The box sat on Aerion's nightstand for weeks, collecting dust just as the thought did in his mind. A stupid prank from his drunken brother, one he wouldn't entertain. Busying himself with work, running the length of his street for an hour each morning and evening, driving until his gas ran on empty. Trying not to let you consume his every waking moment.

But you insisted on it anyway.

You had been friends since you interned at his father's company, only for a summer just to get some experience and a glowing recommendation. Aerion, to his core, was naturally standoffish, so he hadn't warmed to you until you were forcibly locked in his office with him to help stay up to date on reports. One of the boring tasks that Aerion fought defiantly.

It was that afternoon, he finally warmed to you. Though it was more akin to ice melting. He remained silent, gone were the scoffing and pompous commentary. Then, he began to laugh at your jokes. And that afternoon had been the catalyst to a strange friendship.

A friendship of unspoken words, lingering glances when the other was unaware, living life in show for each other. You played the part of friend well; hiding every ounce of yearning in your chest behind your poker face. He was none the wiser to your ache for him; the way he brought you a coffee every morning on his way toward his office, the way he praised you for everything you did to help him, the silent car rides he would give you home.

You would confide in Valarr, another intern you met, who you had found out was Aerion's cousin. Great. No escaping this man. But Valarr didn't much care for his cousin, wouldn't piss on him if he were on fire. So your secrets were undeniably safe with him.

It had been months of yearning of Aerion, veiled with friendly teasing comments and an appropriate distance. Telling Valarr how you wished Aerion would just reject you, so you could move on. But he continued as if your friendship was completely pure, as if he were naive to the way your hands would be less than an inch from each other when you would share his desk for a task. Even when you had left the company after an extended internship, hoping to latch onto someone else at your new job. But your mind refused to unlatch from the pale haired brat you found a friend in.

"I bought you a gift." Valarr had his hands tucked behind his back when he met you at the cafe. You kept touch with him, meeting him for lunch whenever you could. And even today, to celebrate his promotion.

"For me?" You cheered, standing from your seat to embrace him. "You're the man of honor today!"

"Humor me for just a moment. Close your eyes." He took his hands from behind his back, placing the box into your outstretched hands. Your eyes peeled open to see a triangular box, a ONE WISH WILLOW.

"What the fuck is this?" You frowned.

"I was looking for a gift for my dad's birthday and saw that in a crystal shop." He explained, taking a sip of the piping hot beverage you had ordered for him minutes before he arrived.

"You were looking for a gift for your dad in a crystal shop?" Your face scrunched more intensely at your strange friend, the small box still sat in your hands.

"Besides the point." Valarr deadpanned. "It's a One Wish Willow."

"And what does this Willow do?"

"You wish for something and snap it. And your wish comes true." Valarr spoke so casually, as if this were as common knowledge as brushing your teeth or tying your shoes.

"You're hilarious." You gave him a wooden stare, dismissing the small box into your purse. "`What do I wish for? A new best friend?"

"I was thinking you could finally wish for my wretched cousin to cease his existence." Valarr suggested. "Or for him to love you as intensely as you do him."

"Hey!" You exclaimed.

"What? Your love makes me sick." A half-truth. He loved seeing you happy, but not where Aerion was involved. He would snap a Willow of his own to wish you would forget your puppy love for his cousin.

"The only wish I'll be making it for you to be quiet."

Perhaps your neutrality with Aerion didn't just sink into his stomach, or fade into nothingness. Perhaps it mutated in his mind, sending him into a vastness of insanity. The constant, unusual fear of saying something stupid, cheering himself up with watching your social media intently, unwilling to let go of the hold he had on you. He had been driven to insanity over you. That very feeling had him sat in the corner of the backyard, in his designated smoking spot that his father had ordered him to use, because the smoke "keeps lingering in the house".

He held the triangular box in his hand, observing the dated red-and-white design, vexed at himself for even considering resorting to this foolishness.

He studied the box between drags, letting the cigarette sit between his lips as he read the words.

Need help? Call today! 1-323-747-7118

He could wish for his infatuation for you to cease, then he could live his life more peacefully, more for himself and less in show for you. He could wish for you to move out of town, forcing himself to get over you and live your lives separately. But Aerion was a selfish man, he knew it. He wouldn't do anything that didn't serve him.

REMOVE FROM THE BOX AND JUST MAKE A WISH!

SPARK THE MIDDLE AND BREAK IT IN HALF.

WHAT ARE YOU WISHING FOR?

"I wish," he sighed deeply, tapping his foot to find the wording.

It were as if something in his mind had snapped, the sound of a twig snapping echoed in his mind. His emotion felt dialled, it had never burned so violently in his stomach, it had never sounded like a deafening ring as much as it did in this moment.

This was where insanity had taken him, wishing for you to love him as he did you, wishing the one girl who was so passive with him to truly, deeply love him. And so, he spoke his wish aloud. For you to love him, to match his desire. Before snapping the willow, a clean break in the middle as it sat in each hand.

