. When you remain still, his hands begin to rise again.
You stop them before they reach your hips.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“No,” You say. “I know.”
The answer, and the calm with which you give it, irritate him more than an argument might have.
“There is nothing wrong.”
You look at him for long enough that the lie becomes difficult to sustain.
“It did not pass,” You state.
“You cannot possibly know that better than I do.”
Your eyes move across his face: the tension around his mouth, the way his gaze keeps leaving yours, the breath he has not managed to slow.
“I know what you look like.”
Aegon laughs, though the sound carries no amusement.
“Yes,” He retorts before he thinks better of it. “That appears to be the problem.”
Something in your expression changes.
Before you can ask what he means, he shifts beneath you, trying to create enough distance to breathe without feeling every small adjustment of your body around him. You understand the movement and brace your hands against the mattress, lifting yourself away.
The separation is slow after so long spent holding himself back. His body reacts despite him, his cock twitching at the loss of warmth, and he turns his face aside before he can see whether you noticed.
You do not look down.
You move beside him while he pushes himself upright and returns to the edge of the bed. His feet find the floor. His elbows come to rest against his thighs, his hands hanging between his knees as he tries to decide whether he should apologize, dress or leave.
The coin remains on the table.
He stares at it.
“I chose you.”
You have sat beside him, leaving a small space between your bodies.
Aegon rubs both hands over his face.
“You knew what I wanted before I put that coin in your hand.”
When you do not answer immediately, he lowers his hands and looks at you.
“You knew before I brought you through the door. You knew while I stood downstairs pretending I would be perfectly content with whatever answer you gave me.” His mouth twists. “I was hardly subtle.”
“I knew you wanted me.”
“You saw what any other choice would do.”
“Yes,” You say after a moment. “I saw.”
The admission catches him. He had expected denial, perhaps because denial would have been easier to dismiss.
You continue before he can decide what to do with it.
“I knew what you wanted. I still chose you because I wanted you.”
Aegon looks away.
“That does not make the choice false,” You remind him.
“No. It merely makes it convenient.”
“For whom?”
He glances at you, then back at the coin.
“For both of us, apparently.”
You draw in a breath, and he can hear the beginning of hurt in it, though you keep your voice level when you answer.
“Do not call it pity. That is not what it was.”
“I did not.”
“You did everything except use the word.”
Aegon presses his palms together between his knees.
The music below changes, followed by a cheer and the beginning of another song. He listens to it for several seconds before speaking again.
“And last night?” You go still beside him. He continues before you can answer. “I came to your rooms in the middle of the night and stood there until you understood what I could not manage to say.”
“You did say it.”
“Eventually.”
“You asked me to hold you.”
“Yes.”
“And I wanted to.”
Aegon’s fingers tighten against one another.
“I wanted you to want it.”
“I did.”
The answer comes without hesitation.
He closes his eyes.
“How am I meant to know?” You say his name, but he shakes his head before the sound can become another reassurance. “I have paid women to say things before.”
The words leave him more quietly than anything else has.
You do not interrupt.
“To say they wanted me. That they missed me. To stay until I slept,” He looks toward the table again. “Sometimes I told them exactly what to say. It was simpler. At least then I knew whether they had done it properly.”
He waits for you to speak. When you do not, the rest comes more easily and feels worse for it.
“I knew what I was paying for. A body, an hour, whatever words made the hour tolerable. I knew they were lying,” His mouth pulls to one side. “Usually I knew.”
The correction hangs there.
He remembers women whose names he forgot while they were still fastening their clothes. One had sounded tired when she told him she cared, and he had believed her because exhaustion made the lie seem less practiced. He remembers paying another to remain until morning and waking angry because she had obeyed him and was still there to see what remained after the wine had worn off.
“And then I brought you here,” He continues, words spilling out before he can remind himself of what they might cost him. “I arranged the room. I put the coin in your hand. I stood there waiting for you to give me the answer I wanted, and when you did, I believed it because I wanted to.”
“You believed me because I meant it.”
“Yes, and that is precisely what I wanted you to say.”
Aegon stands abruptly, then seems to think better of it and sits again before he has fully straightened. The movement leaves him restless at the edge of the bed, unable to remain still and unwilling to go anywhere.
“You knew tonight,” He continues. “You knew last night. You know every time I come into your rooms and make enough of a nuisance of myself that you finally let me stay.”
“I let you stay because I want you there.”
He laughs once, bitterly.
“There. That-…that is-…I want that to be true so badly that I cannot tell whether I recognize it or merely seize upon it whenever you are kind enough to say it.”
You start to answer, but he keeps speaking, the words coming faster now that the doubt has moved beyond the room.
“I have believed women who were paid to tolerate me because they looked convincing for half an hour. I have believed my mother meant something she did not because she touched my face once instead of striking it. Why should I trust that I have suddenly become clever where you are concerned?”
His voice falters, though he does not stop.
“And before tonight? How many times have I decided you meant something because I needed you to mean it? How many times have you looked at me, or let me stay, or put your hand on me, and I have-…”
He presses his fingers against his eyes.
The sentence fails there.
“How am I meant to know?”
For a while, you say nothing.
The silence lasts long enough that regret begins to creep into the space left by the outburst. Aegon lowers his hands and sees yours move toward him, then stop before touching.
You wait.
An hour earlier, you had placed your hands wherever you pleased. Now you leave the small distance between you intact until he decides whether it should be crossed.
“I cannot give you something you will accept as proof tonigh,” You say at last. His mouth tightens. “But I can tell you what I chose. I chose you. I wanted you. I wanted to hold you last night.”
His eyes search your face before he can prevent it.
You notice.
The hurt in your expression deepens, but you do not repeat yourself or offer him another sentence to dismantle.
“I knew what you wanted,” You say. Aegon looks down at his hands. “I wanted it too. You do not get to tell me that I meant something else.”
There is firmness in your voice, but no invitation to continue the argument. He feels the difference and says nothing.
After a moment, you reach behind you for one of the bedcovers. It catches beneath your knee, and you tug at it with a muttered curse before finally pulling it free.
The sound is so ordinary that Aegon looks at you.
You draw the cover around your shoulders and hold the other side toward him.
“I am not cold.”
“I did not ask.”
On another night, he might argue simply because you have given him the opportunity. Tonight, he takes the offered edge and pulls it across his lap.
The fabric covers his body without either of you acknowledging why he needs it.
You sit beside him in silence.
The house continues around you: music, footsteps, laughter, the low murmur of strangers below. The sounds no longer disappear, though they begin to lose some of their insistence as the minutes pass and you ask him nothing further.
He waits for you to touch him.
When you do not, disappointment comes first, followed so closely by relief that he cannot separate one from the other.
His breathing begins to slow.
After a while, your hand settles at the back of his neck.
The touch is light. You do not pull him around or try to make him look at you. Your fingers rest beneath his hair, warm against the skin there.
Aegon becomes very still.
The same hand had guided him across the room earlier, moved him backward and kept him where you wanted him. Now it remains without directing him anywhere.
He does not know what to do with it.
You leave it there.
The silence stretches. His shoulders ache from the effort of holding himself apart from you, though moving closer would be another request after an evening already built from too many of them.
Your thumb shifts once against the back of his neck.
Aegon looks down at his hands beneath the cover.
He thinks of the previous night, of loosening his arms when he believed you meant to move away, and of the moment before you stepped close again when he had already decided that wanting you to stay did not give him the right to hold you there.
Tonight, he had asked you to wait.
You had waited.
When he said he could continue, you had not allowed him to turn the words into something he owed.
His shoulder touches yours.
The movement is slight enough that he might still pretend it happened by accident. You make no comment and do not immediately draw him closer.
