#dunk smut

he had not accounted for you.

you, with your fine silks and sharp mouth. you, with your jeweled fingers and that chin always tilted up at him as though he is something you've scraped off the bottom of your slipper. your father warned him about you on his first day of hire. "my daughter is... spirited." he'd told dunk. you'd chased off all your last knights with your foul behavior. the money hadn't been worth it.

however, dunk had nodded earnest as ever, hands clasped behind his back, as he towered over the polished floors and high ceilings. spirited he could handle. he grew up in slums. he knows sharp tongues and hot tempers and wild children with no reins.

he's fearsome and domineering. servants scatter when he passes. guards keep respectful distance. stable boys stare at him as though he is some giant carved from oak and iron.

but upon his first interaction with you where he'd tried to introduce himself to you, you cut him off entirely as you stand dangerously close to him in the hall of your manor. "i do not care. you'll be just like all the rest. now move."

ah.

he moves.

at first, he thought your horrible attitude was just a part of being raised wealthy and as the only daughter of your household. of course you were used to getting your way and treating the people around you like trash. you are young, surely. it was nothing but a poor first interaction; he has no wish to bully a nobleman's daughter.

but you test him.

you slip away from the convoy just to see if he'll notice, wander toward dark tree lines where bandits could lurk. you lean over bridge rails too far, and you talk to strange men in markets just to get a reaction out of dunk. every time he steps in, large form looming behind you as he catches your wrist just as you're about to touch a stranger and tells you, "that is enough, my lady," you laugh in his face.

"you don't command me, hedge knight."

the first time you spit on him is when he pulls you away from a man who's mouthing at your neck roguishly during a ball while you're too drunk to function. it landed on his cheek, dripping down slowly. he did not wipe it away immediately. he just looked down at you in disbelief.

you held his gaze, daring him. you are smaller than him by half, but you dare to challenge him either way. he'd never received training for a matter like this. "i told you, you do not command me. if you put your hands on me again, i will tell father to have one of your meaty fingers cut off."

he let you go. that was weeks ago. but you've made a sport of it since then, calling him an oaf, dog, brute, low-born. you toss orders at him in front of others. you complain about how he walks too close, is too big and clumsy, breathes too loud. you tell your fellow ladies that he smells of the stables and sweat, though he washes twice as often as any man in your company.

he's come to wonder if you do it for the fun of it or if you are simply seeking a reaction from him. because he notices the way your gaze turns expectant after you humiliate him. you do watch him quite a lot. when he removes his armor back in your manor after a long day, how you like to frequent the servant's quarters after dark, using the excuse of wanting a night snack from the kitchens... it's so suspicious. sometimes he wonders if he should take his cock out of his breeches and fist it while calling your name to see if you come running. but he doesn't.

dunk is not a clever man, but he is not blind.

still, he says nothing, because he is paid to guard your family, and you. and he doesn't want to sacrifice the pretty penny your father pays him to keep you in order.

so he endures.

until today. today, you slip away again. the road cuts through sparse woods, the afternoon light thin and golden. the caravan slows to navigate a narrow pass, and in that moment of distraction, you are gone. he can tell before he knows for sure. it's been too quiet. he rushes to scan the wagons and seek your fluffy head of hair, but nothing. "fuck." he curses roughly under his breath, stopping everything to search the area for you.

he finds you a quarter mile back, skirts gathered in your fists as you climb a moss-slick rock that juts above a shallow ravine. "what are you doing?" his voice carries. "did you jump out of your seat for me to chase you?"

you don't even look at him. "i'm admiring the view, dunk. go away."

he grits his teeth and steps forward slowly, trying not to startle you or have you run away. "get down this instant. this isn't funny."

"no."

the rock shifts under your slipper, and dunk's heart lurches up into his throat. he reaches forward, hissing; "get. down."

you finally glance back at him, your lip curled in a sneer. "no. you are not my father. leave me be."

"no," he says tightly, "but i am the one who will have to tell him if you break your foolish neck."

you roll your eyes and turn away again, just as your foot skids on the slick rock and you slip forward, letting out a startled little yelp. dunk moves before your other foot even leaves the surface of the rock, massive hands clamping around your body as he drags you back against him forcefully, your soft body pressed up against his with his arm locked around your middle like a band of iron.

for a second, neither of you move. your heart is racing. he can feel it through the layers of silk and linen. "are you mad?" he growls directly in your ear.

once you gather your bearings, you start twisting around in his grip, being a little hellion once more as if he didn't just save your life. "unhand me!"

his patience, that endless, gentle well everyone praises, is dry. he is sick of you. "i do not trust you not to run off again! you could have fallen," he emphasizes.

"but i did not."

"because i caught you. i am paid to guard you," he says angrily, holding you firm against him. "not to chase you like a stray hound every time you decide to prove you have no sense."

"well, i didn't call you a dog for no reason-"

"enough."

you've never heard that tone from him. and for a heartbeat, you falter.

then your pride surges back, and you reach back and elbow at his chest. it's like pushing a wall. "do not speak to me so," you snap. "you are nothing but hired steel. you forget your place."

dunk clenches his jaw tightly and squeezes you a little tighter, trying to will you to shut your smart mouth. "and where's my place?" he demands.

"beneath me," you say sickeningly sweet, before aiming another rough blow to his chest, trying to get him to let you go. you wriggle around, trying again to throw him off you -

his arm bands around you tighter, and he lifts you clean off your feet as though you weigh nothing at all. "put me down!" you shriek, kicking uselessly. he ignores your babbling and in one smooth motion, tosses you over his shoulder. suddenly, you're staring at his broad back and the ground swinging beneath you, your hair falling down his spine, your quickly begin to pound your fists against his back.

"dunk!" you scream, scandalized. "how dare you! i will have you-"

"you will do nothing," he snaps, big hand clamping firmly against the back of your thighs to keep you steady as he strides toward the road, each step long and unyielding. "i am taking you back home. you do not deserve to be out galivanting today."

you twist, but he adjusts easily, unbothered by your struggle. "and then, you will apologize," he says, not looking back. "and you will stay exactly where i put you until you remember how to behave like a lady."

dunk's grip tightens just enough to remind you how completely at his mercy you are.and for the first time since he took this cursed job, he does not yield. you punch his back hard, wondering if you can sink your teeth into his back somehow, when his broad hand comes down hard against the curve of your backside. you jolt, a sharp, shocked squeal tearing from you as your whole body tenses and rocks forward.

dunk's heart beats a tad too fast. he did not plan to smack you, but it was instinct. a correction, like a farmer swatting a mule that won't stop kicking. but the way you reacted... indignation faltering into pure surprise, has heat spreading through his body. he centers his brain long enough to hear your shrill cries. "y-you brute!"

you start wriggling again even more frantically now, trying to twist around and hit him. so he does it again. another rough smack delivered to your ass. he watches the motion of your soft flesh rippling back into place after he spanks you, and that strange feeling of arousal fills him once more.

this time your hips jerk involuntarily, your hands clutching at his back for balance instead of striking him. he's quite satisfied by that. your arrogance has started cracking around the edges. as he walks, he spanks you periodically, each hit measured and deliberate, his large palm landing square and sure through layers of silk, the impact more than enough to sting. to humble.

your protests dissolve into breathless little mumbles of outrage, and your hands, which had been clawing and striking him, slide instead to grip the back of his tunic. your legs stop kicking. you are now limp over his shoulder as he returns you not by carriage, but on his steed with him to your manor.

-

dunk does not waste any time in carrying you through the grand doors, up the staircase, down the long hall toward your chambers where he can make his corrections. lucky for him, your father is nowhere in sight to be questioning why his trusted knight is practically dragging his daughter you her room.

dunk stops outside your room and shifts you carefully before opening the door with one hand. he steps inside and shuts it behind him with his heel. then he walks swiftly to your bed, picks you up, and drops you onto it on your hands and knees, taking off your shoes and tossing them to the ground. "i do not need help to disrobe-!" you complain, trying to weave around and pushing his big hands away, but his temper spikes once more.

"you are the most unruly creature i have ever met." he hisses, pushing your face into the bed. "you run off into the woods," he continues, jaw tight. "you taunt strange men. you climb rocks over ravines just to see if i will come after you."

"do not call me that! i only wish to have some fun, but i cannot with you breathing down my-"

he cuts you off sternly. "and i am not sure if it is because you have been raised too spoiled and pampered to have any manners, or if you act out because you're frustrated that i haven't stuffed your little cunt."

you let out an undignified little sound as he calls out your poorly hidden desires so bluntly, your body shuddering under his. dunk’s huge hand starts to trail to the hem of your dress, and he begins to bunch it up at your hips.

“you’ve made a mess,” his voice comes out as a scoff, and he slowly traces a thick finger along the damp seam of your clothed cunt. “did my brutish behaviour excite you, my lady?”

hearing your own words, your past mockery of him repeated back to you so snidely somehow excites you further. you wonder why he’s taken so long to put you in your place, but the day has finally come for him to put an end to your behaviour and set you straight. breathy moans leave your lips as he rubs you through your drawers, the stickiness collected on the crotch part pushing against you and making a bigger mess. he grabs the back suddenly, tugging it up and pulling it between your ass cheeks so he can rub the fabric against your clit.

his other hand reaches up to fist in your soft hair, tugging and forcing your body to curve towards him with no means of escape. his grip inflicts the perfect amount of pleasure-pain. you feel hot and achy everywhere.

“ser duncan!”

"now you want to address me by my title?" he shakes his head, continuously rubbing your underwear against your sticky cunt, slick now drooling down your thighs. "tch. i can smell your mess. is all this for me?"

you cry out a pathetic "yes!" and push your hips back against his hand, seeking more friction. his face gives an involuntary twitch at your answer, his expression shifting into something you wouldn't be able to read if you were looking at him right now. his hand stills against you momentarily, and you grind your pussy against the heel of his hand with a whine, seeking more.

“seven hells,” he mutters under his breath. that was the last thing he expected from you. he was ready to get off you and pretend he hadn't touched you at all, but you wanted it. the proud little lady who's been tormenting him for weeks is suddenly pliant under his hands, warm and trembling.

dunk lets out a slow breath through his nose, and grabs a fistful of your drawers, tugging them down to your ankles. he watches the sticky strings web between the fabric and your cunt, and groans at how filthy you are for him

“so that’s it,” he says quietly, lowering his face to your cunt and pushing the tip of his finger into your puffy hole. “all this trouble… just because you wanted my attention.” he blows softly on your clit, and you whimper, trying to jut your hips back into his face. he pushes you down a little harder, sliding his finger inside you to the knuckle without warning.

a whimper escapes you at the sudden, unfamiliar intrusion, and as he begins to pump the invading digit slowly, your slick walls cling greedily to his finger as it sinks deep inside of you.

transfixed, he watches as your swollen lips part and cling to his finger with each thrust, a wet squelching sound filling the room. your arousal gushes out around his finger and coats it, making it easy to slip inside you, despite how tight your walls cling to him once he's inside.

with how close his face is to your cunt, he can't resist only looking anymore, and pushes his finger down inside you to make space for his mouth to cover your pussy. he lets out a highly pleased noise at the honeyed taste of you, and eagerly laps at your wetness while curling and twisting his finger inside of you.

he gets caught up in your taste, running his tongue through your falls and dragging upwards, flicking over the tight bud of your ass. you squeal and snap back to attention, having gotten dumb and drooly from when he'd been munching your cunt, but the new sensation has you on high alert once more. he spreads your cheeks with his free hand. "don't move."

you whimper at his tone and gasp as his tongue runs up and down, all the way from the base of your sloppy folds to your ass, all while easing a second finger inside of you.

"s-ser duncan, i-" your voice breaks off into a gasp when his tongue probes inside of you, his fingers spreading you open far enough for him to stuff his tongue in as well. he moans inside of you, sending vibrations through your hole and making your stomach tighten up. your lips part to form weak pants as you bury your face in the pillow.

dunk can see how much your body is responding to him as well. the way your cunt molds to fit his fingers and tongue, how your wetness flows freely to keep your hole lubricated and messy for him. and he could swear the longer he feasts upon you, the better you taste. he's never tasted a cunt as ripe as yours. but he won't tell you that.

his tongue working diligently to taste every drop of your essence. he loses himself in the act of pleasuring you, consumed by the desire to feel you come undone beneath him.

he keeps his fingers stuffed inside you but pulls back for a moment to watch how your cunt swallows them up, and he takes in the sight of your puffy, swollen lips, and the glistening, dusky flesh within. "of course you have the prettiest little pussy." he mumbles, tugging his fingers back and twisting them back in with a turn of his wrist.

before you can respond, he seals his mouth over your cunt once more his tongue delving deep to lap at your dripping slit. your body arches into the sheets. "i cannot take any more," you hiccup. " 'm about to... g-about to-"

dunk ignores your babbles and suckles on your swollen folds, his tongue trailing up to trace circles your clit, flicking over the sensitive bud teasingly before diving back down. his fingers pump faster, stroking your h-spot with each thrust, pushing you ruthlessly towards your impending orgasm. "beg for it," he growls against your sex, his fingers pausing their movement, leaving you teetering on the edge.

"please," you whimper, your voice high and breathy, desperate for release. you cry his name as your orgasm crashes through you, your pussy clamping down on his fingers, as your release gushes onto his hand, your body lifting off the bed. dunk groans, lapping up your essence as it pours out of you, swallowing every drop greedily. your pussy flutters around the invading digits and on his mouth, greedily seeking more. dunk devours every drop until you're licked clean, then runs his tongue over his lips with a satisfied hum.

see more in my misc masterlist

Duncan lumbers through the crowded market streets, his large frame parting the tide of people who flow around him like water. He keeps one hand on the pommel of his sword, the other clutching a small pouch of sweets. Your favourite, he knows, coated in sugar with a treacle-sweet centre. He smiles to himself, imagining the look of joy that will pass over your face, seeing that your husband has brought you your favourite sweets, rather than the bread he claimed to have been craving.

Dunk ducks beneath a low-hanging awning as he winds his way between the stalls and through passageways between rickety buildings. The town reminds him a lot of Flea Bottom, and the shadows that dance through the walkways have a painful kind of nostalgia washing through him.

“Oi, watch it!”

Dunk startles, eyes shooting onwards where a market vendor, an angry vein bulging across his grime-coated forehead, points at an elderly woman wrapped in colourful shawls. Apples in reds and greens roll across the flagstones, a wooden box tipped on its side.

The vendor moves as though to strike the woman, but Dunk gets there first—somehow, he slips through the dispersing crowd and clamps a large hand around the vendor’s wrist. The vendor looks up, and up further, taking in the sheer size of Duncan, and the scowl on his face vanishes, melting back into the shadows.

