=^mreow^=

Your footsteps were faint as you walked gracefully through one of the stone hallways in Ashford Castle; the torchlights flickered across the stone-carved walls and across your face, illuminating your purple eyes even more. The hemline of your robe brushed against your ankles with every step you took closer to his room. Closer to him. 

A satisfied feeling spreads across your body when you see your sworn shield standing outside the door, meaning he had succeeded in the command you had given him. He never did like to make his princess angry. One of his hands was resting on the pommel of his sword, the torchlight flickering across his handsome face. The corner of your lips almost twitches up into a smirk when you notice the way his posture immediately straightens up when he notices your presence.  

“Princess.” He bowed his head deeply in respect as you stopped in front of him. His eyes had no shame as he admired your form; it's not like you minded it anyway. You loved the attention. You were used to his wandering eyes and his touch. Ser Roland Crakehall had been your sworn shield for years; he knew some of your darkest secrets—the ones you allowed him to know at least. 

The two of you shared dark secrets of your own. 

“Be easy on him, princess. He won't survive any more of your cruelty." Ser Roland gave you that charming smirk, his tone teasing as he stepped to the side and quietly opened the large wood door to the prince’s private chambers. His eyes slowly raked up and down your body, a look you were all too familiar with in his eyes. 

Your eyes sparkled with mischief, looking up at him through your eyelashes as you brushed past him and stepped into the doorway, looking back at him over your shoulder. Your tone was dangerously soft but filled with seduction as you batted your eyelashes coyly at him, “Maybe that’s what I desire.” 

You drew your eyes away from your sworn shield as he quietly closed the door behind you, your eyes taking in the room. It was smaller than the one you were given, of course, Lord Ashford wouldn’t dare to insult the princess like that. The scent of the herbal healing medicines and the faint smell of blood lingered, mingling with the smoky scent from the lit fireplace. 

The chambers were faintly lit by the flickers of the few candles in the wall holders, along with the moonlight. The contrast of the warm ambers danced with the cool blue hues of the night, creating a chiaroscuro ambiance. 

Your eyes moved from the fireplace, following the glow of the moonlight to the large bed in the middle of the room, when you heard the sound of the furs rustling, accompanied by a weak groan. Your eyes found his pathetic figure in the dimly lit room. You took a few steps deeper into the room, your sharp and piercing eyes not leaving his still form. 

“He won’t stop asking for you.” 

Those words were indelibly etched in your mind over the past couple of days following the pathetic excuse of a trial of seven. Aerion was pathetic—letting everyone see how desperate he was, having the servants see him in such a way. Maybe if you were a better person, you might have felt a little sympathy for the servants who had to go back to Aerion, facing his wrath when he noticed you were nowhere in sight. 

But you weren’t, and you were tired of their constant pestering. 

Even that useless maester dared to stop you in one of the hallways, spewing some nonsense about how it could do some good for the injured prince if you went to see him, you stopped listening to the cunt when he said something about uplifting Aerion’s spirits. 

From the servants to the maester, pestering you—you were utterly displeased. 

You honestly couldn’t care less about the state Aerion was in and had no desire to see him—In your eyes, he deserved everything that had happened to him; he deserved worse. He embarrassed them all. It was amusing that Aerion had the gall to make a farce about Daeron having others clean up his messes, but then have 6 others fight his battles for him, instead of facing the hedge knight himself—but then your uncle came to you. 

“Please, sweet girl, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think I’d help.”

It was unnatural to see your stern uncle in such a way when he had come to see you late in the night. You could see it in his posture that he hadn’t come for you to kiss all over his cuts and bruises; he wasn't searching for that addictive high and peace he always got while in your presence. He was silent as he poured him a goblet of wine, his footsteps heavy and slow as he limped over to the bed. A heavy grunt left his lips as he sat on the edge. 

You had quietly pushed the thick blankets off of you, the bed creaking as you crawled over to where Maekar sat. The hem of your short nightgown raised to the top of your thighs as you shifted to sit up on your knees. You were careful as you hugged your tense uncle from behind, placing the softest kisses to where his neck and shoulder met. When he uttered those words, your jaw clenched, you knew you couldn’t say no to Maekar…not him…not when he was like this. 

That was the night before, and you were just now coming to see the hurt prince. You wanted to make him suffer more; he was never one for patience. The more desperate he was, the better it was to toy with him. And Gods did you love to toy with him. He was good at taking it, a rare compliment from you in your own sick way. 

“I asked for you...days ago—“ Aerion managed to speak through clenched teeth, every word costing him. He bit off a groan, cutting himself off with a pained cough as he slowly turned his head to find you, his eyesight blurry, but he could see your glorious figure moving closer to him. 

He let out a sharp exhale before he continued in a strained voice, “And you come now?” 

Your hands gathered the fabric of your robe and nightgown at your hips as your steps paused before the rug, stepping out of your slippers and onto the hand-woven rug. You clicked your tongue in disapproval, clearly irritated by his words. “If you truly wanted to see me, you would have gotten up and found me yourself.” 

You took a few more steps closer to the bed, scrunching your nose up at the ghastly sight of the cuts and bruises decorating his skin, the more serious ones covered by bandages. The blanket was pulled up to his waist, his skin covered in moonlight kisses. 

You shook your head mockingly, stopping your lips from twitching into a smirk as you leaned against the wooden bedpost. Your eyes raked over him slowly, a dramatic sigh leaving your lips as you continued, “But of course you had to get others to do it for you.” 

”You didn't want me enough, is that it?” You accused him with a breathy whisper, your lips twisting into a faux pitiful pout. Your fingers slowly unbutton the top buttons of your robe to expose more skin as the words left your lips. You knew he would fall right into your palms after a little emotional guilt-tripping and skin showing. 

It was pathetic how easy he was, and you loved it. 

Aerion’s breath hitched, and his fingers weakly gripped the sheets, wishing his hands were gripping your hips instead. His mouth watered at the sight. He begged himself to move, to touch you and show you how much he truly wanted you, but he couldn’t, and you knew that. He grunted with a hint of a whine, “Stop.” 

“Stop undressing? I thought you liked it when I’m all bare for you?” You taunted him with a tilt of your head, giving him a sultry view of the top of your chest and your neck—that dangerous pout still on your lips. You loved to use his own words against him, showing him how pathetic he truly is. 

A pathetic whimper slipped past Aerion's lips, “Please….” 

You swallowed the insults you wished to belittle him with, but remembering your uncle's defeated face caused you to stop. You let the robe slowly fall from your body and fall to a pile on the floor by your feet, showing your white—nearly sheer lace nightdress. Your hair was natural down your back in waves, the moonlight kissing along your skin. You looked enchanting under the moon and candlelight, Aerion’s breath hitching at the sight. 