"So stupid." He scoffed, discarding the trinket onto the lawn beside him, stubbing the butt of his cigarette out between the fragments. He hoped to wake in the morning and have this useless feeling in the pit of his stomach to be gone, for you to be gone—

His phone chimed, the screen like a stun grenade in the darkness of the garden.

You: Hey, you.

Aerion's mouth dried. This was stupid coincidence, right?

Aerion: Hey.

Was that too blunt? Did he look uninterested? Had he ruined his wish already?

Aerion: What are you doing up so late?

You: Can't sleep.

Aerion: Me neither.

He watched the typing bubble appear and disappear over and over, impatiently waiting for your reply. He lit another cigarette through pure stress, inhaling it as his phone balanced on his knee.

You: Want to go for a drive?

"How have we not done this sooner?" You sighed, settling comfortably into his fully reclined passenger seat, your view of the city below and all its little gleaming lights.

"Busy, I guess." He shrugged. "We live different lives now."

The words felt like a lie as he spoke them. If you wanted to make the time, the two of you would have. But you had become professional and skirting around your feelings, pretending the blossoming in your chest was simply not there.

"That makes me sad." You sighed, looking over at him as his head was already turned to face yours. "I missed you."

Aerion could feel his mind buzz with anxiety, the hankering for another cigarette had his hands balled tightly at his side. "I missed you."

The world looked darker around you. Each different hue now warmer, redder, than it should be. As if a vessel had burst in your eye, the blood coating your vision until all you could see was Aerion. The man who looked no different than when you worked with him a year ago. Hair still unnaturally white, eyes still sunken and jaw still tense. A cigarette dangling from his lip at any given chance.

You had always admired the small details of his face, but only tonight had you truly seen them. It felt like the wires in your brain had been tangled, heightening any sort of feelings you already harboured. His eyes looked darker, smile wider, you could hear the blood passing through his veins, you could hear his heart pumping rapidly.

Your Willow had worked.

Aerion watched you intently; he noticed your tinged cheeks as you smiled at him, he noticed the way you were intensely staring into him, he noticed how you fiddled with the rings on your finger sheepishly. He wouldn't even admit it inside the privacy of his own mind, he would not give Daeron the satisfaction of saying this stupid Willow had worked.

"Want me to drive you home?" Aerion offered. "You look tired."

"No." You answered quickly, reaching a hand out to settle on his chest. "I like it here. With you."

Aerion placed his hand over yours, where his heart was buried beneath, calling out to your flesh above it. "Then you can come home with me."

You nodded. Your mind wasn't your own tonight, you knew better than to go home with a guy you hadn't seen in a year. But it was Aerion, your heart was encased in tattoos of his name, memories of words he'd spoken to you. He felt like home.

Laying beside him in his bed felt feverish. His sheets felt coarse against your bare legs, his hands were weighted as they rest on your hip. You were looking straight at him and all you could make out were the glints in his eyes. His features kissed by shadow and darkness, just white holes where his pupils were.

"You're freezing." He noted. "Do you want some more blankets?"

"No," you whispered, unable to take your eyes from his, "I'm okay."

"I can make you warm. Come a little closer."

You shuffled your legs into his, feeling that hue of warmth return. Aerion's features had brightened, no longer the scary monster in the closet, but the man you loved. The man you pined for day after day, now beside you in a bubble of quiet, intimate vulnerability.

"This might be crazy to admit," he breathed, no longer did he feel a rush of anxiety when you listened to him, no longer did he fear he would mess up the words he spoke, "but I love you. I have loved you, for a while."

Your heart had ceased its rhythm for a moment, Aerion's words the sole focus in those few seconds. "And I, you."

Your days were taken by Aerion, as his were taken by you. You would wake and sleep together, kiss the other goodbye on your way to work, meet for lunch and stay just a few minutes over. He consumed your thoughts, your autonomy, your heart, body, and soul. You were the object of Aerion's desires, there hadn't been a thought that didn't involve you. His mind was held captive by your memory, work on the back burner as he remembered your laughter at his stupid joke.

His father would click in his face, send him reminder emails, all to remind him there was in fact a world outside of you. But it didn't exist to him; he lived in a world without you for years, spent his days and nights in agony wishing for you to be his. And now he had you, he found purpose, he got as he wanted, he would not let his gratitude falter.

Valarr would watch you in concern over coffee, talking as if from another planet entirely. As if you had met the perfect man, and not the parasite his cousin had become.

"Do you not think this is all a bit... sudden?" Valarr frowned, tapping at the sides of his ceramic mug. The sound rang in your ears, taking you from the story you were just telling him of.

"What?"

"You guys seem very in love." Valarr stated.

"We are."

"It's nearly been a month."

You scoffed. "Love doesn't know time, Valarr."

He cared deeply for you, watched you sing and cry and lose your breath with laughter. But he hadn't seen you so in love before. Not to this extent, where you felt antsy without him. Where each moment spent apart felt like a waste of time.

