Hiya

Ormund had been pleased. He spoke none of Lord Godric Ashford or the excitement in the solar. He simply conducted himself as he usually did at such feasts, discussing philosophy and politics with the visiting lords, occasionally asking for your thoughts and praising you to anyone who would listen– commending how wise his ward was, how faithfully you attended the sept. All the while, his hand remained on your thigh beneath the table, squeezing gently as his thumb moved back and forth over the silk. Just as he usually did. 

This should have pleased you. His touch always did. Tonight, though, your mind was muddled with flashes of memories. 

The conversation with Lord Ashford you were not meant to hear. Ormund’s rings cutting into your face as he gripped your chin. The cool sheets of his bed twisted in your fists. His hand at your waist, his voice low as he hushed you and told you to be still. 

The seventh day. 

Following Lady Hightower in the Citadel, your small hand tucked in hers. Playing in the gardens with the Hightower boys. The letter from your queen mother coldly explaining why you could not visit the Red Keep on your sixteenth nameday. The burning pressure. Entering. Stretching. Confessing. 

The seventh day.

Ser Joldwin Mormont and the ashes of his fur-trimmed cloak. Lying across Ormund’s bare chest afterward, listening to the rhythmic beat of his heart. His lips against yours, tasting faintly of wine. Watching one of your siblings’ dragons fly overhead, its giant shadow blackening the earth. 

The seventh day. 

Being held. The knowledge you were never truly wanted. 

The seventh day.

“You are fidgeting.”

Ormund’s voice broke whatever spell your thoughts had cast over you.

You lowered your head. “I am sorry, my lord.”

Ormund hummed. Beneath the table, his hand shifted higher on your thigh, pressing into the soft flesh through the silk of your gown. The feast carried on around you, laughter mingling with the chords of lyres and flutes as they echoed through the Great Hall. No one could see the way their host groped you in plain sight. “Are you thinking of tonight?” 

Yes, you were. And of so much more. “No, my lord.” 

“You appear sad.” He leaned closer, his mouth brushing the shell of your ear, and you shivered. “Have you a reason to be?”

You shook your head quickly. “None, my lord.”

“Good,” he murmured. “Then stop pouting so unbecomingly before our guests and smile.”

You obeyed, because you always did. You arranged your lips into something soft and pleasant, as he liked. Ormund grinned in return and squeezed your thigh once more, hard. “Much better, my dear.”

“Lord Hightower! I do hope we are not intruding, but I simply had to introduce myself properly to your esteemed ward.”

Ormund’s hand stilled upon you, though he had not yet removed it. 

A broad, heavyset man stood before the head table, clad in a fine orange doublet. The wine cup in his hand was filled to the brim, sloshing around as he gestured. Drink had reddened his round, bearded face, and a crooked grin seemed fixed upon it. Behind him stood a tall young man with dark curly hair, fine features, and bright brown eyes. Those eyes were fixed entirely upon you. Something in his look sent warmth rushing into your cheeks.

“Lord Ashford,” Ormund greeted tensely. As the man drew nearer, Ormund briefly brushed one finger beneath his nose, the faintest crease appearing between his brows. “I was under the impression that only your son would attend the harvest feast this season. It is a… surprise to see you here as well.” 

“And miss the finest wine in the Reach?” Lord Ashford chortled, lifting his cup so enthusiastically that a little spilled over the rim and onto the marble floor. Ormund’s eye twitched as he looked at the puddle. “Of course I had to come.”

Lord Robert Ashford. You knew of him, if not the man himself. He was said to be kind, if somewhat silly, with a particular weakness for feasts and fine drink, but there was not one wicked thing about him. Which meant the young man standing behind him must be…

“And this is my son, Godric,” Lord Ashford continued, stepping to the side with a proud flourish to the young man behind him. “Though I understand the two of you require little introduction. He spoke with you earlier about a certain…someone, did he not, Lord Hightower?”

Godric coughed. “Father–”

“Oh, the boy has heard such wonderful things about the princess,” Lord Ashford went on, tipsy enough he was either failing to notice his son’s embarrassment or actively choosing to ignore it. “Her grace, her devotion to the Seven, and of course I would be remiss not to mention her beauty. I fear he has scarcely spoken of anything else since the prospect of betrothal was–”

“Father, please,” Godric interrupted him, a flush creeping above the collar of his doublet. “I am certain the princess has no wish to hear you recite every private conversation we have shared.”

Lord Ashford chuckled and clapped a broad hand against his son’s shoulder. “There is no shame in admiring a fine young lady. Nor, surely, in allowing two young people the opportunity to become better acquainted.”

Ormund’s fingers pressed so deeply into your thigh that you were certain they would leave marks. You did not dare look at him, though you imagined his face had gone terrifyingly blank.

Oblivious to the storm gathering beside you, Godric bowed. “It is an honor to meet you properly, Princess.”

Remembering Ormund’s warning in the solar– and with his hand still gripping you beneath the table– you offered Godric only the smallest inclination of your head before lowering your eyes once more.

“The honor is mine, my lord,” you murmured.

Godric smiled. Ormund, however, did not. 

“Lord Ashford, I am not sure if your son made you aware of the extent of our earlier discussion,” Ormund moved the hand that was on your thigh to the back of your chair. “He made his intentions sufficiently clear. As did I with him.”

Lord Ashford’s crooked smile lowered. “Well, yes…Godric did tell me some of the conversation. But I had hoped that perhaps, upon further reflection–”

“There is nothing upon which to reflect.”

Silence quickly consumed the small gathering at the head table. Ormund smiled urbanely, one hand still gripping the back of your chair. You felt caged. 

“Your admiration for my ward is noted, Lord Ashford,” Ormund said coolly. “You are certainly not the first to admire her, and I doubt you will be the last. But this match will not be considered.”

Humiliation ravaged you like a wildfire. You fixed your gaze on the grain of the table, afraid that if you looked up, the Ashfords would see the tears stinging your eyes. You wished– prayed– that they would go away. 

Ormund sighed and leaned back in his chair. At last, he released your chair and reached for his cup, lifting it with an air of studied levity. “Now then, I would hate to keep you from the wine you traveled so far to enjoy, Lord Ashford.”

“I– well, of course, Lord Hightower,” Robert stammered, plainly attempting to smooth over the moment. He summoned an easy smile, though it came out strained, and bowed low. “Thank you again for your gracious hospitality.” 

Godric’s eyes shifted between you and Ormund before he followed suit. “Lord Hightower. Princess.”

And then, finally, they were gone.

You exhaled shakily, blinking back tears. Ormund had already retrieved the pomander from his breeches and lifted it beneath his nose, breathing deeply. 

“Lord Ashford reeks of cheap wine and horse shit,” he grimaced, keeping the pomander close. “You should thank the Seven that you will not be sent away to live among such people.”

You had smelled neither cheap wine nor horse shit when the Ashfords stood before you. You wanted to tell him so. You wanted to tell him it was cruel to speak of them with such contempt when they had done nothing more than ask for your hand. Instead, you lowered your head. “Yes, my lord.”

Ormund’s eyes narrowed as he studied you over the silver pomander. His gaze moved from the wet shine of your eyes to the stiffness of your pouted lips to your quivering chin. He knew you more than anyone had or would ever know. He could see right through you. You knew it. For a second, it looked as if he was about to say something. 

A steward suddenly appeared at his shoulder. 

“My lord, Lord Uffering requests a private word regarding the grain levies before tomorrow’s council.”

“Lord Uffering can wait,” Ormund replied swiftly, eyes never leaving you. 

The steward shifted uneasily, wringing his hands. “Yes, my lord, but, erm…Lord Orme has joined him in the western gallery…and now they are disputing with each other. Quite loudly, I may add.”

Ormund exhaled hard through his nose. “If you could use your eyes, you would see that I am currently occupied.”

“Yes, my lord. But the matter is drawing attention, and…”

Ormund’s fingers tightened around the pomander before he finally lowered it. “Fine.”

He turned back to you, regarding you with such intensity that the clamor of the feast seemed to ebb around you. “You will remain seated here until I return.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I will not be long.” His hand settled briefly at the nape of your neck, thumb pressing into the divot beneath your ear. “When I come back, we will retire for the evening.”

Your stomach churned. The seventh day.

“Y-yes, my lord,” you whispered.

Ormund held your gaze for another moment, as though searching for the truth only he could uncover. Then he withdrew his hand and rose from the table. You watched him follow the steward toward the western gallery and disappear beneath the archway.

The moment he was out of sight, the stiffness in your bones left you. You slumped in your chair and looked across the crowded Great Hall. The feast continued all around you– lords and ladies mingling, eating, drinking, laughing without a care. Without any knowledge of what these walls truly held.

Why did Ormund restrain you so? Why did he keep you from everyone? Why did he refuse to do the one thing expected of him as your guardian? You were of age. You were a woman in every sense. Would it not serve his interests as your kin to arrange a marriage for you? His sons had gone, and he had been widowed for years. Would it not suit him to be rid of you at last, free to take another wife of his own?

The thought made bile turn in your throat the moment it formed.

Why?

Why did the idea of Ormund with a wife make something sick and vicious twist inside you? Why was any of this happening?

Why was he so cruel? Why did you want him to be?

You understood, at least, his refusal of Aemond. Ormund had told you often enough what such a match meant: brother wed to sister, blood folded endlessly back into itself. Targaryen wickedness in its truest form. He would not permit you to remember that such customs belonged to your heritage as well.

But what of the others? Ser Joldwin, all those years ago, broad and steady and strong. The Martell boy. Every lord and heir who had been dismissed for some fault Ormund alone had deemed unforgivable. Perhaps each of them had shortcomings, that might have been true. But Godric seemed precisely the sort of man Ormund should have wanted for you– young, courteous, well-born, heir to a respectable house.

So what did Ormund want? To keep you as his ward forever? To hold you in his bed one night, kiss your mouth, and tell you how good you were, only to admonish you hours later for whatever sin he had decided lived inside you?

The ceaseless shifting in reality left you dizzy.

“Princess?”

So lost were you in thought that you had not noticed Lord Godric Ashford return to the head table and lower himself into the empty seat beside you.

You startled, and he immediately raised both hands in apology. “Forgive me, Princess. I did not mean to frighten you. I only hoped for a moment to speak with you, if I may?”

Your eyes flitted from Godric to the archway through which Ormund had disappeared. At any moment, he might return and find you speaking to the very man he had forbidden you to entertain. He would punish you, surely. The thought made something low in your belly begin to warm like embers. “Lord Godric, I…I am not certain it is proper for us to be speaking without a chaperone.”

Godric hesitated, glanced out over the crowded Great Hall, then looked back at you with a small, playful smile. “Surely a chaperone of a hundred feast guests would suffice?” 

Ormund would not think so. You bit your lip. You knew precisely what he would have you do. Turn up your nose at Godric and tell him you obeyed your guardian in all things. Then scurry obediently to Ormund and confess what had happened, so he might find some reason to bring about the end of House Ashford. 

But you always did what Ormund wanted. When had you last considered what you wanted?

The answer should have been simple. Godric was young, kind, and handsome. He wished to marry you. Surely this was what any young woman would want: to be admired by a good man and offered a life beyond the walls that had confined her.

Did you want to speak with him? Perhaps.

Or perhaps you only believed you ought to want it.

“I promise you, my lady, I shall do nothing to scandalize your reputation– aside from perhaps subjecting you to a few poor jokes.” Godric placed a hand solemnly over his heart. “I swear it upon my life.”

You could not help but giggle. You could scarcely remember the last time someone had been so light with you. Years ago, perhaps. “I believe you, Lord Godric.”

“Now my father, on the other hand…” Godric glanced towards the table where Lord Robert was engaging in a loud and animated recounting of some story, wine cup spilling with every exaggerated hand movement. Godric sighed. “He seems to be on the precipice of a scandal every time he steps foot out of Ashford. I am certain you could guess that from his earlier…revelations…which I should apologize again for.”

“There is no need to apologize. Your father was very kind.”

“Ah, you are being lenient with him. He can be a fool, but he is also my father, so I suppose that makes me one as well,” Godric chuckled, and his grin widened when you laughed with him. 

For a few moments, the two of you sat together and watched as Lord Robert continued his tale. Then Godric’s expression softened. 

“Did…Lord Hightower tell you anything of our conversation earlier?”

Your smile faltered. You remembered every word, pressed against the boarded door in that forgotten corridor. But you could hardly admit you listened to a conversation never intended for your ears. Or that Ormund refused you any true explanation of what happened. 

You chose your words carefully. “He told me only that you had spoken with him.”

“I see.”

“I do hope he was not unkind to you.”

“No more than might be expected of a man guarding something very precious to him.”

The words flooded you with warmth. Your gaze dropped to your hands, pressed into the sky-blue silk of your gown. The one Ormund chose for you. 

Godric continued, voice genuine. “Lord Hightower seems very protective of you, Princess.”

“He has always been so. Ormund is like a…a father to me.” You felt bile briefly rise in your throat. You swallowed it. “He took me in when I was just a girl. Oldtown is all I have ever known.”

“There is much virtue in that, my lady. A guardian should be concerned for his ward’s safety and reputation. Truly, I would think poorly of him if he were not. But…” He hesitated, glancing toward the western gallery before leaning nearer, his face suddenly gone serious. “You are no longer a child, Princess. And marriage, as you know, is not some minor matter to be settled without your input. A guardian may offer counsel, certainly, but I do not believe any woman should be forced into a marriage she does not desire…or denied one she might.”

You blinked at him, stunned. Ormund spoke of unsuitable bloodlines, weak heirs, vulgar fathers, and men whose intentions he did not trust. He spoke endlessly of what he would permit and what he would prevent. Never once had he asked what you desired. The concept was as foreign to you as Dothraki. 

Godric cleared his throat after a few seconds of silence. “Forgive me. I do not mean to speak against Lord Hightower.”

“N-no, no,” you stammered quickly. “You have said nothing wrong.”

He nodded, though concern lingered in his eyes. “Then may I ask you something else?”

You should have refused. You should have told him it was time to retire. You should have found Ormund. Instead, you found yourself nodding.

“Are you…happy here?”

The question struck you like a slap to the face. 

Happy? 

You had never considered it. Happiness was not a concept widely spoken of in the Hightower. Maybe there were moments. As a child, playing with the Hightower boys in the gardens. When Lady Hightower would sing you lullabies to sleep. Ormund’s bed, warm beneath you in the darkness. His lips against your brow when you memorized all your scripture. 

Moments that were fleeting. But moments that stuck. 

Then you thought of locked doors. Of punishments. Of Ormund’s voice, loud and raging, his mood shifting at the drop of a pin. Of the seventh day. Of sin. 

“I…” Your fingers tightened together in your lap. Would you confess? “I am…content.”

Godric did not appear shocked. Nor did he demand an explanation. He merely regarded you with a quiet sadness that made you feel more exposed than Ormund’s scrutiny ever had.

“I hope you will not think me forward, Princess, but I meant what I told Lord Hightower,” he said. There was a sincerity to him more pure than anything you knew possible. “I have heard nothing but good things of you, and what little time I have spent in your company has only made me wish to know you better.”

Warmth rose into your cheeks. 

“I cannot pretend to know whether you might ever desire such a match,” he continued. “But if you were willing, I would still like the opportunity to…entertain the prospect. If that is what you wished, of course.” 

Surely you should wish that. Surely you ought not to be thinking of Ormund’s hand gripping your thigh beneath the table. Surely you ought not to wonder what it would feel like if Ormund were the one offering you such a choice.

If he were asking you to be his.

Before you could respond, the musicians reached the end of their song. A livelier tune began almost at once, the beat of the drums rising above the conversations as couples moved toward the center of the hall. Godric glanced toward them, then stood. 

“Now, this may embarrass me so thoroughly that you decide to be rid of me altogether, but I must ask regardless.” He turned back to you and held out his hand. “Would you dance with me, Princess?”

You looked once more towards the archway. Ormund would return any second now. He would see you, dancing with Godric in front of the entire feast. He would see you being held by another man. If he did not kill you, he would surely kill Godric. 