You hitched up your nightdress as you climbed up on the bed, the bed creaking from the movement. Your eyes never left his as you slowly crawled across the bed and closer to him on your hands and knees. He felt his mouth water at the sight of your chest, the way your tits pressed against the fabric so perfectly from the angle. 

You noticed where his eyes fell, you purred tauntingly sweet, "Isn't this what you wanted? To see me?” 

You stopped at his side, your hair falling down your back as you perched up on your side, holding yourself up with your elbow. Aerion’s brain instinctively told himself to move closer to you, but the strain on his body forced him to stay still. For the tiniest moment, you wondered what was wrong with you when you felt no sympathy at the sight of his injuries so up close. 

You didn't feel sympathy, but you sure knew how to fake it. 

“I don’t smell milk of the poppy,” you mused airily, just now noticing the lack of that nauseating smell of the thick white liquid in the room. Your free hand lifted, the tips of your fingers were feather-light as you slowly moved them up his thigh and lower abdomen. 

His mouth dropped in want from the feeling of your delicate touch, something he’s never felt and something he didn't know he desired so much until he felt it in that moment. He didn't deserve the softness you scarcely showed. Every detail from your previous moment together and the cruel words you had spoken had played over and over in his head as he lay there for days. It was a beautiful nightmare that he couldn’t escape. 

He didn't want to escape it. 

“I wished to be myself when you came,” he whispered breathlessly as he tilted his head to look up at you better. You noticed the way his chest rose and fell faster, the corners of your lips just begging to twitch up into a smirk at the sight of him already so overwhelmed. He had been fully enthralled with you for as long as he could remember. 

You felt disgust at the feeling of your heart fluttering from the pure devotion Aerion was once showing you again. Your fingertips were teasingly grazing against his sensitive nipples as you moved your fingers closer to his collarbone. Fluttering your eyelashes charmingly, you cooed breathlessly, “How devoted of you.” 

“It was sweet of you,” You started as you broke the several beats of silence that filled the room, along with the faint sound of the fire crackling. The words you had murmured tasted bitter leaving your lips, but you knew it was necessary…your uncle better get you the prettiest dress or jewels as a reward for this. 

You’d prefer his cock to a dress and jewels…and he knew that. 

“You coming to me—wanting me, in moments you thought were your last,” you purred, your voice soft with honeyed satisfaction as you looked down at him through your eyelashes with your riveting gaze. Your fingers continued their journey across his chest, dancing around the bruises and cuts. Sweet wouldn’t have been the word you would choose if you were being honest; you hated how a small part of you found it desirable. 

An unfamiliar warmth spreads across his chest as your words sink in, stabbing him right in the heart. His eyes filled with unshed tears as he felt you place your hand over his heart. The gesture was so tender and so out of your character that it made his heart race. All he ever wanted was for you to feel that same desire, that same yearning he had for you, for him. 

You’ve always been the same, even as a young girl. You’ve always had everyone wrapped around your finger, had everyone eating out of the palm of your hand. He wasn’t blind to it; he knew you liked everyone’s attention, he just wanted to be the only one you loved. 

He was delusional enough to believe he would get it, as long as he was good for you…as long as he showed you pure devotion.  

A mixture of a whimper and a whine left Aerion’s lips as you removed your hand from his chest, his eyes never leaving your hand. Your touch was light, almost teasing, as you slowly traced down the curve of your shoulder and down to the line of your collarbone, your eyes never leaving his. 

“Y-you do?” He stammered in disbelief, his weak but proud tone trailing off into silence as he got lost in following your hand. The tension in his body slowly disappeared, and it was replaced by want and desire as he watched your hand lower. The tips of your fingers moved down to the swell of your breasts. 

His mouth watered as he watched your nipples press against your nightdress as they hardened. You wanted to roll your eyes at how desperate he sounded for your approval, but you kept that faux look of adoration on your face as you hummed “Mhm.” 

“I thought I’d give you a reward for your valiant actions,” you whispered in that sweet tone you had mastered over the many years. He watched as you sat up on your knees, your hands slowly moved down your stomach and thighs to gather the soft linen hem of your nightgown. 

You slowly pulled up your nightgown, inch by inch, slowly revealing more of your skin. First, it was your plush thighs and then the little sneak peek of your Venus mound between your thighs, the curves of your body, the soft skin of your stomach he’d love to trail wet kisses down. 

You paused for a torturous moment, taking notice how Aerion’s breathing paused with you as the hemline paused just perfectly so he could see the undersides of your breasts. You didn't wait any longer before you pulled the nightgown over your head, your hair strands tickling your back. Aerion’s eyes didn't linger long on your breasts before his eyes fell to your thighs as you slowly spread them, giving him a look at what he’s always wanted. 

You tilted your head to the side as one of your hands slowly moved down your stomach, stopping right above where he wanted to touch the most. You purred in that seductive tone you did so well, “Give you a real taste of what you desire.” 

Aerion’s chin jutted weakly as he tried to nod; his arm brushed against the blankets as he moved his hand towards you, not being able to lift his arm. His fingers gently brushed against the soft skin of your knee, his tongue parted his lips as he slowly licked them, faintly tasting the metallic blood from his cut. He wished to touch you more, but the lack of your permission had him stop. 

He begged with a breathless whine, “Please…” 

You raised your eyebrow as you repeated his words as if you were testing him, “Please?” 

“Please, princess,” he was quick to correct himself with wide eyes. He didn't wish to upset you…not when he was so close. You could see the panic in his eyes, cute. 

“Since you asked so nicely,” you cooed as you batted your eyelashes down at him, not wasting any more time to give him what he wanted. The faster this was over, the faster you could find your way to Maekar’s bed. 

Aerion’s eyes filled with desire, never leaving your body as you crawled up to his face, the bed creaking from the actions. He tried to ignore how natural the movements came to you, not wanting to think about how you’ve done this many times before with others. 

One of your hands gripped the carved dark wood headboard as you adjusted your position. Your wet pussy hovering inches over his desperate tongue. You tucked your bottom lip between your teeth as you looked down at him, holding back the gasp you wanted to let out at the feeling of his hot breath ghosting over your sensitive skin. 

Even with the cuts and bruises decorating his face, Aerion looked undoubtedly ethereal between your thighs. His eyes filled with pure longing, a consuming desire to feast on you. 

“Thank you.” A weak, wistful sigh left his lips as you finally lowered yourself to his mouth, his tone showing how pleased and relieved he was for not being denied your taste any longer. His tongue slipped through his parted lips, Aerion’s eyes rolling back as his tongue delved into your folds, your wetness coating his tongue and lips. 

He moaned lewdly against you in pure bliss, the vibrations sending waves of pleasure through your body. He licked and sucked eagerly at you with a desperate and insatiable hunger, savoring your taste because he didn’t know the next time he would be blessed with it.