“You will not lay your hand upon a woman,” Dunk growls, and then proceeds to shove the vendor away.

The vendor yelps, clutching at his bruising wrist—Dunk didn’t even realise he had grabbed the man that hard—while the hedge knight turns and squats, gathering the apples from the cobbles. When he returns them to the upturned box, he hefts it easily in one hand and peers down at the woman with a sympathetic smile.

“Are you alright?” He asks.

The woman smiles softly, reaching up to pat him gently on the forearm. “I am, my dear, thank you.”

Dunk nods to the box in his hand. “Does this belong to you?”

“I just purchased it,” the woman replies sheepishly. “But it seems my arms and hands do not work as well as they used to.”

“Well, my arms and hands work plenty fine,” Dunk says with a smile. “And my wife says I’m the best at carrying her things, so I shall carry the crate for you.”

The elderly woman smiles again, reaching up to pat Dunk’s cheek, before she turns, the pinks and greens and golds of her shawls swishing around her. She smells of powdery lavender incense and wax soap, and for the briefest of moments, Dunk is reminded of what little he recalls of his mother.

He follows her down the narrow lane after shooting one last threatening look at the vendor. She looks largely out of place amongst the common folk who traverse the market streets dressed in browns and greys, fraying cotton and stained linen. She is colourful, eccentric, her skin dark and clean of any age spots, the wrinkles shallow. She didn’t appear as old as Dunk first thought, but maybe he wasn’t paying close enough attention.

After a few minutes of walking, the woman leads Dunk through a small, dark alcove, and stops outside a wooden door painted a forest green, a brass knocker resembling a lion mounted to the front. She unlocks and pushes open the door, and Dunk is hit with a thick aroma of herbs and flowers.

“May I bother you to bring them inside?” The woman asks softly.

“Of course,” Dunk replies instantly, and he stoops low to avoid the overhang of the doorway, following the woman inside, where the hall opens up into a room full of things.

Shelves line every wall, bottles and jars of liquids and powders filling them. They shine in different colours, different consistencies, and the smell that accumulates at Dunk’s head-height makes him slightly dizzy. Dried herbs hang from the ceiling—which the giant man finds out when he is smacked in the face by a bundle of desiccated spices.

Dunk places the crate of apples onto a table in the middle of the room, the wood clinking against several empty and half-filled bottles across the surface. When he rights himself, the elderly woman places her hand on his forearm once more. Her fingers are almost completely obscured by stacks of gold rings, and the bangles around her wrists jingle like chimes as she pets him like a child would a cat.

“I thank you for your kindness,” she tells him. “You will make yourself a fine knight one day.”

Dunk doesn’t think twice about the fact the lady knew he was to be a knight, but the compliment makes him burst with pride regardless. He dips his head respectfully, hand pressing to his chest in a sign of good faith.

“It was no problem at all.”

“Here, allow me to give you something in return,” the woman says, and turns to the lines of shelves behind her, fingers flitting across jars.

Dunk shakes his head, clearing his throat as his hand, once again, comes to rest against the pommel of his sword. He’s trying to appear more noble, but when he stands up straight, he hits the crown of his head on a low wooden beam, making him grunt.

“There is no need,” Dunk says around a hiss, rubbing the top of his head. “I do not—”

The woman points to a jar on the very top shelf, one she cannot reach, interrupting Dunk smoothly. “May you retrieve that one for me?”

Dunk bites his tongue and does what he is told. His large fingers pinch around the small jar the woman wants, and through the tempered glass he can see a yellow powder that seems to sparkle as it catches the low light of suspended candles. He hands it to the woman, who thanks him and pops the cork with a flick of her thumb.

She turns to face him. “When was the last time you lay with your wife?”

“I—” Dunk chokes on his spit. “I beg your—”

“I suppose we have seen the face of the sun many times since you have?” The woman taps the rim of the jar against her outstretched palm, collecting some of the powder. Dunk notices the traces of pink amongst the yellow. “Nearly twelve nights gone? You poor thing.”

Dunk stammers, but can’t articulate words.

Okay, maybe it has been that long, but only initially because your moon blood had arrived. The two of you usually had no qualms with being intimate whilst you bled, but you were particularly tender, and no amount of stretch from your husband’s tongue and fingers seemed to eliminate the ache, so you both decided against it.

Then, even when your blood had passed, the two of you travelling tirelessly for several days straight had meant Dunk did not want you to exert too much energy, even when you did plead with him.

The fact this woman knows that has suspicion, not quite fear, passing through him like a phantom.

“Your wife longs for you, and yet here you are, resorting to obtaining sweets to ease her qualms,” the woman says, and now Dunk is slightly creeped out. The bag of sweets hangs against his hip, fastened to the rope belt around his waist. The woman chuckles softly. “And that is why I believe this will be as good a reward as any.”

She lifts her palm and proceeds to blow the yellowy-pink powder directly into Dunk’s face. He sucks in a startled breath and it fills his lungs like smoke, his mouth tasting the sweetness of ripened grapes and honeyed wine. Quickly, he screws his eyes shut, but the powder lingers already in his lashline, and when he blinks, his vision seems brighter.

“What the—?” Dunk lifts his hand and wipes it down his face, stumbling back slightly.

“It is harmless to your overall health, and the effects will fade when you…” She hesitates, and then pats him on the chest. “Are satisfied, although that may take some effort. Now, be gone with you, Ser Duncan. You have a wife to return too.”

The woman, with surprising strength, spins Dunk around and pushes him out the door. It slams closed behind him, and he stands there with his head spinning, wondering how on earth she even knew his name.

In the shadows of the alcove, he catches his breath, which comes in increasingly laboured pants as his entire body begins to light up with warmth. His clothes feel too sticky against his skin, the back of his neck prickling, his temples dampening. The rope around his hips is too tight, the sword hanging there too heavy.

“Gods above, what is happening to me?” Dunk whispers to himself, looking down at his body as something stirs low in the pit of his stomach.

He thinks of you, waiting so patiently back at the campsite. He groans softly, reaching a hand down to press flat against his groin, where his cock is slowly beginning to harden in his breeches. The thought of you sitting against a tree, maybe mending one of his cloaks, or sharpening one of his blades, has a dizzy sort of pleasure seizing his brain.

Dunk whimpers your name, and stumbles out into the streets. He needs to get to you.

—✿—

The sky above is alight with oranges and pinks as the sun slowly begins to sink below the distant horizon. You watch it calmly, the forest around you quiet and serene, the sound of the nearby river washing through you and instilling a sense of calm. Your hand moves where you clutch your bone-handled blade, slicing it, bit-by-bit, through a small chunk of wood. It now resembles a horse, for the most part. You have taken up carving as a means of passing time, and selling the little statues earns you a bit of coin.

Your serenity is interrupted by the snapping of twigs and approaching footsteps. Several yards away, your horses do not startle, but you grip your knife tightly anyway as the footsteps encroach louder, then louder still. But you can hear the heavy thuds and the wide gait, and a small smile splits across your face when you recognise your husband’s footsteps.

You place your carving and knife aside, dusting the wood shavings from your hands as you get to your feet. Dunk appears through the tree line and your smile grows when you see him.

“Dunk!” You greet him. “I’ve been waiting…”

You take a moment to look at your husband as he walks towards you. His chest rises and falls rapidly, a bright blush painting his cheeks. His eyes appear watery, and as he draws nearer, the hot skin of his face seems to shimmer with something iridescent.

He towers over you, and out of instinct, you reach up and cup your palms to his cheeks. His eyes fall closed and he groans, throaty and loud. He’s feverish, molten-hot. You smell overripe grapes, lavender and honeycakes as he shifts, ripping his cloak from his body and tossing it to the ground.

“What has happened to you?” You ask, concern overcoming you as your hands brace down his neck and chest now, feeling the rabbit-like thumping of his heart.

Dunk groans again, eyes opening to watch your hands work down his abdomen. A shudder racks through him when your hands stop at the waistband of his trousers, your eyes widening as you spot the straining imprint of his cock. Your eyes lift, sparkling in the evening light, and Dunk swears that look alone could have made him spill in his breeches.

“Have you taken something?” You question quietly, finding the knot of his rope belt. You unfasten and unravel it, hefting the sword too and placing it on the ground. Dunk watches with his hands balled into fists. He’ll tell you about the sweets later. You peer back up at him again. “Duncan?”

His name leaving your lips forces him to his knees. A whine rips from the back of his throat as he drops, and you gasp as his knees crackle through dried leaves. His hands reach out, encircling around your hips as he lines himself up with your abdomen, his mouth pressing to your stomach.

Your hands card through his hair, worried. “Dunk, my love?”

“A woman… she gave me something—blew a powder into my face,” Dunk gasps out, leaning his burning cheek against you, listening to your breathing. “Says I will… says it will feel better when I am sat–satisfied.”

You frown. “Satisfied?”

Dunk nods, nuzzling into you. His hips shift as well, and suddenly you feel the tent of his trousers pressing to your leg through your skirts. A soft gasp escapes you as you continue to card your fingers through his hair, tussling the longish brown locks.

You know what he means by satisfied, considering his cock seems to be burning hot through both the fabric of his breeches and trousers, and the material of your simple dress.

“It hurts,” Dunk mutters, mouthing at your dress now, lips pressing to the softness of your belly. The fabric wets with his saliva as his tongue darts out, dragging over the linen. You grimace and thread your fingers against his scalp, holding him firmly and dragging his head away. He whimpers loudly, eyes flying open as he whines out, “Hurts so bad, sweetheart.”

Your heart squeezes tightly in your chest, your stomach churning with worry. You don’t want your husband hurting, but what was really wrong with him? He had left to the market for bread or something of the sort, and returned, not only empty-handed, but flushed with desire with his trousers practically ripping at the seams.

“Duncan…” You continue to grip his hair so he can’t literally lick your dress. “What hurts? You need to tell me.”

Dunk groans as your other hand shifts back to his cheek, stroking the warmed flesh. He leans into the touch with drooping eyelids, his pupils blown so wide his eyes appear black in the fading light of dusk.

“My—” Dunk blows out a breath as if battling something in his brain. “My… oh gods, my love, I can’t say—I just can’t—”

You know what he wants to say. You know it when his hips twitch and he drags the imprint of his cock against your leg once more.

Something warm is blooming in your core now too. The sight of your husband on his knees before you, clutching you as if you were keeping him alive, feverish in his pleasure, has you starting to leak into the gusset of your smallclothes. Heat fills your tummy as you stroke his cheek, the tips of your fingers collecting a shimmering film of yellow and pink dust. It seems to be trapped in his pores, coating his freckles as he peers up at you.

You massage his scalp, which is damp with sweat. “Does your cock hurt, sweet boy?”

The words feel too alien coming from your mouth, much too crude for a lady, but the shock that passes over your husband’s face is euphoric to your slowly dampening core. His mouth drops open, his tongue practically lolling out like a tired hound, as a groan rumbles from his chest and he starts to nod. His cock presses to your thigh and he tries to grind himself against you, but you tug on his hair to get him to stop.

“Well, tell me what you need me to do,” you whisper down at him. “I can help you. You just need to be a good boy and tell me what you need, okay?”

Dunk groans. “Y-yeah, yeah, I can—I can be good. I just—I just need you, pl-please, my love, I need you.”

You coo at him. “Need me? I’m right here, Dunk.”

“No,” he whines out, leaning his forehead against your stomach. You let him. He groans again, this time more high-pitched, bordering on a whimper. “Need your…”

“Need my…?”

“Gods, my heart is going to implode,” Dunk huffs as an aside. “Please—”

“What do you need, Dunk?” You ask firmly, gripping his hair and forcing him away from your stomach. The broken sound that leaves him almost makes you feel bad, but you need him to make some kind of sense before you give him anything. You know exactly what he wants, but he needs to work for it.

Dunk licks his lips, looking you up and down, and the words that leave his mouth sound like nothing you’ve ever heard from him in the entire time you’ve known him. His tone is dark with need, but still light enough to know his words are edging around a whine. “Need your pussy. Need to fuck you so bad, sweetheart. Need to pump you so full that—”

He cuts himself off with a low moan as you push his head down, pinning him and muffling the rest of his rambling against the fabric covering your mound. His mouth laves over the linen straight away, and the heat that overtakes you threatens to burn you from the inside out.

“Come on then, my boy,” you whisper, rubbing his scalp gently, your other hand smoothing down the strong expanse of his shoulders. “Help me out of this dress and I can give you what you want.”

Dunk grunts in relief as he hurries to his feet and spins you around so fast you feel dizzy. He walks you back a few paces until you can brace your hands against the coarse bark of a tree as he pulls at the ties along the back of your dress. He rips the knots undone, large hands trembling as he makes quick work of unthreading the ribbons he himself had tied earlier that morning.

His movements are harsh. Gods, he’s trying to be gentle, but he just can’t help it.

“Duncan…” You grumble, jostled as he tugs and pulls.

“M’sorry,” he slurs as, giving up on the last few ribbons, he hooks his fingers beneath the silky strings and rips them. You gasp as he practically pulls your dress apart, the sound of material tearing filling the forest as your dress loosens around your shoulders and breasts. Dunk slurs again, “M’so sorry, sweet girl.”

He pulls you to him as he drags your dress from your body, leaving you in your smallclothes as you kick the mass of skirts away. The chemise follows—Dunk pulls it over your head and spins you around at the same time, and you yelp at the speed of it all. Your breasts spill out into the cool air of the forest and his head ducks immediately, mouth attaching to a hardening nipple as one of his large hands finds the other. He kneads it as he drops to his knees once more, sucking harshly whilst his other hand finds your smallclothes.

“Dunk,” you call for him through a whine as he tugs them down, and you barely have time to send them away from your ankles before he’s ripping your legs apart.

His mouth drops from your tits, skims briefly over the soft skin of your tummy, before his nose is dragging down your mound and burrowing between your legs.

You gasp. “Dunk, oh my—”

“Need this,” Dunk grumbles. “Gods, need this. Got to—y’gotta give it to me, sweetheart.”

He inhales deeply, and the sensation makes you squeal and squirm, your back arching against the tree. Your hands find his damp hair again, tugging. But it’s no deterrent—the giant inhales again, this time followed by a loud, unabashed moan that sends the birds above flying from their roosts. The forest seems to echo with it, and you can feel the heat of his face burning deeper as he buries himself against you. You feel his mouth split open, warm lips parting for his tongue to curl outwards. He licks through your folds as another groan spills, the vibrations buzzing through you like bees trapped in a jar.

Your hands shift from his head to his shoulders, and you tug at the fabric of his tunic.

“Dunk,” you say hurriedly. “Off.”

