per aspera ad astra

Your composure slumps even lower. “I’m locked out.”

The polished leather of his boots shifts. "Locked out," he repeats, “from your own house?”

“Lost my keys,” you explain, sounding as pathetic as you feel. You can feel his gaze tracking the line of your neck, kissing the field of goosebumps blooming across your skin. Leaving the house in nothing but a slip of silk suddenly seems like the worst decision of your life.

"I see," he says. "You don’t have a spare key under one of your plants?”

Your nose wrinkles in a small, self-deprecating scrunch as you glance up at him.

“Wouldn’t that be too obvious?”

“Obvious is often better than shivering in the dark.” His eyes sweep gently over your collarbone, noticing the way the thin straps of your dress dig slightly into your skin as you hunch over. “How long have you been sitting out in the cold?”

“Long enough to lose feeling in my toes.”

He frowns at the way you’ve wrapped your arms around yourself. Fragile little thing. “Come on.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to let you freeze to death on your own porch," he says, extending a hand towards you. "And I’m certainly not going to watch you turn blue from across the street while I have a perfectly good spare room.”

You stare at his large hand, contemplating whether stepping into the lair of the neighborhood’s most eligible (and most intimidating) bachelor is actually a safer bet than hypothermia.

Is it a good idea? Probably not. But the alternative is another hour of trembling in a thin slip while the wind bites harshly at your skin.

So you reach up, and under the disguise of a curiosity on what lies beyond his walls, you let his hand engulf your smaller one. His skin is a shock of warmth against your frozen fingers, and he pulls you up with an effortless strength that makes you feel momentarily weightless.

“Just for tonight,” you mumble, trying to reclaim a shred of your dignity as you wobble on your numb feet. You pointedly ignore the sharp pain in your heels as you find your balance. “I’ll call the locksmith first thing in the morning.”

“There’s no rush.” He lets go of your hand, palm sliding from your fingers to the small of your back. “The locksmith can wait until you’ve actually had a few hours of sleep.”

“I look that bad, huh?”

“Bad isn’t the word I’d use. Tired, maybe.” He gives you a once-over, looking a little bashful. “Still unfairly pretty.”

You let out a shaky breath, your legs feeling like lead as you navigate the curb. “You’re just being a good neighbor. You don’t have to lie.”

“I’m not lying. The dress looks good on you.”

You look down at the soft material that clings to your damp skin, feeling suddenly very exposed. “Thanks.” Unconsciously, you find yourself leaning a fraction closer to him, seeking his body heat. “But it’s doing a terrible job of keeping me alive right now.”

And unconsciously, his palm skims around the curve of your waist. “Inclined to agree, unfortunately.”

“It was aesthetics over survival, felt like a fair trade for a celebration.”

“Yeah? What was the occasion?”

You let the silence linger a little longer before slowly answering, “My birthday.”

There’s a slight, reflexive squeeze of his hand on your waist. "Today's your birthday?"

“Yesterday, technically,” you correct him, noting that the hour has long since bled past midnight. "But yes."

"Well, happy birthday."

"Mhm."

He stops just inches from his front door, turns his head to peer down at you. You notice his brows pulling together in an observant line. "Don't sound too happy about it."

You let out a long sigh, letting your weight slump against the cold wood of the doorframe. The exhaustion is finally winning. “Birthdays are depressing,” you hum, tilting your head back to meet his eyes. “Another year of expectations you didn’t meet, another reminder that the clock is ticking. Don't you find them a bit… grim?”

He looks at you for a long beat before shaking his head, a single lock of silver falling across his left eye. "No. Not really," he says, turning the heavy brass handle and pushing the door inward. "But I’ve already had fifty-one of them to get used to the idea."

“So what you’re saying is I have to wait another twenty years to finally stop feeling like the world is ending?”

He catches your gaze, his expression softening into something dangerously close to a smile. “I’m saying that by the time you hit fifty, you realize the expectations were the only thing making it grim."

"That doesn't sound encouraging," you note as the house’s heating begins to thaw your frozen skin. "Twenty years is a long time to spend being disappointed."

His lips twitch. "It's not about the wait. It's about the perspective," he explains, guiding you further into the amber warmth of the foyer. "And you’re far too young to be this cynical."

"I wouldn't call myself young anymore."

"Fifty-one minus twenty. That makes you… what? Thirty-one?"

You try not to flinch, but a small, involuntary wince escapes you at the overestimation. "Thirty, actually."

"That’s still fairly young."

You throw him a dubious look. The fine lines at the corners of his eyes deepen. "It’s young," he insists, kicking off his shoes. You follow suit. Then he reaches out, catches your elbow, and guides you toward the living room where a long couch waits for you in the shadows.

His space is exactly as you’d imagined, steeped in warm masculine tones of deep walnut and charcoal. The walls are lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. There’s the scent of old paper, expensive tobacco, and something clean like rain-washed cedar.

You also catch a faint, woody sting of bourbon, which you expected, but as you sink into the couch, you're surprised to notice a lone glass of red wine sitting on the coffee table.

"You drink wine?" You ask. "Never pegged you as a wine kind of guy."

He reaches for a heavy throw blanket draped over the back of an armchair and drapes it over your shoulder. "What do you peg me for?”

“Straight bourbon,” you admit, huddling into the wool. “Neat. Probably a double."

“I do have my few shares of bourbon.”

“Then I rest my case.”

He tilts his head in contemplation. "I suppose I've earned that reputation."

"You've earned a lot of reputation in this neighborhood."

“Don’t think I want to hear the half of it. Would you like a glass?"

You ponder if it’s a wise move. You’d spent the last four hours drowning in cocktails that were far too sweet, and the fuzzy warmth in your chest is a precarious balance against the exhaustion. Adding a glass of wine to the mix might be the final nudge your brain needs to completely shut down.

But as you look at him, standing tall and massive against the backdrop of his endless books with the fluorescent light tracing the sharp line of his jaw, the idea of a quiet glass of wine with your hot neighbor suddenly feels much more appealing than any of the neon shots you’d endured at the bar.

"I probably shouldn't… but it is my birthday.”

“Not trying to pressure you.”

“Not pressured. I’m actually curious what kind of wine a fifty-one year old bachelor drinks.”

“So I’ll take that as a yes?”

“Take it as a hell yeah.”

He disappears into what you think is a kitchen, and your bravado disappears along with him, replaced by a sudden spike of nerves. Now that he isn't standing directly over you, the reality of the situation settles over you like a heavy blanket draped over your frame.

You’re sitting on the couch of a man who is as intimidating as he is handsome, and you’re about to spend the first hours of your thirty-year drinking expensive wine in his lair.

The rug tickles your bare feet as you nervously tuck them under your thighs, trying to make yourself as small as possible in the vastness of his cushions.

“Here,” he announces himself again, and you notice that he’s pushed the long sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, revealing forearms that are corded with muscles and mapped with a faint dusting of hair.

You try not to blatantly stare at the prominent veins tracing down to his wrists as you reach out to take the glass from him. “What is it?”

“A Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon,” he says, settling into the opposite end of the long couch. He drapes one arm over the back, turns his body toward you. “From Napa. This one’s got a bit of ripeness to it. Black cherry, maybe a touch of vanilla.”

You hum, bringing the glass a little closer.

“Gets better with age too,” he continues, eyes lifting to yours. Then with the faintest hint of a smile, “Though it'd be perfect for the occasion.”

You can’t stop the flutter in your belly.

“That’s very sweet of you.”

“It does have a touch of sweetness if you let it sit.”

“No, I mean you, Leon.” You finally gather the nerve to meet his gaze, and find yourself tracing the tiny, crystalline specks of silver that radiate from his blue orbs. “Trying to make me feel better, offering me shelter when I was half-frozen on my doorstep.”

The air in the room seems to shift the moment his name leaves your lips. His shoulders visibly drop an inch. “Yeah, well, you’d do the same.”

You would. Although, as you look at the unshakable size of him, you could never imagine a man like him sitting pathetically out in the cold, mourning a nonexistent tragedy while spiraling over a birthday. Still, you’d have opened your door for him in a heartbeat, even if he weren't half-frozen—maybe especially if he weren't.

And you’re not sure what to make of that.

It’s a thought that feels a little too dangerous to hold onto while sitting this close to him, and you find yourself suddenly, helplessly distracted by the sharp curve of his lower lip.

“Here’s to saving Neighbors in Distress, then,” you offer absentmindedly.

He reaches out for his own glass on the coffee table. Hones his eyes on you with a sincerity that feels tangible as the room falls to the quiet space between his gaze and your breath. The silver specks in his irises seem to ignite in the low light, pinning you to his cushions.

“And to aging like fine wine,” he adds.

A soft burst of laughter bubbles out of you. “That is so corny.” Then angle your head to the side. “And such an old saying.”

“I’m half a century, what did you expect?”

There’s no trace of forced humor in his voice, and that lack of irony makes his delivery even more amusing. The smile on your face lingers as a warm pulse in your cheeks. It blooms as a genuine spark of comfort in your chest, prints over the rim of your glass as you take a sip.

“Wow,” you say appreciatively. “That’s really good wine.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“It’s also incredibly dangerous, I think I need to pace myself,” you admit, placing your glass on the coffee table. “Thirty is supposed to be the age of moderation, isn't it?”

“According to who?”

“Everyone,” you answer, a little too quickly. “Social media, podcasts, people who suddenly start playing padel and structured routines.”

“I think moderation is something people reach for when they’re trying to feel safe,” he observes, rolling the stem of his glass between his fingers. “Less risk. Fewer surprises.”

You smile faintly, but it doesn’t quite reach your eyes. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s… reality catching up?”

His gaze shifts, catching that subtle change in you. “You don’t sound convinced.”

You shrug. “I just thought by now things would feel more... settled. Or clear.” Your fingers trace the intricate, frayed embroidery at the edge of the blanket around you. “Instead it kind of feels like I’m aging out of things without ever really being part of them in the first place.”

“Aging out of what?”

You let out a small breath, almost embarrassed to say it out loud. “Being… wanted, I guess.” A quick, self-conscious laugh follows. “Or at least effortlessly so. Like there’s a point where you stop turning heads and start blending in, and you don’t even realize when the moment of being undesirable happens.”

“You really think that’s already happened to you?”

You don’t answer right away, and that probably answers enough. His glass meets the table with a soft thud. “That’s a dangerous assumption.”

“More dangerous than the wine?”

“Much. Because it’s wrong.”

You’re not sure whether to laugh it off or deny it outright.

“Desirability isn’t about being the loudest thing in the room,” he continues. “Or the youngest. It’s not about catching everyone’s attention for five seconds.”

“Then what is it about?”

The room exhales into silence. The lone lamp spills a muted glow, its light stretching into uneven shadows that breathe along the walls while somewhere deeper in the house, a clock ticks softly as each second threads itself through the sudden quiet.

“Presence,” his voice finally settles into the stillness. “About knowing yourself well enough that when someone does notice you, they don’t forget it.”

“And you think that just… gets better?”

“I know it does.”

The certainty in his voice makes your chest tighten. You look down, suddenly aware of your bare shoulders under the blanket, the thin fabric of your dress, the way you’d felt so exposed stepping into his house.

He leans forward then, just enough to close some of the distance, the sheer presence of his broad frame grounding in a way that makes it harder to retreat into your own thoughts.

“Look at me,” he urges softly.

Hesitation flickers through your posture before you finally lift your chin. There’s a quiet warmth in his gaze, something unguarded that softens the harder edges of him that turns all his intensity into something almost unbearably kind.

“You're worried about becoming invisible, but I can tell you right now, there is not a single thing about you that is easy to look away from."

