A/N: A follow-up to Before the Queen. Happy Thanksgiving to all you American readers! I am thankful for your reviews. ;)

The Right of the Queen

"Jorah?"

Her voice, speaking his name outside his tent, was the last sound he'd expected to hear after the heated encounter earlier that day inside hers.

"My queen?" he answered, pushing up on his elbows on his sleeping mat, where he had lain, not sleeping, watching the shadows cast by the single flickering candle dance on the ceiling of the tent. "May I serve you?"

The flap parted and Daenerys slipped inside, her slight stature not requiring her to duck beneath it. She gazed at him with wide eyes, and, tugging his blanket up over his waist to cover his nakedness, Jorah reached for his discarded, sweat-stained, ragged shirt, which lay in a crumpled pile with his equally soiled and tattered tunic and breeches beside the pallet. They were none of them suitable garments to wear in the presence of his queen, the scraps of dead men of the Second Sons, but they were all he had, everything else he'd had in the world taken by the slavers.

In any case, his shirt was not the most shameful thing about him.

Before he could put it on, Daenerys held up a restraining hand. "Do not trouble yourself, ser. Forgive me if I disturbed your sleep."

The queen, begging his forgiveness? This was surely a different attitude than before, when she'd summoned him to hear him confess to lying with a whore, though Jorah did his best not to let her see his surprise as he cast the shirt aside.

"I did not sleep," he said.

"Neither did I. I mean…"

She bent her head as she drew a brightly embroidered shawl tighter around her shoulders-underneath it, she seemed to be clad in a linen shift which ended at the middle of her thighs-and Jorah thought he saw her eyebrows twitch together, her forehead furrowed between them, though the light was too poor for him to be certain. When she looked up again, no sign of discomfiture etched her young face as she stepped further into the tent.

"I dreamt," she said, "and I woke. I wanted to see that you were still here."

"How could I have gone, when Your Grace has set an armed guard outside my tent?"

He spoke lightly, careful not to show how wounded he was by her lack of trust in him, after all he had endured to return to her service, to her side; he was rewarded to see Daenerys' lips twitch into a faint smile. But as she came to stand just inside the circle of candlelight that surrounded his sleeping mat, Jorah saw the unsteadiness of that smile, and the troubled depths of her dark violet eyes.

"What did you dream?" he asked.

"That you were carried off to the fighting pit." Her voice hitched, and Jorah felt a knot form in his own throat as his eyes followed the movement of her body to kneel beside him. Her gaze settled on his ruined cheek. "I dreamt they did this to you."

He held his breath as she stretched out her hand toward him, and forced himself neither to break their gaze nor to flinch away from her light touch as her fingers traced the outline of the demon brand.

"As you can see," he said hoarsely, "that part was no dream."

"You looked up at me from the pits and said it was my fault that you were there. That you were branded."

He had roared her name as the glowing red iron seared his flesh, though whether because he clung to the memory of her, Daenerys, Breaker of Chains, to carry him through the pain or because he cursed her for bringing this fate upon him, he could not say.

"Of course I don't blame you," he said.

"Nor would I accept blame if you did."

Though her voice was sharp, her caress was tender as she covered the mark on his cheek with her hand. Jorah could not help closing his eyes as he leaned into her touch, pressing his own hand over hers as if he could burn the imprint of her hand there, a brand he would proudly carry for the rest of his days. He was taking a liberty, he knew, but the queen did not withdraw her hand from his grasp.

"But Jorah," she said, with undisguised dismay, "my stubborn bear, why could you not have submitted that day, and begged my forgiveness? I would have given it. I had already given it, in my heart. You could have been spared this."

Jorah opened his eyes and straightened up. "Do you think I haven't asked myself that question every day since you banished me? Why didn't I prostrate myself before my queen? Why did I sell the life of a young woman and her child to buy my passage home? Why did I sell poachers into slavery?"