"Just be careful, please." Valarr intoned. "You know my thoughts on Aerion, and I don't think this is healthy."

"And who are you to decide that?" You laughed, gathering your things from the booth beside you. "Call me when you've learnt my love life isn't your business."

And of course, you ran straight to Aerion. Told him all of Valarr's comments, how he felt about your love, how he stuck his nose where it didn't belong. You sat on his lap as he soothed your tearful words, hand dragging up and down your back to calm you.

"He doesn't understand." Aerion whispered. "The poor boy hasn't felt a love like this, he won't understand until he does."

"I just want to be with you, I feel safe with you." You wept onto his shoulder, your salty tears dampening his shirt. "Don't want to leave."

"Then don't. Stay here, leave that wretched job of yours. I earn enough to make you happy, to keep you here with me." His words carried such weight, despite being unaware of the poison laced within them. He was whispering incantations into your ears, to burrow into the folds of your brain, to darken that hue of warmth you saw.

You felt most like yourself with Aerion. Going on walks, watching movies, baking, grocery shopping, visiting him on his lunch break at his office building. You felt both hands leave the wheel when he kissed you goodbye, but the car maintained its speed. It hadn't slowed down when your hands left the wheel, if anything it gathered speed. Your vision blurred, your heart threatened the break the ribcage that guarded it. You felt on the verge of collapse until Aerion would return home, his hands would settle on your cheeks, and all would be right in the world.

Those feelings of derangement would only flare when Aerion was gone, or an obstacle presented itself. And the newest obstacle had been the secretary, disturbing your private lunch break with Aerion.

"Sorry," she peered through the door with a wide grin, a stack of folders in her arm, "your father told me to give you these."

"Just leave them on that shelf." Aerion instructed, his eyes tearing from you for a moment to gesture to the shelf. "Thanks."

Gratitude. For her. Thanking her for the disruption to your conversation. The world paled until the door clicked shut again, and Aerion's hand sat on your knee.

"As you were saying, sweetheart?"

Locking her in her office felt the most reasonable response, hearing her fists slam against the windows as you walked with Aerion to his car once the office building had shut. It felt good, you moved the obstacle. It was necessary.

But it had failed.

Aerion had been called to release her, as he lived the closest. And your blood bubbled beneath your skin.

"No." You spoke. "I haven't seen you all day."

"I know, sweetheart." Aerion always jumped to comfort you, to soothe your every worry as you did him. "But you locked her in, it's been long enough. I'm sure she's learnt her lesson."

Tears burned at your waterline. Aerion was siding with her, choosing her.

"She disturbed us, she can't get away with that. Who knows what else she'll try next?" You fretted, advancing towards him. Your hands rested on his chest, his hands atop yours. A position you assumed when obstructions appeared.

"Feel that?" He whispered. His heart slammed against your palms, a living, breathing reminder of your wishes. Merged into one, spurring him on. "That's for you."

Your heart was clawing its way out of your body, searching blindly for his own. His hands felt safe, secure, as they pulled you closer to him. There was nothing except him in this moment, just the charge of your skin against his.

"I need you." His teeth nipped at the skin of your jaw, grunts falling from his lips. "I want to crawl inside you."

You whimpered, letting him paw at your shirt. The material was nothing short of an inconvenience, he would tear it from you if it wasn't your favourite shirt. But he felt controlled, he saw himself outside of his own body. Biting at your neck, drawing blood and letting it stray down your skin.

"Aerion," you cried, compressed between him and the living room rug.

"What do you want, sweetheart?" He cooed, bunching your skirt up to your hips.

"I need you... please." You breathed into his mouth, your blood marred his lips so deliciously. His smirk shaped his teeth as fangs, you willed him to drink you in more, to consume you.

He burrowed into you, cradling your back as you arched off the floor. You squeezed around him, pulling him into you further, to keep the connection between you both. He set a firm pace into you, breathing his desire into you, as if being inside you simply wasn't enough.

by the time you’ve both decided to stub out what’s left, you’re staring at him with those eyes that he can only describe as trouble. when your lips meet again, you taste like weed mixing with something distinctly syrupy that bobby is very familiar with. it’s shameful how quick innocent, messy kisses become tongues gliding over one another and drool on your chin. neither of you seem to care. you’re rolling your hips against his desperately and sucking on his tongue like it’s your favorite treat when you’re stoned.

you gasp into his mouth, and he immediately knows what that sound means. his hands finds your waist, pulling your against him and pressing you down, until your warmth is flush against the hard outline of his cock through layers of cotton and denim. a small sound falls from your lips, airy but thick with lust that you can’t swallow down.

“you feel that? you feel what you’re doing t’me?” he whines, his hips lifting off the couch to meet the way he’s guiding you to move. you can only manage a gasp as he speaks. he tilts his head up— his noses nudges your jawline, lips brushing over your cheek on the way to murmur over your ear, “‘s because you’re sitting on top of me, looking all pretty and feeling so soft ... and you’re high out of your fuckin’ mind, aren’t you?”