“Mmph, just like that,” you gasped softly, biting your lip to hold back any louder noises. You didn't wish to praise him too much and have his ego get any bigger. But it was too late, as soon as he heard those sweet noises leaving your lips, it lit a fire in his chest. The praise went straight to his cock, making it twitch under the loose breeches. 

The sound of your moans and the taste of you on his tongue was driving him wild, making him forget all of his injuries and the throbbing pain he felt all through his body as he lifted his hands to grip the plush of your thighs and hold you down on his face. Your breath hitches, a loud moan catching in the back of your throat as his tongue presses into you harder. 

He held you in place as he sucked on your clit with hard sucks, flicking his tongue back and forth over your sensitive pearl rabidly. The wet sounds of him feasting on you, the muffled sounds of pleasure coming from him, and your enchanting moans filled the chambers. Your sworn shield smirked at the faint sounds of your pleasure through the wood door, standing up straighter and squeezing the hilt of his sword harder.  

“Oh, Kessa—tolī jaelan!” You moaned louder in your mother language, feeling his teeth graze against your sensitive flesh, his tongue and lips ached, but he had no care for it. The sounds of his mouth on you and the moans he was letting out were completely indecent and utterly delightful. You start to move your lips in slow circles, grinding yourself against his mouth with a desperate hunger. (Oh yes—I want more!) 

Neither of you was worried about crushing him; he would be honored to die between your soft thighs. It was a death he would happily welcome with open arms and an even more open mouth. His grip on your thighs was bruising; he ate you like a man possessed—as if you were his last meal. 

“Say it.” Your breath catches in your throat as you command him with a low moan, fluttering your eyes open to look down at him. Your half-lidded eyes locked eyes with his glazed pleading eyes, still so needy that he was begging for more. You smirked and pressed yourself more down onto his mouth. You seductively crooned as you finished your command, “Tell me how good I taste.” 

His violet eyes glisten up at you, filled with desperation and devotion as your mound presses harder against his eager mouth. He lets out a desperate, muffled whine against you, the vibrations nearly having you bucking against his bruised face. You bring your hand down, your fingers tangled into his hair. 

”I can’t hear you,” you taunted him with a cruel smile as you gripped onto his silver strands and pulled him away from your cunt. A pained gasp left his lips, and a whine followed closely after at the feeling of you tugging at his hair. His mouth instinctively tried to move back to your cunt, but you just tug harder, your heart fluttering at the sound of his pained whine. 

“Mmmph…divine—you taste divine,” He moaned pathetically, his tongue darting out to lock his lips, desperately trying to savor every last drop of your taste. His hands itched on your thighs; he used all the power he had to stop himself from pulling you back down on his mouth. He could feel it, the way your thighs trembled; you had been close. 

He needed to feel you come apart on his tongue. 

Your grip on his hair loosens as you pull him back towards your burning heat, right where he wanted to be. The moment your grip slackened, he was surging forward with a desperate, grateful moan. His mouth latched onto you with an insatiable hunger, his tongue delving back deep inside you, eager to bring you to the peak you deserved. 

His tongue slides between your lips, finding your clit with a happy moan, circling it in wet, worshipful strokes that make your thighs tremble. The headboard creaked as you gripped it tight, your hips bucking against his mouth with little care for him, grinding yourself harder into his ruined but beautiful face. 

Your thighs trembled and quivered around his face, your walls clenching around his tongue as his nose pressed into your clit. One of your hands stayed in his hair while the other kneaded your breast, your fingers rolling and twisting your nipple. You tried to hold in your moans, but the closer you got, the less you cared. Let his ego get better, let him become even more desperate and devoted to you. 

You would give him this. 

“F-fuck—!” You threw your head back as you let out a loud moan that would play over and over in his head for years, finally giving into the pleasure that had been building inside you as he feasted on you, cumming hard on his tongue. He moans loudly as your nectar floods his mouth, the vibrations extending your orgasm, a bigger wave of pleasure washing over your body. 

Aerion loses himself completely as he greedily drinks and laps at your convulsing cunt, desperate to catch every drop of your sweet nectar. His eyes rolling back with a choked-out moan against you as his own hips buck involuntarily against the air between his legs, the hot burst of pleasure he felt was accompanied by the sharp pain coursing through his body. 

Making his release even better. 

You pushed yourself back up, gripping the wood headboard with two hands as you hovered over his mouth with shaky thighs, his hands on your thighs falling to the bed limply. You smiled down at the ruined sight of Aerion, a small cry leaving his lips as he felt you pull away, as if he wasn't done with you. You found it cute, he couldn’t even breathe properly—his whole body trembling, and yet he still wanted to feast on you. 

Your chest rises and falls as you catch your breath. You reach down and grip Aerion's chin roughly. All that faux kindness was long gone in your eyes as you looked into his own watery eyes, tears rolling down his face, mixing with your nectar. You gripped his face harder, a pained gasp leaving his bloodied lips—the cut on his lip opened from his vigorous feasting. 

You leaned down, your eyes filled with such cruelness it nearly took his breath away. Those pathetic tears kept rolling down his face, his chest rising and falling faster as he felt a sense of panic go through him. What did he do wrong? He intently begged you to give him another chance; he could do better, he swore it. 

The sound of your cruel, sharp hiss breaks the silence of the chambers. 

“Next time, come get me yourself.” 

┊࿐ ❛❛ continue on to my…. 𝙖𝙪 𝙢𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩 & 𝙢𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙢𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩 ❜❜

Ი𐑼 guys guys I knowww i’m so sorry for how long this took to get out , I struggled with trying to keep the readers personality just like how it was in the first part but I’m excited with how to turned out !! please tell me all your thoughts it really motivates me to keep writing !! reblogs and comments are my best friend <3

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He kisses your nape. Warm, reverent. Then again, lower, where your neck meets the curve of your shoulder, lingering, his lips parting against your skin like he means to leave something there.

His arm tightens until there's no space left between you at all. His knees fit into the hollows behind yours. He's wound so tight you can feel it even in the way Valarr holds you, a fine tremor running through him.

You don't say anything.

You let him have it. Let him hold you and breathe you in and press those quiet kisses into your skin. Because you understand, in the wordless animal way you understand most things about Valarr, that he needs this more than he needs you awake.

He needs to arrive. To come home in his body, not merely on his calendar. So you keep your breathing even and your eyes shut. You let him pour six days of want into the back of your neck in the dark.

His breathing slows. The tremor fades little by little. The last of the week leaves him in one long exhale, and somewhere in the warm dark before you both go under, his lips move against your nape one final time.

"My love," he whispers, like a man setting down something he'd been afraid to lose.

You sleep with his arm a dead weight across your waist and his mouth still buried in your hair.