Her hand slipped from his face as he gripped her by the shoulders, a little awkward due to his position seated on the ground, and gave her a little shake that made her shawl slip from her shoulders; she made no move to draw it around herself again, though it revealed the low neckline and the sheerness of her shift.

"Do you think I don't know the answer?" Jorah went on. "That all I have suffered is because I am too proud for my own good-and a fool?"

A fool in love.

Daenerys shook her head, so that the loose strands of her silvery-golden hair fell like silken threads about his hands. "You are no fool. A fool would make me laugh, and no one would ever accuse Ser Jorah Mormont of doing that."

"Gods be praised. I'd be a horror in motley."

Though she did laugh at that, Jorah could take but little joy in the sound for wondering: would she have jeered along with the crowd to see him perform The Bear and the Maiden Fair with Penny and Tyrion? He hadn't worn motley then, or anything at all but a breechcloth, but he might as well have had a fool's cap on his head for all the bell on his collar had jangled as he'd lumbered about. Had the Imp seen fit to make Jorah's mortification complete by apprising her of that, as well as of his indiscretion with the whore?

"No," Daenerys said, as if in answer to his unvoiced questions, her laughter fading away into a sigh, "your absence did not deprive me of laughter. Good council, however, I have sorely lacked. No one has replaced you."

"Not even Ser Barristan Selmy?" Jorah spat the name, though he knew full well how irksome his rivalry with the older knight was to the queen.

But either she had not noticed his bitterness, or decided-for once-to let it pass, for she spoke mildly. "I will not answer you that, lest your pride swell so that you no longer fit in armor or helm. And I need you to ride into battle for me as well as to sit at my council table."

"The armor given me by the Second Sons already fits me ill."

He had meant it as a joke-of sorts-but it failed to amuse Daenerys. "Very well then," she said. "I will tell you that while your advice has often felt wrong to me, it has most often proved right. Had I listened to you more often, I might be nearer to my goal than I am now."

Her gaze briefly dropped to her hands, which were folded in her lap. When she looked up again, her eyes glanced past his, to the brand. Before Jorah could feel the prickle of self-consciousness, however, she had leaned into him, one warm hand resting on his neck, drawing him toward her as she pressed her lips to his cheek.

"And I wonder," she murmured, her breath warm but making the hairs stand at the back of his neck, "if perhaps you might prove right about other things which felt wrong to me."

"Did it feel so wrong, Daenerys?" Jorah asked, nuzzling her. "When I kissed you on the Balerion…You kissed me back. And your…"

He stopped himself, realizing just in time that while she had given him leave to say much-and do more; without his being conscious of it, he had slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her against his thigh-she likely did not want to hear him say, Your Grace's nipples betrayed you. Though he had not even touched her breasts, when he had ended the kiss and swept his eyes over her half-clad form, the dark pink tips of the small pale mounds had hardened into little points. He had not been the only one to notice, her hands flying up to cover them. He could see them now, pressing against the thin fabric of her shift.

"I sensed that you wanted me, too," he said instead.

"I don't know if it was you I wanted, or if I just wanted…someone. I understand the requirements of men," she added, her eyes darting away-and he knew she referred to their earlier quarrel about the whore. "Women have them, too."

The words might have wounded him, had Daenerys not immediately followed them with the entirely contradictory action of twining her hands about his neck and pulling herself into his lap as she tilted her head upward to touch her lips to his. For a glorious moment their mouths melted together…

…then, abruptly, she drew back.

Just enough that she could look him in the eye as she said, "Jorah, if I allow this, you must swear to me that if afterward I should decide that it is the wrong course, you will never speak to me of love again."

"Aye," he said, leaning in to kiss her again, but she held him back with a hand upon his chest.

"Swear it."

"I swear," said Jorah heavily, and this time she did not resist his mouth on hers. "But," he murmured between soft kisses, "it is right…We are right…You'll see…"

"Show me," she whispered, and as if that were not invitation enough, she swept her tongue between his lips and guided one of his hands up from her waist to curl over her breast.

