His raven curls, unbound and tangled, lay atop her pillow. Her belly coils with heat at the memory of her hands pulling at the leather strap that tied them back, at the image she conjures of him raised above her, glowing from the light of the roaring fire, and the look in his eyes as he buried himself inside of her, their flesh fusing in forbidden, long-awaited bliss. Her cheeks bloom with both shame and pleasure at the thought of their union. At her insistence that he spill inside of her and stay there long after both of their pleasures were drawn out, knowing in the morning she would brew a cup of moon tea that she had hidden away from the time before. 

The gods had been cruel to make her love her half-brother. They had been kind enough to make him love her back. 

In her solar he had confessed that he loved her, and only her. And how loathed he was to leave her for Dragonstone. That when he declared, in the presence of their bannermen, that the North was a part of him and that he’d never stop fighting for it, what he had meant in his heart was that she was his North. He admitted that every moment they were apart, she never once left his thoughts. And that everything he had done in the effort to return home truly was to save the North. To save her. His whispered words had sent shivers through her. Both the declaration of his love, and the thought of what kinds of things he had to do to return home to her.

She doesn’t want to think of what all that had entailed. Or what had transpired in the dark between him and the dragon to make her believe he truly bent the knee, and that he loved her. But Sansa wants to trust him and believe the words he told her in the quiet of her bed as he entwined his hand in hers. As he gently stroked his calloused fingers over her bare skin, leaving gooseprickles in their wake.

“I had to make her believe in the ruse, Sansa. I’m not proud of it,” he had rasped, eyes averted from Sansa’s gaze until she reached for him, turning his face so that she could look upon him. He released a shaky breath and croaked, “I’d beg for your forgiveness if you’re willing to give it. But I understand if it’s too much to ask. I wouldn’t blame ye. But I must confess, I thought of you. Every second.”

Jon had fought battles for Sansa, had fought Ramsey knowing the odds were against him. He fought the Others, and survived to come back to her. He had lied, manipulated, and kept the secret hidden away so convincingly, so deep, that even Sansa had not seen it. 

(Her feelings for Jon surely clouded her judgment, causing her to doubt his loyalty).

She doesn’t want to think of what he may have to continue to do to keep up the ruse, or what they both may need to sacrifice. But Sansa knows that whatever it may be, she will do whatever she can to protect him, as he has done for her.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she whispered. And she had meant it. 

Lying in the dark beside him she knows she will always mean it, no matter how much the thought of it stings. No matter the ache that blooms at the unbidden image of Jon with her. He had not truly been Sansa’s to lose then, but now… what were they to each other now? Now that they had crossed the point of no return.

Their love could never be known to any other. This secret they will always have to hide. If they were discovered it could lead to ruin and damnation. Northerners do not accept a union between siblings, no matter that they don’t share a mother. They were no Lannisters, nor Targaryens, and yet their illicit love seemed to prove otherwise. After all that she had learned, had worked so hard to not become, had she turned into Cersei after all? The thought makes her shiver and recoil. 

Perhaps she need not fret over any of it, for the Others are marching upon them. The threat looming, heavier with each passing moment. They may very well take this secret to a grave that lies just beyond the horizon. Lost to each other forever. And yet the thought of that terrifies her more than any possibility of their secret love being sussed out.

Jon stirs beneath her and flutters his eyes open, blinking to adjust to the dim light, and then he lowers his chin toward Sansa. His eyes soften as they land on her and he gives her a smile, sweet and tender, reaching his hand to gently tuck her tangled hair behind her ear.

“We fell asleep,” he says with a voice gruff and tender as he absentmindedly traces patterns on the small of her back.

“We did.”

“I’d better sneak off to my chambers before anyone realizes where I am.”

Sansa didn’t want this night to end. What had been their first union could very well be their last. 

As he moves to get up, Sansa gently pushes him back down to press her body and her lips as close to his as possible. The kiss, at first soft and slow, builds with passion, and desperation to stop time. Before long Jon has rolled Sansa onto her back and hovers over her just as before, looking down on her in wonderment and adoration. The look behind his eyes like an arrow of fire in her belly, and a need coils itself deep inside, begging to be met.

“Jon,” she pleads wantonly, reaching up to grasp his face in her hands, digging her fingers into his beard, weaving them in his hair. A frantic, desperate plea. He obliges, first by trailing kisses down her neck and to her breasts, spending time filling his mouth with them and driving that coil deeper and hotter inside of her, making her ache with need. And then he abruptly stops, pushes the furs farther off of the bed, until he is sitting at her feet, smiling with hooded eyes. The look she gives him of confused anticipation makes him chuckle.

“Why are you laughing?” Sansa sounds a bit wounded, but smiles all the same. 

“I’m not laughin’ at ye, Sansa. I swear,” he raises his palms as if in surrender. “But I want to try something if you let me.” Jon tenderly places his hands upon her knees, “Do you trust me?”