“Yes,” you whispered, heart beating violently against your ribcage. You placed your hand in Godric’s. “I would.” 

Godric led you into the center of the hall crowded with dancing bodies, one hand holding yours while the other hovered near your waist, as though he feared even the smallest impropriety might send you fleeing back to the head table. 

“You should know,” he spoke loudly over the music as he guided you into the first turn, “that I was once declared the finest dancer in Ashford.”

“Oh, really?”

“Well…I was seven,” he admitted. “And the only competition was my sister, who could not yet walk. And the judge was my mother.”

Your laughter rang through the hall as he spun you beneath his arm and guided you back into step.

You should have been happy. You were dancing with a handsome young man who had made his interest in you plain. Godric was courteous. He kept his hands precisely where they belonged and made no attempt to grope or possess you. He complimented your dancing, whispered jokes near your ear, knew every step, and led you well.

Yet all you did was look over his shoulder, searching for Ormund.

Your gaze swept over every face, every couple, every archway. He was nowhere to be seen. Something inside you deflated and the realization came with a flush of shame: perhaps you were doing all of this for him. You wanted him to see you. You wanted him to want you. 

When the final notes rang through the hall, Godric drew you gently to a stop. Around you, the other dancers bowed and separated, their laughter mingling with the applause.

“I must say, my lady,” Godric was still slightly breathless from the dance, his hand holding yours lightly, “I think we make quite a fine pair of dancers.”

You blushed and lifted your free hand to smooth a few stray hairs from your face. You were about to say something, what exactly you could not remember, when a familiar, low voice spoke directly behind you.

“Lord Godric.”

You turned. 

Ormund stood only a few paces away, the crowd having parted around him. Conversations nearby were already quieting. His eyes, blue and still as a frozen pond, were fixed upon your intertwined hands. His face was empty. Terrifyingly, completely empty.

With sudden, perfect clarity, you knew you had gotten what you wished for. And you knew you had made the worst mistake of your life.

“Lord Hightower,” Godric said, his voice turning cautious. He followed Ormund’s gaze and untangled his fingers from yours. “I was only telling the princess that she is an excellent dancer. Whatever lessons you must have arranged for her–”

“Do you make a habit,” Ormund uttered, his voice carrying loudly enough to silence those nearest you, “of disrespecting your hosts?”

Godric blinked and glanced at the confused faces gathering around you. “...My lord?”

“Do you take me for a fool?”

“I– of course not, Lord Hightower.” Godric gave a nervous, uncertain laugh. “We were only dancing.”

“Dancing? Only dancing?” With slow, imposing steps, Ormund advanced into the center of the hall, closer to you. “No, Lord Godric, I think not. I think what you have done is force yourself upon my ward after being expressly forbidden to do so.”

Panic overtook Godric’s expression. “Lord Hightower, I-I did no such thing–”

“But you did, did you not?” Ormund continued, his composure making every word more horrible to endure. “I made my refusal perfectly clear. You pretended to accept my authority, and then, the moment my back was turned, you disregarded my wishes. You disrespected my house. You disrespected her.”

You wanted to interject and defend Godric. You wanted to cower behind Ormund. You did neither.

“You took advantage of her,” Ormund declared, gesturing toward you as though you were evidence to be presented before the hall. “You knew the princess to be quiet and kind. You knew she was too gently raised to humiliate you with a refusal before half the Reach. And so you waited until I was absent and imposed upon her courtesy.”

Godric’s face reddened with the pressure of the entire Great Hall watching this encounter unfold. “The princess agreed to dance with me. She wanted to.”

Ormund’s eyes shifted to you and the hall seemed to contract. Something sharp flickered in his gaze as he tilted his head. 

“Did she now?” he asked, so softly it was barely a whisper. 

Godric turned to you, an obvious plea in his expression for you to absolve him of whatever crime Ormund had laid at his feet before the assembled houses of the Reach. You felt as though you had committed treason against the Crown itself. No– worse than that. As though you had sinned beneath the very eyes of the Seven.

Contrition flooded you so completely that you could scarcely bear Ormund’s gaze. Instead, you fixed your eyes down at the marble floor of the Great Hall– the same floor you had once raced across as a child. 

“Is it true?” He stepped closer until the polished leather of his shoes entered your lowered vision. “Did you wish to dance with him?”

Your voice trembled when you finally answered. “...yes.”

Tears blurred the marble beneath you. Still, you forced yourself to lift your head. Ormund’s face had gone flat once more.

He regarded you for what seemed like minutes, then gave a single, measured nod, as though you had confirmed something he had already known. “I see.”

Ormund’s gaze lingered upon you for another awful moment before he turned toward the watching hall, putting his hand on your arm. His grip was tight. “The princess is plainly unwell,” he announced, his voice once again smooth and measured. “I fear the excitement of the evening has overtaken her.”

A few sympathetic murmurs moved through the crowd. You were unwell, but not for whatever reason Ormund was claiming. You simply kept your eyes fixed above the crowd and willed yourself not to start crying. 

“Please,” Ormund continued, offering the gathered guests his courteous, practiced smile that did not reach his eyes, “return to your dancing. There is no reason our feast should be interrupted.”

Then he looked to Godric. “You may rejoin your father.”

Godric’s mouth parted as though he might object, but whatever he saw in Ormund’s face silenced him. He bowed stiffly instead. “Of course, Lord Hightower.”

Ormund moved his hand from your arm to the small of your back. “Come, my dear. I believe it is time to retire for the night.”

You allowed him to steer you through the parting crowd and out of the Great Hall. By the time the noise of the feast had faded behind you, you were sniveling like a pathetic child. Nothing remained but the sharp echo of Ormund’s footsteps and the hurried patter of your own as you struggled to match his long strides through the stone corridor.

Perhaps you should apologize. Perhaps you should explain yourself. If you could only make him understand, then perhaps he would–

Your head snapped backward.

A cry tore from your throat as Ormund seized a fistful of your hair and wrenched you toward him. You stumbled helplessly beneath his grip, dragged backward until your spine struck the stone wall.

“You fucking insolent slut,” he hissed. His fist tightened against your scalp, wrenching your head back until tears sprang anew to your eyes. “I cannot leave you out of my sight for a single minute before you whore yourself before a hall full of lords?”

He yanked again and the back of your head struck the stone with a dull crack. You clawed at his wrist, desperate to relieve the searing pull at your roots, but he twisted easily beyond your grasp.

“O-Ormund, I am– I did not–” you sobbed, reaching for him again.

His grip only tightened. You felt strands of hair pull and snap beneath his fingers.

“Please,” you cried. “It hurts–!”

“I have given everything to raise you. Everything.” Ormund spat the words, flecks of spittle striking your cheeks. “My house. My food. My protection. My own bed. All I have ever asked of you is obedience and respect.” He wrenched your head farther back. “And this is how I am repaid? You make a cuckold of me before half the Reach, shamelessly flaunting yourself for some boy?”

“It was only– we only danced–”

“You might as well have sucked his cock in the Great Hall.” His body crushed yours against the wall until you were flattened beneath his weight, the scabbard of his sword digging painfully into your hip. “Is that what you wanted to do? Hmm? You accomplished so much in the little while I was gone. Perhaps you did that as well.”

Your face flushed in shame as you gasped at his words. “No, Ormund! No–”

He leaned closer until his face hovered mere inches from yours, pure vitriol burning in his eyes. Ormund’s fist remained tangled in your hair, holding you helplessly in place. Then, suddenly, he froze. The fury in him shifted as he lowered his head, the bridge of his nose grazing your jaw. 

He breathed in. Ormund’s face twisted at once with disgust, as though he were suppressing the urge to gag. “You smell of him.”

A broken sob escaped you, your scalp still burning beneath his grip. There was no reasoning with him. Still, your heart twisted, and you tried. “I b-barely touched him, my lord. Please. You must believe me!”

The muscle in Ormund’s jaw flexed. Without warning, he wrenched you away from the wall and dragged you after him. His pace quickened as he marched you through the corridor, forcing you to stumble in order to keep from being pulled from your feet. Servants flattened themselves against the walls at the sight of him– the master of the Hightower hauling a princess of the realm by her hair while she sniveled and sobbed behind him. None dared intervene. They only lowered their eyes and stepped aside.

“You are an ungrateful, treacherous brat,” Ormund growled. “You may lie to me. You may lie before every lord in that hall. You may even kneel in the sept and lie beneath the faces of the Seven.” He shoved open the door to his bedchamber and pulled you inside. “But the Father sees what is hidden.”

The door slammed shut behind you. Ormund released your hair only to seize the back of your neck. Though the force of his grip kept your head fixed, your eyes shifted toward the bed, already knowing what would come next.

Instead, he steered you toward the adjoining bathing chamber and threw open the door. Heat and steam billowed from within. Servants still moved around the claw-footed tub, pouring steaming, scented water from brass ewers. At the sight of Ormund storming inside with you trapped beneath his hand, they startled and pressed themselves against the tiled walls. 

“The Father judges every falsehood,” Ormund continued, his mouth close to your ear. “Every wicked thought. Every secret desire.”

“I did not–”

“Do not lie to me again.” His fingers dug harder into your neck. “You may deny it until your tongue rots in your mouth, but your body has already betrayed you.”

Ormund lowered his face once more, breathing against your hair, your cheek, the bare skin above your collar. A shudder of revulsion passed through him. “His stink is everywhere.”

He dragged you toward the filled tub. “You will wash it off.”

One of the servants, an older woman with a weathered face, hesitantly stepped forward. “My lord, we were not expecting the princess until later. The water is still too hot–”

Ormund’s head snapped toward her, his gaze blazing. “Leave. At once.”

The servants did not argue. They bowed hurriedly, abandoned the remaining ewers, and fled from the chamber. You did not blame them. For who would want to defend you, who had so obviously sinned before your lord?

Ormund pushed you towards the tub. “Undress.”

You did not move. You could not. Perhaps Ormund had seen glimpses of you before, the shape of your body beneath the sheer nightgowns he often gifted you, the outline of your breasts when candlelight illuminated the fabric. But those moments belonged to the night, in the darkness, when you could tell yourself his eyes were closed or turned elsewhere. 

You had never stood naked before your guardian. 

Your hair hung tangled around your face, scalp still throbbing where he had pulled. Tears and snot wetted the cupid’s bow of your lip, and you were shaking so violently that your teeth had begun to chatter. You had been diminished to nothing. 

“M-my lord,” you whispered, turning towards Ormund. “I can call the women back, they will help me–”

“No.” Ormund stared at you with open contempt. “You will not. You were comfortable enough flaunting yourself for that boy. Now, you discover modesty?”

Your cheeks burned and you hung your head. “Please, my lord…”

Ormund stepped nearer, hands twitching at his side. “You behaved like a harlot in my hall. You may undress like one here.”

Humiliation rippled through you like a wave. You began to believe he was right. You had disobeyed Ormund. You had accepted Godric’s hand. Why? Because you wanted a reaction from Ormund. And now, you had one. 

Your fingers fumbled for the ribbons at the back of your gown. They would not obey you. Each time you caught one, it slipped from your trembling grasp. 

“You are moving too slowly.”

“I-I am trying…” you sputtered. “But my hands…they will not cease trembling…”

The faint rasp of metal leaving leather made you freeze. Ormund drew the small dagger he carried at his belt.

“My lord, please don’t–”

Ormund caught the back of your gown in one fist, and with one swift movement, he cut through the ribbons. The bodice split open with a series of sharp snaps, the ruined ties falling loose around you. Ormund dragged the blade downward, severing embroidery and silk without care until the gown sagged from your shoulders and exposed your breasts. You gasped and tried to catch the fabric, but Ormund had already sheathed the dagger. He seized the torn gown and wrenched it down over your hips, leaving you naked in a pool of shredded blue silk.

Feebly, you crossed your arms over yourself. Ormund was quicker. He grabbed you by the upper arm and hauled you toward the steaming tub, his chest rising and falling with each furious breath.

“In.”

You lifted one trembling foot over the rim. The instant your toes touched the water, scalding heat shot through you. You recoiled with a yelp. “Ormund, it is too hot–”

“Good.” His hands closed around your shoulders. “Perhaps it will burn his stink from you.”

He forced you down. You cried as the searing water engulfed your body. You tried to rise, but Ormund held you beneath the surface of the bath, his fingers biting into your shoulders. Before you could catch your breath, he had dropped to his knees beside the tub and seized a sponge from the tray. 

He caught your wrist and began scrubbing your arm. The rough sponge dragged over your skin again and again, leaving it flushed pink and burning. Ormund’s eyes were wild, his movements frantic. Beneath the fury, there was a panic, a desperation you had witnessed only a handful of times before. It terrified you. 

“Men bow to their lords,” he muttered, dragging the sponge from your wrist to your shoulder as though he meant to strip away the skin itself and uncover something clean beneath it.

You recognized the words at once. Scripture, recited in the sept while you knelt beside Lady Hightower. Now Ormund spoke them in the bathing chamber she had once shared with her husband– only she was dead and rotting somewhere in a crypt, and you were grown and naked beneath his hands. 

“Repeat it,” he hissed. “As I taught you.”

“M-men bow to their lords.”

“Lords bow to their kings.” The sponge moved across your collarbone, then up the side of your neck.

“Lords bow to their k-kings…”

“And kings and queens bow before the Seven Who Are One.” He scrubbed the tender skin beneath your jaw. The same place where, in the darkness of night, he so often buried his face. 

Your voice shook. “Kings and queens bow before the S-seven Who Are One...”

The sponge dragged down your other arm. “All sins may be forgiven.”

“All sins may be forgiven...”

Ormund seized your knee and yanked your leg toward him, scrubbing harshly over your calf. “But crimes must still be punished.”

You swallowed a sob. “But crimes must still be…punished.”

At last, the sponge slipped from his hand and struck the tiled floor with a wet slap. Your entire body was rubbed pink and raw from his touch. Ormund remained kneeling by the tub, chest heaving as though he had just come from hours in the training yard. The water had finally cooled in the tub around you, though your tears had never once ceased. 

Men bow to their lords. Kings and queens bow before the Seven Who Are One. Crimes must still be punished.

The words could not cease circling your mind. 

Crimes must still be punished. Crimes must still be punished. Crimes must still be punished.

Steam from the bath had loosened Ormund’s brown curls, leaving them wild around his face. The sleeves and front of his doublet were soaked through. His collar sat crooked. Strands of hair had fallen across his brow.

You had never seen him so disordered. Ormund was particular about every detail of his appearance. Now he looked just about as ruined as you felt.

He rose and reached into the tub. You flinched, but his hands closed around your waist and lifted you to your feet. Water streamed from your body, droplets tracing the curves of your breasts and the softness of your stomach before falling back into the bath. The cooler air tightened your skin, your nipples pebbling as you shivered beneath his hands.

Ormund held you there, naked and trembling before him. Then he bent toward you. His nose brushed the wet skin beneath your ear. He inhaled once before moving lower to breathe against your neck and shoulder. You scarcely dared move.

At last, the terrible tension in his body eased.

“Clean,” he murmured. His hands tightened possessively around your waist. “You are clean again.”

Seemingly satisfied with his work, Ormund stepped back and surveyed you. His gaze traveled from your wet hair to your breasts, then lower still, lingering over the glistening curls at the apex of your thighs. 

He drew a slow breath, steadying himself, before turning away to restore some measure of order to his appearance. He straightened his collar and smoothed a hand over his damp curls, though the soaked fabric of his doublet clung stubbornly to him. Then he reached into the tub and took your hand. “Out.”

Water streamed from your body and pooled across the tiles as you stepped over the rim. Ormund kept one hand around yours and the other at your waist. Then he retrieved the linen nightgown the servants had left folded over a nearby chair and tossed it toward you without looking. “Dress yourself.”

You clutched it against your chest, relieved merely to have something with which to cover yourself. “Y-yes, my lord.”

With shaking hands, you pulled it over your head. The fabric caught against your wet skin, clinging to your breasts and thighs despite your efforts to tug it loose.

When you had finished, Ormund turned back. For a moment, the two of you merely stared at one another. Then he lifted a hand and brushed a wet tendril of hair from your face, his touch impossibly gentle after the same hand had scrubbed your skin raw only moments before. “Do you understand why I do this for you?”