“bobby—” you force out.

your hands reach for his belt just as his own move to pop open the button on your shorts. his fingers pull down your zipper easy, you barely blink before you’re in a tangle of limbs and the denim is tossed aside. he hooks his digits into your panties next, yanking them to the side while your own hand dips into his boxers. your fingers wrap around his shaft like they have so many times before. gentle and soft and just enough to have him growling low in his throat. you start to pump him, your smooth palm soothing the way he throbs the smallest bit as you free him from the cotton confines.

“don’t even need me to get you ready, huh?” he coos as his fingers glide over your needy cunt, circling your clit a few times to hear the sweet sound that escapes you. he feels your throat vibrate as he presses his lips there. his touches do nothing to settle the ache in you— you flutter around nothing, and he huffs out a laugh, “god, baby. she’s drooling for me— i could slip right in.”

“shut up,” you bark despite your breathy, broken voice. you sit up on your knees with clumsy movements, “you’re talkin’ way too much.”

“bold for someone who’s gonna be losing it on my dick in a minute,”

before he can say anything else, he’s groaning. the sound rumbles in his chest, his mouth falls open as his hands move to pathetically grab at your hips and help you sink yourself down onto him frantically.

you barely give yourself time to adjust.

you start lifting yourself up only to drop back down— you’re taking what you want, even if it hurts a little. you ball up his shirt in your hands and everything blends together as you watch bobby’s eyes roll back through half-lidded vision. his grip slip downwards, groping your ass and trying to get any kind of control he can, but it’s futile when his brain is liquifying in his skill. his fingers sink into your plush cheeks, using his grip to pull you closer and successfully force your hips to grind against his. he’s grunting and panting into your chest, unintentionally subduing his sounds with the fabric of your tee and the fullness of your covered breasts in his face.

“oh, fuck— fuck, baby— so fuckin’ good,” he babbles out, only for your hand to grip his jaw, fingers rubbing over the stubble on his chin before pressing past his lips and eliciting a filthy moan from him as the pads of your delicate fingers press down on his tongue. a dazed giggle crawls up your throat at the sight of him and he nearly cums right then.

the silk of your cunt flutters around him, and he knows you’re right on the edge. he can feel it as you milk him, as your thighs tense up and those sounds of yours become more pitched. he watches as your eyes close, your lashes fanning over your cheeks beautifully. it drives him to hold onto you tighter, to guide your movements with heavier hands, bringing you to rock against him in a feverish grind that has you both losing your composure in a matter of minutes.

your lips press against his jawline as you both cum, mewling in response to the groans of his that are muffled around your trembling fingers.

“holy fuck…” bobby chokes out once they fall free from his mouth and glisten with his spit, boneless under you as you fall into him and rest on his chest in the midst of the aftershocks— a moment passes, full of heavy breathing and suddenly broken by the sound of his raspy drawl.

But he doesn't move away. That's the thing about your temperamental dragon. The refusal is always louder than the retreat, and the retreat never comes.

He stands exactly where he is, tension drawing his slender shoulders tight beneath his tunic, pale eyes narrowed to slits. You rise from the bed and cross the distance between you, bare feet quiet on the stone, and he watches you come the way a hawk watches an approaching hand, nostrils flaring.

You reach up without an invitation and he catches your wrist in a vicegrip. Hard enough that the bones grind.

"I said no." His voice has dropped into something serrated, all edge, no breath. "That is a whore's ornament. You will not put a whore's collar on a prince of the blood."

"I'm not putting it on a prince of the blood," you say, and your thumb finds his pulse, hammering, frantic, a traitor drumming against your skin. "I'm putting it on my husband."

His lip curls. Genuine, blistering contempt, the kind he wears like armour, the kind that has made grown men step back from him and whisper he's mad. "You've lost your mind, wife. This is beneath me. Take your Lysene filth and—"

"And what?"

You don't raise your voice. You tilt your head and watch him, patient as winter frost, while his mouth keeps shaping poison but his hand hasn't tightened, hasn't shoved you back, hasn't done any of the things Aerion is so very capable of doing when he means his refusals.

His body knows you even when his pride won't permit him.

You can see it in him, the war happening behind his eyes. Hatred and want tearing at each other like dogs. His breathing has gone uneven, the tendons in his neck taut as bowstrings. He's furious, genuinely furious, and he's half-hard already, and the combination is doing something to his expression that looks almost like anguish.

"You also haven't moved," you observe mildly, pressing a little closer.

Aerion's nostrils flare. But his grip on your wrist loosens. It's not a permission, never permission, just the muscles giving out under the weight of what he wants and won't ask for.

You step into the space he hasn't made for you and he lets you, jaw clenched so tight you can see the bone beneath that smooth pale skin, and when your fingers brush his throat he flinches like you've put a blade there, sneering down at you.