Sansa nods apprehensively, curiously, and watches as he spreads her legs apart and lowers his head, all while keeping his eyes locked onto hers. Kissing her knees and thighs in turn, he slowly travels higher and higher until his hands are gripping the flesh of her hips and his mouth is on her, licking the wetness between her thighs. It takes everything in Sansa not to cry out. Her heavy sighs alone are nearly loud enough for anyone outside of her door to hear. Jon’s tongue swirls and flicks at the most sensitive part and she has never felt a pleasure so intense. It rivals the pleasure she felt just hours ago when he touched her there as he spent inside of her. This was different and new and thrilling. She climbs higher and higher as his tongue works its magic, pushing her to the brink. And just as she is about to fall off the edge, Jon reaches up to take her breast in hand, his thumb grazing and teasing until she plunges off of the precipice and buries her face in the furs to muffle her cries. 

When the throbbing and the panting subsides, she glances at Jon, a very smug look upon his face, “Did ye like that?” 

Sansa smiles and nods lazily, still catching her breath, and she reaches for him with arms outstretched. He climbs up and kisses her deep and long, the taste of her still on his lips, and she can feel his need for her lined up at the spot his tongue had just deliciously ravaged. And suddenly she can feel the need inside her return in earnest. Those glorious flutters assault her belly as she wraps her legs around his waist and backside, pulling him close, inviting him in again. 

When he buries himself inside her once more, he keeps his eyes focused on hers, whispers a thousand I love yous that she returns in earnest, savoring the feeling of him so close to her as they find a slow and deliberate rhythm. 

Both of them know this might be their last and neither of them are quick to chase the pleasure out, but are intent on committing these precious few moments to memory. Tears stream down Sansa’s temples, sprung from somewhere deep and buried. Jon gently kisses them away.

“I am yours, Sansa. Only yours.” He touches his forehead to hers, “And you are mine.” It is half a question, half a command.

“Always,” she whispers and repeats again and again as she falls from the edge and he spills inside of her once more. 

The dawn arrives, creeping in through the window, as Jon dresses as quietly as he can. And once he has pulled his boots on he crosses back to the bed where Sansa is sitting, holding her knees and the furs close. She is cold without his warmth. He must sense it because he leans over to pull her close, bringing the furs with her, to the edge of the bed. He gently takes her face in his hands as she memorizes the look in his eyes. Kissing her sweetly, with such care and reverence, then envelops her in his arms for a long embrace. 

Sansa buries her face in his neck, breathing in the scent of him, heavy with leather and steel and woodsmoke. She curls herself into his chest. And as she listens to the beating of his heart beneath her ear once again, she doesn’t even attempt to hold back the tears anymore. Releasing the ache of the joy, and the tragedy, of it all. 

“Never forget, Sansa. Whatever happens, know that I love you,” he whispers in her ear, holding her close, running his fingers through her copper waves.

And before dawn can unearth their secret, he moves to kiss her forehead with a desperation and reverence that burns long after he reluctantly pulls away. He stalks toward the door, and then looks back at her with a smile full of hope and fear before slipping into the cover of darkness. 

Alone and cold without him, Sansa weeps upon the furs that warmed them through the winter night. Tears that she has denied for so long finally tumble free and flow without ceasing. They pour out uncontrollably, as though Jon had unlocked a deeply buried chest within her, filled to the brim with love she had for so long confined to the darkest parts of her, and fear of losing what has only briefly been hers. 

She finds that once unlocked she may never again find the key.

~

“Sansa, I don’t love her.”

A heavy, shuddering breath escapes from her lips. The undeniable relief is evident in the softening of her shoulders and the smoothing of the crease between her brows. In the way the corner of her mouth lifts slightly. 

It gives him a surge of hope and he realizes this may be his last chance. As hard as he will fight he knows they may very well die in this battle. He wants not for either of them to perish without Sansa knowing how desperately and deeply she is loved.

“There is only one woman who possesses my heart, Sansa,” Jon confesses, her name rolling softly off of his tongue before his voice takes on a guttural tone, “and it is not her. It has never been, and never will be her.”

Sansa’s eyes narrow and she draws in a slow breath, her chest gently heaving in what looks like defense, and he hopes more than any hope that his instinct has not deceived him.

“To whom does your heart belong?” She asks him, trepidatiously. 

“You know,” Jon whispers, so quietly he thinks she may not have heard him. 

But then she reaches out her trembling hand to him and he clasps it in both of his. Gazing down at the soft skin cradled between his calloused palms, a teardrop lands upon her knuckle and he brings it to his lips to kiss the cool saltiness away. 

She sweeps her fingers over his forehead, pausing to gently rub her thumb across the scar above his eyebrow. His eyes slowly slide shut at the sensation of her attentive touch. And when she cups his bearded jaw he leans into it, releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding since first he laid eyes on this red-haired specter at Castle Black.

Sansa steps gingerly into his space, careful and cautious as if he were an untamed animal. And maybe he is. What came back from death must have been half-beast at least. There is no other way to explain the twisted affections he has held for his father’s daughter all of these many moons. 

But she is leaning into him as well. She is pressing her forehead to his, setting his heart to race, pounding wildly back to life again (and again and again). If this love makes him a beast, then wolves they both must be because she is whispering his name like a honey-sweet song. And hers are the fingers twining through the curls at his neck as she softly bumps her nose against his. 