He remains there, barely touching you, while your hand stays at his neck.
Then he lets more of his weight shift sideways.
You move at last.
Your arm comes around him slowly, leaving him time to retreat before it closes. He does not. You draw him against you, his head settling near your shoulder as the cover gathers around both of you.
For several breaths, his arms remain at his sides.
You hold him without tightening your grip or asking him to decide what the embrace proves.
After a long while, his arms come around you.
You do not move except to hold him more securely.
Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think!
Nene would u consider writing for Aegon? 😔 I don't see him in your muses but I wanted to ask
i side eye aegon ii a lot ... there is a little hate going on there on my side if i'm being honest ...
so if i did write for aegon i will make him as pathetic and miserable as possible to show my displeasure. will make him cry and whine and beg and plead and grovel ... the whole full course meal. grasping at skirts and tits and asking for kisses and touches and to be allowed to cum. panting like a dog just from a few touches and pecks and well placed carreses. crying because he's being either praised or degraded.
The morning after Aegon asks you to hold him, he leaves your bed before you wake and returns with an evening in the city already arranged. He leads you through King’s Landing to a brothel, places a gold dragon in your hand, and tells you that you may choose anyone you want. Whatever he believes he is repairing, however, he has not asked whether you think it was broken.
Word Count: 11.6k
Warnings: 18+. Smut, explicit sexual content. Established relationship, arranged marriage, cunnilingus, femdom (sub!Aegon), consensual power dynamics, service submission, praise kink, blindfolds, sexual roleplay, brothel setting, emotional vulnerability, references to past promiscuity, no infidelity in the story. This is just hurt/comfort with increasingly questionable problem-solving.
Some AU/Setting stuff: They're married, for a little while now. Viserys is still alive (I will continue to avoid his death and its consequences like this fucker avoided conflict and parenting).
A/N: I have wanted to write this story for Aegon for so long. Technically in my head it's the two idiots from Pirtir but they don't have to be (I just think it's more fun in an evil way if you have the brothel story from Pirtir in mind when you read Aegon do what he does in this one). I hope you like this and I would love to hear your thoughts!
Title is from the quote "After decades of starving and yearning, when love and affection has finally been bestowed upon you, how do you bear the delightful intensity of its taste? Each bite overwhelms me to the bone. I did not even have a tablecloth laid, I was never prepared." by mun-dane.
You wake to cold sheets.
Not cold enough to suggest Aegon has been gone for hours, though; only enough that when your hand crosses the space beside you, searching without much thought for his warmth, it finds the shallow impression he left in the mattress and the covers pushed down where he must have kicked them during the night.
Disappointment arrives before concern.
More often than not, he is still there when you wake. Sometimes deeply asleep, sprawled so carelessly into your half of the bed that you must push at his shoulder to reclaim enough room to move. Sometimes awake and pretending otherwise, his breathing made conspicuously even until you open your eyes and catch him watching you through his lashes. He has settled into domesticity with surprising ease for a man of his…reputation.
His absence is not unprecedented either, but this morning, you had expected him to remain.
You know the ordinary shape of intimacy with him. You know the weight of his arm across your waist, the heat of him beside you, the careless familiarity with which he occupies your bed and your space. There is nothing new in waking tangled together or feeling him linger when neither of you has yet decided to move.
What stays with you from the previous night is his voice.
He had come to you angry and exhausted. He had spoken of the council, of his mother, of trying and discovering that effort changed nothing. Then he had looked at you as though your face might deliver the same verdict as theirs.
And he had asked you to hold him.
The memory returns with the same quiet force it carried when the words first left him. A question, weak but audible, stripped of the easy confidence he usually wears when he reaches for you.
You had answered by moving closer, and for a time, he had let himself rest against you. Then you shifted your footing, and his arms had tightened with such sudden instinct that you felt the panic in it before he seemed to understand it himself. He released you almost immediately and went still beneath your hands, leaving enough space for you to move away if that was what you had intended.
You moved closer again, and eventually, his arms rose around you once more.
You had hoped some part of that trust might survive until morning.
Instead, you find his side of the bed empty.
Embarrassment seems the likeliest explanation. Aegon can endure being insolent, vulgar, drunken, contrary, and occasionally unbearable with far greater ease than he can tolerate being seen in earnest need. Daylight has likely made the previous night feel less like comfort and more like exposure.
The thought disappoints you. It irritates you too, though not enough to become anger.
You do not expect him to return and begin a difficult conversation. Difficult conversations have never formed the foundation of your marriage. You have found other ways of knowing one another, some more direct than others, and Aegon has always preferred touch, provocation, distraction, or silence to any prolonged examination of what lies beneath them.
So you rise.
The day begins because days do, regardless of whether a husband has fled before his wife can wake beside him.
By late morning, you are seated in a private study with Helaena, embroidery resting across your lap while she works with quiet intensity. The conversation between you comes and goes without either of you appearing troubled by its irregularity.
Each time the door opens in the adjoining passage, some small part of your attention lifts. You tell yourself that you are not waiting for him. You are merely accustomed to his interruptions.
When he finally arrives, he enters with enough momentum to make the distinction irrelevant. The doors to the study open without ceremony and Aegon steps through.
“My wife.”
There is the smallest skip in his step as he crosses the threshold. So slight that, had you not spent months learning the peculiarities of his movement, you might mistake it for ordinary energy. Aegon has always occupied a narrow space between animation and restlessness, and on most days he moves along it without effort.
Today, though, he has crossed too far to one side.
Still, the greeting warms you before suspicion has the chance to intervene.
Before your marriage, you might have imagined that hearing yourself addressed so frequently through your relation to a man would become belittling. Instead, you have become helplessly endeared to the title as it exists in his mouth.
Aegon says my wife with a satisfaction he never bothers to conceal. The possessiveness itself pleases you less than what follows it: the way his expression waits for you to answer, as though the claim only becomes real when you return it.
“Husband.”
His reaction is immediate and familiar.
His face softens, his smile widens, and his eyes betray the same pleased hunger they always do when you call him yours. He receives the simplest acknowledgment of your marriage as though the word contains far more praise than you placed inside it.
You know how readily praise reaches him. You know what becomes of him when you make it clear that he has pleased you or belongs to you. The title is only one of the gentler forms that language takes between you.
For a moment, he looks entirely himself.
Then the brightness returns too quickly.
He gives Helaena a brief acknowledgment that his sister waves away before coming directly to you, entering your space with no permission sought and no expectation that it might be denied.
His hand cups your cheek.
The touch is warm and familiar. His thumb passes once beneath your eye while he looks down at you with a brightness that would be convincing if his other hand were not opening and closing at his side.
“You were gone early,” You say.
“I was-…” He glances away, then back. “Preoccupied with other matters.”
The answer is deliberately useless. Before you can ask anything further, he continues.
“I have arranged for us to go into town tonight.”
You look up at him.
“Have you?”
“Yes.”
He says it with his usual certainty, as though the arrangements themselves have settled the matter.
“And when were you going to ask me?”
“I expected you would come.”
There is your husband: presumptuous enough to arrange an evening without consulting you and genuinely surprised by the suggestion that your agreement ought to have preceded it.
Ordinarily, you might make him work harder for it simply because he has assumed too much. Today, the restless movement of his fingers makes you hesitate.
“Where are we going?”
“You will see.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I intend to give you.”
His mouth curves, but the expression does not settle naturally across his face. He watches you too closely, waiting for something he is pretending not to require.
You let the silence stretch.
“If you would rather not,” Aegon starts, “we need not go.”
The words come too quickly.
You had not refused, you had barely questioned him; and that small retreat is stranger than the presumption that came before it.