You nodded slowly.

“Then tell me.”

You swallowed. “To…purge me?”

“Yes.” He stepped nearer, cupping your cheek. “I have told you before, and I will continue to tell you. At your core, you are a wicked creature. However earnestly you may struggle against it, the sins of your forefathers live within you. That is why you disobey. Why you cannot always recognize the corruption in your own desires.”

Your breathing grew shallow at his words.

“It is my duty to purge it from you, to discipline what is wicked and preserve what may yet be made good.” Ormund’s hand settled more firmly against your cheek, holding your face toward his. He studied you expectantly. “Do you understand me?”

“I understand you, Ormund.”

“Good girl.” His hand fell away. He turned and left the bathing chamber without another word. You remained where you were for a moment, waiting until you trusted your legs not to collapse beneath you, then wobbled after him.

The bedchamber had grown dim behind the closed shutters, illuminated only by the wavering glow of candlelight and slivers of moonlight. Ormund stood beside the wardrobe, peeling the soaked doublet from his body and revealing the muscled planes of his back. Though he so often slept without a shirt, you turned away bashfully. 

When Ormund faced you again, you kept your gaze fixed upon the ornate rug beneath your bare feet.

“Right,” he said. He dragged a hand over his jaw and glanced from you to the bed. Then he inclined his head toward it. “On the bed, then. Ready yourself.”

Your heart seemed to stop. Your gaze snapped up to him, your brows drawing together. “M-my lord?”

He scoffed as though you were a fool for questioning him. “It is the seventh day. Surely you did not imagine yourself excused…particularly after tonight. I have all the more reason now to question your purity.”

Your mouth opened, then closed again. “B-but, my lord…the bath–”

“The bath did nothing but remove the taint of horse shit from you,” Ormund spat. He advanced upon you. “As I told you before, you managed a great deal in the few minutes I was gone. How am I to know you did not give yourself to Lord Ashford?”

The accusation was absurd. Ormund had been absent for perhaps ten minutes. The hall had been filled with half the Reach. Surely he could not truly believe that you had…

“I said, on the bed,” Ormund repeated, each word sharpened by warning. “Do not make me say it again.”

You hurried toward the bed and crawled onto it. You had done this so many times that the motions should have come as second nature. Yet each time, every part of you trembled with the same terrible mixture of dread and anticipation…and something hotter beneath them both that you could never bring yourself to name.

You shuffled backward until your head met the pillows, then lowered yourself flat against the mattress. Ormund remained at the foot of the bed, the pale skin of his bare chest almost luminous in the candlelight. He looked at your position with a scowl, then closed his hands around your ankles. With one sharp pull, he dragged you toward him until your ass rested at the very edge of the mattress.

He tapped the outsides of your quivering thighs. You parted them, allowing him to step between your legs.

Ormund looked down at you. Your breasts rose and fell beneath the damp nightgown, each breath shallow and unsteady. “You are nervous tonight.”

You began to shake your head, but he clicked his tongue. “Remember what I told you. Do not lie to me.”

Your throat tightened. “I-I am nervous, my lord.”

“Why?” The question was edged with mockery. Ormund reached down and caught the hem of your nightgown between his fingers. “This should hardly surprise you by now. Or…is there something you are trying to hide from me tonight?”

“No, my lord. I swear, I have nothing to hide–”

“We shall see.” He began to draw the nightgown upward. Higher and higher, until the cool air brushed over your calves and thighs, raising gooseflesh in its wake. Higher still, until the fabric gathered around your waist and your sex lay completely exposed beneath his gaze.

Ormund inhaled, and you could have sworn his breath trembled. His thumbs pressed against your puffy pussy lips, parting you beneath the candlelight. You were unbearably sensitive after the scalding bath, and the sudden touch of cool air on your exposed flesh drew a helpless whimper from your throat.

Ormund stilled. His hands remained firmly in place, holding you open as his narrowed eyes lifted to your face. “What was that?”

You swallowed. “N-nothing, my lord.”

“Nothing?” he repeated softly. “Have you learned nothing tonight?”

“I did not mean–”

“Your mouth lies,” Ormund murmured. “But your body confesses so readily.”

Humiliation burned through you. You turned your face toward the pillows, but his voice sharpened.

“Look at me.”

You obeyed. Ormund studied you with a feverish focus. Without speaking, he prodded your entrance with the tip of his middle finger. The sensation made you jolt. He steadied you with a hand pressed firmly upon your hip. “Stay still.”

You tried, desperately. You fixed your eyes upon his face and willed every muscle to quiet, though your breath came shallow and uneven. 

Ormund paused, the tip of his finger still pressing against your hole. “What shall I find tonight, hmm? That you have been faithful to the Seven above? Faithful to me? Or shall I find you have let Lord Ashford fuck this pretty little cunt?”

You squirmed beneath his gaze, feeling as though you had been scalded again by his brazen words. “N-no, my lord.”

Ormund hummed in response. Then, once again, he used his other thumb to spread your pussy lips open, his gaze transfixed on where his finger rested.

“Look at you…” His voice was hushed, contemplative. “I have barely touched you, and your pussy is already fluttering.”

You whined, horrifically embarrassed, but he shushed you before you could protest.

“You are thinking of that Ashford boy, aren’t you?”

You shook your head immediately, adamant. You could hardly remember Godric’s face now. 

Ormund tutted. “Words.”

“No! No, I am not.”

“Then why,” he asked, his gaze never leaving you, “is your cunt weeping?”

You had no answer, other than your body had answered before your mind.

“It is no matter,” Ormund sighed, thumb still holding you open. “You are a deceitful bitch who will learn her lesson regardless.”

Slowly, Ormund began to push his fingertip into you. A broken moan tore through you at the burning intrusion, though you had felt this so many times before. The walls of your pussy clenched around him, and you tried to will yourself to relax your muscles. Breathe, you commanded yourself. Obey. 

His hand stilled, the tip of his finger seated inside you. He did not look away. 

“If you are not wet for Lord Godric,” Ormund whispered, finally lifting his gaze to yours, “then who is it for?” 

For a moment, you were no longer in Ormund’s chambers. You remembered attending the sept with Lady Hightower, kneeling beside her before the bejeweled statue of the Father. You remembered her lessons, her gentle voice, the certainty with which she had spoken.

“You must always tell the truth,” she had taught you. “For the Father sees all.”

The words echoed now, impossible to ignore. You were compelled. You had to confess.

“You.”

Ormund groaned at the confession, his hand tightening at your waist. 

“Do you hear yourself, you harlot?” His voice rattled maniacally, the rings on his fingers pressing into the soft flesh of you. “Do you not hear the lewdness of your own words? Lusting after me, your own guardian?”

Shame flooded through you. You should have lowered your eyes. You should have taken back the confession. But there was something in his voice that told you he was not reprimanding you. Ormund wanted you to say it. He wanted you to confess.

Before you could even think of a response, Ormund’s mouth twisted. Then he spat.

A hot, wet glob landed directly on the swollen pearl at the top of your cunt, obscene and shocking enough that your whole body shuddered. The sensation was like nothing you had ever felt before. Vulgar in a way that made humiliation burn through you even as a moan slipped from your throat.

Ormund saw it, because just as the Father did, he saw everything. A wicked, knowing grin spread across his face.

“Theeere it is,” he murmured, voice low and rough with satisfaction. “Moaning like a bitch in heat. Acting like the whore you are.”

Your face burned and you turned back into the pillows, trying to stifle the whimpering sounds that were attempting to escape you. 

Ormund leaned closer, caging your body in with his, the tip of his finger still inserted into you. “You think I do not know you? I raised you. I made you.”

Your thighs twitched instinctively, as if you could push him away. For a moment, he withdrew slightly, as if it were finished. As if Ormund would simply wipe his hand on the handkerchief he always kept on him and declare the matter settled. It had always been that way before.

The ritual– the inspection that occurred every seventh day– always ended the same. Ormund would stop at the first knuckle, claiming only to feel enough to confirm that your maidenhead was still intact. Then he would withdraw, disappear into the bathing chamber for a few moments while you caught your breath alone on the bed, and return composed once more.

Afterward was the part you cherished most. Perhaps it was the only reason you endured the ritual at all. Ormund would take you into his arms. He would press his lips to your brow, your cheek, sometimes even your mouth, and tell you how good you had been. How faithful. How untouched. He would allow you to rest against him, your head upon his chest, while he kissed the top of your head and held you as though you were something precious.

And for a little while, you no longer felt like a ward. No longer like an unwanted addition to his household. For a little while, you felt like a wife would.

You felt wanted.

But this time, Ormund did none of that. Instead, he pushed forward. 

You gasped at the invasion, hands tightening around the sheets as his finger slid deeper than it ever had before. It was only one finger, and still you felt stretched open by it, your body struggling to make sense of the unfamiliar pressure. Pain mixed with pleasure, a strange concoction that was better than anything you had ever known. 

Ormund watched the reaction move across your face.

“She is so tight,” he whispered, almost in a trance as he looked down at where his finger disappeared inside you. “So untouched. So desperate for more.”

Your stomach twisted at his words. Of course you were untouched. You could not imagine ever being touched by anyone other than Ormund. 

“So obedient for your lord,” Ormund added, voice husky. “And still you asked me not to stop.” 

His thumb moved slowly, the pad of it pressing against your aching clit right above where his finger held you open. The sensation struck through you so sharply your thighs closed his hand, though he pried them back open with ease. 

Ormund’s thumb began to circle your clit, slow and deliberate, while his finger remained seated inside you. The two sensations seemed to pull against one another: the deep stretch of him, the slick pressure of his thumb, the unbearable intimacy of being watched while your body answered him so honestly.

“Do not be so quiet now, my sweet girl,” Ormund commanded you. “Not when your body is finally telling the truth.”

His finger began to move. Slowly at first, dragging almost to the tip before pressing back in. The stretch came easier now, slicker with your growing arousal. His thumb kept circling with maddening precision, steady enough that something began to gather low in your belly.

A coil. A warning. A want. It was overwhelming. It was maddening. It was completely and utterly terrifying. 

“Ormund…”

His finger curled slightly inside you, pressing against a soft place that made you see stars, and you cried out, back arching. 

“There we are,” Ormund breathed. “That is what you have been trying to tell me.”

“N-no,” you said, though the denial sounded weak even to your own ears.

Ormund leaned closer, mouth skimming your jaw. “You want this. You have wanted this every time I stopped.”

Your lips parted, but no answer came.

The coil inside you wound tighter and tighter, every pass of his thumb dragging you closer to some precipice you did not understand. Your thighs began to tremble. Your breath broke into small, helpless whimpers. Panic and pleasure tangled together until you could no longer tell which one made you shake.

“Ormund, please,” you gasped. “S-something…something is happening!”

“Is it?” His voice was calm, almost cruelly so, his eyes fixed on your face. Then, just as the feeling rose so sharply it frightened you, Ormund withdrew completely. His finger slipped out of you, and his thumb left your clit all at once.

The loss was immediate. You whined, hips lifting after him before you could stop yourself, your cunt clenching around nothing. 

Ormund stepped back from the bed, composed and distant, as though whatever had existed between you moments before had vanished entirely. He reached for the handkerchief he kept in his back pocket, and cleaned your glistening arousal off of his finger with a maddening calmness. 

You propped yourself up on your elbows, chest heaving. Sweat had beaded on your forehead from the intense pleasure that was there just moments before. When you spoke, your voice was small and confused. “...My lord?”

Ormund did not look at you. “I have confirmed what I needed to know. You are untouched. That has not changed. But you still disobeyed me.”

You stared at him, searching his face for some sign that he did not mean it. Some indication that this was a test, that Ormund would relent as he always did. That he would gather you in his arms, kiss your face, and fall asleep.

He did not. 

“You are not forgiven,” Ormund said matter-of-factly. Then came the words you never expected to hear. “You will return to your own chambers tonight.”

Your own chambers. You had not slept there in years. Not since before Lady Hightower had died. 

The feast, the bath, the feeling of something coiling in you as Ormund used his fingers upon you like an instrument– it all came crashing down at once. You were unsteady, disoriented. Lost. 

He was sending you away from the only place where you knew how to exist. The only place where you had ever felt wanted.

You scrambled from the bed, your feet landing unevenly against the rug. Before you could think better of it, you reached for his arm.

“My lord, please.” Your voice shook. “I-I cannot sleep there.”

Ormund did not move.

“Please,” you whispered. “I can only sleep here. I have only ever slept here.”

He refused to answer. He remained focused on the handkerchief, wiping the finger that had been inside you moments ago. 

“Please, Ormund. I-I love you.”

He always liked hearing that. You lifted yourself onto your toes and pressed a desperate, open-mouthed kiss to his cheek, waiting for the familiar response. Waiting for his hand to come to your face, for his voice to soften, for him to tell you that everything was all right.

Ormund did not.

Your heart seemed to collapse inside your chest. You could not understand how he could stand there so calmly when you felt as though you were breaking apart.

“I was so ungrateful,” you sobbed. “I was t-treasonous, my lord. I was wicked.” Your hands tightened around him. “I should have rebuked Lord Godric. I should have listened. I was an insolent fool.”

Not knowing what else to do, you sank to your knees before him, head bowed as though you were kneeling before the altar in the sept. The posture came instinctively from years beneath Ormund’s instruction, a familiar act of surrender and supplication.

“Please forgive me,” you whispered. “I will do anything you ask of me. Please.”

You remained there before him, the room silent save for your trembling breaths and quiet sobs. Your forehead stayed bowed, your hands clutching the fabric of his breeches as though letting go would mean losing him entirely. 

Finally, Ormund looked down upon you. “You hear yourself, do you not?” 

You lifted your swollen eyes toward him.

“You beg for forgiveness, but you do not yet understand what it is you are asking forgiveness for.” Ormund crouched until he was level with you, hands on your shoulders. “This is not about Godric or a dance or a foolish mistake. It is about what lies beneath it, the thing I have warned you of for years.”

You shivered beneath his touch, the words chilling you. 

“The dragon within you.”

It felt as though the entire world had narrowed to this room, to this moment, to you kneeling before him. As though every lesson in the sept, every warning, every correction had led you here. 

“I have spent years trying to protect you from the worst parts of yourself,” he continued. “And still, when temptation came, you reached for it. That is why an apology is not enough.”

Your breath caught in your throat.

“You must learn that your impulses do not rule you. Your desires, your pride, they do not rule you. Not even the dragon that plagues your soul.”

“What rules you is none of those.” Ormund leaned closer, his nose brushing yours. “It is me.”

With that, Ormund rose to his feet, though you remained kneeling. His hand went to the leather belt at his waist, the same belt from which his sword scabbard hung. Slowly, he unfastened it and set the scabbard aside on the chest near the bed. He turned to you and gestured for you to stand. 

You obeyed instantly, rising on shaky legs. 

“If you want forgiveness, you will listen to me,” Ormund said, undoing the belt until it came loose in his hand. “You will disrobe. You will set yourself upon the bed. And you will take the strokes of my belt in penance for your sins. Will you do that for your lord?”

You nodded. You would do anything he asked of you. Hands trembling, you reached for the hem of your nightgown and pulled it over your head. You were bare, naked as the day you were born. It felt different from the bath. This time, there was no steam to soften the room. This time, you could clearly see Ormund take all of you in: the line of your calves, the curve of your hips, the plane of your stomach, the weight of your breasts. His eyes moved over your body shamelessly, intense and hungry.

“Onto the bed,” he ordered. “Face away from me.”

You complied, turning from him and crawling onto the mattress. Before you could move too far, Ormund caught your calf in one hand, signaling for you to stop once you were on all fours near the edge of the bed. His touch lingered there for a moment, and then his hand slid upward, palm dragging from your calf to your thigh, then higher still, until it settled over the soft curve of your ass. His fingers squeezed once, firm and possessive, before dropping lower.

You heard the soft whisper of leather as Ormund folded the belt in his hand. You could not see his face from where you knelt, turned away from him, but you could feel his gaze moving over you. The back of your neck, your trembling spine. Your exposed cunt, surely glistening now with arousal though you could not understand why. And then your ass, presented bare and vulnerable to him, where he intended to mark you. 