You fasten the collar with steady hands. The clasp clicks, quiet as a lock turning. Gold settles against Aerion's skin like it was poured there. Fine links pooling into the hollow of his throat, amethysts glowing dark against all that pale, furious warmth, the delicate chain trailing down his collarbone. His pulse jumps so hard beneath the metalwork you can see it in the tremor of the links.

He is, objectively, the most striking thing you've ever seen.

You let him watch you realise it. You don't hide the way your gaze tracks the gold against his jaw, the flush climbing his neck beneath the chain, the way his platinum hair glows against the gleam of metal.

You take your time with it. Look at him the way you'd look at something you own. Appraising, proprietary, openly pleased with what it's infront of you.

"My beautiful dragon," you murmur, and there's nothing teasing about it. Just a wolf admiring what belongs to her.

Aerion's whole body locks up. there's a crack in his expression and for a half-second you see the raw thing underneath, stunned and starving, before the hatred slams back down like a portcullis.

"Quiet," he warns, voice scraped thin. "Don't call me that."

"Beautiful?" You trace the line of gold with one finger, following it along the tendon in his throat. His skin is burning. "But you are. All collared up for me. All that pride and fury wrapped in gold like a gift." Your finger reaches the chain and curls loosely around it. "Like something I bought. Something I'm keeping."

"I will break your hand," he snarls, but his voice has fractured somewhere in the middle of it, gone hoarse and bitten, and his hands are fists at his sides that aren't moving, aren't reaching, aren't doing anything at all because his body has chosen you over every hateful word in his mouth.

"Look at you," you breathe, and you let your admiration sit open on your face, undisguised, almost tender. "My prince. My pretty, collared husband. Wearing a courtesan's chain because his wife asked and he couldn't say no."

"I said no—"

"Your hateful mouth said no." Your eyes drop, pointed, unhurried, to where the evidence of his body's opinion is unmistakable. "The rest of you has a different answer, husband."

The sound he makes is closer to snarl, like he's about to leap forward and throttle you.

"They tell me these are put on courtesans in the pillowhouses," you tell him, conversational, your thumb stroking idle circles against the chain at his throat. "On the loveliest ones. The ones men cross the Narrow Sea just to kneel before." You lean in, your mouth near his ear, close enough to feel the heat pouring off him. "A collar to say this one is precious, this one is wanted, this one has been claimed by someone who can afford the price of them."

Your lips brush the shell of Aerion's ear. He's shaking. Fine, continuous tremors he can't control, running through him like current through wire.

"But you're not a courtesan, are you?" you murmur. "You're a dragon. My dragon. Collared and flushed and hard for me, and all I've done is call you pretty and put gold on your throat."

His hips snap forward, involuntary, vicious, a jerk of motion so sharp the chain shivers in your grip and his breath tears out of him ragged. You feel the length of him grind against your thigh and the confirmation of what you already knew floods you with something hot and deeply, viciously satisfied.

You smile. Wolfish. The smile of a predator who's found the exact place her teeth fit best.

Aerion's hand comes up and seizes your face. A capture, fingers digging into your jaw, your cheeks, wrenching your head so you're forced to meet his eyes. They're blown black, the pale lavender almost gone, eaten alive. His mouth is a shaking, vicious line.

"You think this is funny?" he rasps, and there's something fraying in his voice, an edge that sounds like it's being held together by nothing but spite. "You think you can play with me, collar me like some—some Lysene bed-slave and then smirk at me—"

You don't stop smiling. You let him see every inch of it. The smugness, the heat, the cool Northern certainty that you've claimed something he'd sooner die than hand over. You turn your face into his grip and press your lips to his palm, unhurried, greedy, and feel his fingers twitch against your skin.

"I think," you say knowingly against his hand, "that you liked it when I called you beautiful. I think you liked it so much your whole body told me before your mouth could catch up." Your tongue skims his palm, just barely, tasting salt. "I think my pretty husband wants to be admired. I think he always has. And I think if I told him he was good right now, he'd come apart."

His hand tightens on your face until it almost hurts. His chest is heaving, every breath hauling through him like he's physically fighting something inside him. You can feel the chain taut between your fingers, connecting your hand to his throat like a leash, like a lifeline.

Aerion stares at you and you stare back. The room is so quiet you can hear the candles gutter and the chain clink, once, with the tremor running through him.

Then he crashes his mouth onto yours.

His teeth catch your lower lip and bite, hard enough that copper blooms on your tongue, and you hiss into it, fingers tightening in the chain. He licks the blood off your mouth and comes back for more, tongue pushing past your gasp, his free hand fisting in the back of your hair so hard your scalp sings.

He's trying to take it back—every sound you pulled from him, every tremor, every helpless grind of his hips—kissing you like he can swallow the evidence of what you've done to him and burn it.

You let him have the violence of it. You open your mouth and take his tongue and bite it, feel Aerion jolt, feel the groan rattle through his teeth into yours. Your free hand comes up and grabs his jaw, holds him still, and you kiss him back with teeth and intention, licking into his mouth with the focused, unhurried authority. You catch his bottom lip between your teeth and pull, dragging it out, and the noise he makes is humiliating and so gorgeous you smile.