You place your hand over the one still resting against your cheek.
“I would like to go.”
His fingers still beneath yours.
“Good.”
Relief passes across his face before the smile returns, brighter than it needs to be.
He bends and presses a kiss to your forehead, lingering there for the length of one released breath before straightening again.
“We will leave after supper,” He tells you, already taking a step back. “Wear something warm.”
The confidence has returned, but now you know how easily it slipped.
___
The city suits him.
You notice it before you have travelled far from the Keep. The farther its walls recede behind you, the less Aegon appears to account for every pair of eyes upon him. People still watch, of course. They recognize the silver hair, move out of his path, bow when they remember they ought to and stare when they believe he will not notice. It does not seem to trouble him here as it does at court.
At court, observation is always an evaluation. Someone is measuring whether he has spoken too loudly, laughed at the wrong moment, understood too little or shown too plainly that he does not care to understand more. In the city, people look because he is a prince, because they know his face, or because they have a story about him they intend to repeat later. Their expectations are simpler.
He speaks more easily. He points out people and places you do not know, offers unsolicited histories of taverns whose names have changed three times since he first began visiting them, and occasionally calls out a greeting to someone who answers with a familiarity that would cause scandal inside the Keep. His hand remains around yours through most of it. When the streets narrow, he draws you closer without interrupting whatever he is saying; when they widen again, he does not release you.
You enjoy him like this.
For a time, the pleasure of the evening nearly obscures everything else.
Then he looks at you again.
He has been doing it since you left the Keep. At first, you mistook it for ordinary attention. Aegon watches you often enough, especially when he is waiting to see whether something has amused or offended you.
But this is different, his gaze returns whenever you have been quiet for more than a few moments. If you laugh, something in him eases; if your attention wanders, he begins speaking again before the silence has properly settled.
He never asks whether you are pleased. He only looks again whenever your expression changes.
“You keep looking at me.” You say.
Aegon glances at you once more, as though compelled to demonstrate the accusation. “I am walking beside you. It would be strange if I refused to look at you.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.”
He continues before you can answer, his voice light enough that someone passing would hear nothing unusual in it.
“You are enjoying yourself. I can tell that you are. You have laughed several times, and only once because I nearly stepped into something unspeakable. The air is better out here, the company is better, and no one has attempted to discuss succession with either of us for nearly an hour. It is already an improvement.”
The speech comes with his usual confidence, but it does not feel casual. He has assembled evidence and is laying it before you as though the question has already been raised.
“I am enjoying myself.” You tell him, and if there is hesitation in your words it is only there because you still do not understand what prompted this…strangeness.
His thumb moves across the back of your hand.
“Good.”
He says it too quickly.
You look at him more closely. “You seem relieved.”
“I arranged an evening for my wife. I would prefer that she did not hate it.”
“I have given you no reason to think I do.”
“No. You have not.”
He smiles at you, and the matter appears finished. A moment later he begins telling you something about the street ahead, but the brightness has become more deliberate now that you have recognized it. There is real pleasure beneath it; you do not doubt that. He likes the city, likes being away from the Keep, likes your hand in his and the fact that you have agreed to follow him without knowing where he intends to lead you.
Whatever he has planned, your pleasure in it matters to him with an urgency the evening itself does not justify.
The thought remains indistinct at first. You have already known that the outing concerns the previous night. His empty place in the bed that morning, the haste with which he returned once the day had begun, the arrangements made before he had even asked whether you wished to go; each returns now as he watches your face and waits for you to smile.
Until now, you have assumed the evening is meant to restore his pride. He allowed you to see him frightened and uncertain, and now he is determined to remind you that he can also be entertaining, attentive and easy to want.
It remains the likeliest explanation.
Yet there is a difference between wanting to appear unchanged and behaving as though every pleasant moment allows him to move on to the next part of something already arranged.
Aegon keeps you moving through the streets with the confidence of someone who knows precisely where he is going. He does not pretend the route is accidental. When you ask whether he has a destination, he tells you that he does, although he refuses to name it.
“I have arranged everything,” He promises, “You need only come with me.”
“You have already made that decision on my behalf?”
“I expected you to come.”
The admission is immediate, without embarrassment.
“And if I had not?”
Aegon looks at you. For a moment, some answer appears ready on his tongue, but he thinks better of it.
“You did.”
There is the husband you recognize: arrogant enough to arrange your evening without consultation and entirely convinced that the fact you agreed has retroactively justified the assumption.
He continues after a moment, speaking more rapidly than the conversation requires.
“If you dislike where we are going, we can leave. I am not forcing you to remain anywhere, but I think you should see it before you decide. You may have whatever you want from the evening, that is the point.”
You turn your head toward him.
“The point of what?”
“The outing.”
“That…does not explain anything.”
He gives you another smile and looks ahead before you can study him further.
The words stay with you.
You may have whatever you want.
He has said them as though they are generous, but there is something oddly fixed in the offer, as though it were not merely a possibility but a condition he settled before coming to find you.
Still, the evening itself remains pleasant. He keeps close to you, his conversation moving between gossip, complaint and observations he would never bother voicing before his family. When you answer, he listens. When you laugh, the satisfaction on his face is obvious enough to make you laugh again. To anyone watching, he is merely a prince enjoying the city with his wife.
Only you can feel the tension beneath his hand.
It grows as the route becomes familiar.
You do not frequent these streets, but you know enough of them. Before your marriage, stories concerning Prince Aegon reached you regardless of whether you wished to hear them. He had been seen entering one establishment, leaving another, drinking somewhere else until morning. The details changed depending upon the teller; the conclusion rarely did.
You had expected his reputation to become one of the practical humiliations of marriage.
You had imagined absences, badly constructed excuses and nights in which servants knew more about your husband’s whereabouts than you did. You had prepared yourself to discover how much of the man described to you survived beneath the ceremony and promises.
Instead, Aegon had settled into marriage with almost disconcerting ease.
You had not been given separate chambers, and he had never behaved as though he wanted them. He slept beside you, heavily and without restraint, occupying your share of the bed as often as his own. During the day he appeared wherever you had chosen to sit and stayed until someone called him away. If you spent too long attending to something that did not involve him, he eventually placed himself within reach and made his presence difficult to ignore.
Whatever discipline fidelity required from him at first, it no longer resembles deprivation. He does not spend his nights beside you like a man mourning his freedom. More often, he behaves as though marriage has given him permission to follow you from room to room without having to invent an excuse.
The reputation remains, but the conduct that created it has not, and that is why, when the street ahead confirms where he has been leading you, your first reaction is disbelief rather than recognition.
Warm light spills from the windows; music and laughter reach the street whenever the door opens; the people entering do so with the particular purposefulness of those who do not wish to pause outside long enough to be observed.
You stop.
Aegon takes another step before your joined hands pull him back.
He turns to you.
For a moment, you assume you have been wrong about the changes in him. Perhaps this entire evening has been designed to return him to something he misses. Perhaps he has decided that marriage need not prevent him from enjoying his former habits if he can convince you to enter them willingly.
The suspicion does not survive his face.
He is not looking toward the door.
There is no anticipation in him, no private amusement and no appetite he has failed to conceal. The liveliness that carried him through the city has disappeared. His attention is fixed entirely upon you, and his hand has gone rigid around yours.
He looks as though he has arrived at the part of the evening he has been dreading.
Not enough to turn away from it, because whatever he has decided he means to complete it seems. But the confidence with which he led you here has narrowed into something strained and expectant. He waits for your response without offering any clue as to what response he hopes for.
You look from him to the doorway and back again.
He has not brought you here because he wanted to return. He has brought you here for you.