Her breath, hot upon his mouth, beckons him to open his eyes and when he does he finds the fear in her own has been replaced by a wild hunger he never imagined she would possess for him. A sudden ferocity claims him and he tempers a growl. His fists find her hips and he pulls at her skirts, tugging her body closer to his.

He breathes her name. It’s almost a groan and definitely a question. Pulling his forehead from hers, he finds the answer in her eyes, now a deeper blue than he has ever seen them. They shift swiftly from his lips to his eyes and back again. She inclines her head forward ever so slightly and it is enough to give him the courage to lift his hands to her face and take her lips softly, gently into his.

The kiss is tentative and soft at first like drifting snowflakes brushing his skin. She opens her mouth to him and he relishes the taste of her lips, committing the sweetness of her perfect mouth to memory as he sweeps his tongue across hers. 

Their hands roam, slow and careful at first. Releasing her face from his gentle grasp, he runs his fingers through her hair and slides his rough palms to cradle her neck and grasp the small of her back. He clutches her tightly to him, so close he knows not where he ends and she begins. The realization of it overwhelms him and he whimpers in relief. She hums in response.

Her delicate fingers pull at the leather strap in his hair and she grabs fistfuls, tugging gently at the freshly unbound curls.

A pulsating heat spreads from the core of Jon’s belly, intensifying at the sounds of Sansa’s soft, melodic moaning. The vibration of her song emanates into the lips that she begins to bite. He snarls at the delicious throbbing her teeth creates. It is everything Jon can do to keep from curling himself into her. From grabbing the back of her thighs and wrapping them around his waist to carry her into her bedchamber. From laying her down beneath him so that he may kiss the soft skin of her thighs and the wetness between them until she is breathless and howling his name.

But he refuses to test her limits, allowing her to take control and show him what she wants.

And as if sensing his intentions, she pushes herself into him until the back of his thighs bump against her desk. She grabs him by the waist and steers him to her chair. As she breaks away from their kiss she drags her hands up his chest and to his shoulders, pressing him down slowly onto the seat, all the while never taking her dark and heady eyes away from his. He gazes up at her perfect lips, swollen and reddened by his own. She is breathless and radiant and panting as heavily as he is. 

And as he whispers her name, she pulls her skirts up to her knees and climbs onto his lap. He is hard beneath her and if she hadn’t noticed before she surely knows it now, and yet it doesn’t deter her from relaxing into him. She cradles his face in her hands and proceeds to kiss him deep and slow. It makes him bold enough to take hold of her hips and rub circles into the sharp bones there with his thumbs. She moves her mouth to his neck and tastes his racing pulse with her hot tongue, licking and nipping a trail up to his ear where she breathes his name on a quivering sigh.

He knows it’s wrong but the thrill that sends wave after wave of chills, and the deep-seated coiling in his gut at her ministrations, make him forget his honor. Or hers. And when she begins to arch and grind herself into his lap he can’t help but dig his fingers into the flesh of her thighs, pushing himself up to meet her movements and claim her mouth once again. 

He has wanted this for too long, longer than he can even admit to himself. The feel of her softness, of her heat so close to his, sends his desire climbing so high and so fast he nearly spills right then like a green boy. 

“Sansa,” he groans, reluctantly pulling away from the sweetness of her lips. 

“Hmmm?” 

He meant to put a stop to this most depraved entanglement, to tell her that he will not dishonor her. But as he gazes into her hooded eyes, so full of hope and desire, and remembers that soon they might both be dead, he can’t think of any reason to end a moment so deliciously akin to his shameful fantasies. And maybe the fact that he knows this is not just a reverie makes him daring enough to speak his most hidden secret into existence.

“Sansa, my heart is yours. Only ever yours.” The confession staunches the relentlessly bleeding ache in his chest and he is desperate for the relief of it. 

“It has been yours since the moment I clapped eyes on you at Castle Black. It was then I knew why I was brought back from the nothingness of death. It is why I pushed myself out of that pit of men on the battlefield that day you came to save me. Why I swam to the surface of the freezing wight-infested water. It was for you. To protect you as I promised I always would. Everything I have done since then, all of it, has been to return home... to you.”

Sansa releases a tremulous breath and gently sweeps her thumbs across his cheeks. She kisses away the lingering dampness that the tears he hadn’t even realized he shed left upon his skin. With her hands on his chest, she pushes herself up and climbs away from his body. It aches from her sudden absence. And then she takes his hand in hers, pulls him up from the chair, and leads him quietly to her bedchamber.

Jon knows he should stop her. When she closes the door behind her. When her dress falls to her feet. When she undresses him and lays him down upon the furs atop her bed. But when he kisses her scars, and she kisses his, he forgets to care about all the reasons why they should stop. 

And when he buries himself inside of her and draws her pleasure out, bringing silent tears from her shining eyes, he refuses to regret any love they make between them, forbidden or not. 

And if they soon should die, at least for now they truly live.

~