#jon now

Melisandre found Jon atop the Wall, hunched near the brazier as though the small flame could shield him from the vast, merciless cold that stretched beyond the battlements. The wind howled through the stones, sharp as knives, but she moved with a strange grace, soundless as drifting smoke, until she stood behind him. His eyes, storm-grey and brooding, were fixed upon the restless tongues of fire, yet he did not notice her approach until her presence wrapped around him like a shadow.

“Do you see anything, Snow?” she asked, her voice a low murmur, intimate as a secret whispered in a darkened chamber. Her breath ghosted against his ear, warm and insistent, as though the night itself had leaned down to touch him.

Jon’s shoulders tensed; the rigid line of his back betrayed his unease. He turned his head slightly, enough to catch the faint shimmer of her red hair at the corner of his vision. “You startled me,” he muttered, his tone edged with displeasure though softer than he wished.

“Forgive me,” Melisandre said, her words honey-smooth, as though apology was merely another form of seduction. Her fingers slid with languid patience down the leather of his sleeve until they curled around his wrist, pale against the stark black of his clothes. “But you have not answered me.”

Jon exhaled, the sound weary, his breath misting white in the air. “There is nothing but fire and shadows, my Lady. The same as always.”

Her lips curved in a knowing smile he could not see. “Flames and shadows are all anyone sees. The truth hides between them. You must learn to look closer.” She pressed herself against his back, a steady heat at odds with the bitter wind. Her hand guided his, pulling it nearer the brazier’s glow until the firelight kissed his skin.

He tried to resist, voice low and strained. “Stop that.”

But she did not. Her body leaned into his, inexorable, urging him forward until the sharp heat licked his face and he drew in a hiss of breath. The fire painted him in gold and crimson, and still her voice clung to him like a spell. “Look closer, Jon Snow. Between the shadows. Beyond what you think you know.”

“I am not even sure I wish to—”

His protest faltered, breaking apart into silence as her lips found his throat. Her kiss was slow at first, deliberate, her mouth tracing the steady beat of his pulse. Then teeth grazed his skin, followed by the soft balm of her tongue, each movement claiming him more fully than words ever could. The cold night, the biting wind, the ceaseless dark, all dissolved beneath the molten heat she wove into him.

Jon’s breath shuddered; his hand tightened around her wrist before sliding free, turning his body toward hers in reluctant surrender. The nearness of her, the scent of smoke and spice clinging to her hair, unravelled him. He pulled her against him, rougher than he meant, and her answering smile curved against his lips as she kissed him.

Her mouth opened to his, deep and consuming, her tongue teasing, coaxing, demanding. He moaned into her, a sound half-anger and half-need, and she drank it in like prayer. Step by step, she manoeuvred him closer to the brazier’s glow, until the shadows fled from their forms and firelight wrapped them both.

Still, she held him, guiding him with unseen strength, turning his face back to the flames even as her lips refused to release his. Her warmth and the heat of the brazier mingled, binding him in a world of fire, shadows, and the dangerous promise of revelation.

“Watch the flames, Jon. Watch until you see,” she whispered, her voice a silken thread coiling about him, “or I shall press you into the fire, and your face will bear the same scars as your hands.” The threat was honeyed, delivered in a tone so tender it felt like a lover’s vow, her words spilling against his lips between kisses he found himself unable, perhaps unwilling, to resist. Each brush of her mouth upon his skin blurred the line between danger and desire, binding him with a spell that was equal parts promise and peril.

Jon’s breath came ragged, his chest rising and falling as though the flames themselves had stolen the air from his lungs. He nodded, the movement small, reluctant, yet filled with submission. “Yes, my Lady,” he murmured, the title breaking from him in a voice low and uneven, as if the weight of it cost him dearly. His eyes fixed on the brazier’s heart, on the restless tongues of fire that danced and twisted like spirits eager to be seen. He tried to hold fast, to ground himself in the flicker of light, though her nearness scattered his thoughts like ash in a storm.

Her lips found his throat again, warm and insistent, each kiss branding him more surely than the fire could. The press of her mouth, the teasing scrape of her teeth, made him shiver despite the oppressive heat curling around them. Her hands, slow at first, slipped past the confines of leather and cloth, hot fingers delving into forbidden places, coaxing tremors from his body he could not master. The shock of her touch seared through him, sweeter and more dangerous than the blaze before his eyes.

The Wall groaned under the weight of the wind, the world around them frigid and merciless, yet all Jon felt was her, the molten heat of her hands, the velvet sting of her kisses, the command in her voice that turned surrender into inevitability. And still the flames danced, demanding his gaze, as though they too whispered secrets meant only for him.

One hand worked his cock with languid devotion, her strokes a caress and conquest, coaxing his body into answering each movement with desperate, unbidden thrusts of his hips. The rhythm was tender, almost reverent, yet heavy with the weight of command, as though every motion reminded him that he was hers to guide, hers to unravel. Then, without warning, her other hand drifted lower, her fingertips circling between his cheeks with a patience so deliberate it felt like a spell. When at last she pressed inward, breaching the tight ring of resistance, Jon gasped, a sound caught between protest and surrender, rough with disbelief yet softened by a shiver of need. He leaned forward unconsciously, shoulders bowing, the brazier’s heat kissing his face, as though the fire itself bore witness to his undoing.