Your breath shatters in your throat as he reaches out. His hand is large, the skin calloused, but his touch is incredibly light as he tucks a stray lock of hair behind your ear. Caresses your cheekbone with a thumb.

“So no,” he adds, quieter but no less certain, “I don’t think you’re becoming less desirable.”

If you weren't sure what would finally wreck you on this milestone birthday, what would be the thing to finally break the surface of your spiraling thoughts—you are now, and it’s the magnetic pull of wanting to kiss a man twenty-one years your senior.

But age is just a number, isn't it? Leon has obviously made it clear that he doesn’t view the passage of time as a problem, and looking at the way his eyes are currently tracing the shape of your mouth, you’re starting to believe him.

The gap between your ages feels like an invitation to a level of intensity you weren't prepared for at twenty-nine.

“You really think so?”

“Sweetheart, you’re the most desirable thing I’ve had the privilege of seeing in my entire life.”

You can’t believe you’ve resisted his charm for so long.

You’ve imagined similar scenarios, of course. Living right across to a man who carries himself with so much lethal grace made it entirely impossible not to.

The men you’ve dated in your twenties were mostly just boys still trying to figure themselves out. You were used to clumsy hands and rushed fumbling, to guys who barely knew how to hold a conversation.

Leon is different. Maybe it’s his age. Confidence, agility—it’s obvious he doesn't possess the frantic energy of a younger man, instead moving with an authority that commands your attention without him even having to try. As a result, countless lonely nights were spent of you lying awake wondering what it would actually feel like to have his solid weight pressing you down.

Not that you would ever dare to admit that to anyone. No, thinking it in the privacy of your own mind is already embarrassing enough.

Although the gratification of having him kissing you obliterates any sense of shame. And the way his hands are exploring every corner of your curves proves that he’s spent just as much time agonizing over the exact same thoughts.

You’re uncertain when the blanket fell off your shoulders, but you can feel the rough friction of his palms everywhere. Your arms, your knees, your thighs. You’re aware of him bunching the skirt of your dress upward until it’s gathered at your waist.

You also sense a slight desperation in his touch. A monumental inkling of need bleeding through a composure that suggests he’s been holding himself back for so long, and it is as staggering as the deceptive softness of his lips to realize the sheer force of his hunger.

It isn’t until your lips are swollen and stinging and wet from the relentless pressure of his that you finally fill your lungs with air.

And to your chagrin, he momentarily pulls away. “Maybe we should slow down.”

“Why?” you whine, a little pout hanging on your puckered lips. “Thought I was desirable.”

“You are,” he grunts. His nose grazes the high curve of your cheek. “Believe me, you are.”

“Then what’s stopping you?”

He levels with your concerned gaze. “Don’t want you waking up thinking this was a mistake.”

Yeah, right. As if a few sugary cocktails could be the sole reason of a desire this potent.

Sure, there’s a sweet haze effectively numbing your usual inhibitions, but alcohol didn't carve the hollow ache in your chest every time you watched him pull into his driveway. Nor did it plant the heat that pooled in your belly whenever he caught your eye over the property line—more times than you could admit, less than what you truly craved.

In retrospect, the tension had always been there. Unconsciously. Even if you were stone-cold sober you would still be here.

The morning light couldn't possibly undo the rightness of finally having him in your vicinity.

You reach a palm towards his face. “The only mistake," you whisper, soft words against the rough scrape of his jaw, "would be making me wait another second."

He’s quiet for a moment, but your pretty eyes tip whatever restraint he’s holding onto. Has him tracing the supple skin of your breast with a newfound zeal.

“You sure?”

“Why don’t you take off my dress and find out?”

You feel his amusement radiate against your skin. “Glad your confidence is back.” Then he hooks a finger under the thin silk of your dress, slides the strap down your shoulder. “Because you are beautiful.”

The cool air hits your skin. Two sensitive peaks beg for his attention.

“So goddamn beautiful. Look at these tits.”

There’s amusement laced in your smile. “Also didn’t peg you with such an abrasive vocabulary.”

“Politeness won’t cover what I want to do to you right now.”

Soft strands of hair thread between your fingers as his mouth wraps around a nipple.

Plays with it eagerly, lapping around in circles with agonizing precision before drawing it back as if trying to make the sensitive point swell even larger in his mouth. Repeats the motion far longer than you anticipated, searing a path that sends a rush of hot blood to your core until every atom of your being is vibrating.

You’re convinced the room is spinning as he gives the same attention to your other breast, painting your areola with a slickness that is as heavy as the dampness between your thighs.

He seems to sense the change in your breathing, lets a hand travel down your hip before draping one of your legs over his lap. Bends your other knee, fingers hooking into the crook of your leg to draw you apart.

“Keep them open for me.”

You nod limply. He kisses the side of your throat.

“Undesirable,” he tuts, large hand moving to the wet patch on your panties to map the exact shape of your arousal through the silk. “Do you realize how ridiculous that is?”

You try to form a response, to make some self-deprecating excuse about the depressive weight of your birthday or the slow decay of your youth, but the air simply vanishes from your lungs. The pressure he applies over you sends an electric shockwave of sensation through your nervous system.

He watches the words die on your lips. Watches the way your hips hitch upward. Observes the shallow rhythm of your chest with every rhythmic circle he rubs into your aching little clit.

His mouth ticks up into a smile that softens the weathered lines of his devastatingly handsome face.

“Should I show you myself then?”

“Show…” The supple grain of the couch bites into your shoulder blades as your toes curl into the material. “…what?”

His fingers slip under your flimsy lace. “Exactly how desirable you are.”

“Ahh—” Your hazy mind goes into an absolute sensory overload. One second the room is a blur of amber light and red wine, the next heartbeat you are violently aware of the viscous heat of your own arousal as he gathers it on his fingertips. “Leon—”

He sweeps upward, smearing that glistening moisture across the swollen outer folds and pressing it deep into the delicate flesh of your labia, and you are acutely aware of the aching bead of your clit trapped beneath the abrasive swirl of his fingers, feeling it throb in perfect synchronization with your racing heart.

Leon feels it too. The sharp rhythm of his breathing stutters as he watches you squirm.

“Gorgeous girl.” The blunt tip of his middle finger presses against your slick opening, testing the tight ring of muscle before slowly sinking in. “Absolutely gorgeous.”

“Le…on… oh!”

The addition of a second finger pulls a high keening from your throat.

Two fingers and you feel impossibly full. You can barely fathom the weight of taking his actual cock, and your walls pulsate at the thought. He groans, pulls his hand back almost to the entrance before driving his knuckles deep inside you again.

In and out, back and forth, turning your entire world into a blur of pleasure and the heady scent of him. Incredibly, unapologetically male.

The only thing consuming your mind right now, rightfully so. The pleasure-induced haze that clouds your brain parts just enough for you to breathe in his musk, to watch the absolute concentration on his face as he dedicates himself to your pleasure. At the quiet lines carved beside his eyes. The faint crease at the corner of his mouth. The hard flex of his chiseled jaw, dusted with fine hints of gray.

Maybe aging isn’t so bad after all. You’re suddenly grateful for every single year that carved him into the man who’s currently dismantling you with his bare hands.

Because you feel it. The ongoing swell of an orgasm gathering at the base of your spine. Your breath fractures into a wordless sob and Leon feels your undoing the second it begins. Helps you through it. Massages the deep, aching knot of tension inside your cunt, using the volume of your own wetness to press the base of his palm against your puffy clit.

Your mouth opens wide to gulp in air but all that comes out is a groan that shocks your bones.

Legs parted instinctively wide, it is one of the strongest orgasms you have experienced in a very long time. You’d argue it might be the strongest one ever, but the thought of cumming onto his cock seemed like the only thing that could possibly top the rank.

Your satiated limbs melt into the cushions as he kisses the sweat dripping down your hairline. “Lift your arms up for me.”

You obey wordlessly, and he starts to undress you. Slips off the once delicate lace down the length of your legs. You’re still drifting in a post-orgasmic haze, but your focus snaps back the second he peels his shirt over his head. The flex of his thick biceps and broad shoulders completely rewires your sluggish brain that you find yourself leaning forward as he makes quick work of his pants.

And then it’s genuinely hard to believe that the Leon Kennedy—intimidating, sweet Leon who lives right across your house—is sitting spread out with a raging hard-on that demands your attention.

Which, obviously, you give to him without needing to be asked. The second your fingers fully encircle and squeeze his impressive size, his head falls back against the couch, exposing the strained column of his neck.

You also give your attention to the erratic pulse at his throat. Pressing your lips against a scattering of sun-faded freckles beneath his jaw, swallowing the deep vibration of another groan.

Leon, you’ve come to realize, is not ashamed of being loud. A delightful knowledge that this formidable man is perfectly willing to let his voice gravel with each motion along his shaft. You experimentally tighten your grip and drag a thumb across the weeping slit of his cock, and feel your heart swell with giddiness the moment he comes to cradle your cheeks and groans straight into your mouth.

The power you hold over him is intoxicating. Addicting. Very, very dangerous. Whatever excuse you initially gave yourself about tonight as a symptom of being touch-deprived and horny on your birthday is rapidly dissolving. You can already see yourself easily basking in the undivided attention he's so far given you.

Granted, it is nearly impossible to worry about the long-term consequences when he’s panting directly into your open mouth, failing bid to keep his control intact.

You decide to offer him some grace, slowly loosening your grip. Let your nails graze the soft hair at his base, trace the dark trail up the firm ridge of his stomach until your hand settles on the hard plane of his chest.

He pulls back and pins your hand over his heart. “We should move to the bedroom.”

The heat of his skin is too comforting for you to even consider the effort of standing up.

“Why?”

“Condoms," he huffs. "Don't have any on me."

Your nose curls. It really is hard to worry about the long-term consequences when all you can think about is the desperate need to feel him raw. Surprising, considering safe sex is a practice you've always adhered to.

But Leon really does have a habit of pulling completely new things out of you. Effortlessly dismantles your depressed thoughts, unravels your usual guarded boundaries, and is now rewiring your entire view on intimacy.

There’s a tiny lull of silence before you gather the courage to ask, “How much can I trust you without using one?”

His heartbeat kicks under your palm, and you watch as his brows draw together before the harsh lines on his face soften. “As much as you’re willing to give.” His thumb drags over the back of your hand. “You sure ‘bout that?”

It surprises you how easy the words slip past your lips, devoid of the usual overthinking that has haunted this day so far.

For the first time in a long time, the air in your lungs feels clear.

“I want you to go without,” you confirm.

“C’mere.”

He tugs you closer and sits you right on top of his lap, back firmly flushed against his chest.

“Lift your hips a little.”

You brace your hands against his thick thighs, let him guide the blunt tip of his cock right to your slick hole. The keening sound you make vibrates in the room as gravity slowly takes over, allowing your wet muscles to swallow the first few inches of him.

It doesn’t hurt, but it isn’t any less intense. He fills you with a burning heat.

“Ah—ngh… Leon…”

“Breathe,” he drawls. You feel his lips on the crook of your neck, gooseflesh rising up when you feel the tip of his tongue. “A little more, yeah?”

Your head bobs in a nod. Lungs expanding, lungs deflating—diaphragm relaxed. You count to three and let your body melt against his chest.

It takes him a full minute, filled with soft whines that rumble in the back of your throat and little strokes coming from his hips. Your eyes are unfocused when he gives a final jerk, feeling the coarseness of his hair grind against the slope of your ass.

“Oh, fuck.”