He removes himself from you with a grunt, letting you help him in flinging his tunic off. It lands somewhere in the distance. Dunk doesn’t care though, descending between your legs again and drawing your clit into his mouth with one harsh suck. It makes you yowl, fingernails biting crescents into the freckled skin of his shoulders. His skin is sticky with sweat and impossibly warm.

With another animalistic grunt, Dunk takes one of your legs and tosses it over his shoulder. The new angle allows him to drive his tongue into your drooling hole, and the abruptness makes you keen into him, hips twitching as his nose bumps repeatedly against your clit. Blood pools low beneath the skin, simmering hot in your nerves as he ruts his tongue inside you, each movement eliciting a gravelly groan from the depths of his chest.

His other hand unties the knots of his trousers. He pushes the fabric away with fumbling fingers and pulls his aching cock out of his breeches, the material on the front wet with precum. When his fingers wrap around the length—hot iron wrapped in a sheath of velvet—and the sword callouses on his palm rub against a vein on the underside, his vision whites behind his eyelids. The pleasure is almost painful, the pressure pulling heavily at his cockhead, bruising a purplish-red. Precum leaks from the slit in a continuous rivulet that has his heart knocking against his sternum.

His balls are tight already, and as he tastes you, listening to the light whimpers that fall from your mouth, he realises he’s going to spill. He realises it as his precum wets his palm, his hand gliding without him even needing to spit on it. He realises it as his cock twitches heavily in his hand, again and again; that unmistakable pressure in his lower spine and belly building. He wants to let it happen—he rucks his hips, meeting the movements of his hand, fucking his fist. Grunts muffle in your wet pussy as he chases his high, your thigh warm on his ear.

The precipice of pleasure is right there, but he can’t reach it.

He strokes his cock, twists at the base, tastes the heady scent of you dripping down the back of his throat, but he can’t come.

“Dunk,” you call sweetly, tipsy on pleasure. “Oh, gods, Dunk, keep going.”

It feels like Dunk’s entire face is wet: the upper portion damp with sweat, the lower portion shining with your slick. His mouth moves against you like he’s kissing you, lips spreading and tongue curling. He breathes you in, moaning softly, head bobbing as he continues to fist his cock. It’s nearly trembling in his hand, and you can feel Dunk shivering as he chases a release that refuses to let go.

You can hear him fucking his fist over the wet slurps of his tongue against your pussy. As the forest darkens around you, your ears ring with it, your bare back scratching against the tree trunk as you rock your hips. His mouth is searing hot, forged from the very fires of Dragonstone.

Your thigh quivers over his shoulder as you speak. “Duncan, m’gonna come.”

Your only response is a deep grunt that vibrates your puffy clit, and that has your legs locking up even tighter. Pleasure takes deep root in the base of your spine, and it spreads as you take, take, take, until you topple into your orgasm. It rocks through you, and you hold him tightly, rocking your hips as you spasm around his tongue. Chants of his name roll easily over your lips, and he groans nicely against you as he fucks you through it.

Dunk pulls away after a couple of seconds. His breathing is ragged, lips wet, chest flushed red. He’s still fisting his cock, and you look down at him, meeting his round, watery eyes as he nuzzles against the thigh still draped over his shoulder.

“I…” He breathes in deeply. “I can’t—oh, fuck, I can’t—”

His hand is moving so fast. The sight makes your pussy clench around nothing, and you gingerly remove your thigh from his shoulder. Then, you tap his head.

“Stand up for me, Dunk,” you say gently, trailing a nail along the dip of his clavicle. “I’ll help you, I promise.”

Your husband springs to his feet before you even finish speaking, pushing his trousers and breeches all the way off.

He continues to grasp his cock. It leans forward under the weight of his pleasure, and you both groan when he rubs the head against the soft skin above your navel. Precum spreads across your skin, and when he pulls back, a sticky string connects you two for just a moment. You whimper his name when the string snaps, and he draws in a sharp, almost pained breath.

“Inside,” he whispers, more to himself than you. He drags the head of his cock down as he bends at the knee. “Need… yeah, need to be inside.”

The angle is slightly awkward—he’s just a bit too big—but he makes it work, stooping low as he angles your legs apart. The head of his cock finds the tight hole of your cunt, and he presses it there with surprising restraint.

“M’sorry,” Dunk breathes, leaning forward to mouth at your throat. You arch, and he purrs, pleased, as you willingly give yourself up to him. He kisses your jaw softly. “M’sorry, sweet girl, m’not gonna… I can’t wait. Jus’ need you, s-so jus’ be good, okay? I’ll try—I’ll try t’be gentle, my love. I’ll try for you.”

The head of his cock slips past the ring of your pussy, and you suck in a breath at the stretch. Wide, splitting, and no matter how wet you are, how long he took in stretching you open on his tongue or fingers, there was always a battle of bodies. Always a push to get him fully seated inside you, the tight walls of your cunt clutching around the thick intrusion.

You whimper his name again, nails needling into the tawny freckles along his shoulders.

“I know, I know,” Dunk chants, but he doesn’t stop. He can feel you tensing against him, but he doesn’t stop.

He’s overwhelmed: the heat of your pussy draws his cock in further, his mind going blank, the taste of grapes and lavender aromatic in the grooves of his molars, and leaking from his pores.

His cock slides in further, parting the wet walls of your pussy inch by inch. “Please take it, sweet girl. Please just—fuck, take it.”

It hurts. He’s too fucking big, and he knows it.

You writhe against the tree, standing on your tip-toes now as he drives slowly into you. You're thankful he’s at least easing in bit by bit. You’re not sure you would have survived if he simply took you in one fell thrust.

But at the same time, it feels incredible. The sting of the stretch is underlined by that usual, aching pleasure that festers deep in your pelvis. You feel it as the ridges of his cock run against your posterior wall, splitting you apart, rubbing you the right way. Your heartbeat thrums heavily in your clit, and your back arches against the tree, fingernails now scraping down his broad back.

“Dunk,” you whimper as he feeds his cock into you.

He groans against your throat, sucking harshly. The sound of his name on your mouth, so sweet, so beautiful, snaps whatever composure he had been holding onto. With another guttural groan, Dunk surges forward, jolting his hips inwards and stuffing the rest of his cock inside you.

You cry out, holding him tightly as he fucks into you. He’s rough, his pace coming in quick, brutal thrusts, and he’s panting against your dewy skin all the while. His body shakes against yours as he pulls his cock out, then shoves it back in. You yowl like an injured animal, and Dunk’s heart flutters in his chest.

“M’sorry, m’sorry, m’so sorry—” It rambles from him like a mantra but his hips don’t slow. He spreads you apart, girth still too thick, length still too long. He presses a wet kiss to your cheek. “I know it hurts, sweetheart, I know, but just… gods, just stay like that. Please, sweet girl, be good for me.”

Your back scrapes against the tree as his movements propel you. You’re practically bouncing against him, barely even touching the ground anymore as he takes what he needs. The slide of his cock does hurt, but your walls mould around him like clay. Made for him.

The heat and wetness of your pussy sends him over the edge, and you feel it. You feel him go rigid against you, muscles stiffening as his hips buck. His thrusts grow sloppy, seconds blurring together as his balls tighten and his cock twitches deep inside you. You feel it, feel it nudging up against the plug of your cervix as his hips roll. Then, with a rasping moan of your name, he spills inside you. Deep inside you. Warmth floods your lower belly, through the hollow of your womb as his hips jerk, his mouth biting and sucking at your neck.

And he keeps spilling. It fills you to the brim, and you can’t help but whimper as it drools out from around his cock. With a slightly disgruntled huff, Dunk pulls out, leaning back to look at where his cock hangs, still stiff, between his legs. Cum seeps from the slit, spider-web strings drooling from you too, and the sight almost has him coming again.

But he’s still hard.

“S’not…” Dunk’s brows furrow, and he slants his hips forward to drag his cock against your thigh. You squirm and whine as he wipes his cum across your skin, and then moan when the head prods back at your hole. Dunk whimpers. “S’not enough, need more.”

Then, he’s thrusting back in again. The forest’s shadows engulf you both as he slots himself inside of you, the glide quick and wet and audible as he drives home. You choke on a gasp, hands clutching his shoulders. Your legs are cramping, your back stinging, your pussy aching—but it all softens around the edges as Dunk ruts into you again and again.

“Dunk,” you whisper. “Dunk, please.”

Your husband lifts his head and finally kisses you. For the first time tonight, he slots his mouth against yours. The moan that leaves him has your cunt clenching tightly around the thick of his cock, and one of your hands finds the back of his neck as your tongues meet. It’s an intricate dance, but Dunk's movements are just too desperate to stick to the practised moves—his tongue is breaching, too thick and too strong, flattening against yours roughly. You swap spit, and he pants into the kiss as he chases your tongue and licks over the points of your teeth. It’s sloppy and messy and everything Dunk needs.

His hands are on your waist. Big, encompassing, fingers dimpling the flesh. His cock stretches you open, his heavy balls slapping against the curve of your arse as he ruts you against the tree. The wet sounds of you coming together echo softly through the forest, the sun sunk beyond the horizon now, shadows stretching far and flitting across your connected frames.

“Being so good,” Dunk mutters, licking over your parted lips. It makes you whimper, and your bottom teeth catch his lip. He groans when you release him after a playful nip. “Gods, always so good for me. Needed this so bad, sweetheart. Needed you so bad.”

“Dunk,” you mewl, scratches red along his big shoulders.

Your cunt squeezes tightly around him, another release building deep in your stomach: that same feeling as minutes before, a traction building along your spine as he fucks you. Dunk mouths along your jaw, panting into your ear as his thrusts start to stammer, and before you can react, he’s pulling you away from the tree and manhandling you to the ground. His hard cock slips out of you, the sensation forcing you to suck in a breath as his seed all but drools from your gaping cunt, the cool forest air a sudden stimuli as you’re spun around.

You let out a light grunt as he pushes you down onto your hands and knees, which find the wool of his discarded cloak. Leaves crinkle softly beneath your weight as your back arches and the warmth of Duncan appears behind you. Large, calloused hands trail up your sides, kneading your waist, before dragging back down and palming the curve of your arse.

Dunk gazes at you through the semi-darkness. “Prettiest girl in the realm, aren’t you? And you’re all mine.”

He grunts, then grips the base of his cock. It shines with your slick, wet with his spend too, and he slaps the thick head against one of your arsecheeks. You huff, and he drags the tip down the split of your arse until it ghosts across your hole—just lightly enough to make you draw in an anticipatory breath—before it finds your pussy.

“This is mine,” Dunk utters, and you almost don’t hear him. Even in the relative silence of the forest, his words are so quiet you could have mistaken them for the nearby river. Dunk circles his tip through your soaking folds before notching it and pushing in again. The groan that leaves his mouth makes you shiver. “This—fuck—this fuckin’ pussy, s’all mine. Hey, sweet girl, isn’t that right? Yeah? Tell me this is all mine.”

He thrusts in and you shout, voice carrying through the forest.

“Huh?” Dunk thrusts again, hard and fast. The angle drives him deep against you, tip knocking against the plug of your cervix. He leans over you, sweat dripping from his forehead, hair messy, cheeks pink. His hands pull your arse back onto his pelvis, meeting you thrust for thrust. “Come on, sweetheart, tell me. Need—need you to tell me. Please.”

You don’t know what that woman gave him, but you can see what it’s done to him. You can hear what it’s done, and feel what it’s done.

His rutting is brutal, his cock driving deep towards your womb, your belly full of him. Your arms shake where you hold yourself up, sweat damp in the crook of your elbows as you fist his cloak. It smells like him, and that makes the whines trapped in your throat break free.

“It’s yours, Dunk,” you manage to say as he leans over you, his body hot and too fucking big pressed against your lower spine. You gasp when one of his hands wraps around your hip and heads south, a finger finding your swollen clit. “Oh, fuck, it’s yours.”

Dunk draws a tight circle over the bud, marvelling in the way your pussy immediately tightens around him. “Yeah it is. Gods, I’m the luckiest man in all the seven kingdoms.”

You don’t correct him.

Your body trembles beneath his, and it’s almost like you can feel his cock swelling inside you. He’s impossibly thick, the ridges and veins sliding against the velvet of your walls, the head nailing that perfect, spongy spot inside you. Dunk always knows how to make you feel good, can always get you to where you want to go, but this is something entirely different. There’s an intensity within him you’ve never seen before. A feverish need that’s overtaken him, that flows from his pores, that infects every fibre of his being.

It makes you keen, back arching, listening to the way he grunts with each of his movements, cock splitting you open, heavy balls slapping against your clit as his fingers work against it too. The meat of his muscles are warm against you, solid and sturdy, holding you in place. It all adds to the sensation.

Another orgasm is quickly pulled through your body, and Dunk praises you through it as it crests like a wave.

“That’s a good girl, there we go,” he coos as you come around him, mouth dropping open in a silent moan. Your spine dips, hips stuttering, and Dunk removes his fingers from your aching clit to place a hand in the middle of your back. He forces you into a deeper arch, the new angle punching a scream from your throat as he coos again. “I know, I know, don’t make a fuss, sweet girl. You can do it. You can take me.”

Dunk’s breathing is laboured, and his stamina starts to falter as his cock twitches. Your cunt feels like heaven—a warm, silken heaven—and he screws his eyes shut momentarily, visions of him spilling deep inside you, straight into your womb, vivid in his mind. Maybe you shouldn’t drink the moon tea he finds you brewing during rest stops. Maybe he won’t have to spill across your stomach or tits or arse ever again.

He opens his eyes and grunts around a clenched jaw. “Ah—s’about time I breed—fuck—breed you, sweetheart. Huh? What do you think? Come deep inside this—ah, gods—t-this pretty pussy and give you my child. You’d look so beautiful all fat with my babe, wouldn’t you? Keep you n-nice and bred.”

“Yes, Dunk, fuck,” you moan. “Please, I can’t—”

“You can,” he growls out, fingers a vice on your hips. “Let me feel you. One more time, c’mon, my sweet girl. Let go for me one more time.”

You don’t know if you can.

Your body feels wrung out, like a dress soaked and dried by the river. Your heart clatters against your chest as your breasts push against the material of his cloak. There’s an uncomfortable pressure building in your lower tummy, mostly overwhelmed by overstimulation, but you can feel the remains of pleasure there too.

And Dunk knows you have it in you.

“One more,” he says. “One more, sweetheart, you can do it.”

Body on fire, nerves flaming at their ends, you meet his sloppy thrusts as best as you can. Your limbs tremor like a fawn, and your moans have long run dry: only hoarse whimpers roll from your tongue tasting lightly of honeyed wine.

And then you do give him one more.

Your body reacts to the manic pushing of his cock inside you, reacts to the thick of his cock splitting you open, reacts to the way he whispers your name like the sweetest kind of prayer. You come around him, arms collapsing as your pussy flutters around his girth. You topple forward, moaning his name while the ground shifts to meet you, and your legs seize, verging on a cramp.