“You will pray the Seven’s lesson as you were taught,” he said, though his voice had gone strained. 

A familiar molten heat, like what you felt just a few minutes earlier, had begun to unwind in your belly. You nodded, eyes on the bed below you. “Yes, my lord.”

Leather cracked across your skin. The sound came before you could even register the pain, sharp and booming like thunder. You cried out as a bright line of heat bloomed over your ass, fingers clutching uselessly at the sheets. 

“The Father,” Ormund breathed, voice low. “Tell me His vow.”

You remembered learning your lessons. It was Ormund who taught you when you were just a girl. Before you knew what you would become. What he would become. 

“I-I submit to all judgement,” you recited shakily. 

The belt came down again, landing just below the first one.

You jolted forward, a broken sound spilling from your mouth as the second stroke landed just below the first. Heat spread through you in terrible waves and your knees trembled, but Ormund’s free hand caught your hip to hold you up. 

“The Mother.”

“I seek mercy.”

The third stroke fell harder.

You sobbed again, and shame burned through you at the sound, but Ormund only stepped closer. You could feel him now, the heat of his body just behind yours, the roughness creeping into his breathing. 

“The Warrior.”

You pressed your forehead into the sheets, squeezing your eyes shut, willing yourself to submit. “I will have c-courage.”

The fourth stroke cracked across you, closer to your wet sex. The sound that came from you this time was not a sob, but a moan. You heard Ormund utter a low curse under his breath from behind you. 

“The Maiden, now, girl. You should know this one by heart.”

“I will guard my innocence.”

Next, the fifth stroke. You cried out, smothering your sounds in the sheet, but this time Ormund made no attempt to hide the rough, ruined exhale he made in response. 

You realized there, completely naked on his bed, the bed you had shared with him for years, that Ormund was enjoying this. 

“The Smith,” he ordered you. 

“I will be remade.”

The sixth stroke landed and pain sparked through you, body sagging slightly before Ormund caught you with his hand. His wide palm moved from your waist to the punished, red flesh of your ass. 

“Ormund,” you whispered, though you didn’t know what you wanted of him.

His breath shuddered. “The Crone.”

“I will s-seek wisdom.”

You could hear how close he was. Hear it in the uneven pull of air through his teeth, in the way his hands trembled against your skin.

“Now, the last,” he said.

Like a final judgement, the seventh stroke came down. Hard.

Your cry broke open, high and helpless, your body finally collapsing forward into the sheets as the hurt bloomed through you in a final, burning wave. Ormund followed you down at once, his body bowing over yours from behind.

“The Stranger,” he panted into your ear, bare chest pressed against your back. “Tell me His vow.”

“I will leave behind what I was.”

The belt slipped from his hand and hit the floor. You heard the unmistakable frantic tug of laces being loosened, the rustle of breeches as Ormund shoved them down with no patience at all. 

You did not understand what was happening at first. You only knew he was behind you, breathing hard, one hand gripping your hip so hard it bruised while the other was moving between your bodies with a frenzied desperation. 

Then you felt him. The hard length of his cock, pressed against the swollen skin of your ass. You gasped at the silky, heavy, throbbing sensation. Perhaps you had felt it before, but between sheets, between linen, pressed against your back in the dead of night. You did not know, or did not want to know, or even fully understand what it was. But you knew now. 

You heard movement, skin rubbing skin. Ormund’s fist worked himself in quick, uneven strokes, the leaking head of him pressed against the raw flesh. 

Ormund groaned low in his throat, the sound muffled against your shoulder as he bent over you.

“Do you feel that, Princess?” he rasped. His hips jerked forward, the stiff length of him dragging on your ass. The contact made him shudder violently against you. “Do you feel me on you? This is what you do to me. You have bewitched me, heart and flesh alike.”

Your face burned so hot you thought you might cry from the humiliation of it. Bent beneath him in the bed he once shared with his wife. Marked by him. Listening to the rough, wet sound of his hand moving over himself while his body trembled against yours. 

You turned your head instinctively, trying to look back. To see the reality of what was happening to your innocence. Ormund’s palm came down between your shoulders, forcing your face down into the sheets. 

“No,” he ordered, voice ragged. “Do not l-look at me. Stay down.”

You obeyed. A broken sound left him at that, like a laugh. 

“My good girl,” Ormund breathed. “My sweet, good girl.”

His hand moved faster. From behind, you could feel every frantic pull of his fist in the rhythm of his body: the way his hips twitched, the way his thighs pressed against the backs of yours, the way his hot breath puffed against your neck. Ormund dragged the head of himself lower, close enough that you could feel the swollen head of his cock brush your cunt. 

“Do you want it?” he asked. “Do you want your guardian to finally take you? Do you want me to give you my cock and fill you with my seed so everyone will know who you belong to?”

You did. You wanted it so badly. You wanted Ormund to fuck you, to finally take the virginity he treasured so much. 

“Do you want it, my darling girl?” Ormund repeated shakily, dragging his cock up and down your slick folds, the leaking head of it bumping against your swollen clit. “If I pushed in right now, would you open for me? Would you let me take what is rightfully mine?”

Your fingers twisted into the sheets. You did not even know what you were asking for. You only felt the compulsion of the Father move through you. “Yes, my lord! M-make me yours…”

Ormund groaned. But, to your dismay, he did not push himself into you. Instead, he drew himself back, dragging his cock against your skin as his fist resumed its desperate rhythm. 

His mouth found your shoulder, open and trembling. His teeth grazed you once, biting down lightly. 

“You are mine,” he said against your skin. “Whether I fuck you tonight or keep you untouched for the rest of your life, you are mine.” 

Ormund’s hips stuttered hard against you. “Tell me whose you are, Princess.”

“Y-yours…”

“Say it properly for your lord.”

“I am yours, Ormund!”

With a final, low groan, Ormund collapsed over you, body shaking. You felt something hot and wet spurt across the marks of your ass. His hand kept moving through the violent pulses, dragging every last wave out of himself while he panted your name into the back of your shoulder. 

Finally, the spasming of his cock subsided, and his weight softened over you. Ormund remained bowed over your body, trembling as he pressed his forehead between your shoulder blades. His lips moved slowly along your spine. His palm, sticky with release, spread tenderly over your waist, drawing you more firmly beneath him. 

“My precious girl,” he whispered, pressing another damp kiss to your back. “My beautiful, perfect princess. You did so well for me.” 

You could do nothing but lie there beneath him, overwhelmed and exhausted, your body aching everywhere he had touched you. 

Ormund wrapped both arms around you, rolling onto his side and bringing you with him. He gathered your naked body so tightly against his own it felt like he had never intended to let you go. His release remained warm upon your skin, trapped between you as he fitted himself along your back. One arm circled your waist and the other slipped beneath your head, drawing you into the shelter of his bare chest. Ormund kissed the hairs at the nape of your neck, then your shoulder, his mouth lingering over every place it touched.

“Come here,” he murmured. “My pretty little thing.”

Ormund turned you carefully within his arms until you faced him. His hand moved slowly through your hair, smoothing it back from your flushing, tear-streaked face as he pressed kisses across your cheeks. He did not seem to care that you were both disordered and sweaty, that his breeches remained tangled around his thighs, or that his seed still clung to your body.

Your eyes burned. “I-I thought you hated me… That you would send me away forever.”

“No.” Ormund cupped the back of your head, keeping you against him. “No, my love. Never that.”

A sob escaped, and you buried your face against him, clutching at him as though the Hightower itself were crumbling around you.

Ormund drew you fully atop him, arranging your body over his with practiced intimacy. Your cheek rested above his thumping heart. One of your legs slipped between his, your naked bodies fitting together beneath the rumpled sheets as naturally as though you had been made by the Seven for this. 

“You frightened yourself tonight,” he murmured, rocking you gently against him. “You forgot what I taught you. But you remember now, do you not?”

You nodded silently. Ormund tipped your face upward. His gaze moved over your swollen eyes and trembling mouth with such devotion it hurt. 

“I forgive you.”

Finally.

Finally, the words you had spent the entire night longing to hear. The words you had wanted since the moment you realized your Valyrian blood was something impure. 

The weight of it all overwhelmed you, his forgiveness, his naked body beneath yours, the certainty that he was not sending you from his bed. It all crashed over you at once, and your body shook with the force of your tears. Ormund gathered you closer, shushing softly as he kissed your forehead, your temple, your quivering lips.

“I love you,” he murmured. “I love you. Must I say it a thousand times? I love you.”

You pushed yourself further into him and sobbed harder. You believed Ormund. You always did. For he always told the truth.

“I-I am sorry for the wickedness in me, Ormund,” you stuttered, tears wetting his chest. “I should have been better for you.”

“Oh, my sweet girl.” His fingers combed gently through your hair, the same hair he so often praised for lacking the silver-gold of your blood. “You are not the first woman to struggle against the wretchedness within her.”

Ormund shifted beneath the covers, drawing you higher upon his chest until your face rested within the curve of his neck. His lips brushed your brow again and again as though he could not bear to stop kissing you.

“The Seven have blessed you, though,” he continued. “They did not leave you among your diseased kin who would encourage that fire. They did not leave you in the Red Keep. They did not leave you to dragons.”

You lifted your face from his chest. The candles had long since sputtered out, leaving only moonlight to illuminate the handsome angles of his face. The face you loved, the face you worshipped so dearly. Ormund cupped your cheek and brought your mouth to his.

The kiss was slow and delicate, nothing like the frenzy whose presence still marked your bodies: the angry welts left by his belt, his seed drying against your thighs. Ormund kissed you with the solemnity of a husband sealing a vow before the gods. When he pulled away, he did not allow even an inch of space to form between you.

“You were given to me,” he whispered against your mouth. “To raise. To correct when you wandered. And to cherish when you returned.”

A smile spread across Ormund’s face, full of such love and adoration that your soul ached with it. “And you will always return to me.”

Ormund took your hand in his and pressed it flat over the steady beating of his heart. Then he brought your fingers to his lips and kissed each tip one by one. “The Seven knew you needed something greater than blood or the Iron Throne. Greater even than dragons.”

Your eyes grew heavy as the last of your terror loosened beneath his attention. Ormund drew the covers more closely around your entwined bodies and tucked your head beneath his chin. “They knew you needed a home. A father.”

You nestled deeper into his chest, lulled by the heart beating beneath your ear. Sleep had nearly claimed you when his arms tightened around you.

When Ormund spoke again, his voice was so hushed that you thought perhaps you had dreamed it.

“They knew you needed me.”

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His heavy head lolls on the thin pillow beneath him. The cushion propping up his stiff neck smells like something floral and sweet, like a woman. As his eyes scan the room, he finds that this quaint house, if it could even be referred to as such, is made of only one room — there’s a dining nook crowded in the corner by the window, a cluttered living area in the opposite corner by the hearth, and apparently a sickbed in which he languishes now. 

Through the haze still clinging in his vision, he spots a figure dressed in tatters stirring at a pot with practiced hands — sleeves pushed up to the elbows, faded skirts flowing just below the knee. You do not startle at the sound of his voice, nor do you turn to look at him right away as you crush a handful of dried rosemary into the bubbling water before you. 

“Starry Hill,” you answer plainly, as though you were talking to an old friend rather than a half-dead ghost in your bed. You turn slowly over your shoulder and watch confusion twist at the man’s handsome features — (he’d studied every keep, holdfast, and port in Westeros his father told him to, and yet he’d never once heard of this one). “And no, you haven’t heard of it before.”

The grin is evident in your voice as you turn away to wipe your palms off on a rag. You catch the man’s glassy blue eyes darting around your home — over the crooked shelf of clay jars, past the mismatched chairs around the ancient dining table, and towards the narrow window where dim orange light falls in slanted rays. He cannot yet tell whether it’s dawn or dusk, and the notion disorients him further.

“Apologies for the mess, my lord,” you sigh. “If I’d known I was going to be housing a Hightower for three days, I might’ve tidied the place up a bit first.”

Gwayne’s auburn brows furrow slowly as his face twists in a deeper confusion — both at the thought of having spent three days unconscious in this place, and at the ease with which you seemed to know his name. His house. His blood. “How… How did you know I was a Hightower?”

Your head turns lazily on your shoulder to flash the man a narrow-eyed, almost pitying sort of look. Your gaze falls across his flaming copper hair, the aristocratic slope of his nose, and the inherited Hightower beauty that not even war, nor three days on his deathbed, could manage to take from him. Even halfway ruined, the man still looks like something bred for portraiture. And it would, perhaps, be so easy to tell him as much.

“Well, you were wearing the sigil all over your armor, to be fair,” you deadpan instead and turn back to your cooking.

Only then does Gwayne realize that the heaviness of his armor is long gone from his frame. All of his clothes, in fact, are gone — the pale canvas of his bare chest is on display now, carved lean from a lifetime in the training yard, and now sporting a square piece of plaster across his ribcage. Beneath the heavy quilt thrown over his legs, he can feel a pair of baggy trousers riding low on his hips that do not belong to him. 

Which means you had to have undressed him; bathed him; patched up his marred skin. The thought alone is dizzying.

Panic wraps its hands around his throat as he rises onto his elbows, grimacing at the ache it puts in his side and somewhere deep in his bicep — where a linen cloth has been wrapped tight.

“How did I get here?”

“Your guess is as good as mine…” you huff without looking away from the pot ahead of you. “You’re the one who showed up half-dead on my doorstep, if you’ll recall— So I think I have more questions for you than you have for me, in truth.”

Gwayne’s eyes go glassy and distant as he strains to recollect the events that led him here. 

He remembers Ser Criston’s words about a death march, and the sudden screeching of his horse when the first volley of enemy arrows came flying every which way. He vaguely remembers his mare rearing up and tossing him onto his back against the heavy forest floor, and the way the world erupted with the shouting of a hundred men or more all at once. But he does not know what became of any of them now.

“I need to leave,” he announces at once.

“Oh, I wouldn’t,” you wince as you watch the man fling the quilt from his body, visibly toned from years of knighthood but still pale from his lingering brush with death. “Not on that leg of yours— I’m still not sure I set the bone just right.”

Gwayne’s jaw clenches tight as he swings his legs over the side of the bed. His tired muscles pull taut in protest, though it doesn’t hurt him nearly as badly as his left shin does when his bare feet hit the ancient floorboards. A white-hot pain sears from ankle to knee; his chiseled face screws tight as he chokes on a scream. 

He doubles over in agony and digs his trembling fists into the thin sheets of the down mattress, struggling to take stock of his injuries. 

There’s a plaster just below his knee and a sickly yellow-green bruise blooming just below that, from where the bone came through when the weight of his horse fell on top of him, perhaps. There’s a hot, pulsing feeling beneath the plaster on his right arm — a small but concentrated signature that must’ve come from an arrow. And the length of the shallow scrape along his ribs suggests that it came from a kiss of an enemy blade.

All of it is dressed now in clean linen, from the same kind hands stirring supper across the room from him, entirely unbothered by his suffering.

“Seven fucking hells…” you groan, more to yourself than to him. “I forgot the bloody potatoes.”

Gwayne blinks wildly at your passing figure as you trade the wooden spoon in your hands for the dark, beaten cloak hanging beside the door. “P-Potatoes?” he stammers in response, because he can think of a thousand issues much more pressing than potatoes.

“Yes,” you nod, sliding your arms through the thick woolen sleeves gone soft and shapeless with age. “You can’t have rabbit stew without potatoes. It ruins the whole dish— I’d think you’d know that, as a pretty little lord and all.”

He perks slightly at the mention of it — of food, and of the thought that some other man must surely live here to have killed and skinned the meat for your stew. 

“Where is your father?” he calls to your retreating form.

There’s a certain edge of command in his voice that tries to surface past the wavers of pain. He attempts to assert some Hightower authority in the walls of your home, despite being half-dressed and hunched over the edge of your bed and completely at your mercy. 

“Or a husband, perhaps? Someone I can speak rationally with.”