You wake, hours later, before Valarr does.

The light is grey, the first thin wash of it through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the apartment quiet around you.

You've turned in the night. You're facing him now, the duvet pooled around your waist. Valarr sleeps on his back with one arm flung up across the pillows and the other still curled, even unconscious, toward the warm dent where you'd been.

You look at him.

You allow yourself this, in the rare grey hours when he doesn't know you're doing it: the luxury of looking at Valarr Targaryen without performance, without his mismatched eyes on you cataloguing every flicker of your reaction, without the game the two of you are always, on some level, playing.

You let your gaze move over him the way his moves over you when he thinks you aren't watching.

He's beautiful. An almost insulting quantity of it for one man to carry, the kind that made you think, the first time you watched him cross a room toward you, oh, that face is going to be a problem.

The dark hair ruined against the white pillow, falling across his forehead. The white streak at his temple that you know runs coarser to the touch than the rest of the floppy strands. The long sweep of his dark lashes. The pink mouth gone soft in sleep.

It is, perhaps, the most dangerous thing about Valarr, for what comes out of it.

Next comes the dips and lines of his trained, maintained body. Every inch of it claimed and tasted by you.

But this morning there's something else, too.

He didn't shave in Essos. Hasn't shaved, you'd guess, in four days (overrun, he'd said on FaceTime, drowning, back to back, I'll call again when I surface, love) and he never surfaced, never sent the usual photographs. The week swallowed him whole.

So the lower half of his face has darkened. A heavy shadow of stubble crowds along his jaw, his chin, above the bow of his lip, the clean architecture of him roughened and obscured, the boyish gloss sanded clean off.

It changes Valarr completely.

The golden dragon is gone.

The polished, attentive boy who brings you tea with honey and in his place is a dark jawline, a harder set of hollows beneath the cheekbones. A face with weight and shadow in it. The other Valarr. The silky dark one who slips loose when you fist your hands in his hair, when you growl low in your throat, when you push your fingers into his mouth and watch the brown eye go black. When you ask him to fuck you so hard you can't walk the next day.

The one you've spent three years coaxing into the light, luring up out of deep water inch by inch, nurturing the edge of him your father once glimpsed under all that shine and called the dragon, deep beneath. The one you love no less than the golden one. Perhaps more, in some senses, because he's the one Valarr lets no one else in the world see.

He looks, asleep with four days of stubble in the grey light, like the man who lives underneath the man.

You want to touch it.

So you do. You lift your hand and lay your palm flat against the side of Valarr's jaw, against the rough dark grain of him, and the texture catches and drags at your skin, coarse and entirely new under your fingers.

His eyes flutter open.

By degrees, unfocused at first, the blue one catching the light first. Then they find your face and sharpen. Valarr takes in your expression, whatever it is, whatever you didn't have the warning to school it into, and a deep, knowing pleasure unfurls across his features.

"Good morning, my love," he says, his voice wrecked from sleep, dropped half an octave and rough at every edge. "You're staring."

"I am."

"You like it." His mouth curves into something that isn't quite the golden boy's smile. He turns his face into your palm, drags the stubble across it deliberately, and watches you feel it. Takes in the small, involuntary thing your eyes do. "Tell me you like it."

You don't answer right away. You trace your thumb along the dark line of his jaw, learning the rasp of it. Valarr's eyes hood, his attention sharpening on you with the lazy, predatory patience that belongs to the other one.

"Don't shave," you tell him.

He laughs, low and delighted, the sound rumbling up out of his chest. "No?"

"No." You drag your thumb across his lower lip, feeling the place where smooth gives way to rough. "I want you like this."

"Like this," he repeats, tasting it. He catches your wrist, and turns his head to press his mouth to the heel of your hand. The stubble scrapes, his eyes never leaving yours. "Tell me what this is, then. Be specific. What is it you want, sweet girl?"

"You know what it is."

"I want to hear you say it out loud."

You hold his gaze. Neither of you blinks; you've never been the one to blink first, and he's learned not to expect it. "It's the other one," you say evenly. "The one you keep underneath. He's closer to the surface like this. I can see him from here."

An emotion moves through Valarr's face at that. The pleasure goes darker, banked-coal warm, the brown eye dropping a full shade, and his grip on your wrist tightens by a fraction that says he heard exactly what you meant.

"Then come and get him," he says huskily, and it isn't a request.

"I'm right here."

"Not close enough, my love. Nowhere near."

He's already drawing you in, his arm sliding around the small of your back, gathering you across the short distance until you're flush against the bare warm length of him under the duvet, every inch against every inch.

"Six days. Do you have the faintest idea what six days does to me?" Not a question. Valarr's mouth is already moving. Your temple, your cheekbone, the corner of your jaw, leaving that rough new abrasion wherever it lands. "I needed you in every room I walked into. Every meeting. Every dinner. I'd be mid-sentence, closing the deal I flew out there to close, and all I could think was your hands. The sound you make when I first—"

You kiss him quiet.

Valarr kisses you back like a man surfacing from underwater. Nothing careful in it, nothing of the I won't presume he gave you in year one. Just open and immediate and starving, his hand coming up to cradle the back of your skull and hold you exactly where he wants you.

And the stubble burns. It scrapes your mouth, your chin, the soft skin around your lips, raw and hot, and Valarr does it on purpose. You feel the intent in it. Feel him angle his jaw to grind the rough of it across your cheek, watching for your reaction even with his eyes half-shut and his mouth fused to yours. When you moan into the kiss, when the sting of him drags a low, helpless sound up out of your chest, you feel Valarr's mouth curve against yours in dark satisfaction.

"There it is," he murmurs. "I've missed that sound. I've been starving for it, sweet girl."

He does it again. Harder. Drags his jaw down the line of your neck, the burn blooming heat across your skin in a spreading wash, and you tip your head back and bare your throat to him and let him, your fingers driving up into his hair.

The sound Valarr makes against your throat is nothing like the boyish, contented murmurs you usually coax out of him in the half-dark. It's lower than that. It has teeth in it. It belongs to the other one.

"Missed your skin," he breathes into the hollow of your throat, mouthing at the pulse. "Missed the heat of you, my love. Missed every noise I can pull out of you once I stop being polite." His mouth travels down, the rasp of his jaw scoring a hot path to your collarbone and you arch into the sensation with a sigh. "I'm not doing this quickly. I've thought about it for a week. I've earned the long version."

"Val—"

"Six days," he says against your sternum, and keeps moving down, peeling off your linen sleeping shirt.

Valarr kisses the soft swell of each breast, dragging his rough jaw against the tender underside until you arch off the sheets and gasp. He works lower, open-mouthed and wet down the curve of your ribs, the trembling plane of your stomach.