“Yes, yes, that’s it, that’s what I want,” Dunk babbles, a large hand wrapping around the back of your neck now and pulling you onto your knees. You’re boneless, and he’s so strong, so you can’t do much but let him haul you back against his broad, sweaty chest. He presses a hot kiss to the skin just beside your tragus. “Such a good girl—you did it. Gods, my sweet girl, my perfect girl. You did it, an’ you did so good for me.”

Bulky arms encircle you, bouncing you back against his cock. He grunts into your ear, ragged and bearish, as his entire body pulses with heat. He’s feverish, ill with pleasure, and you’re his soothing balm: the perfect remedy.

With one last pathetic whimper of your name, Dunk shoves himself to the hilt, as deep as he can possibly go, as his orgasm flows through him. His teeth sink into the skin on your shoulder as his cock jerks, hot spurts flooding thick into your womb. You sigh softly into the cool early night air, reclining back against your husband as he empties himself inside you again, your pussy milking him for all it’s worth. Dunk groans into your shoulder, fever finally breaking, his cock giving one last jolt before it slowly starts to soften inside of you. The feeling nearly makes his eyes roll into the back of his head, relief filling him.

You stay like this for a little while. He presses silent, delicate kisses along your bare shoulder and onto your cheek, his hands rubbing over your breasts and belly, but not in a sexual way. His big, rough hands are calming as you both fizzle down from your highs.

Soon though, Dunk realises the forest around you has grown too dark. Wordlessly, he helps you to your feet, bundling you in his cloak before guiding you towards the fire. It is made, but unlit, but it’s roaring in mere minutes as Dunk—who has hurriedly thrown his breeches and trousers on—adds more fuel to the flickering orange flames. 

Then, beneath the firelight, Dunk cleans you up. You sit on a stump before him as he dabs a wet cloth between your legs, wiping his seed from your core. He presses tender kisses to the inside of your knees, and soon you’re dressed, and the two of you snack on salt beef, cuddling beneath the stars.

“Maybe you should go back to that woman,” you say jokingly, turning your head to find Dunk already looking at you. His eyes reflect the fire. You smile. “I like it when you’re needy. I wonder if she has a long-lasting one?”

Dunk flushes, averting his eyes. “I don’t want to have to go through that again. As much as it felt great, my cock also felt about ready to break in half.”

You laugh, and Dunk resumes watching you carefully. After a moment, something lights up in his eyes, and he gets to his feet, still chewing a mouthful of salt beef, and retrieves his rope belt from where the horses graze nearby. When he returns, you lean your head against the pillowy muscle of his upper arm, peering at his big hands as he plucks a small pouch from the belt.

“I got you these,” your husband says shyly, handing you the bag.

You beam when you open it and see your favourite sweets. You incline your head and urge Dunk down to you, drawing his mouth into a sweet kiss.

“Thank you,” you tell him. “I love you.”

He smiles. “I love you more.”

Then, you laugh. “Oh, you poor boy. You went to the market to purchase some sweets, and instead you got poisoned—” you say that part sarcastically, “—by a little old lady. My poor, poor boy.”

You reach up and stroke his hair, watching with awe as his eyes fall closed and a deep purr leaves his chest. His arm wraps tighter around you, pulling you closer into his side.

He never wants to let you go.

———

god he’s so hot

You had been right, of course. Right when you said to buy more long-lasting supplies. Right when you said there might be no inn for miles and miles, and the last bed and fair meal in your bellies were already fading from memory. Right when you said to walk around the woods instead of cutting through, because no one could see the stars under crowns grown so thick, and this particular forest had looked queer even from the road.

It had unsettled him too, if he is honest. The trees stood too close together. The path under them seemed less like a path than an invitation made by something with poor intentions. But Duncan had wanted, badly, to be the sort of man who knew the way.

He had said the coin purse was too light for the inn. He had said north was north. He had said the road through was straight enough, and if you kept going you would come out three days sooner than if you went around. He had said Ser Arlan taught him to read land and wind and moss on bark.

You had only looked at the forest and said, “Moss grows where it pleases in a place like that.”

And now moss grows everywhere. On stones, on roots, on the wrong sides of trees. It slicks the ground under his boots and makes a fool of every scrap of road-wisdom he dragged out to defend himself. The sky has been gone for two days. The trees keep swallowing the light. Little ways open ahead of you and close behind you without sound.

Worst of all, you have stopped telling him you were right. That is how Duncan knows you are truly angry, and it is the last thing he wants. Everything he does is to show you how dear you are to him. When you are only cross, you sharpen yourself on him. When there is still play in it, you peck and prod and make sport of his solemn face until he either laughs or thinks hard about putting his head through a tree. Now you walk ahead in silence with your cloak hem dark from mud, one hand pressed to your empty stomach when you think he cannot see. But he sees.

With the ache in his legs he can't decide whether it is a new punishment from the Gods, or merely a top up of his ongoing one. Being doomed to spend all his time around creature who smells of woodsmoke and crushed green things, whose laugh comes out meaner for hunger yet makes something in him lift like a hound hearing its name, whose hands can bind a cut with such brisk mercy he feels forgiven before the knot is tied, then cuff him round the arm a breath later for moving too soon.

Those hands trouble him. The gentleness of them troubles him worse. The little sharp swats you give him when he says something thick-headed trouble him worst of all, because Duncan is a boy beneath the height and mail and borrowed vows, and boys think where they are forbidden; boys wonder how the same hand might fall in privacy, in play, in anger sweetened by permission.

He cannot have you. That is the root and rot of it. So he keeps you where a hedge knight may keep what is precious and impossible: in his head, in his heart, and, when he strays furthest from the knightly path, in those low, shameful devotions that take him half-awake before dawn, hand gone traitor under the blanket while you sleep near enough to unman him, face softened by the pale morning, mouth parted and begrudgingly unkissed.

A rock hits the tree bark, and a grunt follows. The same crow that has yelled at the pair of you twice already flies off with a menacing cackle, and Duncan sees you standing there with your shoulders drawn and anger practically fuming off your neck.

“If we kill it, we can eat it,” you announce grimly.

“You cannot eat a crow,” he tells you. “It’s a bad omen.”

It is much too quiet. Much too calm, and matches your mood not at all, for you are beyond livid and looking for something to punch outright.

“Oh?” you quip. “Worse than dying of hunger in the middle of the meanest fucking forest I’ve ever been to?” There, you stomp your foot hard enough to feel the impact travel thighwards and spread a vile ache. Your boot sinks into the moss.

Duncan gapes at you, clearly frightened. “We’ll find something soon enough,” he says, taking a few steps forward. His hands fist the belt of the satchel nervously. When you give him nothing but a death stare, he bows his head and mumbles, “Forgive me, I—”

It makes you explode. “Stop this! We’ve found nothing for two days except for disgusting birds!” you yell at him. Or rather, your stomach yells at him, and there is a lot of space within it to draw air from. “We’ve passed the same split ash twice, and there’s no sky in here. Where is your north now, hm?” You move in, throwing your hands around. When he says nothing, you press on: “I told you we should’ve stayed at the inn. I told you we should’ve walked round, but you never listen. Ser Arlan this, Ser Arlan that, I’m sick of listening to the wisdom of that old fart! And quit standing there looking like I should pity you, it’s infuriating!”

His eyes jerk around, but his head doesn’t. “A-aye,” he stammers. Walks right past you. “As you wish.”

“Duncan, I’m—”

“Keep moving.” He cuts you off. Hurt. “Start marking the trees, and perhaps we will stop walking in circles.”

You know damn well you’ve hurt him, regret it dearly, and get only more cross about it. Stupid boys with their stupid I-can-do-this attitudes. Stupid Duncan with his stupid we-can-make-it every time you offer an easier solution. You are well aware of how light your shared purse is, but there are ways around things. You could’ve charmed the innkeeper. Could’ve haggled with the grain seller. Could’ve hunted small game on your way around the woods, and at least there would be some stars above your heads. At least the air would be fresh and not rotten-smelling and damp all the way. Stupid Duncan with his stupid frowned mouth that wouldn’t even show you his endearing teeth or the way his eyes wrinkle when he laughs.

There are moments when you let yourself be deluded into thinking he has a kinder eye on you than merely a companion’s. He looks longingly whenever a larger patch of your body shows, and blushes furiously when he gets caught looking. Always makes you eat your ration first and pretends he’s well fed while his stomach could obviously host yours and his, and he’d still be hungry. He helps you into and out of the tall places, walks first through suspicious lands, and hides you with his broadness whenever someone ill-looking crosses your path. Often you find him staring at you in the mornings. He misliked the idea of you flirting your way into a warm bed so much the door rattled behind him when he stormed out of the inn. Went ahead guilty-looking and pulled at his brows as if it was some sort of personal betrayal.

You were very close to telling him that if you shared a bed you might be able to afford it, but something in you told you no. The same voice that acts as a constant apologist for all the deceptions of a girlish heart. It yearns for his lashes to tickle your cheeks when he kisses you and for his hands to smooth down your thighs, while the mind, still steadfast, screeches at you that he is a knight. A man honourable enough to apply all those gestures selflessly, out of duty and his soul’s purity. So you keep those little fits of unbearable pining to yourself, and only let them boil over from frustration in situations like this one. When the threat of closeness becomes so grand, you end up in the middle of nowhere instead, with no provisions, wineskin empty and body so hungry it feels as if it has started feasting on itself.

Watching him try to be competent while exhausted makes you furious in an oddly specific way. So much so that it takes an additional ounce of effort to look away from what it attempts to disguise. You insisted because food and shelter are sensible, yes, but underneath that: you are tired of him deciding what hardships both of you will nobly endure. You are tired of him being far away all the time. You are tired of him being able to admit a mistake exactly never, because he has some ridiculous fear of failing you.

So you drag yourself behind him, silent, functionally hostile, letting him mark the trees while your eyes remain fixed on the forest’s groundcover. For a long time there is nothing but moss and decomposing bark. Then, a little pale congregation shows itself under the lip of a fallen trunk.

You stop so quickly your knees almost forget the arrangement. Mushrooms. A whole clutch of them, bunched close in the wet dark, caps the colour of old cream and bruised grey at the edges, stems thin and stubborn where they push up through the rot. They look indecently alive in a forest that has offered no berries, no nuts, no rabbit flashing white under a bush, no squirrel rude enough to be killed, no clean water except what one might wring from the moss like from an old rag. You crouch and pick one. The stem gives with a soft little snap. It smells damp, earthy, faintly sweet in a way that makes your stomach fold in on itself with need.

You turn it over. Gills. Fine ones, packed tight underneath, pale as milk. You try to summon every scrap of sense you own about things growing wild and free: what colour means death, what smell means bellyache, what little skirts and bulbs and stains should send a person praying. The knowledge arrives in tatters. Old women muttering by cookfires. A girl you once knew who swore the brown ones were safest, until another girl swore the same about the white. You split the cap with your thumb and watch it bruise darker where you have hurt it.

The forest holds its breath. That is what Duncan notices first. The lack of you behind him. Muttered complaints, boots dragging and hungry little curses aimed at roots, birds, Gods, or him, cease entirely. He turns and finds you knelt in the moss bed, hunched over your own lap as if you have discovered treasure or a corpse.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Mushrooms,” you tell him, eyes fixed on whatever's before you.

He goes still. “Put them down.”

“They seem good enough.”

“Put them down,” he says again, and this time it lands as command. “You do not know what they are.”

Your mouth sets. Oh, there it is. The last rotten twig laid on the pile. You are hungry enough to feel hollowed with a spoon. Cross enough to bite the next thing that comes near your mouth. Cross with him for the inn, for the road, for the woods, for treating you as if you are some soft lady to be carried through hardship rather than the companion sharing it. Cross with him for touching you only when duty gives him permission. Cross with him for staring with those huge blue eyes full of thoughts he never once has the courage to drag into words. Cross with him for standing over you now as if he gets to decide this too.

You gather two fistfuls from the moss and sit back on your heels.

“Don’t,” Duncan says.

So you stuff the first handful into your mouth.

It is a dreadful decision immediately. They are wet and cold and spongy between your teeth, tasting of soil, pepper, old leaves, and something almost buttery enough to coil nerves. You chew with the wild-eyed conviction of a person proving a point no sensible man asked you to prove.

Duncan runs. For a man so large, he hits the ground beside you with shocking speed. “Stop that! Spit them out!” His hand catches your chin, thumb at one side, fingers at the other, trying to turn your face up. True fear has made him clumsy. “Spit them out, I said. Seven hells, are you mad?”

You clamp your jaw shut.

“Open your mouth.”

You shake your head with such force his grip slips. He catches you again, gentler and worse for it, because all that concern is going straight through your skin where his fingers hold you. He is stronger, of course he is, but strength has poor purchase against a mouth sealed by spite. You make a muffled, triumphant sound through the chewed mess of shroom flesh, and Duncan looks one breath away from prying your lips open with both hands.

“D'you want to die?” he snaps. “Is that it? You want to make a corpse of yourself because I told you no?”

It is enough to tip your anger over. You surge up into him with the second fistful crushed in your palm. He jerks back too late. Your hand smears over his mouth, damp caps and broken stems mashed against his lips, and for one glorious, idiotic heartbeat you have him pinned in sheer surprise, your other hand shoved hard against his jaw to keep him from throwing you off.

Then, he does throw you off. You land in the moss with a graceless thump while Duncan spits, coughs, spits again, one hand braced on the ground and the other scraping at his mouth as if he has kissed plague. “Fuck,” he chokes, which would be deeply satisfying under finer circumstances. “Fuck—”

You lie there with your chest heaving, ground cold under your back, and watch him retch up a sorry fleck of pale cap. “You ain’t dead yet,” you tell him.

Laughter bubbles out of you. Thin, cracked, half-starved, ugly with deranged little triumph. It keeps going because his face is appalled, because he has mushroom pulp on his chin, because the whole thing is so childish and awful that laughter is the only shape your body can make around the shame of it.

Then, you see his eyes and the humour dies.

Duncan wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist. Spits once more into the moss. When he looks at you, he is furious, yes, but beneath it something scared sits bare and wounded. “That was foolish,” he says, low and rough. “Cruel foolish.”

You push up on one elbow. “Duncan—”

“No.” He stands too quickly, sways, and pretends he has not. “Enough of this childish nonsense. Get up. Keep walking before we drop dead in this place and the ground eats what is left of us.”

You get up because staying on the ground would mean staying beside the shape of your own idiocy. There is no victory in your belly. The mushrooms sit there damp and useless, offering neither meal nor death nor apology. Your stomach remains hollowed. Your tongue finds some last shred of cap stuck against a tooth and you swallow it down because spitting now would feel too much like agreeing with him.