“No father… No husband…” you sigh and tie the top of your coat, which is a size or three too big for you. “You can speak rationally to me, if you wish, though I fear your current hysterics might render conversation somewhat impossible… But I require no thanks for saving your life, to be sure.”

Your words carry a certain bite that pierces him straight through the chest; the devastating reminder of a debt he has not yet had any sense to acknowledge. 

The door opens with a high-pitched creaking sound; the cool breeze that rushes in tells him that the day is ending rather than just beginning. You pause at the threshold, hand on the frame and hood half-raised

“If you’re going to leave, at least remember to shut the door behind you,” you tell him, detached but not totally unkind. “I don’t want the smell of supper bringing the animals down from the hill.”

The door screeches and clicks behind you, punctuating your leaving. The little house — smaller than his bathing chambers back in Oldtown — goes very quiet and very still with your absence. The eeriness unnerves a distant, boyish part of him that wishes most desperately for your return. The rest of him, however, wants nothing more than to be rid of this place entirely — from the strangeness of it and of you most of all.

Gwayne grits his teeth and hauls himself not-quite to full height. He’s doubled over and bracing his white-knuckled grip on the ancient wooden bedframe as he hobbles the short distance towards the door, fighting through the screaming ache shooting up and down his left leg. He makes it not even five steps before it gives out on him completely.

He crumples to the unforgiving ground in a graceless heap of limbs and injured pride, catching himself on instinct with the arm sporting the throbbing arrow wound going down.

He lies there, groaning and writhing and choking down cries of frustration with his cheek pressed to the cold floor. The sound of his ragged breaths fills the small, empty house as he watches the sunset dip low past the window, quietly waiting for the sound of the door to open — and for your presence to follow.

It opens at last; three minutes or three hours later. A silken breeze rushes in alongside you, as you enter with a basket of potatoes and other vegetables on your hip. You falter in the doorway at the sight of the man sprawled out on your floor, a crumpled puppet with all of its strings cut clean.

A strange, satisfied smile creeps across your face as you swipe your hood back with your free hand. “Well…” you croon lowly. “What do we have here?”

Gwayne lifts his heavy head. He looks up at you with watery blue eyes through the strands of wild auburn hair hanging over his brow. He loses every ounce of his composure in that moment, turning into a doe-eyed and pleading thing as his wet gaze peers at you from beneath his lashes.

“Please…” he rasps. “Help me…”

He doesn’t learn your name until the second day. He does not stand on his own until the fifth. And he does not bathe himself unaided until the seventh. 

You do not coddle him for any of it. You clean his wounds and change his bandages twice daily, and scold him for flinching at the sting — telling him that he’d spent too many years being pampered by wetnurses and that was precisely why he healed so slowly. But, after that first week, he learned to walk the length of your small home without his leg buckling underneath him; though he still requires the cane you’d fashioned for him out of a stag’s antler if he plans on taking more than a step or two.

“Here. So you can stop looking like a newborn calf every time you cross the room,” you’d said when you gifted it to him. “It’s starting to get hard to watch, if I’m honest.”

He is, if he’s being entirely truthful with himself, entirely unused to being spoken to this way. The ladies of his acquaintance back in Oldtown — the soft, sweet-voiced daughters of high lords and ladies — would never have dared to call him hysterical to his face or handle his wounds with such unromantic efficiency. They never would have laughed, as you had, at the sight of him crumpled on the floor. 

You’re nothing at all like the ladies he grew up with. 

You swear like a dockhand; you name your goats like they're your kin; you wear your dead parents' old clothes without a trace of shame and speak of your own life with a bluntness that would scandalize every septa he'd grown up with. It should, perhaps, trouble him a great deal more than it does.

Gwayne knows he could’ve and likely should’ve left days ago. He suspects that you know it, too. Tumbleton was not far from here, you told him, and his kin held the fortress now — a real castle with a real maester to tend to him — rather than this strange, sharp-tongued woman with rough hands and a rougher sense of humor. But still, he does not go. He tells himself that it’s his leg; that the roads were surely not safe yet and that he’d be long in the dying should he cross Daemon’s army a second time.

So he stays, and he makes himself useful to you in the waiting, in whatever small ways he can manage. He could not do much, at first — he could not chop firewood or carry water; he could barely carry himself, in truth — but he could mend a fence while seated, and feed the farm animals while leaning on his cane, and shell the peas you bring in from the garden for supper. 

Gwayne quickly discovers, to his own mortification, that he takes a strange satisfaction in it all. This was not a life meant for knights, certainly not one meant for a Hightower, but yet he can picture all the rest of his days playing out exactly like this — utterly unremarkable, but his just the same.

It has been three weeks since his arrival, give or take, and his days feel less like exile now and more like routine. He sits propped on the pillows after his bath, milky-white skin glimmering from your homemade oils, with nothing but a pair of borrowed trousers covering his lower half.

You sit on the edge of the bed beside him and redress the stubborn wound on his arm that refuses to heal — the worst of his injuries he came here with, Gwayne insists; a nerve-deep pain that he swears he can feel when he’s dreaming. But even still, weeks into the habit of tending to him, you are no gentler about it than you were that very first night.

“Ow—” Gwayne winces when you press too firmly against the wound. You catch his elbow before he can draw it away and urge it back into place with an unsentimental force.

“Stop squirming,” you scold and continue to dab the homemade, herb-flecked ointment onto the irritated skin.

“It hurts,” the man insists.

“It hurts because you’re squirming.”

Gwayne attempts to glare at you as you reach for the linen cloth on the table beside you. The playful frown softens with a soft smile despite himself. “Has anyone ever told you that your bedside manner is just extraordinary?”

“All the time…” you lilt back and slide the fabric around his arm, tying it off with one particularly harsh tug. “Usually right before they tell me that they're feeling much better and no longer require any of my help.”

“Well…” Gwayne croons, pale eyes glittering in the dancing candlelight. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you wanted me gone…”

You glance finally up at him from beneath your lashes, at the handsome knight sharing your house — with bright copper hair gone soft from his bath, and bright blue eyes a little too earnest for someone meant to be teasing — the kind of man that belonged in the fairytales you’d read as a child; not in your own home in your own bed.

Something in your sharp expression finally gives, like The Wall finally weeping after the first warm day of summer.

“You’re the prettiest thing I’ve seen in years, Ser Gwayne,” you hum lowly. “So if you haven’t realized by now that I’m keeping you hostage here, then I fear you haven’t been paying attention.”

A breathy laugh shakes his toned stomach, and the scar along his ribs no longer pulls to do so. He’s fairly certain that you’re jesting, but even still, he doesn’t think he’d care all that much if you weren’t.

“I find that…” he trails slowly off with a squinted look in his pale eyes, as if the realization were hitting him the moment the words fell from his mouth. His melodic voice carries a sort of airiness in it despite the soft confession. “That perhaps I wouldn’t mind it. Being your hostage… Staying here. With you… I don't think I'd mind that at all…”

“Well… That’s a very dangerous thing to say to a woman with nothing to lose, Ser Gwayne,” you murmur, propping your fists on either side of his waist as you lean in close to him — until he can smell the lavender soap on your skin and count the flecks of firelight in your gaze. “Your army has surely presumed you dead by now… No one will come looking for you here… So if you do not wish to be kept by me, the door is still open…”

Something in his chest flares hot at your words, at the thought of being kept by you.

“For how long?” he teases with an arched auburn brow, pink lips curling into a slow smile.

Your eyes flit away and back again. “…Roughly the next ten seconds.”

“Well…” he lilts as his hand lifts slowly from the blankets to cradle your jaw, urging you that much closer. “That seems like plenty of time.”

He leans off the pillow to press his mouth to yours. His nose smushes into the side of yours as his plush lips slot with your softer ones. Your tongue darts between them with little warning and a degree too eager, swiping against his like velvet on velvet. Gwayne exhales a heavy sigh through his nose at the taste of you — like supper and wine and something foreign that he chases with each languid kiss.

You kiss him long and slow, like biting into the sweet skin of an apple, and shift on the mattress to straddle his waist. Gwayne’s free hand shoves the quilt down his thighs to accommodate you upon them. Your fingers rest around his neck like a collar as you grind your hips over his, up his lap and down again. A groan rumbles like thunder in his throat.

His hands dart instantly for your waist, knotting his long fingers in the skirts pushed up to your thighs, as he pulls off of you with a quiet smack. “Don’t,” he hears himself plead.

“Why?” you pant, blinking back at him with heavy eyes.

“It’s been…” His adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “A long… long time.”

Your lips curl into a grin before your head ducks down again. Your mouth smears along his pulse in a sloppy kiss. “Three weeks isn’t so long, is it?”

A laugh sounds in his throat. You feel it rumbling against your mouth. “The war’s been going on for a lot longer than three weeks, my dear…” 

“Don’t tell me Ser Gwayne hasn’t taken his fair share of whores on the road,” you quip against the milky white tendon of his neck.

He smiles with his nose in your hair. “Not many whores on the battlefield, I’m afraid…”

“Oh, you poor thing…” you croon as you pull slowly back from him, more gentle with him now than you were when he was half dead on your porch; though there’s still a playful air about you that he doesn’t yet miss. “No wonder you’ve been so uptight… You’ve just been looking for a little… release, haven’t you? Spit—”

Gwayne’s eyes widen as they flick between your expectant face and the hand you hold under his chin. Despite his obvious diffidence, he ducks his head and spits a glob of saliva onto your palm — and watches with held breath as your fingers dip under the hem of his trousers. They wrap around his cock, laying half-soft on his thigh, and use his spit to work him the rest of the way hard. He feels like heavy velvet in your fist.

His dizzy head tips back against the wall with a quiet thud. Your quiet giggling melts with his pleasured groan as he hardens slowly in your fist. 

“I’ll bet you’ll cum the second I tell you to,” you laugh.

Gwayne nods slowly, adam’s apple moving in his long throat as he fights to keep his lidded eyes open. His breath catches in his chest when your thumb swipes over the sensitive tip of his cock.

“I’ll bet you’ll do anything I tell you to… Won’t you?”

Gwayne nods again, jerking in your fist at your words.

“Oh…” you huff a mixture of a contented sigh and a devilish laugh as you squeeze him harder in your fist. “I am going to have… so much fun with you, Ser Gwayne…”

He has little time to ponder the weight of your words when you shift on top of him again. You pull your fingers from his trousers and tuck the hem beneath his heavy balls. His eyes snap open to find you urging your dress skirts further up your thighs. He’s left mourning the warmth of your touch only for a moment, before your hand slides between your bodies once more to guide the drooling tip of his cock into your already weeping confines.

He’s long and slender — not nearly as thick as the butcher’s son in town who’s been tending to your needs for years, but an inch or three longer still — and made of meandering veins you can feel when you pierce yourself upon him. Your head tips back to exhale a moan at the ceiling, mouth curling into a lazy smile as you adjust to the length of him.

Gwayne chokes on a groan in his throat when your hips sit flush with his again, fingers clutching mercilessly at the plush of your thighs hard enough to etch bruises on the skin. The sound turns into a strangled whimper when you clench absentmindedly around him, warmer than velvet and drooling something fierce.

“I can’t…” the man whines, chiseled features twisting into a pained sort of look as he shifts his hips under your weight — trying to chase his pleasure and run away from it all at once. “I— I can’t— Seven fucking hells…”

You smile down at him when he tries and fails to get the words out. He misses the amusement flashing across your face with his eyes squeezed shut, hard enough to make white stars speckle behind the deep black of his eyelids. You clench around him again, just to hear him whimper for you again.

“Can’t what, my lord?” you coo to him, with a gentleness he didn’t think you were capable of before now. Your hands smooth up and around his neck until your fingers twist in the short auburn tendrils at the very nape of it. Chills erupt down the length of his spine in their wake. 

“I don’t wanna cum yet,” he protests through gritted teeth. “’S too soon—”

“But I want you to cum,” you tell him, and punctuate your command with a calculated roll of your hips. You tighten around him once more when your clit brushes the coarse, dark-auburn hair above his cock. You swallow his subsequent groan in a sloppy kiss, more tongue than mouth, and run the tip of your nose along the bridge of his after. “And then… after I’ve milked your cock—”

“Fuck…” he swears, though it comes out more like a sob.

“—I’ll let you clean me up with your mouth,” you continue. 

A moan tears through his throat at the thought — of pressing his mouth to your cunt until his nose is smushed against your clit, of lapping at the mixture of pleasure leaking out of you like honey, of your hands in his hair pushing him further into your pussy. He bursts at the thought, losing himself completely as he draws you into his bare chest with two strong arms wound up and around your back. 

Gwayne hides his flushed face in your neck as he hugs you against him, meeting your thrusts with weaker ones of his own. He buries each of his pitiful moans into your pulsepoint while his cock jerks wildly within your unforgiving confines— spitting ropes of warm cum that your clenching cunt milks from him. 

“I’m sorry,” he hears himself say as he shudders just against you. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry… Seven hells— I’m sorry…” 

You pet at his wild hair as he comes down from his high, whispering murmurs of praise in his ear as the pleasure ebbs from his trembling body.  “There you go… Good boy… That’s it— Give me all of it…”

Gwayne pulls his face from your neck once he’s fully spent. His trembling hands reach for your face again, cupping your cheeks between his calloused palms to meet your eyes with his wide, wet, and pleading ones. “I’m sorry,” he whispers again. “Let me make you feel good— I want to make you feel good.” 

“I know,” you coo to him, almost sympathetically so. “On your back.” 

Gwayne’s auburn brows knit softly together, but his body obeys like it was designed to submit to you. You remain straddled against him as he descends back onto the pillows. He watches down the bridge of his nose as your hands smooth up his milky white torso — past the fine trail of hair on his lean stomach, over the healed scar on his ribs, and towards his heaving chest.

Your eyes stay locked with his heavy ones as you shift your weight above him, inching up up up. You cage your bottom lip between your teeth as you reach for the hem of your skirt. You drag the heavy fabric of your dress up and over your head. Gwayne has little time to admire your bare body before you’re straddling your knees on either side of his face. His mouth waters instantly at the sight of your glittering pussy as it descends over his mouth — he curls his arms around your thighs to pull you further in.

He groans when the taste of you hits his tongue — a sweet-salty mixture of your combined pleasures — and you feel the vibrations of the sound from your cunt to the top of your spine. You keep one hand braced on the wooden headboard and your other woven through his silken auburn locks, guiding his mouth along your cunt.

“Yes…” you sigh when his mouth meets your clit. “Right there…”

Gwayne moans again at your praise and does everything in his power to make you give it to him again. He focuses on the bundle of nerves — lapping his tongue against it and suckling it between his lips. You make a noise for him he’s never heard before, a high-pitched cry that swells across the quiet room. “Keep going,” he hears you whimper when his mouth wraps around your clit. “Fuck yes, keep going like that—”

Your fingers twist hard in his hair as your hips grind down over his tongue. He moans when you give the strands an especially harsh tongue, and the sound makes you tremble on top of him. You cum for him with a strangled cry, and Gwayne sighs through his nose when a mixture of his cum and yours drops onto the velvety pad of his tongue. 

He laps at every ounce of it with an eagerness that you can hear, a chorus of panted breaths and muffled suckling sounds.

He doesn’t stop until you’re shoving him away by the crown of his head.

You exhale a heavy breath and sit back on your haunches, resting your ass over his chest and propping your weight along his ribs. Your heavy eyes rake over his face — cheeks flushed red, pale eyes glassy with desire, pink lips swollen, chin glittering with your cum, hair wild from the pillow and your fingers alike. An angel carved from in. 

A lazy smile tugs at the corners of your mouth as you shake your heavy head down at him. “You’re not going anywhere, Ser Gwayne… You understand that, right?”

“Gwayne,” he corrects, glittering lips curling upward. “Not ser.” 

“You’re not going anywhere… Gwayne.”

“I’m glad to hear it, in truth…” he confesses on an exhaled breath. “I was starting to like it here anyway…”

Set at the end of the Street of Silk, not far from houses of greater renown, the brothel was the perfect place for those who sought discretion yet would spare no expense in the pursuit of pleasure. It had not been long established, yet the array of women, beautiful and compliant, left it with little to envy in the offerings of older brothels. 