Why he imagines you would want this, and why offering it appears to cost him so much, remains unclear.
Aegon does not immediately attempt to fill the silence, which unsettles you more than the building itself. He has spent the evening speaking whenever quiet threatened to settle between you, carrying you forward through the city on the force of his conversation and whatever purpose he had assigned to the night. Now that you have reached it, he seems to have exhausted everything he prepared to say.
The light from the windows catches in his hair. His hand remains closed around yours, but the ease has gone from his grip.
“What are we doing here?”
“I have made arrangements,” He says, again. At your look, he explains further, “There is a room upstairs, everything has been paid for, and no one will repeat tomorrow who came through the door tonight. You may go inside, look around, and decide whether any of it interests you.”
You stare at him, eyes wide.
“Any of what?”
His jaw shifts, looks away once and then back at you. “Come inside first. I am not explaining this in the street while every drunk in the Street of Silk walks past us.”
The door opens behind him, releasing music, laughter and a man fastening his clothing as he descends the steps. A woman calls something after him that makes him laugh, but Aegon does not turn to look.
He turns toward the entrance and then waits. He does not pull upon your hand or assume that because he has brought you this far you must follow him the rest of the way. Whatever else he has decided on your behalf, he means the choice to cross the threshold to be yours it seems.
You follow him.
A woman standing near the entrance recognizes him immediately. Surprise interrupts her expression for no more than a moment before professional warmth replaces it.
“My prince.”
“Is the room ready?”
“It is.”
“Good. No wine yet. My wife will look first.”
The woman’s gaze moves to you, becoming more careful without growing visibly curious. “Of course.”
There is no uncertainty in Aegon’s exchange with her. He knows whom to address, where the private rooms are kept and how the evening is supposed to proceed. He knows which attendants carry wine and which arrange the companions, how to purchase privacy without making a performance of it and how much money ensures that no one later remembers anything inconvenient.
You had known what his reputation meant. You had heard enough before your marriage to understand that he had not merely visited places like this but moved through them regularly. Still, knowledge acquired through gossip is different from watching him cross the threshold and become immediately fluent in the workings of the room.
The familiarity does not appear to comfort him. With every step farther inside, he looks less like a man returning somewhere he once enjoyed and more like one continuing toward a punishment he has already decided to accept.
The house is warmer than the street. Perfume, smoke and the heavy sweetness of wine occupy the air, while music rises from somewhere beyond the first room and disappears beneath overlapping conversation. People move constantly through the space: attendants carrying cups, patrons shifting seats, women and men drawing closer to anyone whose attention rests upon them for longer than a moment.
There is too much of everything. Too much noise for any single thought to hold its shape, too much warmth and movement for stillness to last, too many hands and mouths and bodies offering something immediate.
You understand something about Aegon then, though not enough to explain him.
No one here requires an account of why a person wants to be touched. No one asks what the wanting means, whether it will last or what must be offered after it ends. Money has answered the practical questions before desire is ever spoken aloud. If one pleasure fails, another cup, another song or another body waits nearby.
You can imagine Aegon younger, angrier and drunk enough that wanting pleasure and wanting relief from himself became indistinguishable. You can imagine him entering a room like this and allowing the noise and warmth to close over him until nothing existed beyond the next sensation.
You understand why he might have returned.
That, however, does not explain why he has brought you.
Aegon remains beside you while your attention moves through the room. He does not examine the available companions with any interest of his own. He watches where you look instead. There are men among them as well as women, and he must have considered that while arranging the evening.
“I know what you are thinking,” he says. “This is not for me.”
“You expect me not to wonder?”
“Wonder if you like, but there is no one here I came to see, and I did not bring you so that I might persuade you to let me fuck someone else.”
The answer is low and blunt. Something almost offended has entered his expression.
“You used to come here.”
“Yes.”
“And now you have brought me.”
“For you.”
He says it with enough force that a woman seated nearby glances toward you before politely returning her attention to her companion.
Aegon notices and lowers his voice,
“You know where I spend my nights. I am in your bed, or in your rooms making myself objectionable until you let me into it. I am not…concealing some second life from you. There is nothing here I want.”
He says it defensively rather than tenderly, but there is no hesitation in him. His eyes remain upon you, and the people surrounding him might as well be part of the furniture.
“This is yours,” He continues. “You may choose whoever pleases you. If you want a man, take one. If you want a woman, take one. If you want both, I have paid enough that no one here will object. There is a room ready, no one enters it without your permission, and no one touches you unless you ask. You may stay for an hour or until morning, you may only look, you may decide you hate the entire idea and leave now. I will not interfere.”
He speaks too quickly for you to interrupt without speaking over him. Each qualification seems intended to establish the completeness of the offer. If there is any limit to the freedom he has arranged, he means to find it and remove it before you can object.
“At no point have I told you that I wanted this.”
“No,” He concedes, looking away for a moment, a twitch in his expression, a barely there furrow of his nose. “No one asked what you wanted before they put you in my bed. That is rather the fucking point.”
The vulgarity draws another glance from nearby, but Aegon appears not to notice or care this time.
“You knew what I was, everyone did. I had been through half the whores in the city, and you had never been with anyone. Then they gave you to me, called the matter settled.”
He gestures at the room, impatient with the difficulty of putting the thought into words.
“So now you may.”
“May what?”
“Choose,” The word comes out more harshly than the offer requires. I had already fucked whoever I wanted. You…had me.”
His gaze moves briefly across the room before returning to yours, “You might have chosen differently.”
The words are delivered with deliberate carelessness, but the attempt does not conceal what it costs him to say them.
“Aegon…”
“Do not tell me otherwise because you think I require comforting. I am not asking you to lie.”
“You have already decided what my answer must be without asking me.” You answer in a hiss, leaning closer. It crosses your mind that you might be the only married couple in the Seven Kingdoms that chooses a brothel as the place to argue.
“I have decided only that you should have been permitted to answer.”
“And you believe this provides the answer.”
“It provides a choice.”
The simplicity with which he says it troubles you more than a longer defence might have. He had others before you; you had no one. To him, that appears to be enough.
“And if I want no one here?”
His confidence falters, although only briefly.
“Then we leave.”
“That is all?”
His brow furrows.
“What else would there be?”
“You have spent the entire evening paying careful attention to my enjoyment of it, and now you expect me to believe you do not care what I choose.”
“I did not say I would enjoy watching you choose someone else,” The admission comes sharply. Aegon looks away again, jaw set, as though irritated that the truth has been dragged into the open. “I said you may. Those are different things.”
The contradiction sits more honestly between you than anything he has said since bringing you here. he has not arranged the evening because the possibility pleases him, but despite the fact that it does not.
You look around the room again. His attention follows yours despite himself. He has not selected someone he believes you ought to prefer or narrowed the offer according to his own taste. He has made it as broad as the house allows, even though the possibility of your using it has drawn every trace of ease from him.
The evening begins to take on a shape you had not understood before. He has placed his old reputation, the marriage arranged for you and the previous night beside one another as though they belong to the same problem and might be answered by the same gesture.
“Is this because of last night?”
Aegon goes still.
“I had thought of it before.”
Your eyes narrow, “That was not my question.”
His gaze moves past you for a moment. There’s a brief flash of irritation in his eyes, less at the question than at being prevented from answering the easier version of it.
“Last night made me think it was no longer a foolish idea.”
“Why?”
“Because it did.”
“Aegon.”
There is more steel in your voice now. You have used that tone with him before, when he has resisted simply because resistance allows him to delay giving you what you asked for. He recognizes it, and his mouth tightens, for a moment looking ready to offer another insolent answer before he chooses against it.
“You asked me what I wanted,” He admits, “I told you.”