“So fucking warm,” he grunts, pulling open your thighs wide across his lap, knees hooked over his sides with your bare feet dangling in the air. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” you slur. There’s no pain to speak of but the strain of him pressing against your sensitive flesh. “Just… full.”

At least, full is the only word your overstimulated brain can offer.

No amount of previous longing could have prepared you for the way his pulse drums in tandem with your own, thudding so violently against your internal nerves. Perfectly snug inside you, as if your very anatomy is fundamentally shifting—melting, molding. Making room to seamlessly map every thick ridge of his shape until there's no space left between your bodies.

But sitting perfectly still is its own kind of torture. The throb in your cunt is spiraling into a desperate itch, and simply having him seated to the hilt is no longer enough.

Friction is what you seek, and friction is what you ask, rolling your hips in a needy grind, doing your best to wiggle against his lap just to coax out even a fraction.

"Christ." The sound he makes vibrates through your entire back, dragged out with sluggish words you have trouble making sense. "...embarrassing this old man.”

You tilt your head back in confusion, try to parse his meaning through the thick haze of pleasure.

“Won’t last long tonight," he explains, slowly rolling his hips that draws another groan. “Not even a good ten minutes.”

A giggle interrupts your keening whine. You let your head fall to the side, resting your temple against the sweaty curve of his throat.

“It’s okay... you can fuck me again in the morning.”

The breathless laugh he wheezes sounds partly wicked.

“You’re goddamn right I will. Take you in my bed.” He drags his hips backward. “The shower.” Then languidly thrusts forward. “Even the kitchen.”

He takes the full weight of your breasts in eager hands.

“Fuck you in the back of my car like rabid teenagers.”

You choke on a moan and reach behind, fingers finding the damp hair at the nape of his neck. “Don’t think our bones can handle the lack of legroom.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make it work.”

You feebly smile at the confidence in his voice.

Somehow, you don’t doubt him. Anyone with a conscious mind would agree that Leon is a man of absolute competence. You might not know the secret he keeps behind closed doors, or the full depth of his life, but you know the way he commands the space he occupies. And you'd expect nothing less from him when the space he's currently residing in is yours.

Physically, sure. He's sheathed impossibly deep within your cunt.

Metaphorically, too, when he’s been threading in your thoughts with a steady persistence. Lingers between looks, between breaths. Settles deep into the unspoken gaps of your everyday life, anticipating your needs long before you do by offering things without excess.

A roof over your head. A glass of wine in your hand without expectation. Heartfelt words that reach you even when you hadn’t realized you needed to hear them.

You wonder if you asked for more for the sake of your own comfort, he would give that too.

For your pleasure, at least. The stretch of him fucking you in slow ceremony is already delicious as it is, but a fierce hunger still gnaws at your neglected clit. You try to guide the hand on your right tit down to the slope of your stomach, drawing it directly toward the spot where your bodies meet.

Fortunately, Leon is more than happy to oblige.

“Right here?"

You nod silently, let your body do the talking. And talking it does in a language of erratic breaths and arching hips. Pliant to his touch, yet greedy for his fingertips. The sheer volume of slick, overheated syrup that instantly coats his skin has him inhaling sharply.

"Fucking drenched,” he grunts, feeling the rigid length of his cock disappear completely between your glistening folds. "Gonna eat this pussy next time."

Crude and abrasive. You like this version of him. So much so that your internal muscles respond before your voice can, milking him with a series of desperate clenches that has his jaw locking tight.

“Next time, sweetheart,” he promises, rubbing circles over the hard knot of your clit. “Taste how sweet this pussy is.”

That seems to do it. Your entire frame tenses, toes curling in anticipation of the sensation climbing up in your leg. Even breathing seems like a secondary concern, a distant chore your lungs are struggling to remember how to perform when you’ve succumbed so completely to the intensity.

"That’s it. You gon' give me another?”

You hiccup through a frantic chorus of “Fuckfuckfuckfuck” and wail helplessly.

“Go on. Let me feel it."

“Shit,” you heave, right before you shatter, squeezing your eyes shut.

You collapse with a satisfied smile, reveling in the ecstasy seeping deep into your bones. But that quiet hum is cut abruptly short when his hands suddenly hook under the backs of your knees, hoisting your legs up and peeling you open.

Starts fucking you for the sake of his pleasure.

You find no mercy in his rhythm, pistoning force that has your breasts bouncing with every jarring strike. Limbs shaking, bones rattling. The room shuddering with echoes of wet, heavy slaps.

It’s nothing you can’t take when you seem to be enjoying it yourself. You realize, staring down at the clotted, white fluid foaming around his cock, that you would gladly give him anything he so much as looked at. He’s already given you plenty of attention that you’ll let him take whatever he needs in the name of gratitude.

A token of appreciation, if you will. A thank you for being the perfect neighbor—the perfect man, capable of melting your resolve with kind gestures before proceeding to rearrange your guts.

Although thinking this is solely for his benefit seems foolish when he's ruining you oh-so-good. Fast and precise, hitting right where you love it, touching exactly where you're tight. 

A harsh jerk of his cock has you blubbering incoherent words, "HolyfuckLe—Leon!"

You're answered with a row of grunts, of squelching noises that increase the more he thrusts in. You feel like a carved pretzel as he pins your legs to your chest, locking you firmly in place. Drilling hard, erratic, pushing all the strength he possesses into your pliant body.

There’s a hot tension in your lower belly. The muscles slacken in your neck—throat closing in as your mouth opens in a scream that doesn't quite make it through.

The silence punched out of you is finally rewarded.

Your third orgasm is gut-wrenching when it happens. It twists your insides, wringing you dry. You’re a mess of tears and drool and Leon makes sure you aren't left completely empty. With two final strong thrusts, he pumps a flood deep into your cunt in exchange for every drop of liquid he’s drained from your pores.

Overstimulated and exhausted, you slowly let your heartbeat settle. So does Leon. His breath tickles the crook of your neck, and there’s a thick, gravelly edge in his voice as he drawls, “I should’ve pulled out.”

Not exactly regret, but an acknowledgment of his complete loss of control. Not that you particularly care.

Lifting a lazy hand, you gently stroke the corded muscle of his arm, soothing down the dusting of silvered hair.

“You don't see me complaining," you whisper, voice utterly sated.

“Yeah? Let me see you.”

The smell of sex is so pungent and sweet as he slips you off his thighs. Lays you gently on the empty space of the couch beside him. Parts your legs for the many times tonight, and marvels at the sight of his cum making its way down to your puckered hole.

He spreads your spent, swollen folds with his thumb. “Gorgeous girl.”

You offer him a tired smile.

Surprisingly, you do believe him.

In a physical sense, yes, that’s true. The way he’s imprinted himself inside your body is proof enough of exactly how fiercely he desires you. But the weight of his words carries a gravity that pulls at something far deeper than your skin. Past the pulse at your throat and the ache in your thighs, settling heavy in the hollow of your chest.

Society has a way of making you feel like you’re meant to diminish with time. Expected to survive in barren soil, pouring yourself out while trying to bloom from roots that wouldn't even bother to water you. Grown accustomed to a slow drought from an environment that convinced you were fading out of focus as the years ticked by.

The way he looks at you defies that logic. The blue in his eyes suggests time has only made your harvest sweeter.

Any insecurities you harbored evaporate under the pads of his fingers as he maps the rise of your belly. All the self-criticism and nagging fear of becoming invisible dissolve the same way he smoothly glides through the valley of your breasts.

The frantic noise of the world goes completely silent when he palms your cheek. His body is hot atop yours, and his gaze holds genuine comfort of being truly, unconditionally seen.

For the first time tonight, you discern the affection decorating his eyes.

And it’s certainly not for the last.

His smile is warm and tender as his breath kisses your lips. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

“Then I’ll have them thrown in the dragonpit,” he mutters, entirely serious. 

You roll your eyes. You do not tell him that the thought of the dragonpit is more appealing right now than the thought of another mouthful of food. 

—

Verminthor is the first to lose his patience. 

You go to him because the stone halls feel too small and the eyes on you feel too many all at once, and in the Dragonpit, at least, the dangers are more honest. Fire, teeth, ancient temper—things you can see and understand and stand your ground against on a good day. The heat embraces you as it always does, smelling of ash and hot iron. Baelor’s hand is firm around yours as you descend the ramp, that quiet, familiar gravity in him settling your jangling nerves. 

“Rytsas, ñuha vēzos,” he calls, voice rolling out into the dimness. 

The Bronze Fury is awake before the words finish echoing. He shifts in his hollow with a long scrape of scale on stone, great head lifting, smoke blossoming from his nostrils. His eyes crack open, twin coals burning gold in the light. 

You are ready for that. You are not ready for what he does next. 

He doesn’t look at Baelor. Not at first. 

He swings that massive head towards you as soon as you step onto the blackened floor, nostrils flaring sharply. The chains above your heads shiver as he uncoils, dragging his bulk closer with ponderous care, talons carving new grooves in stone older than your great-grandfather. 

“Easy,” Baelor says automatically, hand tightening on your fingers. “He’s only—”

Verminthor inhales. You’ve seen him scent the air before, curious or dismissive, a lazy gust that ruffles your hair. But this time, something is different about the nature of his regard. This is a drag, a deep, purposeful pulling of air that seems to empty the world around you and straight into his large chest instead. Your hair moves with it, your skirts tug towards him, rippling with a rustle. You feel the pressure in your ears, the breath stolen from your lungs for half a heartbeat. 

Then he exhales, right over you. It’s hot, but not the scorching blast of true anger. It’s a… testing heat. An unanswered question. 

You gag anyway, eyes watering. “Hells—”

Verminthor ignores your swearing. He drops his head until the great scarred ridge of his muzzle is level with your torso, and nudges. Not a shove—he is too old, too experienced to risk knocking you sprawling by mistake—but a firm, insistent push below your ribs. 

Your hand flies to your stomach on reflex. Baelor’s breath stutters behind you. 

“Verminthor,” he says, warning and confusion tangled together. “What are you—”

The dragon rumbles. 

It’s a sound you’ve never heard from him before. Not the thunder-growl of annoyance, not the deep, pleased purr you’ve coaxed from him once or twice when you scratched just the right scar. This is… sharper. Shorter. Almost offended. His pupils blow wide, swallowing most of the molten gold. He inhales again, shorter this time, right against the front of your bodice, then huffs a hot breath over the same spot, as if trying to clear away some obscuring scent. 

You take a step back, instincts screaming too close, too much, but he follows you, relentless, until your back almost bumps Baelor’s chest. 

“Baelor,” you say tightly. “Call him off.”

Baelor doesn’t answer you. 

His fingers slip from your hand to your waist instead, steadying, anchoring you. You feel him lean around you, his attention gone utterly, completely still. He is staring at Verminthor with a look that makes the tiny hairs at the back of your neck stand up. 

“Daor,” he says under his breath. “It can’t be—”

Verminthor cuts him off with a snort that sends dust sifting down from the arches. The dragon’s gaze snaps to Baelor for a beat—sharp, irritated, as if to say of course it can, little two-leg—then returns to you. 

He rumbles again, deeper this time. The sound reverberates through your bones, centred oddly in the hollow where his muzzle presses, gentle and inexorable, against your midsection. When you flinch, his breath huffs out sharply, almost chastising, and he nudges again, softer. 

Your hand is still splayed there, fingers spread over the thin layer of wool and linen and whalebone. Baelor covers it. His palm is warm even in the heat of the pit; his fingers dwarf yours, closing over them with a kind of reverent care that robs you of speech. 

“Verminthor?” he prompts, and there’s something raw and choked in his voice you’ve heard only a handful of times. “Skori issa?”