You had been the latest acquisition, three moon-turns past. Laden with the debts of your late father, with an elder brother you had heard little of to see them paid, you were fair enough, young enough, and willing enough to serve as passing sport for any man with coin in his purse. It had been years since you’d lost your maidenhood, taken by your uncle’s squire in a struggle that ended with you bent beneath the bridge that spanned the road to your father’s house. Too fair to resist, he had said when it was done. The coupling had been painful, yet it taught you the cruel truths of the world, and hardened you for what was to come.

The men who came to claim your father’s debt were fearsome, swift to impatience. So you had taken to the streets, earning your bread and honing the arts of love and pleasure to fetch a higher price. But the streets were perilous, and when that woman of the Street of Silk found you and offered a place in her brothel, you had not hesitated. It would allow you to keep paying down the debt without risking your life in the alleyways, albeit slowly, for the mistress claimed the lion’s share. For you? Only crumbs, though sweetened with the promise of her protection.

The mistress ran her business impeccably. The house’s patronage followed a pattern that allowed her to arrange the rooms, be they private chambers or shared spaces veiled in fine silks. In the same way, it allowed her to rotate the girls and set her prices according to the night’s demand.

The first to come were most often sailors, soldiers, and men who had set coin aside for the chance to spend a night between the many treasures the brothel had to offer. For such clients, the beer and wine poured was of middling quality, yet they might choose whichever girl they fancied, so long as she was not one of the mistress’s protected doves. Later would come the lesser lords, the sons of middling houses, or newly made knights, who might be served finer wines. These would often take more than one girl to make up for their pride, so long as the price could be met.

Last of all, in the deep hours of the night, perhaps for the discretion that darkness bestowed, came knights of high rank, men burdened by vows of chastity, and even lords of great houses, these last resting until the break of dawn to spare themselves the wrath of their wives. For such as these, the finest Dornish brandies were poured, fruits brought from the Summer Islands laid out upon silver trays, and the most pleasurable and beautiful women were offered as yet another exotic delicacy.

With such clientele, the takings were more than enough for the mistress to keep recruiting fresh blossoms of beauty, as well as to hang tapestries that lent the house an air of refinement. As a certain brothel keeper from a nearby establishment was fond of saying, “Whores make better investments than ships. They seldom sink, even when boarded by pirates.” 

That night was already well advanced. The first tide of sailors had already arrived, loud and in number, and many of the rooms and girls were already engaged. It was one of those nights when Madame seemed well pleased with both the attendance and the profitability of her business.

You had not yet been assigned a client and were enjoying, along with six other women, some chatting and giggling that drowned out the melody of a half-drunk lute player. Your half opened gauze gown bared your breasts as you leaned forward while another woman lined your eyes with kohl. She was young, with a sweet voice and an eastern accent, and had taken you in as both friend and confidante to help you learn the house’s rules. Bless her for it, though you still lacked the cunning of the others.

As the front door bell announced the arrival of new clients, some girls hurried to spy on the men who entered. The mistress had told them a thousand times not to be nosy and to wait for her to make the assignments, but the women always allowed themselves this little mischief. Since your friend was still giving small touches to your eyes, neither of you noticed that the other girls had vanished, until seconds later you saw them rush back into the main hall, breasts bouncing beneath their gowns as they tried to hide behind curtains.

“It’s just one, but he’s hideous!” one of them cried. “Tall as a tower and frightening…”

“He’s a monster! I pity the poor girl who has to take care of him!” whispered another.

Your friend stood immediately and gripped your wrist to help you hide, but you were not fast enough. Madame entered the common room, brow furrowed at the sight of the women scattering, already taking note of the reprimands she would deliver later. Then her gaze settled on your retreating back and hardened further.

“You,” she said dryly and you froze mid-escape. “Upstairs. The room with the big bed. And see that the lock holds this time. He wants privacy.”

Though the rooms were usually prepared in advance, Madame always kept the clients lingering a few minutes to give the girls time to settle in. A pitcher of wine -which you suspected was among the watered down ones- had already been brought up by one of the apprentices. You blew away whatever dust might have gathered on the cup that accompanied it, set a small cushion to shield the rather battered wall from an ebony headboard as large as the bed it framed, and were lighting a stick of incense when your friend arrived to help you.

“Have you seen him?” you followed her with your eyes.

“…yes,” she avoided your gaze as she fluffed a pillow.

“... and?”

She didn’t answer.

“Is he that horrible?”

The woman crouched by one of the bed’s legs to check its sturdiness. 

“Well,” she said, “he is… tall, indeed. And drunk…” She knew all your expressions well, and moved swiftly to reassure you. “I heard he just won the Hand’s tourney." 

You sank onto the mattress. A knight. The victor of festivities you never have even heard off. Were you meant to feel honored to lie with him? You laughed in bitterness and covered your face with both hands.

“Listen…” the woman sat beside you and pulled your hands away from your eyes, holding them for a moment as she looked at you with a small smile. “The mistress has made him pay twice for the inconveniences.”

“What? What inconveniences?”

She pinched your cheeks to bring some color to them, pondering something for a moment. But whatever she’d been about to say, she decided to spare you. 

“You’ll manage. You’ve handled worse men,” she lied.

As you opened your mouth again to voice your doubts, you heard Madame’s voice as she climbed the stairs. 

“I picked one who won’t flinch. Steady hands and a soft tongue. Both ready for a man who knows what he wants...”

“Scream if he gets too rough,” your friend cupped your face and waited for your nod before slipping quickly out of the room.

Madame always instructed the girls to receive clients with enough light for them to see what they were paying for, so you busied yourself with a set of candles bright enough to illuminate half of Westeros. When the door opened, you didn’t see the man duck his head as he entered, but the wood that always groaned under a big pair of boots nearly splintered.

“Welcome, sir,” you said, wick in hand and without turning to him.

A metallic clang that you guessed was his armor against the door preceded a slurred, “bugger me…” 

Your friend had been right: he was drunk. What she hadn’t told you was that his mood was even worse than his balance.

“Congratulations on winning the tournament, sir.” You forced yourself to speak, with a politeness so rehearsed that you might have been taken for a lady. 

“Spare me your niceties, woman,” was his dry reply.

You didn’t often see the cream of society, but the sheer rudeness of this man made you snort. “Yes, sir.”

He grunted, showing no care to conceal his annoyance, then poured himself a glass of wine as he muttered, “too many cursed candles. Leave but one.”

You didn’t like being nearly blind with a man you hadn’t even glimpsed yet, but the client commanded, and as the mistress had warned, he wanted privacy. When only a single flame remained burning, you prepared to turn around.

“No. Keep your back to me.” 

Your brow furrowed. 

“Very good, sir.” 

There was something about the man every time you gave him that title. You could almost feel him bristle and you didn't understand why.

“Take off your gown.” 

His voice made your skin crawl. You obeyed, feeling his gaze sink in your shoulders like sharp teeth as you shed the gauzy fabric. Beneath it, you wore only sheer stockings that reached mid-thigh. No corset or smallclothes to cover your feminine parts. Believing that he demanded full compliance, you bent down to remove them.

“Leave them,” he rasped, and you released the ties at once. He wasn’t the first man you’d encountered with… peculiar tastes.

Behind you, you heard the man shedding his metal shell. He grunted when some piece resisted. You had seen knights disarm themselves many times, and they usually needed help with certain pieces, but you wouldn’t offer unless asked. He didn’t. From the time he was taking, he must be fully armored, yet it wouldn’t be a problem; the room had space enough for two, sometimes three men, to leave their belongings.

You didn’t hear him approach. Large fingers as thick as tanned leather landed on your hips, kneading your flesh upward until they groped your bare breasts. Your client panted as he pawed the most tender parts of your body, and you indulged him when those hands that could strangle a bear guided you toward the bed, one broad palm pressing between your shoulders until yours met the mattress.

“Up. On hands and knees,” his breath was thick and fruity with the scent of wine.

You climbed onto the bed, and immediately noticed him fumbling with what remained of his garments. One hand clamped onto your hips again as he guided your ass backward toward him. You bowed your head, and caught a glimpse of the only thing you could: the bulk of his frontal thighs behind you, strong and covered in hair, adjusting clumsily to your smaller height. Several curses later, he growled and shoved a pair of cushions beneath your knees so you were lifted as he wanted. It was rude and forceful, and you swallowed the urge to turn around and slap him.

With one rough hand still at your hip, his other spread your ass cheeks, prying your southern lips open in an impatient and far from gentle check. A heartbeat later, it was gone, and you could easily imagine where. What pressed against your womanhood next was daunting in both hardness and size, like the rounded head of some great drawbar from the gates of King’s Landing, if iron could pulse with the warmth of living flesh. 

He pushed forward, blunt and graceless, trying to force his way through sheer stubbornness alone. Though he was right about the path and the place, you could tell he was not used to such closeness. His attempts were ill-aimed, shifting from one angle to the next as though brute insistence might win what precision could not. For all his effort, he scarcely managed to breach you more than the width of a fingertip.

“Stay still or I’ll make you,” he grumbled.

“I haven’t moved an inch,” you said in your defense. It was true.

The man growled with frustration behind you. What had he expected? He was built like a warhorse, and you’d been given no time to prepare. His manhood would break you, you were sure of that. You could feel your body tense and recoil instinctively, denying him like an inexperienced maiden. He pressed again, harsher this time, and his fingers clawed at your hips as he angled your ass up and back towards his center. Then with one last forceful shove that drove the air from your lungs, your body finally yielded. The sudden bite of pain drew a pained groan from you. 

He stilled. 

You closed your eyes, bracing for the reprimand you knew as coming. Another client might have lost patience, demanding the obedience he had paid a high price for, yet to your astonishment, he said nothing. He just pressed the heel of his hand to your groin, just over the artery where your blood was racing, and sighed.

“Calm down, girl. I won't hurt you,” he said, voice hoarse but warmer now.

You could barely breathe. You should have run faster to hide in the hall. You wished your last client had been at least a third as large as this one. That way you would have been properly stretched. But neither the young man who came with his father to lose his virginity before his wedding, nor the father himself as he, in his words, reminded you how a man fucks, were even half as thick as this one.

"Breathe… and stop shaking." 

Were you trembling? You were so frightened you hadn’t even noticed, so focused on grounding yourself on the pillow beneath you. You felt his other hand move to your inner thigh, brushing it in soft pats through the stockings. It was gentle, in truth, though to you it felt more like he was petting a skittish mare.

You allowed yourself an abundant intake of air. Your flanks inflated and deflated with it while his legs remained firm behind you, like two columns holding the weight of a looming fortress you were not allowed to see. Aside from the small pats of his hand, his body remained completely still. You silently thanked him for that. From the next room came a rhythmic pounding against a wall, and then moans from a couple clearly enjoying their time more than you. The filthy sounds made your client’s cock twitch and you hissed, though in truth it served as good practice to help you adjust to his body. 

He shifted his hand so that it was now his thumb that checked your pulse. “Come now,” his wine soured breathing hit behind you, his hardness throbbing in agony and less patient than his master.

You swallowed, and wanting to give yourself a little more time, lifted your head and looked to your side with no particular purpose, toward a window which offered only darkness. There you found his reflection, blurred yet clear enough to let you see he was truly a sturdy and towering man, with long hair that seemed more abundant on one side, and hungered eyes that did not tear away from your ass. His image should have terrified you, yet there was something vulnerable in him that drew you close to what you would have called empathy. 

When his manhood complained again, straining to release even a little of its aching tension, your pulse no longer pounded in your throat. The man seemed to sense it too, for his thumb left your groin as he breathed, “that’s it,” behind you.

His movements were slow at first. Not for your sake, but to give himself time to adjust to the overwhelming pleasure your warmth granted him. No man wanted to blow his load too soon, least of all when the whore had been so expensive. You had never felt so stuffed. Even though he gave you time, the drag of his massive cock as it sheathed and unsheathed stretched the skin around your lower lips, tightening you as no man ever had before.

His hands found a hard grip on your hips. Your breaths turned heavy and uneven, his from the effort of driving into you, yours from the strain of taking him. You glanced at his reflection again. His broad shoulders were taut, his head tipped back slightly. You could not see his face, but the way he fought down his moans told you his jaw was locked tight.

His stones, girthy and heavy, bounced rhythmically against your slit, making the honey pour from it more abundantly. You remembered that time you witnessed the neighbor’s bull mounting your uncle’s cow. It was savage. He wasn’t purebred, and when your uncle tried to tie him, he almost destroyed the stable. You were just a little girl and your mother quickly covered your eyes, but those dark sacks, swaying and overflowing with seed, were etched into your memory forever. Now you were that poor cow, you thought, and it almost made you laugh. 

His pace quickened. The slapping sweetly reached that spot which made women go wild and which so few men ever bothered to explore. Not everything in your duty as a whore had to be suffering and pain, so you indulged yourself in a little pleasure. Trying to be as discreet as you could, you greedily lifted your hips to him. He noticed, both hands clamped to your waist as he muttered a curse, then with a lumbering grunt, he pressed you harder against him. He was not a talkative man amd that was for the best. You could not stand those who leaned over you and whispered stale-breath nonsense. Promises of getting you out of there and of giving you a decent life. Some even told you they loved you, smiling crookedly as they helped you bob your head between their legs.

His hips met your ass harder as he drove deeper inside you. You could feel him everywhere, in your cunt, opening his way through your stomach, you could almost feel his headcock, big as a fist slamming against your windpipe. One rough hand ran up quickly to your breasts, grabbing one in a rough handful. Your perky nipple was caught between two thick fingers that squeezed it almost by accident. You moaned.

“Stop that,” he said in a broken snarl. “No mummer’s farce. W-we both know you’re not enjoying this.”

You bit your tongue. For a moment, you thought of telling him you were not pretending, but you refused to feed his ego. You dropped your head and nodded instead, not certain if he saw you or not. Though loving sounds had been coming from the next room without pause, it was yours that drove him wild. His response was to pound into you with all he had. He fucked you as if he hated you; as if he hated the damned place. And above all, he fucked you as if he hated himself. You wondered what had happened to him in the tourney, or in his life, but the rage, the pain as he thrusted his cock as deep as he could made your heart ache more than your cunt.

Stiffing your own sounds was difficult, yet you managed as decently as you could considering the immense stimulation the man provided. What you could not stop was your insides from fluttering around him, claiming his seed like the greedy little whore you were. It was as though your bodies understood one another better than you ever could through words. How contradictory, all the girls fleeing his company, looking at you with pity and worry and there you were, two tears welling up in your waterline as the bastard dragged you to the very edge of pleasure.

Your fists gripped the mattress to brace against his more vigorous thrusts. His hand roamed round your body, furiously, halting between your shoulders and shoving you down the mattress while he kept your ass up. He wanted submission. With another man you would have resisted, despite the direct instructions of your employer, and you even tried, tensing your arms against his impressive strength.

“Down,” he commanded, pressing harder.

The way he said it licked down your back well enough that you shivered, and you obeyed, ass unwittingly slopping up to meet him. His hips rutted into you and your body answered again with a firm clench around his length. He groaned with lust. He was reaching that point where there was not turning back. The hand between your shoulderblades remained firm as steel. His other one stuffed itself into your stockings, tearing the delicate garment on its way down and dwarfing your thigh as he fisted the plush flesh.  

“Ah~” 

His legs jerked, taut abdomen contracting and rrelaxing as he panted hard. What came next was something you knew all too well. A pained, rough groan, followed by a thick warmth spilling inside you. His uneven, jagged nails dug into your thigh, scratching until they drew blood. The bastard did not stop until his balls felt light and empty.

He released his hold, no longer keeping you pressed against the mattress. Your breathing was as ragged as his; your brow slick with sweat. When at last you gathered yourself, you lifted your gaze ahead. The cushion he had set between the headboard and the wall had fallen. The paint was more flaked than before. Your client shifted behind you, likewise struggling to catch his breath as he pulled himself out. His absence almost drew a pathetic whine from you. He leaned forward, clumsy hands rolling down your ruined stockings and fingers pausing to acknowledge each mark on your skin. He clicked his tongue as though reprimanding himself.