“And I held you.”
“Yes.”
“I wanted to.”
“I know.”
He says it quickly, almost irritably, and you realize he does believe you. He is not accusing you of pity or of pretending you were forced; and yet your willingness has not resolved whatever troubled him upon waking.
“Then what is the problem?”
“There is no problem.”
Slowly, you point out, “You brought me to a brothel, Aegon.”
“Yes, I am aware.”
Certainly not aware enough of the absurdity of this, so you continue,
“Because I held you.”
“Not because you held me,” His voice sharpens. He looks at you, frustrated now, as though the distinction is obvious but impossible to put into words. “Because I-I came to you like that. Because I asked. Because you…you…”
“What should I have done?”
“I do not know,” The admission is immediate and angry. He drags a hand through his hair. “This was simpler before you made me explain it.”
“I gather.”
“I had an idea. It was a good one, until you began staring at me like that.”
“Like what?”
He sighs, turning fully toward you. He opens his eyes absurdly wide and thrusts his head forward without moving the rest of his body, holding the expression with his head tilted slightly to the side.
For a moment you only stare back.
Then, despite yourself, you almost laugh.
His face relaxes at once, faintly pleased with himself, though the irritation has not entirely left him.
Taking a breath, he explains, “You wanted to. Fine. I believe you. I am not accusing you of anything,” His gaze moves briefly around the room and returns to you. “I thought of this afterward. That is all.”
It plainly is not all, it is apparently only as much as he can say without either abandoning the idea or admitting he does not understand it himself.
Aegon reaches into his coat and opens one hand between you. A gold dragon rests in his palm.
“Take it,” He says. “Choose anyone you like.”
His hand remains steady, but the tension in his wrist is visible. When your gaze moves from the coin toward the room, his eyes follow despite his effort to keep them fixed upon you.
There are enough people present that the offer cannot be dismissed as symbolic. A man near the stairs smiles when you look in his direction, a woman beside the fire meets your gaze without coyness. Beyond them are others, each available because Aegon has paid for the possibility that you may prefer them.
He does not withdraw his hand.
Whatever answer he believes may be found here, he means to allow you to give it.
You reach for the gold dragon and lift it from his palm. You turn the piece of gold over once between your fingers.
He has given you the room. Men and women wait beneath the warm light, some occupied already, others watching the passage of patrons with patient interest. A man near the stairs meets your gaze again, the woman beside the fire has not looked away.
Aegon says nothing.
He has spent the evening insisting upon your freedom to choose, and now that you appear to be considering it, he holds himself unnaturally still. His eyes follow yours despite every effort not to. He does not step closer, draw your attention elsewhere or offer any judgment upon the people before you. Whatever pain exists in the exercise, he means to endure it without interfering.
You could choose anyone here. You look at the wide expanse of possibility.
The man near the stairs is handsome, the woman beside the fire is beautiful. You can even imagine wanting either of them in some other life, under other circumstances, but the sight of them produces no sudden curiosity and no belated sense of deprivation.
Nothing in the room alters what you want.
You look back at your husband.
He stands beside you in a house that knows him too well. The woman at the entrance recognized him before he spoke. Others may know him more intimately than that. The thought catches, and prods at a prideful, territorial part of you. Some here may have touched him, heard him laugh, watched him abandon himself to whatever immediate pleasure allowed him to forget the rest of his life for a few hours.
You knew those people existed before tonight, but seeing the ease with which the house receives him makes the knowledge sharper.
Aegon had walked through half the city before he was given to you. He has arrived here now convinced that this history left you with something missing, and has responded by placing more strangers between you and waiting to see whether one of them might become preferable.
Irritation returns, quieter and more possessive than before.
He has brought you here convinced that you might discover another person preferable if only the opportunity were placed before you. He has asked you to choose.
The answer is obvious.
You could return the coin and ask to leave, but he might call that propriety, loyalty or concern for him. He has already instructed you not to comfort him. Refusal would leave him free to decide that you had spared him rather than chosen him.
So you turn your hand and open your palm.
The gold dragon rests upon it.
Aegon looks down. For a moment, he does not move.
Then his expression tightens with an understanding that is entirely wrong.
“You need not give it back.”
“I am not.”
His gaze lifts to yours. “Then what are you doing?”
“I have chosen.”
Something changes in his face before he understands. Hope appears too quickly to be concealed, only to falter beneath his confusion.
He looks past you toward the room, searching for the person you mean.
“Who?”
“You.”
Aegon goes still.
Pleasure reaches him first. The strain around his mouth eases, and he takes half a step toward you before the movement stops as abruptly as it began.
“You already have me.”
He says it with genuine bewilderment. He has brought you here to obtain something your marriage did not already contain and cannot understand why you would spend his gold upon what has been yours from the beginning.
“You told me to choose anyone I wanted.”
“Yes, b-…”
“I have.”
You take his hand before he can turn the objection into another argument.
His fingers are warm and slightly unsteady when you place the coin against his palm. You fold them over it one at a time, slowly enough that he cannot mistake the gesture for returning something you do not want.
His eyes remain fixed upon your face.
The room continues around you. Music and conversation overlap; attendants move between tables; someone laughs nearby. The woman who greeted you watches the gold disappear into Aegon’s fist and then looks away, her expression professionally blank.
You find that you do not mind being observed.
Whatever anyone in this house once knew of him, he is standing before you now, and he is the one you have chosen.
“Keep it.” You order.
His fist closes more tightly around the coin, and a smile curves at your lips at the sight.
For another moment, he only stares at you. He seems to expect the meaning to shift if he waits long enough, as though you may yet laugh, admit that you are sparing him or point past his shoulder toward someone else.
You do none of those things.
Aegon moves into your space so suddenly that it nearly startles you. His free hand finds your waist and draws you against him, closing the careful distance he has maintained since you entered the house. He does not quite kiss you. His face comes close enough that you feel his breath against your cheek, and then he stops to look at you again.
“You are certain.”
He tries to give the words the shape of one of his usual presumptions, but there is too much pleasure beneath them.
You touch his jaw.
“I chose.”
The remaining strain falls away so quickly that he appears almost startled by his own relief.
His smile is brighter than the one he wore through the city and far less controlled. There is something disbelieving in it, an animation that makes him look younger and faintly ridiculous. He arranged an entire brothel to offer you anyone you might want and is now barely able to contain his delight that you selected the man who brought you.
He presses closer. His hand shifts around your waist, firm and familiar, and he gives you one brief kiss at the corner of your mouth, as though unable to resist touching you but unwilling to begin anything here that cannot be finished.
Then he is moving again.
The forced momentum that carried him toward the brothel has disappeared. He asks for the room with an eagerness he makes no effort to conceal and guides you toward the stairs before the woman has finished answering him.
You let him lead. He knows the house, and the hand at your waist no longer feels like part of an arrangement he must complete. He keeps you close as you climb, glancing at you often enough that you begin to suspect he still expects you to change your mind.
The gold dragon remains enclosed in his other hand.
At the upper landing, an attendant opens the door and steps aside. Aegon follows you inside, dismisses her with a nod and closes the door himself.
The noise of the house dulls at once. Music becomes a low pulse beneath the floor, and the voices below soften until their words can no longer be distinguished.
The room is warm. Wine waits upon a table, and the curtains around the bed have been tied back. Aegon remains beside the door after closing it, one hand still resting upon the latch.
The energy that brought him up the stairs has not left him. Without the next action immediately before him, however, it begins to turn restless again.
His gaze lowers to his closed fist.
He opens it. The coin lies in his palm.
For a moment, he studies it. Downstairs, it had represented whoever else you might choose. Now it belongs to him, and he appears uncertain what should follow from that.