The dragon answers with a long, low sound that is almost a hum. His eyes drift half-closed. He shifts his great body, slow and deliberate, to curl in closer around you both, tail dragging in a new arc, wingbones creaking. Not trapping you—just enclosing, the way a mountain range encloses a valley it protects. 

“Baelor,” you say again, throat tight. “What does he—”

He doesn’t make you finish the question. 

“Dragons smell… things,” he says roughly, still staring at Verminthor as if he’s seeing him for the first time. “Change in the blood. In… in bodies.” His hand tightens over yours on your stomach. You can feel the tremor in it, the way Baelor’s fingers flex and curl as if desperate to hold onto something there; some dream perhaps. “There are tales. Old tales, really. Of a she-dragon who would not let her rider mount while her belly was full with a child, of another who suddenly refused to range over open sea when his rider’s wife quickened. I thought they were just that. Stories.”

Verminthor huffs at him, seemingly offended by the implication. 

Baelor swallows, and you feel the movement against your back. “He’s not curious,” he says after a moment, almost absently, to himself. “He’s certain.”

Everything in your world suddenly constricts to here and now, sensations so dizzying they overlap with almost frightening intensity inside your mind: the moist, soothing heat of Verminthor’s breath against your cheeks, Baelor’s hand over yours, trembling, and a small, wild hope you’re almost too terrified to examine for more than a breath. 

“That’s impossible,” you breathe out. “I would know.”

“Would you?” Baelor’s voice turns gentle, thoughtful. “You’ve been tired. Sick at certain smells. You were dizzy on the wall-walk last week.”

“It was hot,” you protest weakly. 

“It was winter by southern measures,” he counters. “And you, who sneers at Dornish summers, suddenly growing weak at the edges of my sight—”

His words fade off, suddenly cut off. Under your joined hands, Verminthor’s muzzle presses again, very, very lightly, as if he knows exactly how much pressure your flesh and the fragile things inside can bear. 

You feel, abruptly, ridiculous tears burn at the backs of your eyes. 

“Baelor,” you choke out, helpless.

He moves then. 

He steps around you, between you and the dragon’s face, though Verminthor snorts and shifts to keep his nose tucked against your side. Baelor drops to one knee on the scorched stone without ceremony, heedless of ash and old soot staining his riding leathers. His hands come up towards you, all but drifting—not to your waist, not in some practised courtly gesture, but to cradle your hips like he’s discovered a new religion in the shape of your body. 

He rests his forehead against the spot where Verminthor has been fussing. The breath that escapes your lungs is an unsteady rush. 

“Are you certain?” he asks the dragon, voice muffled in your skirts, raw and ragged in a way you have never heard before. Baelor is not the prince right now, future ruler of a realm; he’s not even the fearsome warrior they tell gallant tales about. Right now, he’s just a man kneeling in the shadow of an ancient god given flesh and asking, pleading, please. 

Verminthor’s answer is unambiguous. 

He gives a short, rumbling roar that makes the Dragonpit’s bones shiver. It’s not loud by his standards, but the message is clear all the same. Chains rattle abovehead, dust dancing in muted rays of light. 

Yes, it says, as surely as words: You little half-blooded fool, of course I am.

Baelor laughs. 

It’s a broken sound, caught somewhere between a half-sob, half-joy, and it shakes his whole body. Baelor’s hands glide from your hips to your stomach, fingers splaying possessively right there over the fabric, covering as much as they can. 

“You hear that?” he whispers, voice wrecked, breathless, not sure whether he’s speaking to you or to whatever might be listening to him under your ribs. “Even the oldest of us knows.”

“Baelor,” you manage, just barely. Your fingers find his short hair, fingernails smoothing over his scalp. His eyes shine brightly when they find yours, wet at the corners. “We don’t know—”

“We will,” he shoots back immediately, lifting his head higher. “We’ll have the maesters and every old crone who’s ever delivered a babe in Flea Bottom check if needed. If they tell me I’m a fool, I’ll bear it gladly.”

His mouth curves, soft and tender all at once. 

“But if they don’t,” he goes on, voice dropping to a muted whisper between you, a dragon’s promise wrapped in a man’s words in each syllable, “if they tell me Verminthor is right, if they tell me you’re carrying my child—”

Baelor breaks off, voice catching once more. The words hang between you anyway, heavy and shining and too full of possibility that steals your breath. Your heart thuds, too fast in your ears. 

If it’s true—if this old beast, this Bronze Fury who’se seen kings rise and fall during his long life, is right—then there’s a life folded small and secret under your hand. Flesh and blood that is half Stark, half dragon, tied to you and Baelor and the realm in ways you cannot yet see. 

“I’ll build a pit in Winterfell,” Baelor says suddenly, the words spilling out, wild and half-serious. “We’ll fly north. I’ll freeze my royal arse off. Verminthor will bully Blackwind. The old gods can stare at us from their trees and decide what to make of it all.” His hands flex, gentling again. “Just… let this be true.”

Verminthor, whose patience for speeches is limited at the best of times, decides he’s had enough. 

He shifts once more, hauling his bulk closer still, until the curve of his chest is a warm bronze wall at your back. One great wing unfurls—not fully, but just enough to sweep around you in an arc of tattered, heat-scorched membrane and scarred bone. 

The world narrows to a pocket of dim, dragon-shadowed warmth and the man on his knees before you. 

Baelor stills. You feel his fingers tighten on your stomach in some unconscious echo of the way Verminthor’s wingtip tucks closer, as if wrapping the three of you tight against anything that might try to reach in. 

“Soft old brute,” Baelor whispers, fondness wrapping around each syllable. His free hand finds the wing’s leading edge, stroking a callused thumb over an old, puckered tear. Verminthor hums, low and satisfied. 

“He’s… pleased,” you observe with a strangled laugh, bewildered and lightheaded in equal measure, because there are no other words for the mood settling over the pit, in truth. Verminthor’s breath has slowed, deep and even in your ears, a steady rumble through the ancient stone surrounding you. His eyes glow faintly in the dimness of the keep, watching you with a heavy, proprietary calm of a creature who has lived a long life and has seen many things beyond your comprehension. 

“Grumpy as always but content, yes,” Baelor says with a huffing laugh that fans over your inner wrist, because Verminthor is still scowling at you both like he’s irked it took you this long to realise something he figured out the moment you walked in. “He’s already angry at the world on your behalf. Look at him.”

You do. 

For the first time, you notice the way he’s angled his body. Not just around you like you first thought, but between you and the pit mouth, the ramp, the door. Any threat that comes in will have to go through bronze and fire and ancient rage before it can touch you. 

“He’ll be worse than Blackwind,” you say faintly.

Baelor’s smile is pure, helpless adoration. For you, for the dragon, for the unseen little future nestled between your bodies. “Good,” he says, voice still frayed. “Old gods know I need the help.”

You snort, the sound dissolving into something suspiciously like a choked-back sob. You bend, awkward with his hands and Verminthor’s wing and the tangle of your own feelings, and press your forehead to Baelor’s. 

He tilts his head, nose bumping yours, the barest brush of his mouth at the corner of your lips. His breath smells of smoke and the apple he didn’t finish at breakfast. 

“We’ll make certain,” he murmurs. “We’ll be careful. You won’t so much as set a foot on a saddle without three dragons and a wolf snarling about it.” His thumb moves in small, soothing circles over the spot Verminthor keeps nudging. “Until then…”

“Until then?” you echo.

“Until then, humour an old dragon and a foolish prince,” he says softly. “Let us pretend, just for today, that he’s right.”

Your eyes flutter shut. Under your palm, under his, under the careful pressure of Verminthor’s muzzle, your body feels… the same. No quickening, no sudden flutter, just your own heartbeat, loud and scared and too hopeful. But there is a sense, sudden and fierce, that you are not as alone inside your skin as you once were. 

“All right,” you exhale, voice rough. “Just for today.”

Verminthor huffs, as if deeply insulted by the “just”. He pulls his head back enough to fix you with a molten stare that says very plainly: this is not pretending, little wolf. 

“See?” Baelor says, a touch smugly, brushing a kiss against your temple. “Already taking your side over mine. Traitorous beast.”

The dragon snorts in his face. Baelor laughs again, more ragged now, and drops one more kiss—lighter than a breath—just above where your hands rest. 

“Ñuha tresy,” he whispers so quietly you almost don’t catch it. My child. Then, after a beat, softer still, “Ñuha zaldrīgona ha ñuha direlītsos.” My little dragon-wolf.

You don’t have it in you to stop him or tell him to wait, that is seems unwise to name what isn’t certain just yet. That, on the off chance it’s not true, your heart could not bear to see the disappointment on Baelor’s face. Yet under Verminthor’s powerful wing keeping you tucked away from the world, and Baelor’s arms secure and unmovable around your middle, it feels less like tempting faith. 

When you finally leave the pit, Verminthor lets you go with obvious reluctance, wing drawing back slowly, head following you up the ramp until the last possible moment. He huffs one final warm breath against your back, an old god’s blessing in dragon form, then settles again, curling in on himself with a satisfied grunt. 

As the heavy door thuds shut behind you, Baelor’s hand finds yours once more. His fingers lace through yours, protective, possessive, entirely unashamed of his inability to be parted from you. 

“You’re not wandering anywhere alone,” he declares decisively, giving your fingers a gentle squeeze. “Not until we know for certain. And even then, we…”

“Baelor,” you interrupt him, half-exasperated, half-fond. “I’m pregnant, not made of glass.”

“We don’t know you’re pregnant yet,” he says loftily, and you almost laugh, warmed by the unadulterated happiness you see shining out of him like Dornish sun that seems to love him so. “But until my maesters swear otherwise, I will be treating you as if you are made of the finest glass in the Seven Kingdoms.”

You snort. “And if they swear for it?”

Baelor’s grip tightens again, his voice tumbling towards something that thrums in your bones like a distant roar, all intent and heat. 

“Then you’ll never again doubt that you carry a dragon’s child,” he replies huskily, his head bowing towards you. “Because every dragon in this city will know, and they will all look at you the way Verminthor did today.”

You think of molten eyes, a wing curled like a sheltering hand, the strange, gentle way a creature of fire and fury pressed his nonse against your belly. 

“And you?” you ask softly. 

He glances at you from the corner of his eye, a slow, crooked smile spreading across his handsome face, tender and fierce in equal measure. “Me?” he wonders. “You will be sick of the feel of my hands on you before the first snowfall in the North, my wolf.”

You squeeze his fingers, sliding your other hand unconsciously, protectively, over your midsection. 

“We’ll see.”

The gentle command from Baelor sounds beneath you, encircling your thighs to guide you into an easy grind. The swiping of his tongue along your slit makes the stroke of ink on old pages even harder to read.

"Rȳbas se aegon dārysion ikso aōhi by vēzos se ñuhor ziry… liberysion? Daorys Conqueror drējī iiii… iderēptan ondor ōregon issa rȳbas ziry ikso pāletilla–oh–s-se brōstan se Starry Sept se Oldtown ondoso High Septon se Vēdosorys–fuck, right there."

Some of the words could be smoother in their pronunciation, prettier off the roll of your tongue, but your reciting is rather impressive. You're learning fast, which only strengthens the suck of Baelor's lips around the clit. A non-verbal, spit-bathed action of admiration from the Hand, whose cock leaks stringy dribbles onto his stomach… twitching each time you squeak and groan.

Baelor makes you read until you can't anymore, until his face is coated in you and you're crying for him to let you come. He only obliges after making you ask in his mother tongue.