And Jorah-who had not been able to sleep for thinking of how he might right the wrongs he had done her and win the place he longed to hold, not only in her bed, but in her heart-felt his mind empty of everything but the softness of her lips against his and the perfect smallness of her breast in his hand and how exquisite the ache was in his hardened manhood when coupled with the certainty that he would, at last, find his release within her.

No sooner had the last thought danced through his mind than Daenerys' hands pressed against his chest. In his astonished disappointment-She had, after all, led him to believe that she intended to see the act of love through to its completion before she changed her mind. Was this Targaryen fickleness?-he allowed himself to be pushed back onto his bed of skins. It was not until she straddled him, her shift hiking up to reveal the expanse of her pale, slender thighs resting either side of his hips, that he understood that the act of love was precisely what was on Daenerys' mind. Her fingers closed around his cock, guiding it up to her entrance, which-dear gods-was wet and ready for him.

He, on the other hand, was not, and he found himself doing what he had never once, in all the times he had dreamt up this moment, imagined doing.

As she rocked her hips down into his, burying his length within her, he groaned and pushed himself to sit up.

And slipped out of her.

"Jorah, what-?"

He kissed her mouth, open in a small o of bewilderment, and then eased out from beneath her so that he sat on his knees. With one arm around her, he tugged at the hem of her shift, rolling it up to reveal the soft patch of golden curls that grew between her legs, and above it, the smooth plane of her belly. Leaning her back in the cradle of one arm, he bent to kiss her navel, and he continued to blaze a trail with his lips and tongue up through the middle of her body as he slowly drew the garment upwards, the fingers of his other hand fitting into the spaces between her ribs. Daenerys finished removing her shift for him as he lingered at her chest, burrowing his face between her breasts, kissing the sides, the soft warm skin beneath them ,before taking one in his mouth, teasing the hardened tip of one nipple with his tongue, grazing it so lightly with his teeth until she gasped and took his face in her hands and guided him up to kiss her mouth again, giving him a glimpse of her dusky violet eyes just before they fluttered shut in pleasure.

Gently, he lowered her back onto his bed so that she lay beneath him. Her chest hitched beneath his, and she gasped as he continued to kiss her. He knew the reason why; it was the same as why she had tried to mount him a moment ago, why she had resisted him that night on the Balereon: she was the queen, and she would not be dominated by her knight.

But in bed Jorah was a man, and Daenerys, though always queen in his heart, would be his woman.

She submitted-in her way; her hands fisted in the thinning hair at the back of his head as she kissed him harder, and her thighs opened for him as she wrapped her legs around him, pressing her heels into the small of his back to help him push inside her. He very nearly spilled his seed into her at once, so warm and tight she was around him-which came as little surprise, in light of how long he had wanted her. But he bit his lip and clutched her to him and managed to hold back, as much for himself as for Daenerys; if this were to be his once, and only, time with her, he would make it last.

It wouldn't be, though. It couldn't be. Not now that he'd heard her voice whisper his name, and felt the eager buck of her hips up against his. No matter how long he drew out this moment, sometimes matching her youthful exuberance to bring them to the edge and then holding back, guiding her into the slower pace which experience had taught him, making her moan in his arms and clench around him, it would never be enough. Not for him. He hoped not for her.

She was begging him by the end, though, and her little mewl-Jorah, please-was his undoing.

Perhaps he was still a bit of a knight in bed, after all, he thought as he found his release. Though he had never been more willing to serve at the pleasure of the queen.

Afterward, when he had caught his breath and started to withdraw from her, Daenerys held him firmly in place inside her, her arms about his shoulders and her legs still wrapped around his thighs.

And when he lifted his head to meet her eyes, he found her looking at him in a way she never had. Even before his face had been ruined by the slavers' brand.

Jorah managed to restrain a grin from breaking across his face, but he could not stop himself from asking, "Well? Was I right?"

"If I tell you yes," said Daenerys, "then you really will not fit that armor."

He swelled within her, and, said, "Then you will just have to keep me here, where I won't need it."

"That's my right, as your queen," she said, and kissed him.