He turns the gold dragon between his fingers.
“You already had me,” He says again, quieter now. “But you insisted upon paying anyway.”
His eyes lift to yours.
The corner of his mouth begins to curve.
“So,” He holds the coin between two fingers. “What is it you have bought?”
You recognize the invitation in his voice. The seriousness of the moment has not vanished, but he has found a game to place around it, and you have no desire to refuse him.
You look at him where he stands beside the door, still holding the coin between his fingers.
“Come closer.” You order.
Aegon pushes away from the door.
He does not hurry, although the restless energy that brought him upstairs remains visible in the movement. The gold dragon disappears into his closed hand as he crosses the room, his attention fixed upon you with an intensity that makes the few steps between you feel longer than they are.
He stops within reach.
The corner of his mouth remains faintly curved, as though he is still privately amused by the fact that you have purchased what was already yours. The strain that followed him into the brothel has not entirely left him, but it has loosened enough for something familiar to show beneath it.
“My Lady.” He answers, a bow of his head in greeting or deference. He has never called you that. The unfamiliar title is enough for you to understand the game and play along.
You look at him as though you have not spent months learning every line of his face. His hair has fallen untidily across his forehead from the walk through the city, and his cheeks remain faintly flushed from the cold outside. There is nothing of the careful elegance a house such as this might teach a companion to offer. He stands before you in princely clothes, visibly pleased with himself and waiting to discover what use you intend to make of him.
“Do you belong to this...establishment?”
Aegon glances around the room for a moment, before shrugging his shoulders with a downward curve of his mouth.
“Once, perhaps. I came often enough that no one needed to ask my name. That was close enough.”
“And not anymore?”
“I am married.”
The answer is immediate and faintly self-satisfied. Of all the men from whom you might have expected to hear marriage offered as an explanation for abandoning a brothel, Aegon had once been the least likely.
“That does not usually stop men.”
“No,” He agrees with ease, “I did not expect it to stop me either.”
He looks at you while he says it, then away, considering the matter as if it had happened without his participation.
“I thought I would come back. I certainly meant to, once or twice. Then I would leave her rooms and find myself halfway back before I had reached the stairs. Or I would remember that she would know, and abandon the notion entirely.”
“She might not.”
“She would.”
The certainty pleases you. Aegon steps closer, though he does not appear to notice that he has done so.
“She would not need to accuse me,” He continues, “That would have been easier. She would look at me, and I would know that she knew, and then I would have to wait and discover what it had cost me.”
There is no pride in the admission, there is no mention of vows, duty or a husband’s honour. He speaks only of appetite and consequence, of finding that the risk of losing your attention outweighed whatever pleasure had once brought him here.
“And now?”
“Now there is nothing downstairs I want,” The answer seems to leave him without preparation. He looks briefly annoyed by its ease and tries to bury it beneath something lighter. “Unless the wine has improved. It was dreadful before.”
You do not indulge the diversion.
“Does your wife know?”
“Know what?”
“That you would rather be with her.”
Aegon shifts closer without appearing to notice he has done so.
“She knows that I sleep in her bed. She knows that I interrupt her while she reads and appear in whichever room she has gone to when she wishes to be left alone. She complains that I take up too much space and steal the covers.”
“She sounds like a difficult woman.”
“She is.”
The warmth in his expression contradicts him.
He continues speaking, his voice easier now that the fiction has given him enough distance from the subject.
“I have explained that if she did not want me underfoot, she should not have married me. She claims that I was underfoot before the wedding as well, which is irrelevant. At least now I have a right to be there.”
You nearly tell him that such right has never existed, but decide against it. The argument would only please him, and there is something unexpectedly endearing in hearing him describe the ordinary intrusions of your marriage as though they prove his case.
You tilt your head to the side, studying him for another heartbeat before you quietly prod,
“You must love her very much.”
Something in Aegon’s expression falters before becoming still. He looks down at the coin enclosed in his hand, and when he speaks again, the playfulness has thinned from his voice.
He turns the gold dragon once against his palm.
“I would do anything for her.”
The answer comes quietly, without the insolence he might have used to make it less earnest.
Something hungry and entirely unbecoming of a woman of your station coils at your chest, settles somewhere under your ribs, and your voice is rough when you ask,
“Anything?”
“Anything she asks. It need not be wise,” His mouth moves faintly, a barely-there smile, “It often is not.”
A smile of your own curves at your lips, and you muse,
“She is a very fortunate woman.”
Aegon laughs.
It is a small, bitter sound, emptied of amusement almost before it leaves him. He turns toward the bed as though you have made a joke and he is sparing you the embarrassment of acknowledging it.
“You need not mock me.”
The response irritates you more than the laugh.
You close the remaining distance and place your hand against his jaw.
His skin is warm beneath your palm. The muscles there tighten immediately, and when you guide his face back toward yours, he resists for a moment, not enough to pull away, only enough to show that he would prefer not to watch you continue what he has mistaken for cruelty.
“Look at me,” Aegon obeys. “I am not mocking you.”
His throat moves beneath your thumb.
“She is very fortunate,” You tell him. “And she loves you.”
He remains tense against your hand, eyes fixed upon yours. The music below reaches the room as a muted pulse, joined briefly by footsteps in the corridor before they pass.
Then his breath leaves him and warms the inside of your wrist.
His jaw loosens. His lashes lower, and his face settles more fully into your palm before he seems to realize he has allowed it. He does not retreat. He only watches you from beneath his lashes, waiting.
One hand rises toward your waist and stops just short of touching you.
“May I kiss you, my Lady?”
The formality remains, but the playfulness has gone from his voice.
“You may.”
He bends before the permission has fully settled.
His mouth touches yours carefully and pauses. When you do not turn away, he kisses you again with more certainty, his waiting hand closing around your waist.
The grip is firmer than he appears to intend. His fingers gather the fabric of your dress before spreading against your side, drawing you nearer until his body meets yours.
There is nothing measured in the kiss after that. Relief has made him impatient. You feel it in the uneven breath against your mouth and in the way he follows each small movement of your head, unwilling to surrender even the little distance required to breathe.
You let him have the kiss until the answering want in you begins to pull you after him, until it would be easier to let his urgency determine what follows than to remember that you brought him upstairs to be used at your pleasure.
Then you press your palm against his chest.
His mouth follows yours for a fraction of a moment before he understands. His body stills beneath your hand, though you can feel his breathing continue rapidly through the layers between you.
He draws back only far enough to look at you. His lips remain parted, his forehead almost touching yours. When he begins to lean closer again, you keep him where he is.
“I paid for your time,” You remind him, a smile curving at your lips. “I intend to use it.”
His attention sharpens, a breath stutters halfway into his chest. The hand at your waist shifts, and the corner of his mouth begins to rise.
You lift your arms slightly.
Aegon looks at your cloak and understands.
He releases you with visible reluctance and places the gold dragon upon the table beside the wine. The coin strikes the wood with a quiet, distinct sound.
Then he steps behind you.
Before his hands reach the clasp, you feel the warmth of him at your back. His breath moves over the skin near your ear as he lowers his head to see what he is doing.
His fingers settle beneath your throat.
He knows the fastening, though it requires enough care that one knuckle brushes repeatedly beneath your jaw before it comes loose. The cloak slackens around your shoulders, and Aegon draws it away slowly, its weight dragging along your upper arms before he catches it and places it aside.
“The gloves.”
He returns to stand before you and takes your left hand between both of his.
His thumb slips beneath the fabric at your wrist before he begins to draw it down. The glove catches lightly against your knuckles, and he frees each finger with a patience that makes the modest undressing feel more intimate than it ought to.
He removes the second in the same way.