"Epagon nyke hae bisa, ñuha jorrāelagon," he mumbles wetly, pecking light kisses against your folds.

(Ask me like this, my love.)

It takes you a moment to sound it out. The once foreign, now familiar sounds slowly register.

"…k-kostilus, kostagon nyke–nyke māzigon? Kostagon ao mazverdagon nyke m-māzigon?"

(Please, can I come? Can you make me come?)

A proud smile spreads against your pussy, followed by a pat of your ass.

"Sȳrī gaomagon…"

(Well done...)

𓆰 VALARR TARGARYEN of HOUSE TARGARYEN

It is official. You are now wed to Valarr Targaryen, linked to the Prince of Dragonstone until the end of either of your times… and Gods, if he wasn't going to make sure you enjoy the first several suns of being his wife.

You've come too many times to care how uncomfortable the two members of the Kingsguard are. Valarr, caring even less, is stuffed under the covers and up against your cunt, savoring away as he has been all morning.

"…My Lord–"

"I'm a bit busy with my new wife. Your new Princess, who I'm sure would much rather hear nothing than the drone of your unimportant questions."

They can barely hear the muted words over the little groans you release whenever Valarr curls his lips around the swell of your clit. He gives you one last suckle before kissing up your belly and emerging from the blankets with a full exhale of air. The man licks at your neck, then pecks up to your mouth before shuffling on his side with an arm wrapped around your front. His movements slip the covers down just enough to reveal your breasts to the men, who nearly choke as they rescind their stares.

"Y-your uncle has... requested your presence in the main hall," one of the guardsmen stutters out. Valarr continues his kisses, humming with the content of a million and one men when your hand reaches to cup his jaw. He deepens the pecks into a long snog, only interrupted by the few words your husband can remember to get out.

"Men, my father has instructed me to spend whatever necessary time it will take to make my woman comfortable in her new home," he begins, mismatched pupils trained onto you as he lowers himself back under the covers with a grin that makes you giggle. There's a pause of quiet, and then a squeal from you, who reaches a grab at the nearest pillow with a dropped jaw and arching back.

More nipples. The guards look away, this time toward each other. Completely helpless and willing away the blood rushing to their own cocks.

How beautiful their new princess is.

"Therefore," Valarr breathes in, "I advise you return at a later time. Perhaps sometime next week? Possibly next summer…"

𓆰 AERION TARGARYEN of HOUSE TARGARYEN

"You."

The cut of his voice startles you well before the echo is finished ringing throughout the corridor. Your steps pause, and you tighten your grip on the bedsheets in your hand.

Turning, you see him. The prince, with his hair like ash and violet eyes stuck in a hard stare. There's something else there, too, just behind all that mean. It tries to suffocate your lungs as Aerion struts toward you, only pausing when he's close enough for your throat to bob with a thick gulp. Silently, he keeps watching you, eyes settled upon your chest as you bow before him.

"My prince. You are usually not awake at this hour. Is everything alright?"

Aerion just blinks at you, thinking.

"Fine. Just feeling a bit hungry."

"Oh. I can stop by the kitchens and retrieve a platter for you, if you wish. I am sure they wouldn't mind, so long as I explain who it is for."

The wobble in your voice is small, but there. Quivering with already uneven breaths, you opt to focus on the loose of his sleeping tunic while you speak. Boring and beige it is, yet, somehow, he wears it with an air that only he is capable of.

"No, girl. I'm hungry. Starved."

Brow furrow, you still don't understand. What kind of appetite can a plate of summer fruits not fill?

Your question is answered by a long walk to his room and a surprisingly gentle touch he uses to guide you toward his bed.

At first, he just talks.

Asks you how in seven hells you'd been assigned to working for the ruling family. Wondered why such a pretty thing like you would be relegated to changing bedsheets and fetching bathwater. There's a bit of impatience to his voice, but he keeps himself together long enough to get your shoulders to relax and wrap a hand to unstring the back of your dress.

He quickly stops you from covering yourself when the fabric pools to the floor, leaving you completely bare before him. Tracing a touch around your nipple, Aerion talks with a bowed chin.

"As I said, I'm rather famished… and I've had an eye on you for quite some time, gevie."

The word, strange sounding to you, slips a shiver down your spine. Aerion drags his middle finger lower, across your stomach, through the hair of your mound, and dips it inside your slit. You gasp and reach to clutch at his arm, moaning in surprise at the way the digit strokes your clit before he yanks it away.

Gazing straight at you, Aerion stuffs the finger inside his mouth. Groaning at the taste, he wipes all over his tongue before tugging it free with a pop.

The man commands you with a silent ah, dropping his jaw and waiting for you to do the same. Between your parted lips slips the same finger that reaches to press so far against the back of your tongue that you gag.

Aerion smirks at the sound, grabbing your cheeks with the rest of his hand so you can't look anywhere but him.

"Yes… you'll do quite nicely."

𓆰 DAERON TARGARYEN of HOUSE TARGARYEN

He's drunk, nearly-crying, and balls deep inside you.

"Fuck me," Daeron groans, eyes rolling as his hips smack into yours. You clutch him and the damp of his skin closer, tugging on the wild head of hair when he cries out once more with an ache to fill you for the second time this night. "Milk me, dove. Take my seed."

His words are slurred and breathless, choking away into nothing as his cock pumps you full with another thick load of cum. Your name slurs out of the man as a prayer, eyes glazed with alcohol and tears. "Ah–ah. Yesyesyesyes."

Daeron pulls out before either of you is ready, but only to use his tongue to catch when his cum leaks from your slit. His impatience and hazy mind get the best of the eldest son, who resorts to slicking his tongue inside you to scoop out the mess. Eating himself from you, he makes certain not to forget your clit, thumb coming to pull back the hood to swipe his nose at it.

Again, he's drunk. Yes, on ale and wine, but also you. Addicted, really, to filling you up then slurping at your clit until you're empty, only to fill you back up once more.

"The way we taste together…" he huffs out wet breaths across his still squirming tongue. "I could die in this, for you. Drown in it."

Daeron nuzzles his face deeper. Swirling his head and tongue in opposite directions while stretching his grip until he can grope your chest. He squeezes, humming with slow blinks and a sweaty forehead. All the while, thinking nothing of your husband-to-be.

Completely lost in you, Maekar's future (and second) wife, all the ale clouding just how fucked he will be if he is to keep this up. The unfairness of it all keeps him stupid, lapping at you like a trained mutt. Like a son who does not care of his father's wishes.

Daeron saw you first, so why doesn't he get to marry you?

𓆰 MAEKAR TARGARYEN of HOUSE TARGARYEN

He can't help but let a little of his demeanor, stern with sturdy grips, leak in at times like this. Times when he has to grip your skin to keep you from closing your legs like your body keeps trying.

It's almost too much. The fast flicks of Maekar's tongue and rough slurps of your hole, making sure to drag his teeth against your clit just to feel you jerk. You can feel the beard of white scratch at you with every sharp gesture of the man's head, prickles dragging to dampen themselves along your slit.

A gasp snatches from your lungs when Maekar pushes his tongue inside you, as deep as it'll reach. He growls, allowing you to trap his head with your thighs as he fucks his tongue in and out of you, jagged breaths blowing from his nose loudly.

"My P-Prince, I must return–agh–to my chambers…" you remind him through shaky, barely able to remember the reason for the coming evening celebrations. "…to prepare for tonight's festivities. My father is pr-probably wondering where I've gone. Ah! If we do not finish soon, I fear all the honey cakes will be gone before–"

"Fuck the cake," Maekar grumbles, silently making a note to himself to make sure you get some regardless of when he finally frees you from his grasp. "And your father is probably drunk on wine and too busy shouting songs with my guards to realize his kin is gushing about in the arms of The Anvil."

With that, he's latching back onto you, scraping the flat of his tongue on your nub in lively strokes. His chest jumps with a small victory when you whine his name, forgetting all about the party and sweets and the worry over what your father will think.

Soon enough, you won't have to concern yourself with whatever your father feels–how easy the aging prince traces his title into your dripping centre. Soon enough, you will be his pretty wife, fully his to feed cake while he sucks your tits to rid himself of the shitty days behind him.

𓆰 LYONEL BARATHEON of HOUSE BARATHEON

Of course, he is to find you at the worst possible moments. Worst being relative, as Lyonel possesses a skill of the tongue unlike any other, but still. You could be in the bath, in bed, or walking through a nearby forest, and he's pouncing. Sudden and tender, groping at your flesh through the dark, golden-detailed cloth that he'd begged you not to slip on during the earlier hours of the morn.

Deep chuckles bounce from Lyonel and against your inner thigh. After the sound, a sloppy kiss.

"Lyonel," you huff, helping to bunch up the dress of your skirt that he's already halfway buried beneath, his hands clawing at your panties with light scratches and tugs of impatience. "L-Lyonel."

The man answers with a dig of his tongue inside you, groan cutting through the buzz of the outdoors at the taste. The ground sits hard under your back, almost damp when you arch to rub harder against the measured flicks.

"We w-will be requested for dinner soon," you remind him, breathless and with a fuzzy stare at the sky of seemingly endless clouds. Lyonel remains distracted, suckling you with long licks until his mouth fills with the taste of you, promptly spitting globs of spit to slicken you even further. You can feel the warm, sticky drip down your ass as Lyonel feeds away. Unconvinced.

Finally, he answers. Bubbles of drool coat his lips and chin, the words muffle just below your belly button, when he kisses his way through an unbothered shrug.

"No matter that," Lyonel wheezes, stomach pressed against the grassy ground as he shuffles. Poking his head to catch your eye. "I will command the kitchens to prepare you something of sustenance once the trees watch me take you properly."

"And what of your meal?"

Lyonel laughs, messy curls tickling his forehead. "Oh, my sweet, sweet thing. I have all the nourishment I need right here in my palms."

tell me what u think :)

His lips came to place a tentative kiss to your shoulder. Your grip tightened on his arm as you felt him falter briefly at the gesture, his first of the walk. Neither of you acknowledged it—but your heart gave a familiar anxious kick regardless.

A gentle silence settled between you both as you walked, the heavy steps of the Kingsguard trailing behind you. No doubt they saw his stagger and had come closer; he cast a placating glance back to them before he began guiding you down a less traveled path. Birdsong occasionally punctuated every unhurried step you made. When a brief draft washed over the gardens you caught the familiar hint of cedar-wood and fresh linen. It was the scent that usually tinged his skin, now mixed with the traces of lavender from the morning's bath.

Eventually, he led you to a reserved canopy perched above the bay. He turned and dismissed the Kingsguard, who seemed hesitant at first but ultimately nodded; heavy metallic steps marked their exit. When he turned back around to where you stood, you had moved to stand before the stone railing. His mismatched gaze traced every gentle waver of the strands that framed your profile—a soft, golden gleam resting along the edges. You could feel the weight of his gaze on you, casting a sidelong glance at him over your shoulder. A delicate smile landed on your lips, one that he matched shortly after. His eyes lingered over you for a moment longer before he unclasped his hands from his back and made his way to you with careful steps and an appraising once-over. His calloused hand slid to the small of your back, gently drawing you to him. Your hand drifted over his other one that rested on the railing. The cold wind-kissed metal of his rings burned against your fingers. "You look beautiful today," he said quietly, his eyes tracing over every delicate crease and faded shadow you had acquired through your years together. His hand came up from the small of your back to hold your chin, his thumb brushing across your chilled skin in a gentle caress.

"You said that already," you murmured back, a familiar warmth settling in your heart and blanketing your skin. A warmth that always consumed you when he looked upon you, as if you were the only thing in existence.