He's leaving that scrape everywhere he's been so your whole body lights like a struck match, nerve by nerve. Valarr's hands settle on your hips and spread wide, thumbs hooking into the points of bone. He kisses one, then the other. Then rubs his stubbled jaw against the soft inner skin of each thigh, back and forth, watching your face the entire time. Until you're squirming under the weight of his hands, slick and aching, your breath frayed into ragged uneven pulls.

Then he settles between your legs and lifts those shadowed eyes to your face.

"Hands off the sheets," he say, low, certain, your golden Valarr momentarily away. He takes your wrists and sets your hands in his hair himself, deliberate, then flattens his palms over your hips and pins you to the mattress. "Hold on to me instead, sweet girl. I want to feel it when you come apart for me."

The first stroke of Valarr's tongue tears a sound out of him that's worse than yours.

A deep, broken, drowning groan against your core. The noise of a man tasting the only thing he's wanted for a week and finally being allowed to have it. He moans into you. He keeps moaning into you. The flat of his tongue, then the point of it, slipping between your folds, relearning you as though he's been kept from this for years and not days.

He's drunk on it, you can feel him going under, the careful man dismantled by the first taste of you, leaving only this: a starving creature with his face buried between your thighs, breathing you in like he can't remember how to do it any other way.

And he uses the stubble. The calculated contrast of his hot, soft mouth and the raw burn of his unshaven jaw against the most sensitive skin of your inner thighs. He sucks on the nub, pressing his cheek against the crease of you, pleasure and sting braiding into something so acute you cry out and your fists clench in his hair.

He won't let your hips move. Every time you try to chase more friction, Valarr presses you flat down, holding you precisely where he wants you, making you take it at the pace he's decided on. His eyes stay on your face through all of it: fevered, drowned-dark, drinking down every helpless thing it does.

"Valarr—"

He hums against you, low and ragged, the vibration bowing your spine off the bed. "I know," he slurs, kissing the swollen folds gently. He sounds raspy, half-pained "I know, sweet girl. God, I know. Let me—just let me have you. I need you."

And then he goes deeper into you. You feel him slip the last of his composure like a coat dropped to the floor.

Whatever was left of the boy is gone; what surfaces is the dark thing he keeps buried, the worshipful animal at the bottom of him, and it doesn't kiss you so much as it adores you.

He noses against you, dragging his open mouth through you bottom to top. Valarr's tongue twists, slower now, then ravenous again, no rhythm any more, only hunger. There's nothing elegant about it now. It's wet, his tongue working you furiously, your arousal dripping into his awaiting mouth.

Valarr keeps making sounds against you, low and broken, sounds that aren't meant for you to hear, the unguarded noises of a man undone by what he's tasting.

"My love," he breathes against you, reverent, dazed. "The taste of you... I've been parched—"

And that's when you feel it: Valarr starting to rut down into the mattress beneath him, helpless, instinctive, grinding the aching length of himself against the sheets because the want has overrun him entirely.

Because eating you out has reduced him to something primal and shaking. He doesn't seem to know he's doing it. His hips move on their own, a slow, shameless grind he isn't aware of. His fingers dig harder into the flesh of your hips, and his whole body has gone fevered and greedy for more. Lost in the taste of you with four days of stubble searing your thighs and both pupils blown to black.

Valarr drags his mouth back just far enough to speak, chin slick, lips swollen like your cunt, eyes barely focused. "More. Give me more. Pull—pull my hair—please, I need to feel it—"

You fist both hands in his dark hair and you yank. Hard enough to sting.

Valarr groans—wrecked, grateful, half-feral, the sound vibrating straight through you and making you clench—and the pull snaps something loose at the core of him.

He drags you back against his mouth and goes after you with a renewed, ravenous greed, his jaw working, the stubble searing. Valarr's tongue turns relentless and exact, and the edge comes rushing up faster than you can brace for.

You tighten your fists until the dark strands strain through your fingers, and you arch off the bed. Your insides clench, coiling, and he takes you over the edge with his hands pinning you down and his mouth never once relenting.

You come apart with his name torn out of your throat and the rough burn of him branding the inside of your thighs, your whole body drawn taut as wire and then breaking. Valarr makes a sound against you that is purely starving, a deep desperate groan as the first wave of you hits his tongue, and he laps at you, parched, greedy, refusing to miss a single drop.

He licks you through it like a man drinking after days in a desert. His tongue working slow and devout against the slick of you, gathering every shudder, every pulse, every spill, drinking down every last thing your body gives him. He doesn't gentle, not really. Valarr worships, drunk and patient in his devotion. Kissing where he's been licking, licking where he's been kissing, refusing to let go of you until you're trembling and oversensitive, whispering his name and he's certain he's had all of it.

Only then does his mouth soften, turning gentle, pressing one final lingering kiss to the trembling inside of your thigh.

You lie there undone, your limbs still trembling, your hands still loosely tangled in his ruined hair, your chest heaving.

"Val," you whisper, when you find your voice.

He crawls back up the length of your body, and there's something dark and unhurried in the way he does it. Almost predatory. His mouth finds yours and you kiss him deeply, holding his face to you. A wet kiss, sloppy, finesse abandoned, you tasting yourself on his tongue, the stubble blazing against your already-tender lips, and neither of you cares in the slightest.

"You're going to be raw," Valarr murmurs against your mouth, sounding obscenely pleased about it. "Every time you feel it today you'll think of me, sweet girl."

"That's the idea," you tell him, and he makes a low sound and kisses you harder.

He's hot and solid above you. He's also, you note with a slow curl of satisfaction, still achingly hard. His length presses to the crease of your hip, untouched, ignored, leaking against your skin.

You reach down between your bodies and close your hand around him.

Valarr hisses sharply through his teeth, hips jerking into your grip.

You hum, low and pleased, and kiss the corner of his mouth tenderly, working him in a firm, unhurried stroke, feeling him pulse hot and heavy in your fist. "You missed me," you say against the rough line of his jaw. Not a question.

"Yes." Valarr's smooth voice is destroyed. He says it the way the dark one says everything—quiet, certain, more dark silk drawn taut than golden charm. "More than anything. More than is reasonable. More than I—" His breath catches and breaks as your hand twists at the wet head of him. "It was a sickness. The whole week. I'd have burned the deal to the ground to come home a day sooner if I could've found good enough excuse. I lay in that hotel every night and reached for you but you weren't there and it was... unbearable, love. You unmade me from an ocean away."

The admission lands somewhere low and bright in your chest, and you bare your teeth at it, pleased to your bones. You roll him.

You roll Valarr onto his back beneath you in one clean motion, legs wrapped around him, and Valarr blinks up at you, startled. For half a heartbeat the golden boy surfaces, the reflexive courtesy, the you've only just—

"Love," he starts, his hand finding your hips. "You don't have to, you just came apart, you—"

"Quiet."