He breaks away panting, wild-eyed, mouth swollen and blood-smeared, and you don't let him get far.

You tug the chain.

A measured pull, the gold biting into the back of his neck.

Aerion's head tips forward, forced, the angle dragging him down toward you, and you hold him there, his mouth hovering over yours, breathing your air. The chain pressed firm against his throat. His pulse hammers against the links hard enough that you can feel it thrumming through the gold into your fist.

"Stay," you murmur against his mouth. A command. A wolf's word.

You pull again. Harder. A real pressure now, the collar snug against his Adam's apple, gold links creasing the flushed skin, and you watch Aerion's eyes go glassy and his lips part on a breath that has nowhere to go.

He moans.

Not behind his teeth. A real, wrecked, open sound, the kind of sound courtesans are trained to coax from their wealthiest patrons, obscene and helpless and utterly without dignity. The kind of sound a prince of the blood should never make. If anyone else heard it, it would ruin him, you know.

He moans like a whore with your hand wrapped in his leash, and the vibration of it travels through the chain and into your fingers and settles, hot, at the base of your spine.

You hold the chain taut. His throat works against the pressure, swallowing around gold. His mouth finds yours again. Wetter this time, messier, all desperation and no technique, his teeth clashing against yours, biting at your lips like he can punish you for this even as his body bows into you.

You kiss him back with blood on both your mouths and one hand in his hair and the other wrapped in gold links, holding his throat, keeping him exactly where you want him.

Your collared, shaking, furious, beautiful husband. Yours.

Aerion doesn't break the kiss so much as redirect it. One moment his mouth is on yours, blood and spit and the taste of his own undoing, and the next his hands are at your waist, hauling you backwards. You feel your spine hit the edge of the bed frame hard enough to knock the breath from your lungs.

"On the bed," he snarls against your mouth. "Now."

You could resist. He knows it. The chain is still wrapped around your fist and his throat is still collared in gold and if you pulled right now he'd have to stop, have to kneel, have to wait. You could make him beg for it if you felt like it.

You choose not to.

You let yourself fall back onto the furs and he follows you down like gravity, one knee between your thighs shoving them apart. He wrenches them apart, graceless, nothing courtly about it.

His hands find the laces of your gown and yank. Fabric tears. You hear stitching give, the soft rip of silk surrendering, but Aerion doesn't care, doesn't pause, just drags the ruined bodice down your shoulders and off your arms with the efficiency of a man stripping armour.

"Wretched thing," he breathes, and the words land hot against your collarbone. His mouth follows the words. Teeth scraping the jut of bone, tongue dragging through the hollow of your throat. "Wretched, insufferable—"

He bites the swell of your breast through your shift and your back arches off the bed. His hands are everywhere, pulling linen, shoving wool, ripping where pulling isn't fast enough. Cool air hits your skin in patches—your stomach, your ribs, the tops of your thighs—and his mouth chases every new inch of you like he's starving and you're the only thing left in the larder.

"You think you can collar me," he hisses, dragging the shift over your head and throwing it somewhere behind him. His eyes rake down your body, naked now, spread beneath him on the dark furs, and for one raw second the hatred in Aerion's face cracks and what's underneath is so hungry it looks like pain. "Think you can put a leash on a dragon and smile about it? You smug, superior—"

"Beautiful," you interrupt softly, admiring. Your eyes trace the collar at his throat, the way it catches candlelight as his chest heaves.

His jaw locks so hard you hear the teeth grind.

"—vicious little wolf," he finishes, and his voice has gone thick with something that isn't anger anymore.

He's still dressed. His tunic is rucked, his breeches straining, and when you glance down you can see the dark stain spreading at the front of the linen where he's leaking, where his body has been ahead of his pride since the moment you fastened the clasp.

You let your gaze settle there. Deliberate. Hungry.

"You know," you say conversationally, tracing one finger down the chain at his throat, "in the Lysene houses they auction the prettiest ones. The patrons bid all evening. Wine and silks and perfumed halls, and the courtesans walk among them, collared just like this—" your nail taps a single amethyst "—so everyone knows the goods are spoken for."

Aerion's nostrils flare. A muscle jumps in his cheek.

"They'd have bid high for you." You tilt your head, considering him. That platinum hair mussed, mouth bitten raw, gold at his throat, cock straining wet against his laces. "Very high. A prince with a face like that? Those eyes? That mouth?" You smile, slow and wolfish, briefly dragging your thumb over his full bottom lip. "I'd have outbid them all. Every merchant prince and magister in the room. I'd have bought you for myself and taken you home in your collar and kept you exactly like this. Hard, and furious, and all mine."

A sound rips from Aerion, rumbling through his frame.

His hand shoots to his laces, fumbling, tearing at the ties with shaking fingers, and you watch him strip his breeches down his hips with none of the control he prides himself on. His cock springs free flushed and dripping, slick at the head, twitching with his pulse, and the evidence of what your words have done to him is obscene and unmistakable.