"I know, and I would say it again because it is true," he said with a small chuckle. His lips pressed a tender kiss to your forehead before he turned to rest his gaze out onto the bay, hands coming to rest on the stone railing.

This time, your eyes lingered, admiring the shift from quiet adoration to his usual stoic thoughtfulness. Your fingers toyed with the warmed silver that his rings had taken from your hold. His gaze clouded in mimicry of the overcast that rolled in the distance, speaking of an evening storm. A fragile silence stretched between you both, enveloped by the distant crash of waves against the rocks and the occasional rustling of trees catching in the wind. "It's healing nicely," you said softly, your gaze drifting to the back of his head. The short, neatly kept, graying hairs were scattered around the dark seams woven into his skin. Your thumb slowly swiped across the nape of his neck and up into his hair, careful not to touch the sutures. "I just hope it doesn't scar."

If he had heard your whispered prayer, he didn't speak of it. He let out a slow breath as he felt your hands in his hair, leaning just slightly into the touch. You could see the faint outline of the whitecaps in the dark amber of one eye; the other's bright blue melded with the deeper shades of the lulling tide. His thumb pinned your fingers atop the back of his. "I have been fortunate," he murmured, his eyes dropping to your joined hands. "The gods have blessed me with a patiently elegant, albeit insufferably stubborn, wife who has ensured my recovery." You all but huffed at his dry remark, retracting your hand from his. A rich, full chuckle escaped him as you pulled away, his hand quickly reaching for yours once more in protest.

"I'm starting to think I liked you better when you were bed-bound," you grumbled, although you found yourself chuckling alongside him. The sound of his laugh was so lively, so free, so unusual to hear, even before the events at Ashford. He had always been so consumed by his work, scarcely making time for things he enjoyed outside of his books. A notion that made you savor these stolen, unburdened moments all the more.

He raised his brow at your comment, that familiar stoicism returning to his features even as his lips barely rose into a wry smirk. His hand gripped your wrist securely, just enough to keep you from pulling away any further.

"And here I thought you were glad to see me back with my usual wits," he mused, tugging you closer once more, placing an intricate kiss on the inside of your wrist, his beard tickling against your soft skin.

"Oh, I am, though; your usual wit has nothing to do with your offhand comments," you countered as you watched his gentle ministrations. "I fail to see the issue; I called you 'patiently elegant'—"

"Alongside 'insufferably stubborn'—a bit backhanded, wouldn't you agree?"

"I'd say it depends on who you ask—" he started, but immediately paused, seeing the glare you were giving him. With a heavy sigh, he relented, his lips once again finding purchase against your wrist. "Fine, perhaps a little backhanded, albeit with good intentions."

You couldn't stifle an eye roll at his half-assed concession; releasing yourself from his grip, you moved to loop one of your arms around his neck, the other coming to rest on the opposite shoulder. His firm hands naturally settled on your hips before sliding lower to squeeze your backside as he leaned in to kiss your cheek.

"Don't try to butter me up now," you hummed, your hand coming up to trace the expertly shaved edge of his beard against his neck, which you had watched him line up this morning. A cold draft billowed through your hair into his face slightly, and he carefully tucked your hair aside.

"I have absolutely no idea what you mean," he said wryly into your skin as his lips began moving slowly along your neck. "Though there is one thing I wish to show you before the storm comes." He hummed against your skin, only pulling away to nod to the dark clouds that gathered over the bay.

You followed his gaze before turning back to him. "Oh, so that's why you wanted to walk in the gardens today? You had something planned," you asked with raised brows. "And here I thought you were just tired of being inside, as you said."

He cocked his head to the side, giving you a look of exaggerated offense. "What I said earlier was true; I was starting to go mad from being inside…but it is also true that I may have arranged something," he huffed, his grip tightening on your hips affectionately.

You hummed, your eyes narrowing slightly in skepticism. But before you could reply, he was already leading you back out to the gardens.

His arm didn't take long to find its way linked back with yours as he guided you back down the cobbled path. The lush, honeyed fragrance of the flowers fanned over both of you. Your gaze followed the delicate climbs of ivy and the elaborately crafted stone urns that carried dainty stems. The petals ranged from the finest shades of a Dornish red to the gilded yellow of a coin.

Baelor eventually to steered you to the end of the path marked by an expansive and aged fountain, which you had passed earlier. The soft trickle of water cascading from the small spouts into the large basin echoed in the small clearing. The two Kingsguard he had dismissed earlier perked up from their conversation as you approached, inclining their heads slightly in greeting. In return he dipped his head, and they took up a loose follow as before as he guided you along the circular trail and to a new path.

You knew better than to ask him for any hints, but you couldn't stop your mind from flicking between possibilities as you approached an area of the gardens you had seldom visited. He looked upon you, noting that familiar furrow of your brow and slight distance to your gaze as you walked.

"I assure you, it is not what you think it is," he said simply, giving you a knowing look. The sound of the fountain faded in the distance, replaced by the heavy steps of the Kingsguard, who trailed several feet behind you.

"That implies I even have an idea of what it is; you haven't given me any hints," you mused, noting the subtle shift to paler tones along the flowers.

"Well, we are in a garden; I don't think there are many hints I can give to your benefit," he said thoughtfully, guiding you towards a narrow archway. As you neared the impressive stone arch, you looked back, having heard the stopping of the Kingsguard, who now stood at the far end of the path. Baelor paused, you both under the archway, following your gaze.

"You got the Kingsguard in on this too?" you teased, your eyes finding his.

"I merely told them not to ruin the moment with their unceremoniously loud armor," he said in that soft-spoken jest you always adored. You laughed and gave him a playful smack to his shoulder. He laughed with you, gently urging you forward with a tug of your looped arms.

"Bad-mouthing me to the Kingsguard, I see—" you started as he tugged you along but stopped when your eyes landed on the sight before you.

It was a small courtyard draped with the finest lilies you had ever seen. Long, slim petals that opened in a rich plum at the center—bleeding into a striking garnet and ending in a burnished crimson that radiated against the afternoon sun. Remarkable and proud buds resembling the ardent orange of a pumpkin rested at the center, complemented by small, blackened freckles that stretched out to the middle of the petals. You found yourself rendered speechless at the sight, your mouth dropping slightly in awe. As your eyes scanned over the small space, they stretched along the edges of the walls to the worn bench that sat tucked in the corner shaded under a trellis. Your feet carried you by their own accord as you neared a secluded pair. "During our trip to the Stormlands, you had mentioned they were the most stunning flowers you had ever seen," Baelor said, the soft timbre of his voice finding you through your surprise. His eyes followed yours as he approached you with tentative steps. "I had them planted before we left for Ashford." You paused at that, stilling your reach to the delicate flower. The bitter memory of the tourney brushed through your mind. Slowly, you addressed him over your shoulder, and he met your gaze head-on. "It was meant to be a gift, a thank you for being so understanding of my duty." You knew exactly of the duty he spoke of. The duty that kept him from your chambers late at night. The duty that would keep him hunched over the desk of his solar for so long he forgot to eat at times. You opened your mouth to retort but he continued, "It wasn't my intention to enter the tourney, but they would have been waiting for you when you returned even if I hadn't," he finished, offering a tender almost apologetic smile. You felt the familiar heat of tears welling in your eyes at his words, a sound between a scoff and a laugh left your chest. "They're beautiful," you said with a quivering lip and a trembling hand that wiped the stray tears away. He closed the distance between you quickly, his strong arms embracing you as he held you for a long moment—lips pressed against your hair as he shushed you gently. Your fingers curled into the fine material of his black tunic, tears staining his chest. His hand held the back of your head, the other rubbing soothing circles along your back. A few minutes passed before he pulled back, lowering his head to meet your gaze. The soft pad of his thumb stole away the last tears that threatened to fall. "Thank you," you whispered with a soft melancholic laugh and a sniffle. "They are the least I could do, there is no need to thank me," he stated solemnly, bringing his lips to yours in a reassuring kiss, before slowly guiding you to sit with him on the bench. Your eyes shifted to his features, recognizing the hint of pride that resided in his expression. His arm came to rest around you. "Once I find more flowers you like on our travels, I hope we can have dinner here one night," he suggested, giving your arm a light squeeze. You looked at him at that, his eyes filled with nothing but fondness and determination. "I would like that," you said, bringing your lips to his cheek. Your hand sliding to the nape of his neck, coasting around the stitches that fused his pale skin along the back of his head. "Just don't leave me a widow with nothing but flowers to remember you by." His eyes fluttered briefly at that, "You would sooner drag me back from death's gates yourself. That much I am certain." You chuckled at that, an almost bittersweet sound, that he matched. His hand found your chin, tilting it up slightly—lips sealing yours in a tender embrace. The distant rumble of thunder rolled through the sky, your pulse quickening as he deepened the kiss. His hand tangling in your hair as the clouds began to blot out the sun, and when the rain began to drizzle, you finally broke away.

The maester read the terms of the arrangement over supper, as though he were reading a list of household accounts. Even now at the Red Keep, after quite the travel from your home, your father sat across from you with his hands folded on the table and his eyes fixed on the tablecloth, and you sat very still and still thought of nothing at all, because that was the only way to keep yourself from doing something foolish.

You had the urge, briefly and vividly, to stand up from the table and walk out the room and keep walking, out of the Red Keep entirely, out through the gates and down to the harbour and onto the first ship that was going somewhere your father hadn’t already arranged. But you knew better than that. They would drag you back before tide turned. They always found a way too.

“The betrothal will be formalized within this moon period,” the maester said, glancing up from his scroll to look at you with the mild apologetic expression of a man delivering weather. “The wedding is to follow swiftly after. Prince Baelor has agreed to it, so I do not see why it shouldn’t go forward without trouble.” 

Without trouble. As though trouble were something that lived in logistics. As though the trouble had nothing to do with you sitting in this room and being talked about like a parcel to be sent on.

Prince Baelor. You had heard the name your entire life. Everyone had. You grew up on the stories the way other children grew up on songs. Baelor Targaryen, who had held the line at Ashford when lesser men had broken and run. Baelor Targaryen, who had ridden through a burning village to pull three smallfolk children from a collapsed roof, and emerged the other side with his cloak in flames and not a word of complaint about it. Baelor Targaryen, who had put down the Blackfyre Rebellion with cool efficiency that men still talked about at feasts, their cups raised and their voices hushed with something that sat right at the border of reverence and fear. 

They called him Breakspear. They called him that because no one had ever broken him. 

You thought about that even after the maester excused himself and your father finally looked up from the tablecloth with the expression of a man who believed he was being generous. 

"You'll be a princess," he said. "You understand what that means."

"Yes," you said, and your voice had no happiness in it, no solace, nothing that could be mistaken for either of those things. "I understand."

He took that as agreement, because he always took silence and stillness as agreement, and perhaps that was your fault too.

You lay awake in the guest chambers they had assigned you, the ones you would occupy until the wedding made you someone’s wife, and you turned your father’s ambition over in your mind like stones you already knew the shape of. He wanted children from this union. Heirs who carried Tyrell blood and Targaryen blood. Not giving any mind that Baelor already had two sons by his first wife, the one who had died in her labours years ago, giving birth to Prince Baelor's youngest son. Your father made it clear to you that he wanted his blood in the line of succession. He wanted to be able to look at the Iron Throne one day, and say, somewhere in that, there is something of mine.

You did not want that. You did not want any of it. You did not want to be near the prince, did not want to give him heirs on top of the ones he already had, did not want to spend your life in service of an ambition that had never once asked what you wanted from your own. 

Two sons was enough for any man. 

That night, sleep did not find you. 