So you follow Duncan who walks ahead with his shoulders drawn hard, nicking the trees with more force than the trees deserve. Each cut shows pale through the bark. A poor little wound, then another, then another. You keep your eyes on them because looking at the back of his neck seems unwise. Because there is shame in you now, a hot coal of it under the hunger, and because the whole matter will surely sort itself out once there is road underfoot again. Road, sky, a stream, some village woman with a pot over the fire and enough mercy to sell you both porridge on credit.

The more you walk in dead silence, the more odd everything grows. First, the green deepens. Moss goes dark and bruises emerald where your boots press it flat, then almost black around the roots. The rot in fallen trunks shows itself in bands: brown, rust, yellowed cream, a wet red near the heartwood that makes you look twice. Beads of damp shine on bark like threaded glass. The world has somehow grown a skin and every part of it is tender.

Your eyes roll themselves to look ahead, to check whether up matches the down, and something unfeasible happens: Duncan's hair catches auburn where there is no sun to put it there. You blink hard, but it is still in place. Burning copper, warm at the roots, as if late summer has claimed him and crowned him its ruler.

He is ten paces ahead, fully clothed, filthy at the hem, angry with you in every line of him, and still something in the sight of his back opens a door you have spent months pretending was only a crack in the wall. His shoulders shift under the cloth. His rope-belt rides where his stride pulls it. One hand hangs near his thigh, broad and scraped at the knuckles, fingers flexing now and then as if he is still trying to close them around his temper.

And you can smell him. From there. From too far. Wool and old sweat. Iron, leather, green bark crushed fresh under his boots. The sour-sweet human warmth gathered at his throat after two days beneath the same clothes. It comes into you with the air and sits in your mouth, intimate as a thumb pressed on the tongue.

Your face goes hot. “Duncan,” you say before you mean to.

He stops, and turns only half-way. “What?”

Nothing. Everything. You have no answer fit for speech, only the sudden, humiliating perception of him through distance, moving among the trees like the forest made room grudgingly and only because it had to.

“I—” You swallow. The hollow in your stomach twists, and lowers into a stranger ache. “Nothing.”

He looks over his shoulder then. Only for a moment. His eyes are still angry. Still hurt. Something else beneath. The blue of them near takes the knees out from under you.

The white of your shift under the cloak flashes blinding to him. For a vile moment he knows the body beneath the cloth with alarming accuracy. The curve and press of it. The warm hidden places where fabric clings. The space between your thighs where his fingers would fit if his hand twitched one inch further into sin. He blinks, and once his lids lower he can feel the forest pulsing around him. Trees throb from root to crown, or so he thinks. Leaves shiver high above, though there is no wind he can hear. Only you.

Your breath comes from behind him, fine and close, though he knows you are several paces back. The small draw of it, the break and the swallow after. If he stays inside the sound too long, his head fills with images that shame him: blood moving thick and slow through veins, mouths parting in the dark, the slick red place behind your teeth. It comes again, and this time he hears the scrape of teeth over your lower lip. Hears your tongue shift when you swallow. Hears the wet click of it like a secret told directly into his ear.

He turns away hard and starts walking before his face can betray him. The ground gives strangely under his boots. Too soft to carry him, or too willing. Moss takes his weight and keeps the shape of it. Roots, slick and glossy, groan like sleeping limbs. Behind him your steps begin to sound coloured. Brown-black when you tread on earth. Pale when you crush dry leaves. Red when you stumble and curse at the tree that caught your sleeve.

Duncan scratches at his wrist. The itch has started there, under the cuff, a mean little needling. Then the other wrist. Then the side of his neck, just beneath the hair. His skin feels wrong on him, pulled too tight over bone, and the collar of his tunic rasps his throat with each breath. He hooks one finger under it and drags, angry with the cloth, the nature and his own flesh for having the gall in a time like this.

He stops at the next tree and lifts the knife. The mark comes crooked. His hand is less steady than he thought. Bark peels under the blade, wan tissue showing beneath, and when he braces his palm against the trunk the taste of it goes through his skin. Warm resin and bitter green. Something cloying and golden underneath, thick enough to coat the tongue.

For one dreadful breath, he wants to put his mouth to it. Then, he snatches his hand back.

You catch up while he stands there, staring at the tree as though it has whispered something incredulous to him. Your shoulder comes near his arm. Near enough that your warmth finds him through sleeve and cloak and all his ruined good intentions. He employs every nerve in an effort of not looking down. Looking down would show him your mouth, and he already hears too much of it.

Duncan sucks in a breath and regrets it at once, because it tastes like your laughter. "D'you feel—"

"N-no," you snap, visibly clawing at your sleeve.

The itching has gone worse now that you are close to him. You try to look everywhere but at his face and still it pushes itself into vision. More gorgeous than ever, which is a terrible thing to discover about a man who has just called you cruel foolish and looked as though you had stuck a knife between his ribs. His mouth sits soft even in anger, upper lip fine and nearly secretive, lower lip fuller, tenderly made, the whole of it held in that slight crookedness that makes him look as if a smile has once lived there and left its shape behind. Kissable enough to seem wet with sweetness. Near dripping, like split fruit. You can almost tell what it would taste of: salt, hunger, the warm copper of his bitten cheek, some grave and boyish mercy he keeps trying to spend on everyone but himself.

Beneath it, when his lips part around another breath, you catch the heart-wrenching disorder of his teeth. Crooked and ivory, youthful enough to undo the rest of his solemn, knightly face. His canines show for one bare second and something in you folds toward them with such obedient stupidity you want to laugh again, or bite your own hand. You would let them hurt you. You would lick over the uneven enamel just to learn the shape of him there too. His cheeks are freckled under the dirt, and the little mark high on the left one sits like a sign left by some indecently helpful god: here. Peck him here. His eyes are so blue they have no right to be warm, and yet they are, even scared, even angry, even with the pupils blown strange in the forest’s dim. His lashes would shame half the women in Westeros. His throat shows above his collar, working hard, begging for hands to circle it lovingly and feel the swallow pass under the thumbs.

It is the whole complex architecture of him that shreds you. The way his face moves before he can command it. Wrinkles with laughter. Saddens openly, no matter how quickly he ducks his head. Sets in anger he throttles inside himself until his jaw looks pained with it. He is a book flung open so wide the spine must be creaking, and still he behaves as if no one can read him. You want that face in your hands. At your neck. Bowed over you in the dark. You want that mouth at your breast, licking sweat from skin, lower too, in places the hunger in you has grown too proud to give it a name. He is a young man made, in this instant, to be loved down to the bone and back again, and you cannot understand why he will not simply let you.

“I feel… something,” you say after a moment, small and ashamed, and Dunk’s head snaps to the side to glare at you properly.

“I told you.” His voice comes out sharp, and he scrapes a hand over his mouth as if he can wipe the tremor from it. “I told you not to eat them.”

He looks worse now, which is a cruel way of saying better. Sweated through at the temples. Lips parted. The anger in him has gone twitchy, pulled tight, and every part of him seems brighter for it, as if fever has decided to make a feast of him first.

You ignore the fit because looking at him too long makes the ground loosen under your feet. “Do you feel it too?”

“I feel…” He stops.

The words plainly fail him. His jaw shifts. His hands open and close at his sides, large and helpless, missing something they have no right to know the shape of yet. There are knightly words for pain, for hunger, for wounds taken cleanly, for fear swallowed and carried forward. There are no words decent enough for this kind of yearning. No chivalric term for a cock so hard it makes thought limp and useless. No sweet, courtly account of his tongue feeling parched as old leather, as if only the salt of your skin could wet it. His whole body has turned want into a task. His hands want your flesh, specifically, under them. His mouth wants sweat. His chest wants weight. Even his bones seem to ache in your direction.

“Sick,” he says at last.

That throws you off enough to cool your face by one degree. “Sick how?”

His eyes shut briefly. “Wicked-sick.”

“Duncan.”

“Below the gut,” he grits out. “Aching.”

You move without thinking. One step, then another, drawn by the sound of him admitting anything at all. Your hand lifts near his chest, not touching yet, though the heat of him rises through the little space between you. “Well then—”

“No.” He backs away so quickly his spine hits the marked tree. Bark shudders behind him. For one absurd moment you think the forest gives a pleased little pulse. “No,” he says again, weaker. “I will not. I cannot throw all we have away for one witchcraft misery.”

A frown pulls at your mouth. You swallow, and Duncan feels it as if the working of your throat has passed through his own. His eyes drop there and jerk back up, pained.

“But we’ve got nothing but each other,” you say.

It comes out bewildered. Worse than that, wet at the edges. The tears mortify you the instant they gather, because you are hungry and furious and lit up from the inside by some vile little mushroom, and still the part of you that hurts most is the old part. The standing outside him part. The watching him lock himself away with all his goodness like a miser with coin.

“Duncan,” you mumble, and step in again.

He makes a sound under his breath. Almost your name, but more a plea with its back broken.

Then both his hands come down on your shoulders. Firm, but not harsh. Even now, with his face ruined and his arms trembling from the work of resisting it, he holds you as if you are something flammable he must keep from the fire. His fingers bite only as much as they need to. He keeps you at arm’s length, and the distance feels tormentuous, heartending and warm all the same.

“Sit,” he says.

You stare at him.

“Please,” he adds, and that does worse things to you than any command could.

With absolute pain written into every muscle, Duncan guides you back from him and down onto a mossy rise between two roots. He waits until you are seated, then pulls his hands away as if touch itself is thorned. He goes several paces off, too damn far, and lowers himself heavily to the ground with his back to another tree.

“We wait,” he says, breathing hard through his nose. “That is all. We wait it through.”

You hate the idea, but keep sitting where he put you because your head confuses the command for beguilement. The first few hauls of air almost convince you it might work. Your hands are folded badly in your lap, nails pressed into meat below the thumbs. He stays with his knees drawn up, head bowed and eyes closed. Looks as if he means to endure his own body by refusing to believe in it.

The distance should help; it does the opposite. It makes you want to scream. Whatever lives in your blood follows him across the ground and brings him back whole. His smell grows stronger with space, more exact, meaner for being denied. Salt has gathered at his hairline, and the place beneath his jaw where a mouth could fit grows warmer. You shift on the moss and the moss answers too softly, sinking under your hips with a sympathy you resent.

Across from you, Duncan’s hand closes around a fistful of earth and your own palm burns with it. His fingers dig in. Soil packs under his nails. A root bends against the heel of his hand, and your skin reports the pressure as if the soil has confused you for him.

He hears something. His head turns a fraction when you breathe through your mouth. Sweat slides down the side of your neck, slow as an insect. His lashes lift. His eyes go there with such naked soreness that your throat tightens around nothing.

“Stop listening to me,” you say.

His mouth twitches into a strained smile. “I am tryin'.”

“You look like you are praying.”

“I am tryin' that too.”

A stupid, tender ache opens in your chest and gets swallowed by the lower one. You drag your sleeve over your neck; it makes the itching worse. Cloth rasps over skin and the sound of it seems to pass through Duncan’s teeth; he winces and shifts, hard, then stills with both hands flat on the moss.

There is no hiding it. The line of him under his breeches is plain enough even in the dim. Angry, trapped, dragging each breath out of him by force. You look before you can tell yourself not to. Then you cannot look away quickly enough to make it innocent, and, begrudgingly, Duncan notices.

His face goes the most painful red. One hand flies down to cover himself, and the pressure makes him give a low, broken sound through his teeth. He jerks his hand away again, humiliated nearly past bearing, and turns his face aside. “Do not,” he says.

You should feel triumphant. Some sour little part of you tries, but it dies quickly. He looks wretched with it, sweating and rigid, punished by the very thing you have been imagining for months with all your private, girlish cruelty. Your own body answers him with a deep pull that leaves your thighs weak. Nothing shows on you so simply. That feels unfair too. You are suffering just as stupidly, only your suffering has the manners to hide under skirts.

“Dunk,” you say, softer.

His shoulders climb.

“We could help each other—”

“No,” he grits.

“You did not even let me finish.”

“I heard enough.”

“You heard what you wanted.”

“I heard what I feared.” He swallows, and the sound arrives in you wet and close. “And I said no.”

He feels your stare on him. His hands go into fists again, punishing the green because the green will not bruise like the body would. He is picturing it now, Gods help him. How wet you must be under all that cloth. He does not know much, but he has learned enough to know girls do that when they start looking like you look now: flushed and wounded and angry with wanting. He thinks of putting his hand there and near loses the thread of his own breathing. Thinks of the heat of you opening under his fingers. Thinks of being allowed the taste of it, then the taste of your mouth after, and in the state he is in now he cannot help wondering whether that too would have colour, or sound, or smell. Whether kissing you would ring gold in his teeth. Whether your breath would taste the way your laughter does. The sweetness of permission feels so distant it turns appalling, and Dunk sits there starved with the effort of keeping those pictures caged.

“It would be wrong,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because we are half mad.”

“We were half mad before.”

“This is different.”

“You mean easier.”

His eyes cut to you. The look makes heat climb under your ribs. There he is, the part of him that can be stern when forced to it, that can stand between you and ill-looking men on the road with all that height suddenly gathered into threat. It should warn you away, but instead it scrapes through the need and brightens it.

“I would not have you come back to yourself and curse me for it,” he says.

The words land too near the old fear. That miserable little thought that perhaps his whole pain is honour fighting witchcraft, while yours is only the truth made louder. You breathe through a phlegmy laugh. “Curse you.”

His brow knots.

You are about to leave it be. To sit through it, wait through it, whatever is a brilliant solution that Duncan has thought of. Your hips shift on the ground, and make you mutter, inadvertently, “I wanted you before I ate the bloody things.”

Duncan stares. Truly stares. The blue of his eyes has gone strange again, wide and dark at the centre, his face emptied of everything save for shock. “W-wha—what?”

You lick your lips. His gaze drops there and returns with visible effort. “Y-yeah,” you say, now that it is out and steaming on the groundcover. “That.”

He blinks. Your courage begins to thin immediately, because why wouldn't it. It was never courage, only fever with a mouth on it. You pull your knees closer, as if there is still some arrangement of limbs that could restore dignity.

“I mean—” Your voice catches. You hate it. “Never mind. I know you are trying to do right by me. I know. We can wait it through. Forget I said anything.”

Duncan’s chest rises, and the forest seems to rise with it. He breathes out your name, barely shaped. His hands have opened, the dirt clings to them. He looks frightened still, painfully so, but the fear has changed its direction. Some part of him has stepped to the edge and found ground there after all.

“Say it again,” he says.

Your heart gives a foolish, violent knock. “What?”

His throat moves. “What you just said."

You stare at him. “Duncan—”

“Please.”