He doesn't give you time to admire it.

His hands seize your thighs and wrench them open. Wide, wider, until the stretch burns and your hips cant off the furs. He settles between them and you feel the blunt, wet head of him drag through the slick mess of you once, catching at your entrance, and then he drives in.

One stroke. All of him. No preamble, no patience, no tenderness.

Your head snaps back. The sound that leaves your mouth is half gasp, half snarl. He's thick and hard, furious inside you, every inch of him a declaration, and your body seizes around him in a clench that makes Aerion's shoulders shudder.

"There," he grits out, teeth bared, hips already pulling back for the next thrust. "Is this what you wanted? Your collared whore between your legs?"

He snaps forward. Hard. Your body jolts up the bed, furs bunching beneath your spine. His hands pin your hips, thumbs digging into the hollows, holding you open, holding you still while he fucks into you with furious, punishing strokes. The narrow cant of his hips drives a rhythm that's all fury and no mercy.

"Spoiled—" Thrust. "—conniving—" Thrust. "—wolf—"

Aerion bites the junction of your shoulder and your neck. Sucks the skin between his teeth hard enough to bruise, hard enough to mark, and the sound you make is shameless, back bowing, your fingers scrabbling at his ribs.

He bites lower. The top of your breast. The ridge of your collarbone. Everywhere his mouth lands he leaves evidence. Welts, teeth-marks, the wet shine of his tongue, mapping you like territory he's conquering even as the collar at his throat says otherwise.

You let him have it. The fury, the pace, the bruising grip. You let him think he's reclaiming himself.

Then you wrap the chain around your fist and pull.

The collar bites into his nape. Aerion's head jerks forward, forced, and the angle changes, drives him deeper, and the sound he makes is guttural and broken, so far from princely it would make his father weep.

"My pretty whore," you murmur up at him, and your voice is steady even with him buried to the hilt inside you, even with your thighs shaking around him. "My beautiful, expensive, collared—"

Aerion's hand closes around your throat.

His fingers find the column of your windpipe with the precision of a man who's t done this before, who knows the anatomy, who's imagined the give of it. Real pressure follows his grip and your airway narrows to a reed.

You lean into it.

Your chin tips up, back arching. You press your throat harder against his palm and moan. Open-mouthed, loud, the kind of sound that fills a room and stains the air. The look on Aerion's face when he realises you're not afraid, that you like it, that the compression of your breath is making you clench tighter around his cock, is something you will keep behind your teeth for the rest of your natural life.

"You," he manages, and his hips haven't stopped, punishing rhythm gone ragged at the edges now, his voice husky. "You're the whore of the two of us. Acting like this. Taking my cock like this. Listen to the mess of you. Moaning with my hand on your throat like a—a dockside—"

You yank the chain. Harder than before. Hard enough that the gold bites welts into his skin, hard enough that Aerion's breath cuts short and his eyes roll and his next thrust goes so deep you feel it in the back of your teeth.

Your hips snap up to meet him—deliberate, brutal, grinding him into the deepest, most sensitive part of you—and the wet sound of it is filthy, unmistakable, the slick drench of your body taking his echoing off the stone walls.

His composure shatters.

What's left is animal, narrow hips pistoning, the obscene slap of his skin against yours, his fingers spreading you wider, thumbs hooking your thighs and pulling until you're split open around him in a way that's almost too much. The stretch burns. The fullness borders on pain. You're going to ache tomorrow, going to feel every brutal inch of this for days, and the knowledge of it—the phantom soreness already gathering in your hips—makes you wetter, makes you greedier, makes you tighten around him until he chokes.

"Fuck—"

He hooks your legs over his shoulders. The angle goes deeper, filthier, the wet sound of his cock working in and out of you loud enough that you can hear every thrust, every slick drag, the rhythmic slap of his balls against you keeping time like a drumbeat.

You reach up and wrap both hands in the chain and haul him down toward you, bending yourself nearly in half, pulling him deeper by his collar until Aerion's forehead presses against yours and you're breathing the same ragged air.

"Come in me," you tell him. An order, a wolf's command.

"Do not order me—"

But his hips stutter, his jaw going slack. The muscles in his neck cord tight against the gold links and you feel him break. The first hot pulse of him inside you floods you, thick and sudden, and Aerion's whole body seizes above you like a man struck by lightning.

He spills in deep, wrenching surges, hips grinding against yours with each gush, and there's so much of it—gods, so much—you feel it flood the space where you're joined, feel it overflow, feel the hot trickle of it escape around his cock and drip in slow rivulets onto the sheets beneath you.

The heat of it, the sight of your pretty dragon shaking apart above you, collared, spilling himself into you, desperate and greedy, pushes you over.

You come snarling. Your back arches off the bed, your teeth bared, your fingers coiled in the chain. The pleasure tears through you in savage waves and your body clenches around him. A vice-grip that wrenches a shocked, gutted noise out of his chest.