You saw him for the first time in the courtyard of the Red Keep, three days after your party had arrived. He was speaking to two knights in riding gear, his back half-turned to you, and your first thought was that he was taller than you had expected. Your second thought was that he looked like a man who had never in his life needed to raise his voice to make a room go quiet. 

He turned when your footsteps scraped the stone, and you caught the full measure of him at once. The grey decorating his beard in patches. The broad set of his shoulders, built for armour even in plain clothes. The mismatched eyes, one brown and one blue, that settled on you with an attention so direct it was almost physical.

"My lady of Highgarden," he said, and there was a small smile on his lips, something measured and polite, as he tilted his head slightly down to look at you.

"Your Grace," you answered, almost too quickly, and kept your eyes down for a beat longer than you needed to, studying the worn stone at your feet like it might offer you something useful.

He waited for you to look up. You got the sense he was patient at waiting. You got the sense he had waited out many things larger than this.

"You've come a long way," he said.

"Indeed," you said, because you had to say something. "The road was kind. We had good weather, by the gods' grace."

"Did you."

"Yes."

A silence settled between you that felt less like discomfort and more like he was simply observing you, cataloguing something at a pace you couldn't rush. You smoothed your skirts with both hands, a nervous habit, and hated yourself for it almost immediately.

"I hope you are pleasant with having to wed me," he said, pausing briefly, watching you twist your fingers together in front of you. "Are you?"

No. The word arrived in your mind before anything else did, clean and immediate. No, I am not pleased, I am frightened and resentful and I have not slept properly in two weeks and every story I have ever heard about you ends with someone not getting back up.

But you could not say any of that. Your father would have your tongue before the sentence was finished.

"Do not do that to your fingers, my lady," Baelor said, interrupting the spiral before it could swallow you whole. "You'll do harm to them."

You stopped instantly. The command was not unkind, but it was a command, and your body obeyed it before your mind had finished deciding whether to. The smile that had been on his face when he first turned was gone now, though the faint softness underneath it remained, held carefully in place.

"I'm starting to wonder if you aren't pleased with the match," he said, his voice entirely calm, the way deep water is calm. "You still haven't answered."

"I apologize, Your Grace." The words came out smooth and easy, rehearsed without meaning to be. "I am pleased. It is my duty to be, and if our union strengthens the bonds between our houses, then I am glad of it."

A lie. A very good one. You had been practicing variations of it for weeks.

He looked at you for a moment longer than felt comfortable, long enough that you wondered if he knew, long enough that you felt the specific heat of being studied by someone who was accustomed to reading situations accurately and quickly. Then he exhaled slowly through his nose and looked out across the courtyard, giving you the small mercy of his profile instead of his full attention.

"A diplomatic answer," he said.

"I've been told I give those."

"I don't doubt it." He glanced back at you, brief and measuring. "I've been told you paint."

The change of subject was abrupt enough to unsettle you, which you suspected might have been the point. "I do," you said carefully. "Sometimes."

"What do you paint?"

The question was so plain and without ceremony that it caught you off guard. You had been braced for something political, something that required a careful answer, and instead you got this. "Flowers, mostly. And the water. We have a lake at home, on the south side of the grounds. I've painted it perhaps a hundred times."

"And it still interests you?" Not sarcastically. Genuinely curious in the way of someone who finds focus in other people interesting rather than puzzling.

"Every season it looks different," you said. "Every hour of the day. I don't think I could exhaust it."

Something shifted in his expression then, small and real, the faint softening of a face that held itself deliberately composed as a matter of long habit.

"I have kept you long enough," he said, and inclined his head to you. "I'll see you at supper, my lady."

He walked past you back into the keep, and you stood in the empty courtyard with your hands still at your sides and tried to decide what you made of that, and found that you couldn't. The wind came through and lifted the loose edge of your sleeve, and somewhere above you a bird crossed the grey sky, and you stood there until the sound of his footsteps had faded entirely.

Then you went inside, and sat with your ladies, and smiled, and said nothing at all. Because that’s the order of the way things were here.

The feast was loud and long and you drank your wine too fast and smiled until your face ached. Baelor sat at the head of the table to your left in the same dark cloth he had been married in, the three-headed dragon embroidered at his chest, and you had been a wife now for approximately six hours and you could feel the full weight of it settling over you like armour you hadn't been measured for.

You had married a man who had killed people.

Not cruelly. Not without cause. But he had, and the stories were very clear on that, and they did not try to soften it, not even for the women who were being handed to him. He had done what needed doing and done it well and the realm had benefited and all of that was true and none of it made a difference to the part of you that was sitting at this feast watching the candlelight move across his hands and thinking about all the things those hands had done before they had touched your jaw this morning.

You did not know how much wine you had drunk. Enough. Not enough. Somewhere in between. You had lost count around the third cup and stopped caring around the fourth, and the noise of the feast pressed in from all sides, laughter and music and the scrape of chairs on stone, and somewhere in the middle of all of it you sat very still and rethought your entire life from the beginning. 

Merry found you eventually, your cousin with her pretty laugh and her gift for making any room feel smaller and warmer. She dropped into the seat beside you and took your hand under the table and squeezed once, and you squeezed back, and neither of you said anything about it.

"He keeps looking over," she said quietly into your ear, after a while.

"Does he?"

"He's been watching you all evening."

"He's probably worried I'll knock something over," you said. Merry laughed. Across the table Baelor said something low to the man beside him and did not look up from his cup, and you watched him for one unguarded moment before you looked away.

You watched him sometimes, after that, in the spaces between conversations. When he wasn't looking. You tried to read him the way you read the lake, the way you looked at a thing from different angles until it gave you something. He did not gesture when he spoke. He did not laugh loudly. He listened more than he talked, which among men of his station was genuinely unusual, and when he did speak the people around him leaned in without seeming to realize they were doing it. Like plants toward light. Like something involuntary.

What surprised you, later, was the bedding ceremony. Or rather, the absence of one.

Baelor had refused it. Quietly, without spectacle, in the way he seemed to do most things, and the court had no choice but to fold around his decision and pretend they had never expected otherwise. You heard it from Merry, who had heard it from one of the Kingsguard, and you stood there absorbing the information with a feeling you didn't immediately have a name for. Relief, you decided. It was relief. Strange and unexpected and slightly humiliating to feel so strongly, but there it was.

Even so, when the door to your new chambers clicked shut behind you both and you heard the latch catch, your chest tightened all the same.

The room was full of candles, dozens of them, casting everything in soft shifting gold. Someone had arranged fresh flowers near the window, roses among them, and turned down the bed with the kind of careful attention that made the whole thing feel more deliberate, more inevitable. You crossed to the window and stood with your arms folded loosely at your waist and looked out at the dark city below and tried to remember what breathing was supposed to feel like.

Then he said your name.

Not my lady. Your name, and it sat differently in his mouth that it did in anyone else’s. Lower, somehow. More considered. 

You turned from the window. He was watching you with that same quality he always had, the direct unhurried attention, but there was something else underneath it now. Something careful. Like a man approaching a problem he didn't want to make worse.

"You don't have to worry so much," he said, and moved to the table across the room, pouring wine with his back half-turned to you. His hands were steady. Of course they were. "We won't consummate it tonight."

The words landed and your stomach dropped, but not from relief. From something closer to dread, the specific crawling dread of a daughter who could already hear her father's voice somewhere in the back of her skull telling her she had failed before she had even begun. It had only been a couple hours of being a wife and you already failed short. You dropped your gaze to the floor. Your fingers found each other, and you started pulling at the skin around your knuckles without meaning to.

"Did I do something, my prince?" The words came out smaller than you intended. Quieter.

He set the goblet down. You heard him turn.

"You don't have to keep calling me that," he said. "We're married now."

"What would you prefer?"

"My name," he said. "Just my name."

You pulled in a slow breath. "Have I done something wrong, Baelor?"

His name in your mouth felt foreign and right at the same time, like a word in a language you had been studying a long time and had only just spoken aloud.

He crossed the room toward you, not quickly, not with any urgency, just steadily, and he stopped when he reached you and put two fingers under your chin and tilted your face up. His touch was warm. Dry. Unhurried.

You were not expecting the kiss he pressed to your forehead. Soft, brief, almost nothing, and yet it stayed on your skin after he pulled back, like the impression of something.

When you looked up at him your lips were parted and you had nothing to say.

"No," he said, simply. "You haven't done anything wrong." He searched your face for a moment, his mismatched eyes moving between yours. "I don't want my wife drunk and anxious the first time. I'd rather you come to it because you trust me enough. Not because the court expects it of you before morning."

A silence opened up between you. Outside, the city murmured on, indifferent.

"That could take a long time," you said, and you meant it lightly but it didn't come out quite that way.

"I know," he said. And then, without any particular weight to it, like a man stating a fact he had already made peace with: "I can wait."

You looked at him standing there in the candlelight, large and steady and entirely serious, and you thought about all the stories, all the things they said about him, the battles and the efficiency and the men who had not gotten back up, and you thought: none of them mentioned this part. None of them thought to.

In the weeks that followed, you learned that baelor woke before dawn, every morning, and could be found in the training yard before the light had fully come. You learned that he ate simply and without fuss and that feasts bored him, that he tolerated them because they were required and endured them the way another man might endure a long sea voyage.

 You were still frightened of him. Not in the way you had been that first night, with your arms crossed and your heart hammering. You didn’t know how he made you feel. 

Baelor noticed your distance, of course. How could he not. You were always in bed before he came to the chambers, feigning sleep or close enough to it that he never tested the difference. You declined his invitations to share supper with excuse after careful excuse, a headache, correspondence from home, fatigue from the afternoon. He accepted each one without comment, and somehow that was worse than if he had pressed you. You were grateful, most of all, that he had not yet commanded the marriage to be consummated. That was the thing you held onto.

You felt guilty about it sometimes. In small quiet moments, when you were honest with yourself. But guilt was a feeling you could set down and pick back up. Fear sat differently in the body.

Every other day there was a new rumour. Your ladies brought them to you the way birds bring things back to a nest, little bright pieces of nothing that accumulated into something. You had no choice but to sit and listen, just as you were doing now, in the small solar off the main hall where the afternoon light came in sideways and made everything look warmer than it was.

"He is a great man," said Elayne Hightower, in the tone of someone conveying information she believed you were too simple to already possess. She was one of the ladies assigned to you upon your arrival, and in the weeks since you had arrived at a quiet and absolute conclusion: you did not like her. Not even a little. She was the kind of woman who delivered cruelty with a smile and then looked confused when anyone minded. "A great man in every sense of the word, if you take my meaning."

She let the last words hang there and looked at you sideways, watching for a reaction.

You took a slow sip from your goblet and gave her nothing.

"Surely you've consummated the marriage by now," she said, leaning forward slightly, dropping her voice in the conspiratorial register of someone who wanted an audience but pretended otherwise. She set her goblet down on the table and smiled at you with all her teeth. "Do tell. How was it?"

The bluntness of it made your eyes go wide before you could stop them. "I do not wish to speak of such matters with you, Lady Hightower."

She rolled her eyes, the gesture practiced and a little bored. "No need to be so shy about it, princess. Virgins always get so delicate when someone brings it up. It's rather sweet, really." The word sweet landed the way a small blade lands, point first. The other ladies around you had gone very still, a few of them hiding their mouths behind their goblets. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, not knowing what you're about."

"Mind your tongue," you said, and you meant it to come out firm and it came out soft, which was worse.

She made a small sound with her teeth, a dismissive little tsk, and waved her hand as though you'd said something tedious. Then she tilted her head at you, her smile going thin and sharp at the edges.