His eyes clung to the flames, refusing to abandon them, for he knew the danger of turning toward her. Each time he tried, each time his body threatened to break away from the fire’s hypnotic dance, she would nudge him closer, whispering without words that the flames were his tether. The blaze wavered and writhed, shadows lunging and retreating, and in its chaos he thought he saw shapes, faces, omens, terrible and alluring visions, but he dared not look away. Fear and desire braided themselves within him, shackles and fuel all at once. He knew too well she had burned men alive, many men, their screams carried to the cold heavens. And now she let him feel, with every push of her hand, that she could do the same to him should he falter.

Her fingers moved with unholy precision, plunging and withdrawing, each slow drag scraping fire along his spine. Jon whimpered, a sound raw and trembling, spilling from his lips despite his clenched jaw. She curled her fingers just so, as though she knew the secret architecture of his body better than he did himself, and the result was devastating, small, broken gasps torn from him, whiny sounds of reluctant pleasure that made his chest heave with shame even as his body begged for more. Melisandre’s eyes burned hotter than the flames at their side, and though she was half-surprised by the pitch of his cries, she welcomed them, savouring the proof that his resistance was already collapsing in her hands.

Melisandre withdrew her fingers with a slow, deliberate grace, and the sudden emptiness made Jon cry out, a hoarse, desperate sound that betrayed how deeply he had been taken by her touch. His hips moved of their own accord, pushing back, searching blindly for what had been stolen from him, the need plain in every trembling motion. She hushed him with a low murmur, soft as velvet yet carrying the weight of command, her hand smoothing over his flank as though soothing a restless beast.

From within the folds of her robe, she drew forth a secret. Stannis and Jon were of a kind, grim, unyielding men shaped by duty and shadow, yet men who could be undone, reshaped, remade by the fire she carried within her. She had often wondered if the boy who brooded at the edge of the world would take to the same pleasures her king had endured, and now her curiosity burned hotter than the brazier beside them. She reached beneath the scarlet cloth, drawing out the carved wooden phallus, darkly polished and gleaming faintly in the fire’s glow. With unhurried precision, she bound it to her hips, pulling the ties snug, testing the weight until it was secure, until she and the wood were one seamless shape of power.

Jon’s chest heaved, his breath uneven as he sensed the shift in her presence. She gathered him against her, one arm tight around his middle, holding him firm, and then with a single, unrelenting motion, she pressed forward, filling the hole her fingers had left wanting. His body lurched in shock, his legs quivering beneath him as if the Wall itself shuddered at the force of it. A raw gasp tore from his throat, his eyes wide and wet, tears shimmering unfallen as the intensity of her invasion crashed through him.

Her hands gripped his hips like iron, steadying him, holding him to her will. “Watch the flames,” she breathed against his ear, her tone both caress and command. The words curled around him like smoke, wrapping tighter each time she withdrew and thrust again, dragging the wooden length through him with merciless rhythm. The brazier’s glow wavered before his swimming eyes, firelight fracturing into shards of gold and blood-red as his body bowed beneath the dual weight of pain and ecstasy.

With every push and pull she wrung new sounds from him, choked whimpers, muffled groans, low cries he could not silence, each one a testament to his unravelling. The world narrowed to the rhythm she set, the flames before him, and the cruel, rapturous oblivion toward which she drove him. His strength faltered, his defiance melted, until nothing remained but the raw, consuming tide of release she held just beyond his reach.

It took only a few more of her merciless, measured thrusts before Jon’s body betrayed him entirely. Each movement of her hips, each stroke of her hand, drove him closer to the precipice until there was no holding back. With a strangled cry that seemed torn from the very marrow of his bones, he spent himself into the brazier, his seed hissing as it struck the coals. The flames answered like a living thing, leaping higher, roaring with sudden hunger, the fire twisting into unnatural shapes that seemed to leer and whisper. The heat blasted against his face, and Jon felt, with a shudder that hollowed him out, that what burned there was not holy fire but some darker, older magic that had claimed his release as offering.

Shaken, he dared a glance over his shoulder. Melisandre stood behind him, her lips curved in a smile that was at once radiant and terrible. It did not warm him; it chilled him to the marrow, a smile carved of shadows and secrets. Her eyes gleamed with knowledge he could neither bear nor name, and Jon understood in that moment that whatever had just transpired was no mere indulgence of flesh, but a ritual, a binding, an invisible tether wrapped about his soul.

He did not know what vow she had coaxed from his body, nor what chain she had forged with her touch. All he knew was the hollow ache that lingered inside him when she withdrew, sliding the wooden phallus from his trembling body with cruel patience. His muscles trembled, his chest still heaving, yet her warmth was already retreating, leaving him bereft in the cold. She melted back into the shadows, her scarlet robe trailing like a ribbon of blood into the night.