Aerion's hips slam forward on instinct, burying himself as deep as he can go, and both hands grab your backside, full handfuls, fingers sinking into the flesh, dragging you onto him like he can crawl inside you.

"Fuck—fuck, you're—gods—" Greedy and petulant even now, grinding into your contractions, chasing the squeeze of you. His cock pulses and you feel the fresh hot leak of him, not a full release but close, dangerously close, his body trying to spend itself again just from the clench of yours. "Take it—take all of it, you greedy—perfect—fucking —"

The filth spills out of him unchecked, half-words and fragments, praise tangled up in profanity. His arms lock around you, both hands still full of your ass, and he folds over you, curling, coiling, a dragon wrapping around his mate with his face buried in your throat and his hips still rocking in small, helpless pulses.

Burrowing into you. Trying to get closer when closer doesn't exist.

You hold him through it. Chain slack in your fist now, your other hand in his silver hair, your legs still trembling where they're hooked over his shoulders.

He stays inside you through every aftershock, twitching, half-hard, refusing to pull out even as the mess between you gets obscene. His spend leaks around his cock, dripping in slow pearly rivulets down through your folds, pooling beneath you on the sheets.

You reach between your bodies and touch yourself, fingers sliding through the slick ruin of his release and your own, spreading it over your core, your navel, the trembling plane of your stomach. Painting yourself with the evidence of him.

Aerion watches you do it. His chest heaving, his mouth open, his eyes tracking your fingers with the dazed, shattered focus.

You bring your fingers to your mouth. Hold his gaze. Taste.

His cock twitches inside you. He makes a low, growling sound.

Then, slowly, as if his bones have turned to water, he collapses. Aerion's weight comes down on you in a controlled fall, his face dropping into the curve of your neck, his breath coming in long, shuddering pulls against your pulse. The chain goes slack between you. The collar shifts, warm against your collarbone where his throat presses.

For a long moment there's nothing but breathing. The guttering candles. The cooling sweat between your bodies. His heartbeat thuds against your ribs, gradually slowing.

You burrow into him. Turn your face against his chest and press your mouth there. Teeth grazing his sternum, his collarbone, the smooth skin over his ribs. You nip. Suck a patch of skin between your lips and release it flushed. Your tongue drags through the salt-sheen of his sweat, tracing the cut of muscle, and your hand drifts up to stroke his chest, his throat, fingertips trailing the chain at his collar, the ridge of his Adam's apple, the hollow beneath.

Petting him. Mapping the territory you've claimed.

Aerion's hand comes up and cradles the back of your head. His fingers thread through your hair, and he shifts, angling his neck, tilting his shoulder down, offering you more skin. Easier access.

"You're an animal," he informs you, voice scraped raw and dry as bone. His thumb traces the curve of your skull. "A feral, uncivilised creature who should have been left in the kennels at Winterfell."

You suck a bruise into the ridge of his collarbone. He exhales through his nose, slow and controlled, and tips his chin higher, baring the collared line of his throat to your mouth with an ease that contradicts every word coming out of it.

"Disgusting habit," he adds, as you nip the tendon below his ear. His fingers card through your hair, untangling, smoothing. Stroking, greedy and possessive. "Gnawing on your husband like a bone. Do they teach you that in the North? Is it in the wedding vows, hm?"

You hum against his skin. Your teeth graze his pulse point and his breath catches—just barely, just enough—and his hand gentles at your nape, cradling rather than holding.

You can feel him preening under it. The commentary is armour but his body is liquid, angling into every scrape of your teeth, every press of your lips. Offering himself up piece by piece while his mouth pretends outrage.

You press a kiss to the hinge of his jaw. Soft. Almost sweet.

Then you pull back just enough to meet his eyes.

"My pretty whore," you murmur fondly.

The reaction is instantaneous.

His eyes flash, pale lavender burning through the blown-black aftermath, and his hand snaps from the back of your skull to the nape of your neck, gripping hard, fingers digging into the tendons. He drags you up and kisses you. Bruising. All teeth, his tongue pushing into your mouth, tasting himself on you, tasting everything on you.

His other hand slides down your body. Between your thighs. Through the mess of his own spend. He pushes two fingers into you easily, so wet you barely feel the stretch of him, just the sudden fullness and the obscene sound of it, his seed squelching around his knuckles as he curls deep.

"Whore," he repeats against your mouth, low and dangerous, his fingers pumping into you with a rhythm that's already building toward something. "You want a whore, wife? I'll fuck you like one." His teeth catch your lip. His fingers twist and you gasp. "Over and over. Till you can't walk. Till the whole Red Keep knows what I've done to you. Till you're dripping with me for days."

You laugh. Breathless, warm, the sound vibrating between your mouths. Your hand finds the chain and you pull him closer—not hard, just a steady pressure, a reminder of what's still fastened at his throat—and your legs wrap around his hips, drawing him in, fitting your body against his like a key turning in a lock.

"Good," you say.

His fingers curl inside you, his mouth finds yours again. The collar gleams between you in the candlelight.