"Well. If you won't share, I suppose I'll simply tell you how he spent the remainder of the evening. Once he was done with you, that is." She paused for effect. Let the silence do its work. "He came to me."

The room went very quiet.

You sat completely still. You were aware of every person in that room, every averted eye, every carefully controlled expression. You could hear the city outside the window. You could hear your own pulse.

You thought about the night of your wedding. Baelor helping you out of your dress without making anything of it. Baelor sitting with you until you had went into a dreamless sleep, after the many wines you had that evening. You had thought, lying there in the dark, that whatever he was, he was at least that. Decent. Trying.

But then. A man of his station and appetites, refused by his new wife night after night. It was not hard to imagine. It was, in fact, very easy to imagine, and you hated how easily the picture assembled itself.

You felt the anger arrive before you'd decided to feel it. It was different from the distant background dread you'd been carrying for weeks. This was sharp. Immediate. Something with edges.

Your brows pulled together without meaning them to.

"I can tell you the particulars if you like," Elayne said, pleasantly. "He talks you through it, I'll say that much. Very thorough. He did write me this morning, actually, to say he'd be visiting again soon." She glanced at the other ladies with a little lift of her chin, a performer acknowledging her audience. "I suppose things between you two haven't quite found their footing yet."

You stood up.

It happened before you had finished deciding to do it. One moment you were sitting and the next you were on your feet, and the room seemed to go even quieter somehow, the way rooms do when something shifts.

"That is my husband you are speaking of," you said. Your voice was very even. You were rather proud of how even it was, given that your hands were trembling slightly at your sides and you could feel the humiliation pressing up behind your eyes like water behind a dam. "Whatever the circumstance, whatever your history with him, you will not speak his name to me in this manner again. If you do, I will take the matter directly to His Grace the King. Do you understand me?"

Elayne looked up at you from her seat with that same thin smile, and said, "I've hurt you. I'm sorry for it, truly," in a voice that contained not one single grain of apology.

The lady beside her pressed her lips together to hide something that was almost certainly a smile.

You did not say another word. You turned and walked out of the room, and you did not wait for your knight to fall into step behind you. You walked until the corridor bent and the solar was out of sight, and then you stopped and pressed your back against the stone wall and breathed and looked at the ceiling and thought about absolutely nothing at all, which was very hard to do, and which you forced yourself to manage anyway.

You stayed there until you trusted your face again. Then you went back to your chambers and sat at your window and watched the world outside until the light faded, and you did not want to think about Elayne Hightower, and you certainly did not want to think about Baelor. 

You didn't hear the door open. Your eyes were distant, fixed on nothing in particular beyond the glass, and your meals had come and gone untouched all day, the chambermaids cycling in and out like tides, and you had let them. Appetite required a kind of presence you did not currently have.

Without meaning to you, as Baelor spoke your name, as you turned to face him you glared at him, a pouty look on your face. 

"Is it true?" The words left your mouth before you had decided to say them. You didn't know where the nerve came from. Only that the jealousy had been sitting in you all day like something swallowed wrong, and underneath it the thing you had been less willing to look at: that somewhere in the weeks of distance and avoidance and careful politeness, you had grown fond of him. Quietly. Without meaning to. You had been seeking him out even as you pulled away. Maybe that was why he had gone elsewhere. Maybe the fault was yours and you hated that thought most of all.

You hated her. You were certain of it now. 

Baelor looked confused. More than confused, actually. Surprised, in the specific way of a man who had learned not to expect much and was recalibrating in real time. You were always the one who waited to be spoken to first, who answered in half-sentences and agreeable nods. You speaking first, and like this, meant something was wrong. His brows drew together. "What's true, princess?" he said quietly, his eyes moving over your face.

"Do not make me say it." Your voice was unsteady and you resented it. "It hurts enough to think about. Let alone say it to your face."

He took a step toward you and you looked down and that was when he noticed your hands, your fingers picking at the skin around your nails the way they always did when you were trying not to cry.

"How many times," he said, and his voice was very calm, "have I told you to stop doing that."

"Do not act as though you care," you said, and your voice cracked on the last word and you hated yourself for it. You looked up at him. "Did you care when you went to Elayne Hightower on the night of our wedding? Did you think of me at all? People call you honourable. They say it like it is the truest thing about you."

Something moved across his face. Something small and quick. He pressed his lips together and the corner of his mouth shifted, barely, the suggestion of something that in any other moment might have been amusement.

"What is funny about this?" You stared at him. "Do you know what it felt like, sitting there while she told me in front of everyone. While they smiled behind their goblets and thought I couldn't see."

He closed the distance between you. "What did she say." Not a question. A quiet command.

"Vile things. Things I don't wish to repeat." Your voice broke properly then and you turned away and walked toward the window because you needed something to look at that wasn't his face. You could feel the tears and you refused them, crossing your arms over your chest.

You startled when his hands found your shoulders. His fingers gathered your hair and moved it aside, and then the scratch of his beard against the slope of your neck, the press of his lips there, warm and deliberate, and his hands settling at your waist, drawing you back against him. You let him, because you were tired and hurt and his hands were warm, and some part of you had been wanting something like this for weeks without knowing how to say so.

"Tell me what she said," he said against your hair.

You told him all of it. The smile on Elayne's face. The details she offered without being asked. The letter she claimed he had sent that very morning. Your voice stayed mostly level and only broke once, near the end. His hands did not move from your waist the entire time.

"She said you'd promised to see her this evening," you finished. "It was humiliating. I never want to see those women again. You have made me friendless in a court that was never mine to begin with."

You pulled away and turned to face him. He looked down at you with an expression so steady and intent it was almost hard to hold.

"Were they laughing," he said.

"Smiling. Murmuring. Close enough."

"Then why would you call them your friends."

You opened your mouth and closed it. He had a point and you hated that he had a point and you were not going to let it distract you. "That is beside the matter. You still haven't answered me." The next words came out low and laced with something that surprised even you. "Whether you truly found comfort between her legs on the night you wed me."

You lifted your chin at him. "If you promised to see her this evening, then go. I won't keep you."

He held your gaze for a long moment. And then, very quietly, "do you think I would do that to you."

You stared at him.

The question sat between you, very quiet, and he did not move while he waited for you to answer it. He just looked at you the way he always looked at things, with that patient undivided attention that had unnerved you from the beginning and unnerved you still, though differently now. Less like standing in the path of something and more like being seen.

"She said you did," you said finally. Your voice came out smaller than you wanted. "She said it very plainly."

"And you believed her."

It was not an accusation. It was not even a question, quite. 

"I didn't want to," you said. "I tried not to. But I sat in that room and I listened to her describe you and I thought about all the nights I've gone to bed before you came in, and all the suppers I've refused, and I thought—" You stopped. The words felt too honest. Too much of something you hadn't meant to say out loud.

"You thought what," he said.

"I thought that you would have every reason to." You lifted your eyes to his. "I have not been easy. I know that. I have not been what a wife is supposed to be to you and I have known it every day and done nothing about it because I was frightened, and I—" Your voice broke on the last word and you pressed your lips together hard and looked at the ceiling and refused to cry in front of him. Absolutely refused.

His hand came up and curved around your jaw, tilting your face back down toward his. His thumb moved once across your cheekbone, slow and deliberate, the way you might steady something fragile.

"Look at me," he said.

You did. You had no choice when he held your face like that.

"I have not touched Elayne Hightower," he said. "Not on our wedding night and not since. I’ve never done so, and I have no intention of doing so ever." He held your gaze, not blinking, not letting you look away. "I don't know what she told you or why she told it, but it was a lie. Every word of it."

You searched his face the way you searched paintings, looking for the thing that was not right, the detail that would give the lie away. There was nothing. There was only Baelor, steady as he always was, telling you something plainly and without performance, the way he told you everything.

"Why would she say it then," you said. "She had details. She said you wrote to her."

"She is a woman who enjoys the particular power that comes from making other women feel small," he said, without heat or drama, as though he were noting the weather. "And you are new here, and a princess, and a considerable threat to people who were comfortable before you arrived. She said it because she could and because she wanted to see what it would do to you."

Your mouth was dry. "And what did it do to me."

Something shifted in his expression. Softened, in that way that still caught you off guard when it happened. 

"It made you speak to me," he said. "First. Without waiting to be spoken to."

You hadn't thought of it that way. You hadn't thought of much of anything clearly today. You became abruptly and uncomfortably aware of how close he was, his hand still at your face, the warmth of him in the cooling room.

"I made a fool of myself," you said quietly.

"You were jealous," he said. "That's not foolish."

You felt heat climb your neck. "I wasn't—"

"You were." And there was that near-smile again, the one that lived at the very corner of his mouth and barely made it further than that. "I'm not saying it to embarrass you. I'm telling you because I'd rather you know that I noticed and that it mattered to me. That you mattered enough to be jealous over."

You didn't have anything to say to that. You had prepared for denial and deflection and a polite dismissal, you had not prepared for this, for him standing in the candlelight holding your face and telling you plainly that you mattered, without ceremony, without asking for anything back.

"You should have told me," you said finally, because you had to say something and it was the truest thing left. "If she had said those things to you about me you would have told me. You wouldn't have let me believe it."

"No," he agreed. "I wouldn't have." He studied you for a moment. Then: "I'll speak to her."

"Don't." The word came out quickly. "It will only make it worse. It will only give her more to say."

He shakes his head in a silent no. “She won’t, I’ll make sure of it.” 

"Baelor, please." You moved after him as he turned, reaching for his arm without thinking. "I'm asking you not to. She will humiliate me further for it. She will talk about me behind my back to anyone who will listen, she'll make my life a living—"

He kissed you.

Not gently. Not the way he had kissed your forehead on the wedding night, careful and brief and almost impersonal. This was something else entirely. His mouth pressed to yours with a kind of fierce certainty, one hand cradling the back of your neck, his thumb tilting your jaw up, and the sheer unexpectedness of it emptied your mind of every word you had been about to say.

For one stunned moment you simply stood there. Then, without deciding to, your eyes closed and you leaned into it. It was not a polite kiss. It was not the kind of kiss a man gives a woman he is merely fond of. It was hungry and deliberate, all heat and pressure and the slide of his tongue against yours, the faint graze of teeth at your bottom lip, his beard rough against your skin, and it tasted like wine and something underneath it that was just him, and it stole the breath from your lungs so thoroughly that when he finally pulled back you had to remind yourself how lungs worked.

You looked up at him. Your mouth was still parted. You had nothing at all to say. He did not step back. He did not look remotely apologetic. He simply watched you absorb what he had done.

A faint thread of warmth lingered between your lips when he pulled away, and his thumb came up to swipe it from your skin almost absently, eyes never leaving yours.

“That is what you were afraid of,” he said quietly.

You swallowed. “Of being kissed?”

“No.” His thumb pressed once against your lower lip. “Of wanting it.”

Heat climbed your neck.

Before you could answer, he leaned in again, but this time the kiss was slower. Not an interruption. Not a silencing. His mouth moved over yours with intent, coaxing instead of claiming, and when you softened beneath him, when your hand tightened at his chest and your body leaned into his without instruction, he made a low sound of approval in his throat.

“Good girl,” he murmured against your mouth. “That is honest.”

His hands slid down from your shoulders to your waist, broad and steady, and then lower, settling at your hips. He pulled you flush against him, slow enough that you felt the full press of him between you, solid and unmistakable even through layers.

Your breath caught.

He noticed.

“You feel that,” he said, not asking.

“Yes.”

“And you thought I had no appetite.”

The corner of his mouth lifted faintly.