You set your mouth to his throat.

You kiss down the strong column of his neck, dragging your lips over the jumping pulse, and Valarr's protest dies unspoken in his chest. You press your mouth to the curve of his jaw, the hollow under his ear, the spot beneath his jaw that never fails to undo him.

"Val," you say against his throat, and you let him hear the raw need in your voice. "I missed you too. Every night. I kept turning over to feel for you and you weren't there. The bed was wrong and the room was wrong and I was wrong without you." You kiss the corner of his jaw. "Do you understand me? I missed you the entire week."

Valarr groans deep in his chest, a wrecked thing, and his arms come up around you immediately. Both of them, urgent, gathering you in.

He's trying to pull you flush against him, trying to fold you in close, his hand splaying wide between your shoulder blades like he means to crush you to his chest and hold you there. The dark Valarr has gone vulnerable in an instant. The hunger has folded itself around something softer.

He wants to bury his face in your hair and breathe you in and stay like that, just hold you, just have you against him, the way he held you when he first slid into bed last night.

You feel him try to pull you up.

You stop him.

You set your palm flat to his sternum and you press him back to the mattress, kissing his pulse one more time. Then you start moving down.

"Sweet girl—" his voice cracks. "Love, come up—come back up here, let me hold you, that's all I want, just let me hold you—"

"Not yet."

"I don't need anything else, I swear, I only want you in my arms—"

"I know, pretty thing." You kiss the centre of his chest. "And you'll have that. After."

You move lower. The sharp line of his collarbone, then lower still, your mouth finding one flat, pink nipple and closing over it. His hand fists in your hair, no longer pushing you off, holding you to him now, his breath gone short and uneven.

"Sweet girl, please, I'm fine, I don't need—"

"Val." You lift your head just enough to meet his eyes. The blue one is glassy. The brown one is gone black. "I want to taste you too. I've been waiting six days. Let me have my turn."

The sound Valarr makes at that is wrecked. His head drops back against the pillow. His hand stays buried in your hair, holding tight.

"Fuck," he breathes at the ceiling. "Yes. Yes... anything. Yes."

You drag your open mouth down the centre of his chest, his stomach, feeling each band of lean muscle leap and tense beneath your lips. The sharp catch of his inhale, the way Valarr's whole body has drawn taut and trembling and waiting under you.

"There he is," you murmur, pleased, against his skin, giving him his own words back. "Closer to the surface now, isn't he?"

A broken sound is your response, his hand tightening in your hair.

You reach the jut of one hip bone and press your lips there. Then the other, kissing each one in turn, letting your teeth graze the bone, and you feel his stomach hollow out on a sharp indrawn breath, his fingers trembling against your scalp.

"Sweet girl," he rasps again, and there's no refusal left anywhere in it.

It's a plea, low and dark, the golden one and the silken one finally collapsed into a single, helpless want.

He kisses your nape. Warm, reverent. Then again, lower, where your neck meets the curve of your shoulder, lingering, his lips parting against your skin like he means to leave something there.

His arm tightens until there's no space left between you at all. His knees fit into the hollows behind yours. He's wound so tight you can feel it even in the way Valarr holds you, a fine tremor running through him.

You don't say anything.

You let him have it. Let him hold you and breathe you in and press those quiet kisses into your skin. Because you understand, in the wordless animal way you understand most things about Valarr, that he needs this more than he needs you awake.

He needs to arrive. To come home in his body, not merely on his calendar. So you keep your breathing even and your eyes shut. You let him pour six days of want into the back of your neck in the dark.

His breathing slows. The tremor fades little by little. The last of the week leaves him in one long exhale, and somewhere in the warm dark before you both go under, his lips move against your nape one final time.

"My love," he whispers, like a man setting down something he'd been afraid to lose.

You sleep with his arm a dead weight across your waist and his mouth still buried in your hair.

You wake, hours later, before Valarr does.

The light is grey, the first thin wash of it through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the apartment quiet around you.

You've turned in the night. You're facing him now, the duvet pooled around your waist. Valarr sleeps on his back with one arm flung up across the pillows and the other still curled, even unconscious, toward the warm dent where you'd been.

You look at him.

You allow yourself this, in the rare grey hours when he doesn't know you're doing it: the luxury of looking at Valarr Targaryen without performance, without his mismatched eyes on you cataloguing every flicker of your reaction, without the game the two of you are always, on some level, playing.

You let your gaze move over him the way his moves over you when he thinks you aren't watching.

He's beautiful. An almost insulting quantity of it for one man to carry, the kind that made you think, the first time you watched him cross a room toward you, oh, that face is going to be a problem.

The dark hair ruined against the white pillow, falling across his forehead. The white streak at his temple that you know runs coarser to the touch than the rest of the floppy strands. The long sweep of his dark lashes. The pink mouth gone soft in sleep.

It is, perhaps, the most dangerous thing about Valarr, for what comes out of it.

Next comes the dips and lines of his trained, maintained body. Every inch of it claimed and tasted by you.

But this morning there's something else, too.

He didn't shave in Essos. Hasn't shaved, you'd guess, in four days (overrun, he'd said on FaceTime, drowning, back to back, I'll call again when I surface, love) and he never surfaced, never sent the usual photographs. The week swallowed him whole.

So the lower half of his face has darkened. A heavy shadow of stubble crowds along his jaw, his chin, above the bow of his lip, the clean architecture of him roughened and obscured, the boyish gloss sanded clean off.

It changes Valarr completely.

The golden dragon is gone.

The polished, attentive boy who brings you tea with honey and in his place is a dark jawline, a harder set of hollows beneath the cheekbones. A face with weight and shadow in it. The other Valarr. The silky dark one who slips loose when you fist your hands in his hair, when you growl low in your throat, when you push your fingers into his mouth and watch the brown eye go black. When you ask him to fuck you so hard you can't walk the next day.

The one you've spent three years coaxing into the light, luring up out of deep water inch by inch, nurturing the edge of him your father once glimpsed under all that shine and called the dragon, deep beneath. The one you love no less than the golden one. Perhaps more, in some senses, because he's the one Valarr lets no one else in the world see.

He looks, asleep with four days of stubble in the grey light, like the man who lives underneath the man.

You want to touch it.

So you do. You lift your hand and lay your palm flat against the side of Valarr's jaw, against the rough dark grain of him, and the texture catches and drags at your skin, coarse and entirely new under your fingers.

His eyes flutter open.

By degrees, unfocused at first, the blue one catching the light first. Then they find your face and sharpen. Valarr takes in your expression, whatever it is, whatever you didn't have the warning to school it into, and a deep, knowing pleasure unfurls across his features.