When both hands are bare, he keeps them in his. His thumb follows the faint mark the fabric has left around one wrist, then crosses the center of your palm.
Aegon lowers his head.
You feel his breath before his mouth touches you. The kiss lingers against the center of your palm, warmer and less ceremonial than the gesture pretends to be.
The touch travels farther than it should. Your fingers curl once, an involuntary movement that draws his eyes upward before he lifts his mouth from your skin.
“My lady,” he murmurs against your palm.
The words and his breath move together across it. You take your hand back before he can tempt you further and turn away from him, issuing another order,
“The dress.”
For a moment, he stands close without touching you. Then his fingers find the uppermost fastening.
The first opens easily. The next resists him.
A ring catches softly against the clasp. He mutters something beneath his breath and tries again, more carefully. His fingertips press through the fabric against your back and occasionally slip beneath its edge, grazing the warmer skin below.
His breath warms the nape of your neck.
Aegon is usually impatient with dresses. He has torn ribbons, bent hooks and complained at length about the number of obstacles placed between him and your body. Tonight, he works in silence.
The quiet draws your attention to every smaller sound: metal against metal, cloth shifting beneath his fingers, the muted music below and the breath he releases when the final fastening yields.
The repeated brush of his fingertips beneath the edge of the dress turns each stubborn fastening into its own delay. By the time the final clasp yields, your breathing has shortened enough that you are grateful he stands behind you and cannot see your face.
The dress loosens across your back.
He slides his palms beneath the fabric at your shoulders and eases it down. The material drags slowly over your skin, baring first one shoulder and then the other.
Cool air reaches you.
His mouth follows before the chill can settle.
The first kiss sends a shiver across the skin he has bared. At the second, your head inclines before you decide to allow it, exposing more of your neck. Aegon’s hand tightens at your waist, and the breath he draws against your shoulder tells you he noticed.
He no longer seems restless. All that movement has narrowed into the patient work of his hands and mouth, each touch followed by a pause in which he waits to feel what you permit next.
You turn beneath his palms.
Aegon steps back only far enough to let you face him. His gaze drops immediately to the loosened dress, lingering before he pulls it back to your face.
The look pleases you.
You touch his cheek.
Aegon leans into your palm before he can decide whether to allow it. The weight of his face settles there, his eyes closing for a moment as his shoulders ease beneath his coat.
His mouth is still reddened from the kiss, and seeing him rest against your hand like this, softened, waiting and already so willing to be directed, sends another slow pull of desire through you.
His eyes open.
He lifts his head slightly, but not enough to break the contact. The look he gives you is uncertain, as though he is waiting to discover whether you noticed what he has done.
You do not withdraw.
You pass your thumb once over his cheekbone.
“What else does my lady desire?” He asks. His voice is softer now, the question made less playful by the fact that he remains nearly resting in your hand.
You let your palm slide from his cheek to the center of his chest. His breath pauses beneath it.
You apply the slightest pressure.
“Kneel.”
Aegon’s eyes lift to yours.
His pupils widen, and his mouth parts upon a breath. Then the corner of his mouth moves.
He lowers himself without looking away.
Your hand remains against his chest as he begins to descend, feeling the shift of his body beneath it. It passes to his shoulder as he sinks and leaves him only when he moves beyond your reach.
Aegon settles onto his knees before you, his face upturned and the remnants of your touch still visible in the softness of his expression.
For a moment, neither of you moves.
The position is familiar, but the setting is not. Music continues beneath the floor, joined by laughter too muffled to distinguish from any other sound, and the gold dragon remains upon the table where he placed it. Downstairs, strangers drink and touch and choose one another according to simpler arrangements.
Here, Aegon waits.
His hands rest upon his thighs. His gaze passes once over the loosened fabric at your shoulders before returning to your face, and the want in it is so direct that your body responds before he has touched you again.
You pass your fingers through his hair.
His eyes lower. He leans into the contact, following your hand for the brief distance it moves, but does nothing more than you have permitted. The stillness is not ease. You can see the anticipation held through his shoulders and in the way his fingers press into his own thighs.
You step back until the carved post at the corner of the bed meets your shoulder. Its wood is solid beneath your hand when you reach behind yourself to steady your weight.
Aegon follows on his knees, closing the small distance without being told. He stops before you and places one hand at the hem of your loosened dress.
His eyes lift.
You nod.
His fingers gather the fabric slowly, drawing it upward past your ankles and calves. Cool air moves over the skin he exposes. His mouth follows the path of his hands, first at the inside of one knee and then higher, every kiss separated from the next by the warmth of his breath.
He knows there is no need to hurry.
You can feel how much he wants to.
His grip tightens whenever your fingers move in his hair. His breathing grows heavier as the dress rises farther. When you adjust your footing and the movement brings you nearer to his mouth, a small sound catches low in his throat.
Desire pulls sharply through you at the evidence of his.
Aegon lifts one of your legs and guides it over his shoulder. One hand settles firmly behind your knee, bearing your weight, while the other keeps the gathered dress away from his face. You brace yourself against the bedpost and look down at him.
He looks back.
The sight of him there, the silver hair already disordered beneath your hand, his mouth warm against the inside of your thigh, his body held beneath yours because you placed it there; sends heat through you with enough force that your fingers tighten around the carved wood.
Aegon notices.
His mouth curves against your skin.
You pull his hair.
The smile disappears, but the brief flash of pleasure in his eyes does not.
He kisses higher.
The first deliberate touch of his mouth draws a breath from you before you can contain it. His hand tightens behind your knee, holding you steady when your body reacts.
He knows you too well to require a sequence of instructions. He knows the difference between the breath that asks him to continue and the one that warns he has moved too quickly. He knows when the tightening of your hand means more pressure, when it means patience, and when the smallest change in angle will make your leg tremble against his shoulder.
The knowledge appears in each adjustment.
His head turns when your hips shift. His tongue slows beneath the tightening of your fingers and returns with greater certainty when you do not draw him away. His free hand moves around your thigh and pulls you nearer, not enough to disturb your balance, only enough to remove the distance your body keeps instinctively creating.
The room contracts around his mouth.
The music below loses its rhythm. The bedpost beneath your palm, the weight of your leg across his shoulder and the heat of his hand behind your knee become the only fixed things left.
Aegon looks up whenever the angle permits it.
The glances are brief, but each one finds your face. When he sees pleasure there, his own becomes visible. His eyes darken. His fingers dig more firmly into your thigh. Once, when your head falls back and his name leaves you without intention, the sound he makes against you sends a vibration through your body.
Your other hand joins the first in his hair.
His response is immediate. His hips shift where he kneels, too abrupt and unguarded to be part of the game, and the evidence of his arousal strains against his clothes. He draws a rough breath through his nose but makes no attempt to touch himself.
His hands remain upon you.
There is no restraint left in his eagerness, but there is still care. Even as his own pleasure becomes impossible to hide, he does not lose the particular rhythm your body has taught him.
Another person might possess skill, patience or beauty. Another person might have learned the responses of countless bodies in this house.
Aegon knows yours.
He recognizes what you need from a change in breath too slight to become language and pursues it with a satisfaction that belongs as much to him as the pleasure belongs to you.
The tension gathers until remaining still becomes impossible.
Your heel presses into his back. Your grip tightens hard enough in his hair to pull a broken sound from him, but his mouth does not leave you. The pressure remains constant while the rest of your body strains toward release.
Aegon’s eyes lift again.
He sees it approaching.
His hand spreads across your thigh, securing you against him as pleasure breaks through you. Your head falls back against the post. For several breaths there is nothing beyond the force of it, his mouth and the hard support of his shoulder beneath your leg.