“Took me well,” his voice was hoarse beyond anything you had ever known. The praise, blunt though it was, might have touched you had you not heard him stumble backward a moment later.

Having learned well the lesson of granting him privacy, you did not turn around while he armed himself again. It did not take long. He likely fastened only the pieces strictly necessary. Another sign of how little he wished to be there. For the first time, you thought the reason might be shame. 

When the door opened, you sat upon the bed, hoping for at least a glimpse of the man who had nearly split you in two. You caught only the lower third of an immense longsword disappearing through the doorway.

Your friend did not take long to come in. Rushing to attend to you with a set of clean clothes in one hand and a tray bearing a teapot in the other. She set it upon the bedside table, and knelt before you.

“Are you hurt?” she held your chin and tilted your head from side to side, inspecting your cheeks, your neck, and moving down to study your breasts and sides.

You shook your head, still dazed. She sighed in relief, then spread your legs to continue her assessment, and frowned when she reached your thighs.

“Drink” she gestured toward the teapot.

You swallowed the honeyed infusion while she cleaned the mess between your legs, a task that took her a little longer than usual. When you set the empty glass on the small table, she rose on her feet and refilled it to the brim.

“He is a big man, love,” she said as you looked at her with one eyebrow arched.

You forced yourself to drink it when Madame appeared at the door, radiant and pleased with herself, just like after a profitable venture had been concluded. She did not bother to enter, but watched you from outside with a satisfied smile.

“Well done, girl,” you heard her while your friend placed a third glass into your hands. “He will come back.”

...................................................................

He sees you spill three goblets of the good stuff trying to take it up the stairs on a tray, then the next night at dinner a whole roasted quail and all the golden potatoes made special for the queen regent. A splatter of juice at your feet, tears in your eyes, you brush by his shoulder to beg the kitchens for another.

Sandor knows the population of labourers swells and abates nearer to and further from grand events, but he wonders if they’re really so desperate they haven’t thrown you out or let king at you for all the trouble you've caused.

The tourney for the nameday of the golden princess grows nearer, amplifying the chaos behind the velvet curtains where the bluebloods can’t see. The kitchens smell perpetually of bread and meat and herbs, of sweat and toil. You hide there when you can, thinking no one will notice, that nobody can see. His eyes flit to you when he walks by or through, where you’re begging to just be made to peel potatoes or stir a great pot of sweet smelling broth.

“Please, they’re already cross with me,” you whine, soft and insistent, fingers twisted in your cream coloured skirts.

Sylvanna the old kitchen maid always takes pity, always negotiates with the stewards to let you be useful here rather than disruptive in the hall or gods forbid serving a noble. Three of her now grown children work in the keep, and you seem to have weaseled your way into her maternal old heart.

He tries to pay no mind, knows you’ll likely be gone soon after the festivities are over and therefore he doesn’t feel the need to do much more than snap at you when you bump into him and then watch your ass in those skirts move as you scurry away.

Sandor would never force a woman, but he won't keep himself from looking and lusting, of thinking of the way your voice goes high when you've gotten in trouble yet again and how it might sound when you're full of his cock, the way you might look with your dress pulled down and those sweet tits dangling in his face. He's no more than a man, and he'll honor his urges by fisting his cock to the thought of lapping at your cunt if he wants.

He finds you smeared in mud after a smattering of rain one morning, herbs tucked into the apron of your uniform, hands full of leaves, the unnecessary shit nobles need to eat their food. You're rushing, flustered again, hands making a mess of the gardens.

“They'll whip you for that,” he grunts, “looks like a rabbit's been at it.”

You look up, eyes wide with a familiar fear. It makes him sneer.

“I'm to take all the rosemary to–”

“Are you supposed to tear up the roots, too, little rabbit?”

You pause, and your mouth works for a moment. The garden bed is a mess, and half the rosemary you've got is the woody ends, the roots pulled right from the ground.

The realization dawns on you at the same moment he steps forward, and you lean back, whispering, “that's why it was so tough…”

He laughs, neither cruel nor kind. When his leather clad hand curls around the pommel of his shorter blade, your eyes widen and you fall back onto your bum as he draws the steel out.

“I didn't mean to–” you squeak, poor little rabbit. He cuts the remaining herbs and leaves the stump to grow back again, tossing the plants to the ground. You sag in relief.

“Are you simple?” He knows you aren't, he only wants to be abrasive, wants to punish the fear you felt, make you feel silly for thinking he'd cut you down over some rosemary.

He's a dog, not a monster. Though he benefits from his reputation, he isn't Gregor.

“No, I'm not- I'm sorry, I thought…” you look away, standing, mud on your skirt.

“That the castle dog would maul your pretty neck?”

“I'm not used to seeing steel!” You insist. He can't tell if you're truthful. “I was just startled is all.”

He straightens fully, towers above you, feels acutely aware of his face and his stature as he grunts, “no? That was the smaller one.”

You step around him on the soggy garden ground and, like prey, your eyes follow him from the side. He finds it both tired and endearing.

He wonders how you'd look at him should he reveal he's got no sword for you but instead a long hard cock.

“Thank you for your help,” you say quickly, before disappearing.

The next time he sees you is in the stables. Stranger has been snuffling around a ripe new mare, and now nobody but Sandor can brush him down and put him away for the night. Too rowdy, his boy. Too like his rider.

It isn't until the padlock is shut that he hears you again with your tears. Soft, weeping just behind the wall. He pauses.

“I haven't got the coin,” your voice is quiet, miserable, “they haven't paid us yet.”

The low murmur of another voice, something he can’t make out, sounds angry, pointy. He hears you sniffle loudly, hears the shuffle of feet.

The conversation peters off, until he hears you walk around the stable and back towards the keep.

Sandor steps into your path—he can be quiet when he wants.

It’s not the first time he’s startled you (he hopes not the last), and that little squeaky gasp is enough to rush blood to his cock, straining against armor, trying to get at you. Down, boy.

“What’s that you’re weeping about?” he looms, “poor little rabbit. Not enough coin?”

The immediate scrunch of your nose and the pull of your lips makes him pulsate.

“That wasn’t any of your business, Ser.”

“No?” he looks you up and down, lecherous, but not threatening. He stands still, lets you squirm, “not a Ser.”

You return the look, only your eyes are far away, sad and frightened. The anxious expression on your face doesn’t flag his cock, but it does make him curious.

“Someone hurting you?”

That makes you pause, frown. You look up at him and your eyes are more focused, yet no less distrusting.

“Want me to kill them?”

The evening air is all he can feel for a moment, trapped so in your wide eyes, little rabbit girl and the sweet smell of her hair, her wet face, eyes lashes clinging together. You don’t understand— why should he offer such a thing? A beast like him.

“Nothing so sweet as killing someone that deserves it,” he presses, “who is it? Some ugly little whelp you took for a husband? That sorry fuck hit you?”

His eyes search for marks, knowing all too well the kinds of abuses women can suffer, especially in this godsforsaken castle. The image of his brother knighted still haunts him worse than the smell of his own skin charring.

Your mouth opens, moving again—cute— and you shake your head, “no, no. I’m not married. Nobody’s hurting me.”

“Then what?” he presses, reaching out quicker than you can anticipate and cupping his huge hand to your soft cheek. Not married. He looks down at your body, wants to see it swollen, trapped by a babe.

You look up at him, sucking in a soft breath, then rush, “I just need— I need my coin from the steward, because,” you pause for a breath, “because I’m in debt. It’s stupid, it's all my fault. I just need to pay or they said they’ll burn my home down.”

Burn. That makes him freeze. Who’d threaten such a thing against you? You’re a silly, clumsy woman, what kind of trouble could you possibly be in— he isn’t naive enough anymore to believe in appearances anymore, but his gut tells him you’re as sweet as you look.

“What kind of fucking debt?”

“The— they wanted my house. But I grew up there! I was born in it, I wanted to have children there too, and who else has a house? I’m fortunate to have—” he stops you with a hand over your mouth. Littlefinger, that rodent had been buying up property, god knows for what. Sandor can picture it now, men at your door, demanding some kind of tax, punishing you until you're destitute, all for some fucking house he’s sure is smaller than Baelish’s room in the Keep.

“I’ll take care of it.”

Your eyes, impossibly wide. You bravely pull his hand away from your mouth, holding his thick fingers with yours, “no! But how? I can pay, I think, I just need my salary.”

“You think some fucking maids salary is going to satisfy that greedy bastard? I thought you said you weren’t simple.”

It takes nine days to corner that smarmy cunt and make him accept Sandor’s coin, to back down to a threat and the promise that should Littlefinger not turn his sights to another place, then who’s to stop the Hound from separating his head from that scrawny throat?

You find him in less than an hour after he leaves Baelish. You’re panting, sweating, eyes wide and in awe as you see him, “Ser!”

“Not a Ser,” he says, muscle memory.

“How did you do it?” you step close, too close. All your fear is gone, all that weight. He feels a smidge of something warm in his belly.

He tells you the truth—

You touch his armor and look up, wide eyes and sweet face, “how can I repay you?”

Sandor brings you to his preferred inn. Far, but worth the ride for its privacy. The innkeep isn’t afraid of him and the tavern girls are getting there, too. They know he’s there to drink and sleep, sometimes to bring a whore for the night. They know he won’t hurt them.

You lean back against his chest the entire way, watching as the city thins enough to relax, as the smells abate. You’d kissed his cheek and smiled when he asked to take you to bed, naive girl. He wants to marry you, but he won't say it yet. Wants to pump you full of brats and fill that empty house of yours just to see you smile again.

There’s no need for drinks, though he offers anyway— wine? Ale? You shake your head to both, insisting on seeing the room first. I’ve never been in an inn you say, like it's fancy. He supposes you’d have no need to, no extra coin to. It was stupid and brave to try and pay Littlefinger with a maids salary, now you can keep it all.

He pulls your dress down to see what he’s been waiting for for weeks, exposing your tits to the air, hunching down and bringing one to his mouth so he can suck on your tight nipple.

His mouth lavishes them, enjoys the feeling of soft skin in his mouth and the smell of your soap, the breaths form your lips.

When you see him, that angry red bobbing cock springing free from his britches, you swallow, “that— it’s way too big.”

“A maid, then?” he says against the skin of your soft breast, fingers hiking your dress up, finding the wet seam of your cunt. No underclothes. You’re soft there, too, skin and hair caressing his hand, sweet little pussy.

“No,” you shake your head, “I almost got married once. But you're much bigger than he was.”

He laughs, hitches you further up the bed by cupping your lady’s place and pulling, making you squeak. Sandor has always known he’s bigger than most, but he loves to hear it. Especially from a pretty woman, in bed with him without the promise of coin.

“I’ll lick you first,” he bunches your skirts up and pushes them up to your stomach, laying down to reach your pussy.

He’s only a man, and this is just the sweetest sight. You’re damp for him between the thighs, plush and pretty. His thumb finds the junction between your thigh and groin and presses there, fingers curling around your asscheck, as he leans forward and sniffs.

“Oh, don’t!” you cry out, bending so as to pull away.

“You’re in bed with a fucking hound,” he presses his nose to the slit of you, breathing in your sweet musk. You lay back down. Sandor puts his tongue on you, splits you with it, sliding through your folds like tasting the most decadent meal. He pushes it inside, tasting your hole, making an introduction before his cock arrives.

You keen, high, as loud as you want— who’s going to interrupt Clegane in bed? Nobody who wants to keep their head. When he comes up to suck on your swollen clit, you shout your pleasure into the air.

It’s only when he can fit four thick fingers inside you that he sits back up and presses the head of his cock to you, an angry ram battering down the door. You tense for a moment as he pushes in, holding your breath.

“You can take it,” he slides further, “feel that?”

Your pussy squeezes him, involunterarily or not, he snarls with how tight you are around him, “sweetest fucking cunt I’ve ever had. Grateful fucking cunt.”

You make a pained little sound as he pushes in another inch or so, a squeak, your pussy squeezing around him like a vice. He knows he’s a big man, shushes you by rubbing your flank like a horse, “hush, girl.”

“It’s hurting,” you complain, bottom lip pushed out, hips wiggling to try and make space, “just wait—”

“You’re almost there,” he’s not lying, there’s only half an inch or so until he’ll be buried all the way up your snug cunt, but he doesn’t want to make you suffer. No, he just needs you a little wetter, so he waits right there and swipes a tough thumb over your begging clit. You gasp, and whine again.

“San- Sandor,” your hand goes trying to grasp his wooly forearm, but you’re overwhelmed and uncoordinated, eyes glassy, fingers wiggling in the air, “stop, or I’ll come.”

“Come,” he doesn’t stop, pulls back the delicate skin covering your precious clit and presses until he feels it jump and flex against his thumb, “wet my cock.”

A comet in the sky, a star bursting open— you’re amazing to see, so open, shaking and squeezing on him, his cock sliding through the gush of your orgasm to bottom out.

“That’s a good girl,” he encourages, not letting up, sliding back out through your soaked hole and back in. He abandons your clit and instead pulls back the wet lips of your pussy so he can watch himself disappear all the better inside you.

“Look.”

You do, head coming up, unfocused eyes searching for where he's connected to you. You’re so full, he can tell by the way you’re gasping for every breath, fingers gripping your skirts now to hang onto anything, to pull them up so you can see too.

Sandor regrets not tearing the dress from your body when he could, laments that he can’t see your belly so that he can picture what it might look like swollen up with his babe. He gives the fabric you're holding the stink eye, palms itching to hold your middle as he ploughs you like a ripe field.

“How’s that big cock feel in your guts, little rabbit?” he pants, damp with sweat, the room hot. Wonders if his callouses and scars and body hair hurts your soft skin, “gonna be even more full when I give you my load.”

“Mmhn,” you lift your eyes to him, mouth wide and open, “you’ll put a babe in me.”

“Yeah?” he pumps you harder, watching himself disappear, fingers moving to your knees so he can push your legs back further, “can feel how wet you are, doesn’t sound like an issue. You want me to make you a mother?”

“Please,” you nod slowly, rocked up the mattress by his thrusts, “oh, please.”

“Pretty little rabbit,” he grunts, mouth curling into a snarl as he really starts to focus, “don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

The veins in his neck pop, throbbing in time with his cock, back aching from how frenzied he’s becoming. You begin to shout again when you can breathe, fingers clenched, pressed so against the mattress so that you can’t move. He’s going to pump you full, breed you, make you his.

“That’s right,” he snarls, “I’m going to fill you up, rabbit, you hear? Best cunt I ever felt.”

That expression— she must have been made in the image of the Mother— he’s heard it a thousand times, praise for delicate princesses full with the next heir, for the peasant girls that visit the king for him to bless their babies or swollen stomachs. He’s tuned it all out, only ever interested in spilling outside or watching the woman he’s bedded drink her contraceptive.

Sandor understands, now, looking down at you. His muscles tighten, balls drawing up to his body as he fucks you hard with the singular goal of making you withchild. Of planting himself inside you and watching you grow and grow.

He lowers his face to yours and scratches your delicate neck with his stubble, growling promises threats in your ear about the way you’ll need to depend on him after, about how he’s going to marry you after this. He watches the way your tits bounce, wants to see them leak with the evidence of this union.

His pace stays consistent even as he swipes over your clit again, demanding one more time for your surrender, waiting to come until you’ve begun to shake again, begun to cry with the sensitivity.

He pulses inside of you, pressing all his weight down for a moment, snarling like an animal as he makes a mess.

Just as you begin to push weakly at his shoulders, he sits up, gingerly pulling his cock out. You’re wide, swollen, leaking. He pushes a pillow under your hips and lays beside your exhausted body, murmuring, “they make the royal ladies do this to make sure the seed took.”

You turn to him, pressing your forehead to his hairy chest.

While my giftee is no longer involved their prompt was illuminated manuscript with a kneeling Dunk (amazing line up with my own offer), and I knew just the Codex Manesse image.

Though the 'plot' veneer here is after Ashford, Ser Arlan's coat of arms (with the black diamond of a funerary hatchment) gets a top spot as part of Dunk's lineage.

Dunk's arms are simplified to be a little more real world heraldic.