"Good morning, my love," he says, his voice wrecked from sleep, dropped half an octave and rough at every edge. "You're staring."

"I am."

"You like it." His mouth curves into something that isn't quite the golden boy's smile. He turns his face into your palm, drags the stubble across it deliberately, and watches you feel it. Takes in the small, involuntary thing your eyes do. "Tell me you like it."

You don't answer right away. You trace your thumb along the dark line of his jaw, learning the rasp of it. Valarr's eyes hood, his attention sharpening on you with the lazy, predatory patience that belongs to the other one.

"Don't shave," you tell him.

He laughs, low and delighted, the sound rumbling up out of his chest. "No?"

"No." You drag your thumb across his lower lip, feeling the place where smooth gives way to rough. "I want you like this."

"Like this," he repeats, tasting it. He catches your wrist, and turns his head to press his mouth to the heel of your hand. The stubble scrapes, his eyes never leaving yours. "Tell me what this is, then. Be specific. What is it you want, sweet girl?"

"You know what it is."

"I want to hear you say it out loud."

You hold his gaze. Neither of you blinks; you've never been the one to blink first, and he's learned not to expect it. "It's the other one," you say evenly. "The one you keep underneath. He's closer to the surface like this. I can see him from here."

An emotion moves through Valarr's face at that. The pleasure goes darker, banked-coal warm, the brown eye dropping a full shade, and his grip on your wrist tightens by a fraction that says he heard exactly what you meant.

"Then come and get him," he says huskily, and it isn't a request.

"I'm right here."

"Not close enough, my love. Nowhere near."

He's already drawing you in, his arm sliding around the small of your back, gathering you across the short distance until you're flush against the bare warm length of him under the duvet, every inch against every inch.

"Six days. Do you have the faintest idea what six days does to me?" Not a question. Valarr's mouth is already moving. Your temple, your cheekbone, the corner of your jaw, leaving that rough new abrasion wherever it lands. "I needed you in every room I walked into. Every meeting. Every dinner. I'd be mid-sentence, closing the deal I flew out there to close, and all I could think was your hands. The sound you make when I first—"

You kiss him quiet.

Valarr kisses you back like a man surfacing from underwater. Nothing careful in it, nothing of the I won't presume he gave you in year one. Just open and immediate and starving, his hand coming up to cradle the back of your skull and hold you exactly where he wants you.

And the stubble burns. It scrapes your mouth, your chin, the soft skin around your lips, raw and hot, and Valarr does it on purpose. You feel the intent in it. Feel him angle his jaw to grind the rough of it across your cheek, watching for your reaction even with his eyes half-shut and his mouth fused to yours. When you moan into the kiss, when the sting of him drags a low, helpless sound up out of your chest, you feel Valarr's mouth curve against yours in dark satisfaction.

"There it is," he murmurs. "I've missed that sound. I've been starving for it, sweet girl."

He does it again. Harder. Drags his jaw down the line of your neck, the burn blooming heat across your skin in a spreading wash, and you tip your head back and bare your throat to him and let him, your fingers driving up into his hair.

The sound Valarr makes against your throat is nothing like the boyish, contented murmurs you usually coax out of him in the half-dark. It's lower than that. It has teeth in it. It belongs to the other one.

"Missed your skin," he breathes into the hollow of your throat, mouthing at the pulse. "Missed the heat of you, my love. Missed every noise I can pull out of you once I stop being polite." His mouth travels down, the rasp of his jaw scoring a hot path to your collarbone and you arch into the sensation with a sigh. "I'm not doing this quickly. I've thought about it for a week. I've earned the long version."

"Val—"

"Six days," he says against your sternum, and keeps moving down, peeling off your linen sleeping shirt.

Valarr kisses the soft swell of each breast, dragging his rough jaw against the tender underside until you arch off the sheets and gasp. He works lower, open-mouthed and wet down the curve of your ribs, the trembling plane of your stomach.

He's leaving that scrape everywhere he's been so your whole body lights like a struck match, nerve by nerve. Valarr's hands settle on your hips and spread wide, thumbs hooking into the points of bone. He kisses one, then the other. Then rubs his stubbled jaw against the soft inner skin of each thigh, back and forth, watching your face the entire time. Until you're squirming under the weight of his hands, slick and aching, your breath frayed into ragged uneven pulls.

Then he settles between your legs and lifts those shadowed eyes to your face.

"Hands off the sheets," he say, low, certain, your golden Valarr momentarily away. He takes your wrists and sets your hands in his hair himself, deliberate, then flattens his palms over your hips and pins you to the mattress. "Hold on to me instead, sweet girl. I want to feel it when you come apart for me."

The first stroke of Valarr's tongue tears a sound out of him that's worse than yours.

A deep, broken, drowning groan against your core. The noise of a man tasting the only thing he's wanted for a week and finally being allowed to have it. He moans into you. He keeps moaning into you. The flat of his tongue, then the point of it, slipping between your folds, relearning you as though he's been kept from this for years and not days.

He's drunk on it, you can feel him going under, the careful man dismantled by the first taste of you, leaving only this: a starving creature with his face buried between your thighs, breathing you in like he can't remember how to do it any other way.

And he uses the stubble. The calculated contrast of his hot, soft mouth and the raw burn of his unshaven jaw against the most sensitive skin of your inner thighs. He sucks on the nub, pressing his cheek against the crease of you, pleasure and sting braiding into something so acute you cry out and your fists clench in his hair.

He won't let your hips move. Every time you try to chase more friction, Valarr presses you flat down, holding you precisely where he wants you, making you take it at the pace he's decided on. His eyes stay on your face through all of it: fevered, drowned-dark, drinking down every helpless thing it does.

"Valarr—"

He hums against you, low and ragged, the vibration bowing your spine off the bed. "I know," he slurs, kissing the swollen folds gently. He sounds raspy, half-pained "I know, sweet girl. God, I know. Let me—just let me have you. I need you."

And then he goes deeper into you. You feel him slip the last of his composure like a coat dropped to the floor.

Whatever was left of the boy is gone; what surfaces is the dark thing he keeps buried, the worshipful animal at the bottom of him, and it doesn't kiss you so much as it adores you.

He noses against you, dragging his open mouth through you bottom to top. Valarr's tongue twists, slower now, then ravenous again, no rhythm any more, only hunger. There's nothing elegant about it now. It's wet, his tongue working you furiously, your arousal dripping into his awaiting mouth.

Valarr keeps making sounds against you, low and broken, sounds that aren't meant for you to hear, the unguarded noises of a man undone by what he's tasting.

"My love," he breathes against you, reverent, dazed. "The taste of you... I've been parched—"

And that's when you feel it: Valarr starting to rut down into the mattress beneath him, helpless, instinctive, grinding the aching length of himself against the sheets because the want has overrun him entirely.