He continues until your fingers loosen in his hair.
Even then, he does not move away immediately.
His mouth softens against you. He presses one final kiss to the trembling skin of your inner thigh and lingers there, breathing heavily, before lowering your leg from his shoulder.
His hand follows its descent. He steadies your knee, your calf, then your ankle, keeping hold of you until both feet are planted beneath you again.
You remain against the bedpost while your breathing settles.
Aegon stays on his knees.
His face is flushed. His lips are wet and reddened, his hair thoroughly ruined beneath your hands. His chest rises rapidly beneath his clothes, and his arousal remains unmistakable.
He looks pleased by all of it.
Not only by what he has done to you, but by what doing it has done to him. Satisfaction sits openly in his face, softened by the expectation with which he waits beneath you.
“Was I good?”
The question is quiet, familiar and almost indulgent. He already knows that he pleased you. He wants the knowledge given back to him in words.
You pass your thumb across his lower lip.
“You were. You’ve pleased me.”
Pleasure flashes across his face, sharp and undisguised. His hand closes more firmly around your ankle, and the corner of his mouth rises beneath your thumb.
“You knew that already.” You say softly, barely a tease.
“I had reason to hope.”
The smile that curves at his lips is sly, proud. The answer might sound insufferably smug if the delight beneath it were not so obvious.
“You wanted to hear it.”
“I prefer certainty.”
His lips move against your thumb as he speaks.
You allow the contact for another moment before withdrawing your hand.
“Stand.”
Aegon rises.
The time spent kneeling has left a temporary stiffness in his legs, but he hides it quickly beneath the eagerness with which he returns to your space. His hands begin to settle at your waist.
You stop him with one finger against his chest.
“Undress.”
His breathing catches.
There is no hesitation. He reaches for the fastening of his coat, already beginning to pull it open.
“Slowly.” You add after a heartbeat.
His hands pause. Aegon looks at you.
You have moved to sit at the edge of the bed, the dress still loose around your shoulders and your breathing not yet completely restored. From there, you can see him fully.
You offer a smile and a tilt of your head, your brows lifting slightly as you look expectantly at him.
Because good behavior might as well be rewarded with an explanation, you add, “I want to watch.”
The effect begins before he moves again.
His posture changes. His shoulders ease backward, exposing more of his chest beneath the loosened collar, and the breath he draws makes the fabric shift against him. His gaze passes over you, your bare shoulders, the disordered dress, your knees parted just enough to leave room for him if you called him nearer, before returning to his own hands.
He opens the coat, but this time he does not hurry.
He draws it from one shoulder and then the other, allowing the fabric to slide gradually along his arms before catching it in one hand. Beneath it, his shirt has come loose at the throat. The skin visible there is flushed, and the rise of his chest remains too rapid for composure.
He places the coat beside your cloak. His eyes return to you immediately.
You let your gaze travel over him without hiding it.
Aegon sees.
The knowledge moves visibly through his body. His chin lifts. His shoulders draw back a little farther. Not with princely dignity, but with the pleasure of realizing that your silence contains appetite rather than judgment.
His fingers move to the belt at his waist.
He draws the leather through the buckle slowly, eyes fixed upon yours. When your gaze lowers to follow his hands, his mouth curves.
The movement of the belt becomes more deliberate after that.
He is not presenting some polished routine learned in rooms like this, there is too much genuine excitement in him for polish. But he begins allowing each action to last: the pull of leather through metal, the brief pause before setting it aside, the way he lets his shirt fall open farther before reaching for the next fastening. Your attention has made him conscious of his own body.
When he reaches for the hem of his shirt, you stop him with a small movement of your hand.
“Come here.”
Aegon obeys immediately.
He steps between your knees, the open shirt shifting around him. You place both hands at his waist and slide them beneath the fabric.
His stomach tightens beneath your palms.
The heat of his skin contrasts with the cooler air of the room. You move upward slowly, feeling his body react ahead of your hands: the tightening of muscle, the widening of his breath, the harder beat beneath his ribs.
Your fingers pass over his chest.
Aegon’s mouth parts.
He watches your face rather than your hands. Every response you allow him to see affects him; the lowering of your gaze, the way your thumbs move across his skin, the breath you take when the shirt opens farther and reveals him.
You press your palms across his chest and up to his shoulders. He trembles once beneath the touch.
You push the shirt from him, and the fabric slips down his arms and gathers briefly around his elbows. He frees himself without stepping away, letting it fall behind him without looking to see where it lands.
For a moment, you only examine him.
His skin is flushed from throat to chest. His breathing moves visibly through his body. Desire has made him both restless and extraordinarily attentive, as though he might move into your hands at the slightest invitation but will remain precisely where you have placed him until it comes.
You trace one finger from the center of his chest toward his stomach.
His hand begins to rise, but you look up sharply and it stops in the air between you. A small, pleased smile moves across his mouth.
“May I?”
You shake your head. “Not yet.”
His hand lowers.
The obedience sends another pulse of want through you.
You let him step back and continue.
The remainder of his clothes comes away without haste. You do not need to direct each movement. He understands that the act of watching is itself what you asked for.
He turns when a gesture tells him to. He pauses when your attention catches. Occasionally his eyes leave yours long enough to follow your gaze across his body, and each time he discovers where you are looking, his arousal becomes more pronounced.
By the time he stands naked before you, the display no longer resembles service performed at a distance.
You have shaped it together.
He does not conceal himself or pretend indifference beneath your scrutiny. He stands where you placed him, skin warm and flushed, breath open, his body responding visibly to being watched.
Only his eyes remain restless.
They return to your face after every silence, every shift in your posture, every moment in which your gaze lingers without explanation.
You let him look.
He finds what he wants in your expression. You make no attempt to conceal the desire with which you examine him, and each time he recognizes it, something in his body tightens with renewed pleasure.
Still, his gaze returns.
One confirmation does not prevent him from seeking the next.
Your attention falls to the loosened ribbon hanging from your side, a long-since-loosened fastening of your dress.
You draw it free.
Aegon notices the movement. His eyes lower to the silk between your hands and then rise again. Recognition appears, followed immediately by a slow, anticipatory smile.
“Close your eyes.” You order. He obeys.
His lids lower without hesitation. His chin lifts slightly, offering himself to the familiar act. He knows what the ribbon means. The memory of other times you have taken his sight changes his breathing before the silk touches him.
You stand.
Aegon remains still as you approach, though his arousal shifts visibly when you enter his reach.
The ribbon passes over his eyes.
You draw it around his head, moving his hair away from the knot. He turns slightly into your hands, helping you secure it without needing to be asked.
When you finish, your fingers remain briefly at the back of his neck.
Aegon releases a slow breath.
Without his gaze moving over you, his attention appears everywhere else at once. His head tilts toward the whisper of your dress. The muscles along his stomach tighten when you step away. His fingers flex and then relax at his sides.
The blindfold hides his eyes, but nothing else.
His mouth remains parted. His breathing deepens as you move around him. A faint smile still touches his lips, not insolent now, but expectant.
You pass behind him.
His head turns slightly in the wrong direction, following the sound rather than your position, and a quiet laugh leaves him when he realizes he has lost you.
The pleasure in it warms you.
You circle him without touching, allowing the anticipation to build.
Aegon grows very still. Not rigid, but receptive, expectant.
His shoulders remain loose, his hands open at his sides, his body exposed without any attempt to anticipate where your touch will land. He listens for you in the movement of fabric and the quiet pressure of your steps against the floor.
You stop before him, and his face turns toward you with surprising accuracy.
The silk covers his eyes, but eagerness remains visible in the lift of his chin, the tension low in his body and the breath he holds when he senses you near.