The Targaryen arms are not the show version again for real world heraldry - where the important part is a consistent blazon (written description) rather than a absolutely consistent image. So unless the dragon was specified as in annulo (in a circle), these are can still be described as Sable, a thee-headed dragon Gules.

The little arm beasts are also Dunk & Baelor. I like to imagine them curled up together like the weirdest little cat things.

Dunk-beast is pointing specifically at the 'hold honor in their breast' line as an "I remembered my vows, did you?"

The helmet Baelor is presenting has the Targ color torse (fabric twist) as livery for a knight sworn to the house - the similar twist on Dunk's arm is absolutely his King's ✨favour✨. Winged crests in shield colors were very common in Germanic heraldry though it also double up here as a trace of Ser Arlan again.

Baelor's little cape has a pattern called vair which is supposed to look like a squirrel's winter fur. Royal mantles and all that.

The air in the Paper Street House was a living thing. It was sweat, sawdust, testosterone, and the low, guttural symphony of men breaking themselves to be remade. Upstairs, in the sanctum of the second floor, the air was different. It was the scent of ink, of expensive paper, of your French press coffee, and the singular, chaotic pheromone that was Tyler Durden.

You were the untouchable queen. They all knew it. The space monkeys downstairs spoke of you in hushed, reverent tones, a mythology built on glimpses: a flash of leg on the stairs, the shadow of your profile in a high window as you watched them toil in the garden, a whisper of your perfume lingering in the hallway after you’d left for the city. You lived among them, yet apart. Tyler’s one concession, his one weakness. You had a real job, a life outside, drawing those gritty, nihilistic comic panels he so admired. It kept you real, he said. It kept you you. And you were his. Everyone knew that, too.

Angel Face knew it better than most. At nineteen, with the face of a ruined angel, he was pure, fervent devotion. He believed in Tyler’s cause with every fiber of his beautifully bruised being. And he believed in the idea of you. He’d whisper about you with the others in the dark, the kind of crude, desperate fantasies born of celibacy and sublimated rage. What he’d give to just see you up close. To have you look at him, just once.

Tonight, the basement was a cathedral of violence. Angel Face had fought, as he always did, with a terrifying, graceful abandon. His opponent had landed a clean, sharp hit, busting his nose with a satisfying crunch. Blood, warm and metallic, painted his lips and chin. It was nothing. A badge. He grunted, touched the swelling bridge, and headed upstairs, a towel pressed to his face, in search of cotton to stem the flow.

The kitchen was dim, lit only by the pale moonlight filtering through the grimy window. And there you were.

Leaning against the counter, a steaming mug of coffee in your hands, you were a vision that short-circuited his brain. You wore a robe—Tyler’s robe, he recognized the pattern—belted loosely around your waist. It fell open in a deep V, revealing a tantalizing expanse of skin from your throat down to the smooth plane of your sternum, the shadowed valley between your breasts. The moonlight caught the line of your collarbone. You weren’t wearing anything underneath. The knowledge hit him like a physical blow.

He froze, a deer in the halogen glare of your presence. The blood from his nose seeped, forgotten, onto the towel. He’d imagined this moment a thousand times, but the reality was paralyzing. You were more. So much more.

You took a slow sip of your coffee, your eyes—dark, knowing, amused—tracking over him. You didn’t seem startled. You seemed… expectant.

“Messy business in the basement,” you said, your voice a low, melodic thing that vibrated in the quiet. You set the mug down with a soft click. Then you gestured him over with a curl of your fingers. “Come here, Angel Face. Let me see.”

Angel Face.

You knew his name. You knew him. The information detonated in his chest, a warm, terrifying explosion. He wasn’t just ‘space monkey #3’ to you. You had plucked his chosen name from the ether and held it in your mouth. He was suddenly, acutely aware of his own body: the blood, the sweat, the dumb, hulking stance.

He moved as if in a dream, shuffling forward until he stood before you, the cold linoleum a stark contrast to the heat radiating from his skin. You reached up, your fingers—cool and clean, smelling of soap and ink—gently tilting his chin. He flinched, not from pain, but from the shock of the contact.

“Oh, you poor thing,” you murmured, your thumb brushing a smear of blood from his cheekbone. Your touch was devastatingly gentle, a stark antithesis to every touch he’d known in this house. “Such a pretty young thing, getting all banged up down there with the animals. Doesn’t seem right, does it?”

You were teasing him, but there was a bedrock of tenderness beneath it. You plucked a piece of cotton wool from a box on the counter, soaked it in water from the tap, and began dabbing at the blood around his nostrils. He held his breath. Your robe gaped further with the movement, and his eyes, wide and helpless, dipped for a fraction of a second before snapping back to your face. You saw it. A ghost of a smile played on your lips.

“Look at me, angel,” you cooed, your voice soft as a lullaby. “Not a loser anymore, hmm? Not like the last time. Or the time before. Everybody loves a winner, right?”

The words, your tone, they dismantled him. They spoke directly to the raw, hungry core of him—the boy who’d always been overlooked, the pretty face that was a target, the desperate need to be chosen. You were treating him like a precious, wounded child, and it was the most erotic experience of his life. He felt his knees go weak.

“There we go,” you whispered, as you gently packed his nostrils with clean cotton. “All fixed. Good as new. Maybe even better. Character.”

Your hand smoothed back his sweat-damp hair from his forehead. It was his undoing. A small, choked sound escaped him, and before he could think, he swayed forward. His arms, moving of their own volition, slid carefully around your waist, his big hands settling tentatively on the small of your back. He leaned his weight into you, just slightly, resting his chin on the exposed skin of your sternum. He could feel your heartbeat, steady and calm against his jaw. He looked up, his face tilted, his blue eyes—one already starting to purple—wide with dumb, worshipful awe.

You didn’t push him away. You chuckled, a warm, rich sound, and your arms came around his shoulders, one hand cradling the back of his head. “Oh, sweet boy. You’re just melting into me, aren’t you? All that fight, gone. Just a puddle.”

He nodded, minute and helpless, nuzzling almost imperceptibly against your skin. He was breathing in your scent—coffee, jasmine, you. In this moment, all the odds were in his favor. This was it. The something that was bound to begin. It had to happen, happen sometime. Maybe this time, I’ll win.

The spell shattered with the sound of heavy boots on the basement stairs.

“Angel Face! Jesus Christ, did you get lost in the fucking linen closet? It’s been half an hour, for God’s sake—”

Tyler Durden filled the doorway, his sharp eyes taking in the scene in a nanosecond: you, in his robe, holding the broken-nosed, starry-eyed boy like a mother comforting her son after a nightmare. Angel Face, clinging to you as if you were the only solid thing in a spinning world.

Tyler stopped dead. A slow, incredulous smile spread across his face. He looked from Angel Face’s blissful, dazed expression to your own calm, defiant one.

You met his gaze and gave him The Look—the one that held centuries of feminine knowing, mixed with a challenge—and then you let the corner of your mouth curl into The Smirk™.

Tyler barked a laugh, shaking his head. “Fucking hell, girl,” he said, his voice a mix of admiration and pure annoyance. “Out of all the grown men here… you picked the baby?” He ran a hand over his shaved head. “I mean, of course. That’s just what you do. All that nurturing shit.” His eyes narrowed playfully, landing on Angel Face, who was now stiffening in your arms, reality crashing back in. “But you better not spoil him rotten. He’s still got work to do.”

Tyler turned and shouted back down the stairs, his voice echoing through the house, loud and deliberately indiscreet. “HEY, JACK! UPDATE! ANGEL FACE HAS BEEN OFFICIALLY PROMOTED TO TEACHER’S PET! LOOKS LIKE THE KID’S A NATURAL AT KISSING UPSTAIRS ASS, TOO!”

The sound of raucous, jeering laughter filtered up from the basement. Angel Face flinched, his face burning with a new kind of heat, but he didn’t let go. He couldn’t. Not until you made him.

You looked down at him, your smirk softening into something more private, more genuine. You gave his shoulders a final, gentle squeeze before releasing him. “Run along now, angel,” you whispered, your thumb tracing the line of his bruised cheekbone once more. “Daddy’s calling.”

As he stumbled back, the spell broken but the imprint of you seared into his soul, he knew. He was still a space monkey. He was still bleeding. But for one fleeting, infinite moment, he had been held by the queen. He had been seen. He had been chosen.

And as he walked back down into the din, the taunts and congratulations washing over him, the taste of your skin and the echo of your cooing voice in his ears, he felt a new certainty blaze in his chest.

Maybe this time.

and, yeah. he knows he should send you away. should tell his guards to take you elsewhere, should give you a golden dragon for your troubles and tell you to buy yourself a nice gown or a good meal.

he should do the right thing. the godly thing. but then you come near him smelling of honeysuckle and ambrosia and every godforsaken tempting thing in all the seven kingdoms, and ormund is done for.

at first, you only sit in his lap and kiss his cheeks. and he tells himself it's fine, you know? it's not like you're really doing anything wrong. just worshipping a man you'd been paid to make feel good. and it does make him feel good, your soft lips against his skin.

but then he lets himself touch you.

slow at first. a hand on your thigh—over your dress. albeit a thin barrier of lace and silk, but a barrier still. and then he drags his knuckles down the back of your smooth neck, stroking the sweat-slick hair that clings to your nape.

you thread your own fingers through his curls, mouth drifting lower to lay kisses over his pulse. you're good at what you do, he realizes quickly. because before he can even register what's happening, you're turning fully to staddle his hips and hiking your dress up your legs.

he can feel you, even through his trousers. the heat that emits from between your thighs, the wetness, the desire. it makes him feel dizzy. drunk, even.

you give a tentative roll of your hips over his bulge and his head falls back, knocking lightly against the top of the mahogany chair. it's too much, and he knows it, and there's a thought in the back of his head as you create a delicious rhythm that he might be damned for this.

but he's too far gone now, that iron grip on his control slipping through his fingers like smoke. he can only feel the remnants of it like a thick humidity, can hardly remember those life-long teachings of the faith.

when your fingers unbuckle the iron buttons of his doublet, he lets you. doesn't push you away like he should when you push it over his shoulders and down his strong biceps, either.

you're so soft. tracing his scars with eager hands, still humping his clothed cock like you're the most desperate girl he's ever seen. he tugs roughly at the tie at the back of your dress, the fabric over your chest falling away with little resistance.

his big hands come to cup your breasts, massaging the supple flesh, calloused thumbs stroking over the peaks of your nipples. his mouth waters at the sight of you, bare and free and open, all for him.

his for the taking.

his for the feasting.

ormund leans forward and suckles your tit into his mouth, tongue demanding as it flicks across your nipple. he kisses his way across your sternum to the other, sucking and biting, unable to stop himself from making some sort of claim on you despite being fully away you're not his to claim.

he's not an indulgent man, no. but greedy? well...that's another matter.

your breath is warm against the shell of his ear as you say, "i want you inside me."

he should say no. he knows that.

but then you say, "please, ser."

and gods. what's a man to do? deny a pretty woman? deny the prettiest woman?

ormund doesn't have the strength. not when you beg so beautifully.

"get up," he says.

you do without a moment's hesitation. perfect girl. obedient girl.

ormund stands to his feet and crowds your space until you have to take a step back. one, and then another, and another. he tilts his head and smiles with a wolfish grin until your back hits the edge of the desk.

he sees it there, for a fleeting moment—the fear in your eyes. but you don't have to be afraid, not of him. he's a godly man, don't you know? he would never hurt a woman, let alone one like you.

gently, he lifts his hand to your face and strokes the back of his knuckles over the curve of your cheek. "do you have any idea how beautiful you are?"

the fear subsides, and ormund traces the shape of your sweet mouth with the pad of his thumb.

"if it weren't for coin, would you still want this? and don't lie, girl."

he watches as your pupils dilate. you nod, slowly at first, but then again with more certainty. "yes."

"good." he presses his thumb past your lips, feeling the soft wetness of your tongue and she sharpness of your teeth. you hollow out your cheeks, staring up at him through your lashes the whole time.

a moan escapes him at the sight of you. pretty and sinful and irresistible all the same. he lets you suck his thumb for a few precious moments, committing the feeling of your warm mouth to memory.

but the moment his desire for you grows impossibly more suffocating, he brackets an arm around you and lifts you onto the desk. ormund pushes your shoulders back and pulls your dress up right over the ravens he'd been writing moments before you'd stepped foot into his space, ink likely still drying.

you lift your legs; the heels of your feet hooked right at the edge. ormund gorges himself on the sight of you; bare and spread wide for him, beautiful and womanly and so very wet.

with one hand, the knight undoes his belt. and with the other, he strokes a finger through the seam of your cunt. finds your clit and circles it carefully, delighting in the way your eyes flutter closed and a hum leaves your lips.

his cock is aching now. throbbing in his hand as he pulls it from his breeches and strokes it desperately.

this would be enough to finish him, he knows. a firm grip around the base of his cock and the most mouth-watering sight before him. an interactive display of indulgence.

it should be enough.

and yet it is not.

ormund brings his hand, wet now with your arousal, to his lips. he inhales deeply, taking the scent of you deep into his lungs, before he brings his finger to his mouth and sucks the taste of you off of it.

he makes space for himself between your spread thighs and watches curiously as you prop yourself up on your elbows. "i want to watch it go in," you admit sheepishly.

there's a tone of innocence in your voice that has him trembling with need. it makes him feel...powerful, almost. like you're at his mercy.

and maybe you are.

ormund knows he shouldn't like the feeling, but he does. and he's already gone this far, and so he grips the back of your neck hard and pulls you forward, abdomen curling to get a better view.

he lines himself up at your entrance, coating the tip of his cock in your slick, and then slides in deep.

the thought crosses his mind that you feel like heaven.

tight and wet, a kind of worship in it's own right.

ormund fucks you hard. tugs at your hair and slams his hips against yours with reckless abandon. kisses your cervix with the tip of his big cock, stretching you wide.

he doesn't kiss you, because it's too intimate.

but his lips hover over yours, breathing in your moans, swallowing up your exhalation. ormund thinks you're beautiful as you are, but when your eyes are wide and you're all filled up with him?

gods.

it's something else entirely. makes him throb inside of you, the muscles in his arms flexing as he holds you upright. "you're perfect," he says, and means it. doesn't throw the word around lightly.

but it's true.

ormund circles your clit with his free hand after gathering spit from his own mouth for ease of friction. he smears his saliva over your cunt, slapping his fingers against you slit, twice gently, and then once sharp.

but he soothes the ache quickly, shushing your whining with a steady pressure against your swollen clit.

he spreads his fingers and slides them down, two on each side of his cock that still pistons into your opening. sweat begins to bead along his hairline. "tell me you want me," he murmurs, voice low and thready.

"i want you," you say.

and it satisfies him, but then you keep going and his knees grow weak.

"want you to—to defile me. feels so good. so—so good inside of me, please. don't stop. please don't stop. i want to be your woman. i'll do anything, my lord. anything, please."

there's a part of him that doesn't believe it. ormund tells himself you're being paid to say these things. that it's about the gold and not about him.

but you beg so beautifully and he thinks that yeah, he might want that, too.

might want to keep you at his bedside for his own twisted pleasure. for his own relief. his pet. his plaything.

his woman.

your cunt squeezes tight around him, and your knuckles around the edge of the desk blanch as you hold tight. "oh, gods."

he groans, the sound reverberating deep in his chest, and then empties himself deep inside of you. fills you up and doesn't stop his thrusts. his cock twitches and becomes coated with your release and his.

he doesn't slow his pace until your muscles go slack, until the oversensitivity becomes borderline painful.

carefully, he releases his hold on you and lays you back against the desk, a small smile forming on your pretty face. a look of pure bliss, provided by his touch alone.

ormund gently pulls himself back, and watches as the sticky white mess of his cum spills out of you. he gathers it with his fingers and pushes it back in, thumb stroking lightly over your clit.

it's wrong, and he knows it, but he hopes that it sticks. hopes that one day your belly will be rounded with his baby, and he'll have no choice but to marry you. to raise you up from a girl in a brothel to a lady of his house. a hightower.

ormund hopes he'll get to keep you.

ormund also hopes the gods might forgive him.