It takes more from you than the mushroom, that one word. You sit there with your skin singing and your mouth swollen around the truth, while he waits as if you have a blade to his neck and every intention of mercy.

“I wanted you before,” you say.

His eyes close, and his face changes direction so fast you nearly miss it. It seems to not be able to settle between hurt and then hurt getting alleviated, then the rest of locked places opening at different speeds. A bewildered, boyish joy gets smothered so quickly by hunger that your hands twitch in your lap.

“I thought—” he chokes. “I thought it was only me.”

A smile, toothy and horrible, pulls your mouth and it suddenly makes sense what one old woman has said to you about smiles: that they are deceitful, that creatures bare their teeth in fear and pain mostly. “Idiot,” you say, laughing, because the shake it gives to your shoulders at least loosens something up.

“Aye,” Duncan says. For the first time in days his mouth tips upward. "I might be."

You nearly cry then. Properly. From fury, from tenderness, from the unfairness of him sitting there all this time with the same wound as yours hidden better than yours. Your lips part to tell him that waiting is fine, that you can both be noble and miserable and half-dead until the mushrooms spend themselves, that he need not come closer, that you are sorry for making it worse, when he lifts his head and rasps, "C'mere. C'mere, girl."

He manages to stand, but only just. Poor thing limps for the ballast between his legs, face drawn tight with the effort of making his body obey him. You find no such strength in yourself, so you crawl on all fours, getting fistfuls of moss between your fingers, knees drowning, cloak slipping off one shoulder as you go to him with whatever dignity hunger and witchcraft have left you.

When he gets close enough, he falls to his knees and into you. His arms come round you, pulling you in, the both of you stumbling with it. He sinks your back into the ground and his mouth onto yours. Groans loudly for it. The sound goes through you before the kiss does, and then the kiss is there too, wet and hard and poorly aimed for the first starving second while his mouth is learning yours by error.

Duncan feels like a hundred fists that have been holding each joint of his spine let go in the same instant. Suddenly he can bow deeper, go at it harder. Get more of himself over you, around you, as if he means to wrap you into himself. Your body tastes like absolution through his palms and covers him in its odd soot. It gets into the lines of his hands, beneath the nails, under the skin, and he does not know whether to pray over it or lick it off.

His cock presses to your thigh, and it is worse and better somehow than it has ever been. Worse because there is cloth between you and still the pressure nearly blinds him. Better because it is you, actually you, warm and shifting, making a place for him with your legs and your hands and your open, foolish mouth.

Into his mouth, you are laughing. He is kissing you and you are laughing, giggling so saccharine you might be made of sweet things. The laughter itself has a taste in Duncan’s ears, the sound of it melts on his tongue, enters the bloodstream through all the grooves in it, and when he pictures licking your neck, he wonders: would your skin giggle too?

His hands find your collar because the thought has nowhere else to go. He pulls at the laces with none of the skill he has for knots, fingers too large, too eager, too angry with cloth for existing. The shift gives under them, opening enough for air to touch the skin below your throat, and he lets his lips slide from yours.

It goes badly for him. Your jaw is slick from his own mouth. Lower, it goes open and wet and panting, tongue rolling out as if he has forgotten any courtly use for it. He licks down the side of your throat to the collarbone to find out whether laughter lives there, and learns it gives him praise instead. All of you tenses beneath him. Your legs jerk. Your nails go hard into his back through tunic, and the pain comes through bright enough to make his hips grind down.

“Duncan—”

“Yes—” he mumbles into your skin, uselessly. Then, because he's gone foolish: “You taste—Gods—like being let in. Like rain after I thought there’d be none. I don't know—”

He tries again with his tongue since words make a poor account of the matter. His weight settles over you, heavy and shaking, and you answer by wrapping your legs round his hips. The cradle of it, the permission of it, make his head dizzy. His cock settles where it most wants to be, when you take his face in both hands.

Duncan stills, or tries to. Your palms press his cheeks, thumbs push under his upper lip with such strange, fond boldness that his breath stops. You bare his teeth yourself, exposing the crooked row of them while he looks down at you, broken and burning, too far gone to be ashamed quickly enough.

Then you crane up and lick across them, and a slide of flesh on enamel rings in his bones like a bell. A sound leaves him that has no knightly ancestor.

“You’re so pretty I could kill you,” you say.

He makes another sound, worse than the first, and you press your face to his before he can hide from it. Rub your cheek against his, nose dragging clumsily along the dirt and wet of him as if looking is suddenly insufficient, as if you must take the shape of his face by touch too.

“Undress me,” you breathe against him. Your hands clutch at his collar next, less patient than his. “And you. Take it off. I want to see you. Undress us.”

"A-all of it?" he asks dimly. The only thing he gets is a nod. A glint in the eyes that have gone so dark Dunk has to squint to recognise the ring of remaining colour in them. His mind is still considering it, while the body has taken to obeying briskly: he undoes the rope and tosses it into moss, gets his hand under the hem of the tunic, drags everything over his head and for a moment blinds himself in linen.

When he comes free his hair is rucked up and the sight of him near bends you with affection. He looks younger like this. Exposed by acquiescence before he is exposed by skin.

“Boots,” you tell him, because he has gone still under your looking.

“Aye. Boots.”

He nearly tangles himself in the work of them, kicking one free, then the other, cursing when the heel catches in wet. His breeches follow with even less dignity, shoved down and worked off in an ugly struggle of knees and hips and breath held through his teeth. He is too large for haste. Too flustered for grace. Beautiful in the middle of both.

Then, his hands come back to you and change. Shaking terribly and clumsy as ever, but tender in a way that seizes your throat. He unlaces you as if he's wronged the ties and has to make amends. His knuckles drag against your breastbone, and he looks at your face like he still expects rebuke.

"Duncan," you say. "You can touch me."

"I—I know," he says. "I'm tryin' to be gentle."

“You can be quick and gentle.”

He blinks to that. Grows as heedless as you wished him to be all this time and you watch the permission taking shape in a mind trained to deny itself. He pulls the laces loose, opens the front of your bodice, works fabric from shoulders and arms with an urgency that keeps catching on worship. When cloth sticks at your elbow, you both swear at it. When your skirt snags beneath your hip, he makes a noise close to despair and you have to lift yourself enough for him to drag it free.

Once you're denuded properly, framed by green and dark, he sits back on his heels and his face breaks open around the sight so quickly he has no time to hide it. Want, yes, awful and plain. But wonder too, and fear of the wonder, and that same helpless grace he wears when given food he did not ask for and badly needed. His hands hover near your sides without touching, fingers flexed, palms dirty, as though he has come upon something hallowed and has no idea what Gods do to fools who reach too fast.

“Do not look like that,” you say, though you want him to look exactly like that until the trees fall down.

His throat works once. “Like what?”

“Like it's a trickery,” you tell him. "I'm here."

To prove it, you push yourself up on your elbows and reach. Crawling. Climbing. You're climbing, climbing, climbing and there is no end to him. Duncan The Tall, Duncan The Broad, Duncan the man you've wanted so badly all this time and suddenly cannot contain it. Whatever it is that is happening now has not so much set you to be doing this, but has stripped the already precarious layers of we shouldn't, I couldn't, he wouldn't and made your mind and heart and hands and legs go need you, want you, death to me if I can't have you, please, please, please—

Your arms make it to his neck, hips slot into his lap, and there he is, angry and throbbing and so needy for you that the heat of him seems to have found its own heart. His hands catch your waist, grip harder when your skin gives under them. The first press of you against him turns his face ruinous. His mouth opens. His lashes jump. For one breath he looks as if he might beg pardon of your bones for wanting them so badly.

Then, you push him, barely. Pressure on the chest, a lean of your weight, and still he goes, pliant, as if all the strength has been taken out from under him. His back sinks into the moss, arms fling to the sides for he'd let you crucify him. You land with your palms on either of his shoulders, knees wedged into the dirt and thighs crowding his ribs. Between your legs his stomach rises softly, and the hairs on it tickle the skin most sensitive.

“There,” you breathe.

Duncan is stricken. Drained of volition as if volition were blood, and that one is occupied to gather elsewhere. He bends his knees slightly to ease some of the terrible sensation of air cooling the weep of his cock, and thinks he's never been so close to bursting just from being. He has his eyes closed to achieve anything—regroup, withstand, persist this unbearable wave of tenderness that thrashes in him—when your fingers get to the tendons of his neck and caress him, and it's all he needs to tip his head back and bare his throat to you.

There, your looking turns worse. You gape at the long working line of it until Duncan’s breath snags. The notch above his breastbone. Sinew drawn tight under the skin. The pulse batting there as if trying to get out. Your fingers follow first, light enough to make him suffer, then firmer when his head lolls to the side and his mouth opens on a sound he seems to bite in half.

“Don’t do that,” he says, palms flexing in the dirt.

You pause. “Do what?”

Dunk's lids crack open and he finds you above him with your hair all wild, staring as if you've found a chunk of gold in the mud. “Look at me so,” he says. "As if I'm—"

He fails there, since there are no words for it. As if I'm worth looking at. As if you're seeing something comely. Too much feeling is brought to a narrow door and made to wait outside because no word is plain and large enough to carry it in.

"You are," you tell him. Set both palms lower, where his chest is warm, alive and broad enough that your fingers look foolishly small against it. Through the sparse hair, over the hard-won muscle and the softer give laid over it, and that one you give a greedy squeeze. His nipple tightens under the heel of your hand and he jerks, shocked enough to look double-crossed by his own body, so you do it again.

“Gods,” he says, strangled.

“Good?”

His answer comes late, dragged through the teeth. “Aye," he says, though the mind still lingers in the country of mortification. Arms begin their raise, some old reflex reaching to cover himself, to help you or stop you, or simply manage the unbearable position of being wanted.

You swat them away, go back to cradling his jaw, and tell him softly, "Don't." He freezes, then melts under your thumbs on his cheekbones. "Don't be scared of me," you whisper.

“I ain't scared of you.”

“You are.”

His face twists, proud even now. “I’m scared of what I’ll do.”

“What will you do?”

"Shame myself," he says. "Fail you, I—"

"You won't," you tell him. "Is it shameful if we are both ruined? I just want to—" A swallow. "I just want to look." You bend over him, and the shift of your hips brings proof to your side of things. Your cunt grinds his stomach, leaves him all slicked and warm, and Duncan learns it helps little to nothing that you are equally fervent. Only makes him worse for it. He lies under you, enormous and nearly unmanned, and hears you whisper an absent, "Let me," a second before your mouth finds his chest.

He goes silent in that alarming way men do when noise has become too small for the body. Every part of him tightens. You kiss him, once, then again, then open your mouth and press your tongue to skin which tastes like freedom you have with him on the road, human and dear, and when your teeth graze him he gasps, and your own skin goes hot at the power of it. “You’re beautiful,” you say into him.

He shakes his head hard. “N-no.”

“Yes.”

“No, girl, don’t—”

“Yes,” you say again, and put your mouth lower to make the word enter him another way.

With it, your frame slides down his. His muscles pull tighter for it, cock strains against your stomach, hard and furious with denial, and the sight of him suffering through praise makes something in you go soft and feral both. Your hands glide from his ribs to hips, thumbs follow the inward cut there, then squeeze the warm, soft belt of flesh low on his belly. It's so generous and male and so violently lovely it makes your teeth set. Some songs ought to be rewritten for men like him. Some maiden's graces ought to be stolen back and hung on his foolish body where they belong. The supple flesh at his middle should be praised the way poets praise hips and breasts and long necks. His breadth should be Venusian, size should be called lush. His stubborn, hungry, frightened beauty should have men lighting candles under it and women lying awake from thinking too long.

It feels as if he sets of the beauty in you when he's all across your lips, gentle, coarse, freckled with the body that bears marks of every touch. It blooms easily where your fingers rake him, where your teeth nick him, where you suck and lick and kiss. He blemishes red against milk, and then the milk whole blushes into pink from all the blood that's alive within him, and for you.

“You're so gorgeous,” you murmur, face lost in skin. “It makes me angry that you do not see it.”

"You oughtn't eat those mushrooms," he says, trying for light, coming out pitiful. "They fool your eyes."

Your mouth splits into a smile. "I'm telling the truth," you tell his belly. "Only now I've the courage for it."

"Aye, well." Duncan swallows, and his spine bends towards you with it. "It's doing me harm, girl," he says anyway.

"Hm, good," you hum. Keep going lower, lower still until your nose finds his navel and rests there. The hair thickens beneath your mouth, darkening downwards, and you press your face into it because you can, because he lets you, because the smell of him there goes straight through your skull. You wedge your nose into the small dip of his belly and breathe him in.

It makes him feel like he's dying. Lust has him hard and fevered, yes, but your adoration takes his joints apart. He has imagined your mouth for months in shameful pieces: the shape it takes when you sleep, the wet inside of it when you laugh, the feel of it in a bedroll dream that left him waking guilty and sticky and half-mad with it. Now those same lips chose him, return to him, find new places to be fond over. He has no defence built for being cherished.

“Please,” he says, though he's unsure what he begs for. His hips jump, hand joins the begging in your hair, and you just stay, drunk, half-conscious, with every breathing device body offers devoted to the densest parts of him.

There's no friction to explain it. It's only his mind draining and draining of thought so his blood can fill him elsewhere. He feels himself sweating, muscles in his sacrum thumping, sack going hard as rocks, before he even realises he's going to come simply from this. “My girl—" he tries, voice cracking around it. "Wait. I'm—oh—”

You do hear him, but understand too late. He goes rigid beneath you, helpless and huge, and his lower back lifts off the ground, breath breaks into loud, choked moans, and then he spills so hot against your body it shocks you. A wicked part of you goes yes. Give me. The gentler one holds him through it, sighs all delighted and lets him rut into a poor cradle made of your bodies pressed together.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, shaking. "I'm sorry. Forgive me."

Your head lifts, sluggish, and you catch him turning his face aside, red to the ears. "Forgive you?" you ask.

“I didn’t mean—” He swallows hard. “I should’ve held. I should’ve—”

“Stop,” you say. Come back up to have your eyes level and drag some of the wet with you. "I could kiss you bloody for that.”

You brush the hair off his forehead. It shines satin. Makes him this much more beautiful. He looks at you, dumbfounded and startled, then lets his lids lower when you put your mouth back on him. To his cheek. Then, the high freckle on it you have wanted since before the forest went strange. “Pretty,” you tell him. “Gorgeous. Sweet stupid man.”

“Do not call me sweet after that.”

“I’ll call you what I like.”

He tries to look stern. Fails because your mouth is on his again. Fails worse because he has barely softened at all, still hard, still wanting, already gathering toward the next hunger while shame loosens its fingers from his throat.