Because eating you out has reduced him to something primal and shaking. He doesn't seem to know he's doing it. His hips move on their own, a slow, shameless grind he isn't aware of. His fingers dig harder into the flesh of your hips, and his whole body has gone fevered and greedy for more. Lost in the taste of you with four days of stubble searing your thighs and both pupils blown to black.

Valarr drags his mouth back just far enough to speak, chin slick, lips swollen like your cunt, eyes barely focused. "More. Give me more. Pull—pull my hair—please, I need to feel it—"

You fist both hands in his dark hair and you yank. Hard enough to sting.

Valarr groans—wrecked, grateful, half-feral, the sound vibrating straight through you and making you clench—and the pull snaps something loose at the core of him.

He drags you back against his mouth and goes after you with a renewed, ravenous greed, his jaw working, the stubble searing. Valarr's tongue turns relentless and exact, and the edge comes rushing up faster than you can brace for.

You tighten your fists until the dark strands strain through your fingers, and you arch off the bed. Your insides clench, coiling, and he takes you over the edge with his hands pinning you down and his mouth never once relenting.

You come apart with his name torn out of your throat and the rough burn of him branding the inside of your thighs, your whole body drawn taut as wire and then breaking. Valarr makes a sound against you that is purely starving, a deep desperate groan as the first wave of you hits his tongue, and he laps at you, parched, greedy, refusing to miss a single drop.

He licks you through it like a man drinking after days in a desert. His tongue working slow and devout against the slick of you, gathering every shudder, every pulse, every spill, drinking down every last thing your body gives him. He doesn't gentle, not really. Valarr worships, drunk and patient in his devotion. Kissing where he's been licking, licking where he's been kissing, refusing to let go of you until you're trembling and oversensitive, whispering his name and he's certain he's had all of it.

Only then does his mouth soften, turning gentle, pressing one final lingering kiss to the trembling inside of your thigh.

You lie there undone, your limbs still trembling, your hands still loosely tangled in his ruined hair, your chest heaving.

"Val," you whisper, when you find your voice.

He crawls back up the length of your body, and there's something dark and unhurried in the way he does it. Almost predatory. His mouth finds yours and you kiss him deeply, holding his face to you. A wet kiss, sloppy, finesse abandoned, you tasting yourself on his tongue, the stubble blazing against your already-tender lips, and neither of you cares in the slightest.

"You're going to be raw," Valarr murmurs against your mouth, sounding obscenely pleased about it. "Every time you feel it today you'll think of me, sweet girl."

"That's the idea," you tell him, and he makes a low sound and kisses you harder.

He's hot and solid above you. He's also, you note with a slow curl of satisfaction, still achingly hard. His length presses to the crease of your hip, untouched, ignored, leaking against your skin.

You reach down between your bodies and close your hand around him.

Valarr hisses sharply through his teeth, hips jerking into your grip.

You hum, low and pleased, and kiss the corner of his mouth tenderly, working him in a firm, unhurried stroke, feeling him pulse hot and heavy in your fist. "You missed me," you say against the rough line of his jaw. Not a question.

"Yes." Valarr's smooth voice is destroyed. He says it the way the dark one says everything—quiet, certain, more dark silk drawn taut than golden charm. "More than anything. More than is reasonable. More than I—" His breath catches and breaks as your hand twists at the wet head of him. "It was a sickness. The whole week. I'd have burned the deal to the ground to come home a day sooner if I could've found good enough excuse. I lay in that hotel every night and reached for you but you weren't there and it was... unbearable, love. You unmade me from an ocean away."

The admission lands somewhere low and bright in your chest, and you bare your teeth at it, pleased to your bones. You roll him.

You roll Valarr onto his back beneath you in one clean motion, legs wrapped around him, and Valarr blinks up at you, startled. For half a heartbeat the golden boy surfaces, the reflexive courtesy, the you've only just—

"Love," he starts, his hand finding your hips. "You don't have to, you just came apart, you—"

"Quiet."

You set your mouth to his throat.

You kiss down the strong column of his neck, dragging your lips over the jumping pulse, and Valarr's protest dies unspoken in his chest. You press your mouth to the curve of his jaw, the hollow under his ear, the spot beneath his jaw that never fails to undo him.

"Val," you say against his throat, and you let him hear the raw need in your voice. "I missed you too. Every night. I kept turning over to feel for you and you weren't there. The bed was wrong and the room was wrong and I was wrong without you." You kiss the corner of his jaw. "Do you understand me? I missed you the entire week."

Valarr groans deep in his chest, a wrecked thing, and his arms come up around you immediately. Both of them, urgent, gathering you in.

He's trying to pull you flush against him, trying to fold you in close, his hand splaying wide between your shoulder blades like he means to crush you to his chest and hold you there. The dark Valarr has gone vulnerable in an instant. The hunger has folded itself around something softer.

He wants to bury his face in your hair and breathe you in and stay like that, just hold you, just have you against him, the way he held you when he first slid into bed last night.

You feel him try to pull you up.

You stop him.

You set your palm flat to his sternum and you press him back to the mattress, kissing his pulse one more time. Then you start moving down.

"Sweet girl—" his voice cracks. "Love, come up—come back up here, let me hold you, that's all I want, just let me hold you—"

"Not yet."

"I don't need anything else, I swear, I only want you in my arms—"

"I know, pretty thing." You kiss the centre of his chest. "And you'll have that. After."

You move lower. The sharp line of his collarbone, then lower still, your mouth finding one flat, pink nipple and closing over it. His hand fists in your hair, no longer pushing you off, holding you to him now, his breath gone short and uneven.

"Sweet girl, please, I'm fine, I don't need—"

"Val." You lift your head just enough to meet his eyes. The blue one is glassy. The brown one is gone black. "I want to taste you too. I've been waiting six days. Let me have my turn."

The sound Valarr makes at that is wrecked. His head drops back against the pillow. His hand stays buried in your hair, holding tight.

"Fuck," he breathes at the ceiling. "Yes. Yes... anything. Yes."

You drag your open mouth down the centre of his chest, his stomach, feeling each band of lean muscle leap and tense beneath your lips. The sharp catch of his inhale, the way Valarr's whole body has drawn taut and trembling and waiting under you.

"There he is," you murmur, pleased, against his skin, giving him his own words back. "Closer to the surface now, isn't he?"

A broken sound is your response, his hand tightening in your hair.

You reach the jut of one hip bone and press your lips there. Then the other, kissing each one in turn, letting your teeth graze the bone, and you feel his stomach hollow out on a sharp indrawn breath, his fingers trembling against your scalp.

"Sweet girl," he rasps again, and there's no refusal left anywhere in it.

It's a plea, low and dark, the golden one and the silken one finally collapsed into a single, helpless want.