His hands come to you, and arrive with less fear. Still careful, but firmer now, dirt-palmed and shaking, learning the shapes that've been bludgeoning him in his sleep. His mouth opens wider, touch slides up, then down, then around, and when you gasp he hears it bright as struck metal and groans as if the sound is next to his ear.

“Tell me,” he says against your lips.

“What?”

“If I do wrong.”

“You won’t.”

“Tell me.”

You look at him then, this great man under you, stubborn and proud and delicate where he has hidden it worst, heart bigger than his body and twice as easy to wound. “I’ll tell you,” you say. “And I’ll tell you when it’s right.”

His eyes close briefly. “Aye,” he breathes. “Do that.”

"And you tell me," you say, "what do you want."

“Your neck,” he says, gathering you closer. Rising to sit, and pulling you with him. You let yourself be lifted and sat back onto his lap. "The nape." His voice roughens. "I want—Seven forgive me, I want to smell you there."

The wish should be strange. It is strange. It feels like a hand closing under your ribs. “Then do it,” you tell him.

He finds your hips and turns you, guiding rather than hauling, mouth already searching for the place before he has settled you. You feel him shift, chest coming to your back, breath over your shoulder, and when his nose presses where it ought to, he makes a sound so low it seems to enter the ground before it enters you.

“Gods,” he says.

You brace yourself on both hands. “What?”

There's no proper answer. Just mouth opening over skin, wet and hot and shaking. He breathes you in there, kisses, breathes again, each pass less composed than the one before. His groan reaches your spine as heat before sound.

One permission opens the next in him. More private. You let him smell you without recoiling or calling him a creep, and worse—seem to enjoy it, because the sweet scent of your cunt joins all the other ones. The locked, starved part of Duncan takes the gift and grows bold from enduring it. Your body softens forward, the shape of yes becomes flesh under him. It loosens something old and badly tied. If he may put his mouth here, then he may want the slope of your back. If he may want that, then perhaps the weight of himself over you is no crime. Perhaps wanting to cover you is only wanting, and no beast’s law until he makes it one.

He presses you down and you go willingly, sinking onto the moss, cheek turned to the side, hips lifting because Gods, I want you here, I want you right here. The earth gives as if it has been waiting to receive the shape of you both and smells loud.

Then, his frame comes over you. One arm wedges itself across your shoulders, the other braces on the ground. His weight lowers in pieces: chest to back, belly to pelvis, cock—slick and warm—to ass, calves to your feet, and it thrills you that there is so much of him still going on when you yourself end.

“I want you like this,” he says, mouth to your ear.

Your arms weaken. “Dunk.”

Your voice makes gold flare behind his eyes. He sees it, absurdly, as his name leaves your mouth: gold struck thin, gold swallowed, gold caught in the hollow under his tongue. His arm tightens, asking with the pressure before his mouth can manage the question. “Can I? Have you like this?”

“Yes,” you near cry. “Yes. Take me.”

Duncan closes his eyes. Settles a bit heavier. “Too much?” he asks, wrecked.

“No.” You push back against him, furious with tenderness. “I swear to the Seven, I’ll bite you. More, Duncan. Give me more.”

Your restlessness does something terrible to him. So he gives you more, in small increments, though he wants to give you all of it at once. Shields you with himself until the forest air can hardly get between you. You feel his heart hammering through his chest, buzzing like it's bees sealed under bark, and him rolling his hips into the plush of your buttocks. The promise of him is tremendous—slick, large, rigid, veined perfectly, with a thick blunt head that barely squeezes itself through the crease, and heavy, potent balls, ready to fill you up to the brim.

“I want you,” he murmurs at your ear, words broken by the drag of his pelvis. “I want you so much. Wanted you—Gods, I wanted—”

“Then have me,” you whine and almost impale yourself on him. Duncan huffs a laboured breath, trembles when his hand leaves the dirt to guide himself inside you and you welcome the sweet weight pressing your shape into the ground. He's all over you. His scent has bled over to your tissues. His thighs flex over yours, and then, oh—

"Fuck—" he grits, and it's deeply satisfying. The crown breaches you. The whole wood pulses dark green, copper, red at the roots. The girth splits you. Only then do you remember how unbearable the need has been, because the answer to it comes shaped like Duncan and hurts accordingly. Your body takes him by inches, each one too much until the next one proves it survivable. He pushes in so slowly you can make out the build of him in your mind, impossibly present, taking his place through clench and that bright pain that flashes behind your eyes whenever your body tries to change its mind.

“Easy,” he pants, though there is nothing easy in him. “Easy, girl.”

He grips your hip, shaking so much the fingers jump on you. Holds himself there, barely inside enough to destroy you, nowhere near enough to save you. The restraint of it turns wicked. You feel the carefulness in him like another ache, another place he refuses to fill. “Duncan,” you whisper, pleading.

“I know,” he says. “I know.”

“You don’t.”

He tries to breathe. You feel it against your back, great lungs straining, arm tight across you. He gives you another inch and your vision darkens. Your thighs start quivering under his, badly enough that he stops. “Sweetheart,” he says. “You were to tell me.”

“I am telling you.”

“You’re shaking.”

“Yes." You swallow. Find his forearm and squeeze it meanly until your nails leave dents there. "Because you stopped.”

He hides in the back of your neck. For a second Dunk seems to lose the whole battle against himself there, hips twitching, cock dragging deeper by a cruel little accident that makes you choke on his name. He goes still immediately, horrified by his own body, and you could howl from the piety of it.

“Keep going,” you say.

“I’ll hurt you.”

“N-no—it hurts wherever you aren’t,” you say, and he groans. “Please,” you say, needy, crazed, with your truth made fanatic. “Duncan, please. I need you. I need you, I need you—”

"Gods damn it, girl," he says. "Gods damn it, I need you too."

He pushes in farther. Rougher, all of him, setting you aflame from the inside. Your body empties of room for hunger or air or shame, because he's taken up all of the space within it. He rolls his hips and finds another impossible depth, making the burn open into something lovely enough to frighten you.

“There,” you sob. "Right there."

He is all over you. In you. Around you. Heavy enough to press your breath into the earth, careful enough that you can feel forbearance shivering through him. His groan comes against your spine before your ears receive it, and when his mouth opens by your neck, all you can do is push back and take the shape he has made of you.

Then, Duncan's hips lift. He feels himself dragging all the way back, and your cunt grips him on the exit like it disagrees with the hollowing. "Fuck, you're so—" he says. Sinks back in, faster, hungrier, worse, better, more, and finds that however little space the angle grants you, you use it wisely. Push your sweet ass out for him until your bodies meet with a wet slap and only then does he understand how wet you've made yourself for him. How ready you are. How willing.

He slots flush to you and finishes his thought: "—tight."

"Gods, fuck me more," you say. "Dunk—"

His name turns gold behind his eyes again. Brighter this time, struck hard enough to spark. He works his muscles and feels the colour burst through his skull, down his spine, into the hand he has braced across you.

“Like this?” he asks, already doing it again.

“Yes," you breathe. "Jus' like that. Oh, fuck—”

So he gives it to you. Just like that.

The boy in him, the one who blushes and stammers and hides his wants under duty until duty starts to resemble cowardice, gets shouldered aside by something broader. Some man’s part of him with dirt under its nails and your heat round its cock and no room left for pretty suffering. He still holds you with care; that remains. But his hips are done pretending they do not know what they want.

He fucks you harder, and the moss takes the force of it. Your fingers claw into green and black and flesh of his forearm. His palm slips in the dirt and catches again. The earth smells damp and opened. Leaves taste bitter on the air, and beneath all of it is you: hot, slick, clenching down each time he draws back as if your body would rather keep him entire.

“Duncan,” you gasp.

He buries his face against the back of your neck. “Say it again.”

“Duncan.”

Gold, again. He groans, broken loose enough that his mouth starts working without permission. “You’re beautiful,” he says. "So beautiful."

You laugh, though it comes out ragged. “Now?”

“Aye, now.” His hips grind deep on the word. “Especially now.”

“Liar.”

“No.” He lifts enough to look down the line of you, the turn of your cheek, the sweat on your neck, the place where your malleable body strains under his and endures more, asks for more than he would ever suspect. “You are. Gods, you are. I can scarce stand it.”

You shudder around him. That does him harm, too.

He drops his mouth to your ear. “If the sun never came up, I’d not care. If this wood kept us here and there was only this, only you under me, I’d—” His voice catches. He drives into you again, short and rough. “I’d be a worse man than I thought.”

“You’d be honest,” you say, smiling. Exhilarated. Turn your face enough that your cheek drags in the moss. “Tell me more.”

That should shame him. It does, but the shame is toothless. The mushrooms have made a ruin of his monastery for silence, and his body has found the ruin agreeable. “I hate when men look at you,” he says.

Your breathing trips. “What?”

“I hate it.” His hand tightens on your ribs, then loosens quickly, remembering. “In inns. On roads. When you smile to get us bread cheaper. When some man thinks you soft because you’ve a soft mouth, or thinks you easy because you are kind, or thinks—” He thrusts harder, angry now, the memory of every look finding your body through his. “I know what they think.”

You push back into him, mean with pleasure. “How do you know?”

He goes still for half a breath. Then his mouth finds the shell of your ear, and his voice drops so low it seems dragged from the ground.

“I am a man.”

There. There it is. The confession under all confessions. He has looked too. He has thought. He has watched the curve of your smile over a cup, the bend of your back by the fire, the softness of your mouth in sleep, and made himself suffer for it as if suffering could make him clean. He has wanted with the rest of them and hated them for wanting less carefully.

You clench around him so hard his forehead knocks between your shoulder blades.

“Seven hells,” he chokes.

“Were you thinking too?” you ask, cruel because you need him to say it.

“Aye.”

“What?”

His hips start again, less measured, sloppier and greater for it. The more they do, the more you drip for him and Duncan no longer knows anything. He just feels.

“Your mouth," he says. "Your hands. How you’d sound if I—” He loses the sentence inside you and has to drag it back by force. “How you’d look under me. Over me. Anywhere. I thought of you so much I near made myself sick with it.”

“Good,” you pant.

“Good?”

“Yes. I wanted you sick.”

He gets punched to the gut by sheer force of words. Drives into you harder, close and blunt and heavy, his arm drawing you up enough that your back bows under him. His chest drags over your skin and hums through you, hair falls forward, tickling your cheek. His mouth returns to your neck as if that place has become a home he means to worry open.

“My girl,” he mutters.

“Yes,” you breathe.

“My girl?”

“Yes, Duncan, yours, just—fuck—”

More, more, more is what you want, so he gives it. Gives you more because you asked and because he has wanted to be asked for so long the wanting has grown limbs. He gives you the weight, and the girth of him until the tip touches the spot that makes you go there. There, right there, fuck me there, more, you keep saying. He smiles through it, nods through it, and despite his balls going laden enough to feel heavier than whole of him, he still manages to tease you.

“There?” Duncan asks.

“There," you say. "There, don’t stop.”

Your legs tense. Feet curl against his calves, and your toes find them for purchase. He wonders if he is deep enough to dent the earth beneath your belly when he fills you. If you will be sore from him. If you will let him soothe you with his mouth after.

“I wouldn’t,” he says, and then feels the change in you. The hardening of your buttocks under him. The faint tremor starting low, travelling outward through muscle, your body drawing itself tight around the place where he is buried. His hips falter, then go meaner because you push back for it. “Close?”

“Oh, fuck, Dunk.” Your face has gone into the dirt. Your cheek, your mouth, all that cleverness pressed to moss and leaf-mould while you pant under him like the ground has stolen the rest of your words. “Fuck, my darling, I—”

His whole body stumbles at that. “Say that again.”

“Yes—” you breathe instead, uselessly, beautifully. Your thighs shake beneath his. “Darling, Oh Gods, yes—”

You tighten on him. Duncan chokes. His arm bands across you with a blind little jerk, keeping you under him, keeping himself in you, his other hand clawing at the earth by your shoulder. “Girl—”

Then it has you. Breaks hot and huge through your nerves, too large for the body it has been given. Your hands seize in the ground. Hips kick back into him and then can do nothing but bear it, taking the thick drag of him through each bright pulse while the world opens its wet mouth around you. Soil at your cheek. Leaves green on the tongue of the air. His chest heavy over your back, a low-humming cage. His breath at your neck, ragged and stunned. His cock inside you, absolute.

Pleasure rolls through so fiercely it feels delivered, brought down to you by the only body that could have carried it. Your Venusian boy. Your tall knight. Your man with the freckled face and the foolish, breakable heart. You had wanted him before the mushrooms. You want him through them. You will want him when the forest has spat you both out into ordinary daylight and made cowards of all this green magic.

“Duncan,” you sob into the dirt.

He tries to hold. For one more breath, he tries. There is some last thread in him that thinks of weight, of gentleness, of the promise he made you with his mouth and his shaking hands. Then you clench again, deep and helpless, sucking him in as if your body means to wring the marrow out of him, and the thread snaps clean.

He slots himself tight to you. All the way in, hips pressed hard to your ass, whole of him poured over you, size finally surrendered to yours with no cleverness left in it. His mouth goes into your hair.

“Fuck,” he bites out. “Fuck, fuck—Seven—”

He comes worse than the first time. Brutal enough that he thinks, distantly, he might go blind from it. His body drives deep and stays there, sack flattened against you, him spilling hard into the tight, shuddering hold while the whole woods dissolve from his vision. His groan tears out loud, then breaks into something rawer. Teeth catch in your hair. For a moment he forgets how much of him there is, forgets all the roads he failed to find, forgets everything. Remembers his girl only.

“My girl,” he cries into your hair, ruined with it. “Gods—my girl.”

Several heartbeats continue the spending in him as aftershock, profound and almost soundless. It leaves him hollowed in a way hunger never managed, emptied clean through and simple with awe: he has put himself in you. Some living of him has gone where his hands and mouth and morning thoughts have been circling for months, and no witchcraft can explain the feeling spreading through his ribs now. That is his own. The fierce gladness of being allowed to give you something his body made, before sense arrives and worries it with teeth.

“Oh—” you say.

It is the first small sound either of you has made that belongs to the after. Thin, dazed, almost curious. Duncan hears it and comes back to himself by ugly degrees: ground under his knees, sweat cooling along his spine, the fist of his hand in your hair, the full weight of him poured over you as if you are something the earth gave him to smother.

“Seven hells,” he whispers. Gathers himself off you with a haste that makes both of you wince, then gets an arm beneath your ribs and rolls you with him onto your sides. The movement is clumsy, tender, terrible. You end up tucked against him, his chest to your back for another breath, his mouth at the crown of your head, both of you still joined in the softening.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks.

You laugh. It comes out loose and pleased and completely unhelpful.

Duncan lifts himself enough to look at your face. “That is no answer.”

“I know.” You turn your head with difficulty, cheek streaked with dirt, eyes gone drowsy in a way that makes him ache all over again. “Ask me again when my bones remember their duties.”

His brow pulls, worried despite everything. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been taken apart and put back wrong.” Your smile curls, lazy and wicked at the edge. “Happy.”

Satisfied enough, he eases himself from you, jaw tight with the sensation, and then goes still. For a second he only stares, caught by the sight of his seed slipping warm down your thigh, white as milk, taking grains of dirt with it. Wonder hits first. Possession after. Then sense comes in like cold water poured down his neck. “Oh, Gods,” he breathes.

You turn into him before he can get any farther into horror, nuzzling your face against his chest as if you mean to burrow under the skin there and quiet the heart hammering beneath it. “Don’t worry,” you murmur. “I know how to make moon tea. Hush. Just—hush a moment.”

His hand hovers above your back, then settles, broad and shaking. “You are sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“And the itching?” he asks. “Is it still on you?”

You tip your face up enough to look at him. The forest has begun to dull around the edges. Green is green again, mostly. His hair is only light brown where damp has darkened it, though a warm thread still catches in it when he moves. The air no longer tastes quite so loudly of leaves. “No,” you say. “All my itches have been scratched.”

Duncan nods, solemn as a septon receiving grave news, and draws you closer. You let him have that for three breaths. Then, you add: “Doesn’t mean I won’t itch again.”

His face changes so quickly it makes you laugh: worry struck through, then comprehension, then that wide boyish smile he has been hoarding from you like a miser. He laughs too, and the sound rolls through his chest into your cheek.

“I’ve got you all covered in dirt,” he says, as if this is suddenly the great shame of the hour.

His palms move over you, brushing at your shoulder, your arm, the smear along your hip, making a worse mess of it because his hands are filthy too. The gentleness of the attempt makes your throat pinch.

“Yeah, you brute,” you say. “Manhandling me like that. So unknightly—”

He cuts you off with his mouth. Better for it, like he's taken the lesson and learnt carefully. Long, deep, with no hunger's panic or teeth knocking, and no witchcraft dragging him by the blood. Loving too, with his hand at your jaw, thumb near the mouth's corner. You soften into him. Breath leaves him through his nose. He tastes only of ruined man.

When he lets you go, his forehead stays against yours. “Will you listen to me next time?” he asks.

You look down and trail your fingers through the hair on his chest, damp and curling under your touch. “No.”

His eyes open. “No?”

“I would go hungry another week if this is where it gets us.”

“Girl,” he says, despairing and fond in equal measure. He wraps you in before you can make it worse, chin settling on the top of your head. You feel the shape of his smile there, hidden in your hair. Beyond him, the trees stand dense and black and wet, all their malice used up or merely bored of you at last.

Then Duncan goes still. “Hey,” he says quietly.

You shift against him. “What?”

His hand smooths once over your back, then points past your shoulder. You twist to look, and between the close trunks, farther ahead than any path had shown itself before, light pours through in a clean, ordinary sheet.

“Look,” he says.

"Gods be good," you say. "See? You ought to trust me more."

"As if that is your doing," Duncan huffs, all exasperated but still endeared.

"Hush, knight," you tell him. "Or I will eat you."

Duncan mutters something about never eating anything you hand him again, then takes your hand before you can answer. It rather spoils the threat.

He was in the same state now as he walked closer, his blue eyes wide, captivated by the way your skirts hitched just so as you moved, pupils dilated, the adrenaline from the fight still thrumming through his veins, woven in with the simmering yearning for you, for this moment.

"My princess," he breathed, chest heaving under his breastplate, grimy hands twitching, as if wanting to touch but not allowing himself to just yet. "Have I pleased you?"

And oh, those words made your cunt flutter. So, so earnest, your sweet knight. So ready to seek your favor, even after having proven himself so valiantly on the field, bringing honor and renown to your house and your name, to you.

"Yes, ser," you affirmed, smile softening as you watched Dunk kneel between your parted thighs, broad shoulders keeping them spread. "You have pleased me greatly. I enjoyed watching you joust."

"Yeah?" Dunk's voice dipped, barely above a whisper, baby blues never leaving your face, memorizing every twitch and movement, wanting nothing more than to lose himself in the face of the woman who acclaimed him so readily.

"Yeah," you parroted, one of your hands lifting to cup his cheek, thumb brushing over the dirt caked onto his skin, but you gave it no mind. You couldn't care less, not when Dunk's lashes fluttered, and a sound akin to a wounded animal punched out of his chest, breath brushing your wrist.

He leaned into your touch like a man starved, pressing his gauntlet-clad palm onto yours to keep you there. Watching him rub his cheek against your skin, nuzzling you with almost childlike eagerness, made warmth spread in your chest and throughout your body like simmering fire.

It was easy to bring Dunk's face closer and press a soft kiss to his mouth, making another one of those delicious, aborted sounds fall from his bloody lips. You wanted the proof of his strength, the proof of his endurance onto you. Seeing the red smeared across your skin, he shook his head, his other hand reaching out to brush the crimson away, but you stopped him gently, shaking your head.

"No, ser," you said. "Let me have proof of your valiance, for you have suffered and bled for me today," a pause, as you guided his hand onto your skirts, right where the hem brushed your stocking-covered ankle. "And I wish to reward you."

A ragged breath left him as soon as his fingers brushed against your clothed skin, trembling, not from inhibition, but desperation. Pure, unadulterated need to hike up your skirts and dive tongue first into your pussy like an animal without an owner. And Gods, he wanted to.

Has been thinking about it since he set foot onto the jousting field. Even when he knew he had to focus on not being unhorsed, or tilting his spear right, or holding his shield up to block sword and mace alike. All he could think about was how good your cunt would smell, would taste once he was allowed to be between your legs again, once he deserved to feast at the altar of your sweetness, if the gods granted him victory. and they did, and yet—

"Are you sure, my—"

"Lift my skirts, Ser Duncan," you interrupted, thumb brushing his cheek anew, ceasing his delay. You knew what he wanted and understood why he was hesitating, even though you two had been in this same predicament plenty of times before.

After every prevailed joust, you offered Duncan what he craved: a place between your thighs and unrestricted passage to your pussy. When he first asked for it, still green in his sexual desires, face almost as red as a freshly plucked strawberry, you were more than delighted to offer yourself over to him. After all, you had been waiting to get the knight into your bed since your father had assigned him to guard your every move. All those nights where you ordered him to stay vigilant as a sentinel at your door while you pleasured yourself loud enough for him to hear truly worked wonders. A siren song to an unassuming sailor.

"Claim your prize, ser," you persisted, letting the pad of your thumb skim his bloody bottom lip, tugging it lightly, enough to bare his teeth to you, the sight of his crimson canines making the ache between your thighs mount. "You've kept me waiting long enough," you chided, eyes sharpening enough to watch the way his own widened, as if the mere thought of displeasing you brought a sense of urgency, weaving into the marrow of his bones and kicking his senses into obeying every single one of your whims.

He moved.

Not fast enough to startle, but with the conviction of a man who stopped reigning in his heart's desire and started taking.

His broad, armored palms brushed against your ankles, bunching up your skirts and lifting the flurry of flowy fabric, letting the cold steel chill your clothed skin. He hoisted it up, up, until he gathered it at your waist, allowing him to have a good look at—

"Princess—," he gasped, fingers tightening into your skirts, moments from tearing the material to shreds as feelings overwhelmed him, feeling more beast than man in the face of such a pretty picture.

You were bare.

No small clothes to cover your dignity, your pussy spread open and dripping, your hole throbbing around nothing, clenching shamelessly, as if urging him closer. Calling to his cock or his fingers or his mouth to heel. And Gods, Dunk wanted nothing more than to answer.

The view was obscene. His broad shoulders and the hulk of his body kept you splayed open. Thighs on each side of him allowed him to see every inch of the sweet reward he was given.

"Pretty?"

Your voice snapped him out of his reverie, barely able to drag his gaze away from the gorgeous spread of your cunt, blinking as his eyes met yours, feeling a ruddy flush creep up his neck as he saw the pleased curl of your lips as you watched him. He swallowed, nodding, so, so earnest, his armor shifting and clanking with the movement, making you let out a small laugh.

"A—always, my princess," Dunk whispered, not being able to keep steady any longer, steel-clad fingers curling into the lace band of your stockings and pulling, dragging the material down your thighs, using the grip to bring you closer to the edge of the bed along with it. "So bloody pretty," he praised, dipping his face until it was level with your mound and breathing you in, lashes fluttering at the tangy musk of your cunt.

His tongue darted out to taste without preamble, not being able to hold back, the scent of you intoxicating beyond measure, calling to him like a siren song. Steel fingers dimpled the fat of your thighs as he brought you even closer, pressing your cunt against his face, muffling a deep, guttural groan into the heated, slick flesh, moving his head from side to side, unashamed, nuzzling into your pussy, face mushed into you, spreading your juices onto his nose, cheeks, and chin.

It made you moan, hands seeking the top of his head, fingers tangling into his dirty hair, tugging him even deeper against your heat, hips twitching, already meaning to grind against his face. "Oh, my sweet knight," you lilted, breathy and airy as you felt the tip of his nose nudge your throbbing clit, the movement of his head granting you delicious friction. "Always so eager, so good for me."

The words had the desired effect, feeling as another groan muted against your heat, Dunk's tongue laving broad, firm strokes along your wet folds, spreading you open, lapping at every inch of your cunt like a dog would water. It felt divine. It always did.

Dunk might not be versed in many things, but wielding a sword and eating pussy were two that he could boast about until the end of his days and would never fail to ring true.

"Taste s' good, my princess, my lady," he moaned against you, head swiveling incessantly between your thighs, clumsy and eager and so, so good, creating a flurry of depraved, loud wet noises that made you flush.

Your fingers tightened into his hair and pulled, tugging, eliciting more debauched sounds from him, before appeasing the slight sting you knew you caused, petting at his dirty strands as you cooed. "Yeah? Does it taste better than your victory, ser?"

Perhaps it was a wicked, ungrateful question. But the way Dunk nodded not even a moment after, baby blues half lidded as he looked up at you, tongue still licking between your folds, already pussy drunk and lax with pleasure, was more worth it than every gold coin in the seven kingdoms.

"Won jus' to taste you, princess," he babbled, mouth drenched with a mixture of blood and your slick, the view making you moan as your eyes drifted down, seeing streaks of crimson along your cunt and inner thighs, from where Dunk's blood marked you. Gods, you couldn't help but throb and clench around nothing at the sight. Having your sweet knight's spilled blood onto your skin, smeared onto your pussy, pleasure mixed with honor. The honor he fought so hard for today in the joust. "Jus' to have her again."

You couldn't help the grind of your hips at his words, feeling the telltale sign of your peak beginning to build at the base of your spine, moans spilling freely from your lips, the sloppier Dunk got, slobbering all over your cunt, tongue flicking against your clit before wrapping his lips around it and sucking gently, cheeks hollowing.

"Ser—," you gasped, broken and wanton, fingers tugging harder at his hair as your hips humped forward, greedy and twitching against the suction. "My good ser," the praise fell from your lips like a benediction, washing over Dunk in waves, body warming up from the inside like a flame kindling.

He did not even realize his own hips ground forward, armor clinking louder as the fervor mounted, his clothed cock brushing against the bed frame as his mouth feasted on your cunt, hard as steel and leaking in his breeches and armor. But he did not care, not when you felt this heavenly, when the taste of you cloyed the back of his throat and invaded every sense. He pulled back just enough to see how the blood smeared all over your pussy and inner thighs, his eyes glazed over with heat. Dunk loved the sight. Loved that it was his blood. His pain. His proof of victory.

His tongue rolled around his mouth for a moment before he spat onto your pussy, letting saliva and blood drip down your folds obscenely, making his breath hitch noisily into his throat. It made you moan. His cock twitched in his breeches, hips grounding even harder against the bed, the depravity of it all making all the blood rush to his face, blush bleeding down to his throat.

"She's so wet f' me, my princess," he groaned, the sound ripped from his chest as he watched the crimson drip further. "So pretty."

The sight was enough for him to dive right in with renowned fervor, steel fingers gripping your thighs and pulling you harder against his face, aiding you to hump your hips against his mouth, drenching him in your juices.

It was too much. You have been wet since the joust. Since you watched him barrelling into men left and right, knocking them down effortlessly, his size and broadness eclipsing any other knight on the field. The throbbing of your pussy never ceased as he fought so valiantly, only making you press your thighs together beneath your skirts and keeping in soft moans of wonder as you watched your sweet knight make his way to victory.

"Duncan," you moaned, broken and high, feeling the thread about to snap, only getting a muffled moan in response to his name being spoken by you, fingers tugging at his hair, needing something to tether yourself to before shattering. "My sweet Duncan, don't stop—"

"I got you, my princess," was muffled into your folds, his efforts doubling, feeling the way your thighs shook, his scalp stinging at the relentless way you held onto him, but he did not mind. He wanted you to use him. Wanted you to always use him to feel good. "Let me have it," he pleaded, tongue lapping at your throbbing clit, moving his head from side to side, the stimulation making a full-body shake run through you. "Please, princess, please—"

You were powerless to his pleading, to the way he looked between your thighs, eyes glazed, shining with so much devotion, your slick smeared all over the bottom of his face. Gods, it was a sight that'll keep you awake and wound up for nights to come.

It unraveled you now, peak unfurling in the bottom of your tummy, gushing into Dunk's mouth, crying out his name again and again as he continued to lap at the juices flowing against his chin, cheek, and on his tongue, moaning like it was the nectar of the gods. "Thank you," your sweet knight whimpered, panting into your pussy, his hips rutting faster and faster against the bed as he lapped up all of your slick. "Thank you, princess, thank you, thank—"

The words broke off into a long, punched-out moan, a full-body tremor bowing his hulking frame forward as he followed suit, cumming in his breeches, dirtying the inside of his armor. His forehead pressed to the top of your mound, tongue lolling out to softly lick the remnants of what he couldn't prior, cleaning you, sated and boneless between your thighs.

Your chest heaved with soft pants, watching him, gaze so achingly tender it could drizzle honey in its wake. The fingers that tugged at his hair gentled, petting soothingly, scraping at his scalp in slow, deliberate motions, making Dunk hum in delight against you, leaning into your touch like a flower towards sunlight.

"Thank you, my sweet ser," you whispered, leaning down to press a lingering kiss to his damp hairline, wanting him to know how grateful you are for him, getting a small, bashful smile in return as he turned towards your mouth, baby blues mirroring every feeling that resided inside your heart, making your chest ache.

Your sweet knight. Your sweet Duncan. All yours.