2. Bride's Cloak

Some moments had passed since he shuddered and spilled into her, yet Jorah did not move apart from Daenerys. He'd loved her these seven nights, yet still he reveled in the sensations of being joined to her like this: of his cock, flaccid within the warmth of her wetness and his own sticky seed; of his heart, pounding within his chest cradled between her small breasts; of his face, buried in the curve of her neck, warmed by her skin and the heat of his own breath against it; of his lips, slightly chapped, trailing light kisses over her collarbone.

"Catching your breath so you can go once more, my bear?"

"No," he groaned more than answered as she slowly bucked her hips up against his. He pressed down into her in response, tempted by the suggestion, but the twinge in his manhood didn't last and his arm muscles twitched from their prolonged exertion. "No, love, I'm spent. I just…don't want you to have to leave."

With a sigh, Jorah slipped out of her and rolled onto his side. She must leave, regardless of what he wanted. Daenerys was his lover, but she was Khal Drogo's wife.

Even so, she tucked herself against him, her small hands splayed across the slackened muscles of his back as she embraced him, her knee threaded between his thighs. She pressed her mouth to the hollow of his throat, her tongue darting out to taste him, and said, "You would sleep with me, as well as sleep with me."

"Aye."

Jorah wrapped his arms about Daenerys in turn, and his gaze drifted over her head to the door flap of his tent. His thoughts turned to his hall on Bear Island, to the great oaken door with its iron bolt and bar in the lord's bedchamber-not so much in fear of the flimsy barrier between them and the khal's wrath should they be caught in this damning position, as because he simply wished he were home. That this woman was his wife, to have and to hold through the long nights. Or even the days, should he wish it.

"Khal Drogo never fell asleep with me on my sleeping silks," Daenerys says, "even before he tired of me. I think it is not the Dothraki way. " Her breath gently ruffled Jorah's chest hair. "But I think if I had a Westerosi husband to love me, and then to hold me as I slept, I should never have another nightmare again. Nor would I dream of the house with the red door, for I would always be home."

Blessing the silken silver of her hair with a kiss, Jorah did not voice the words that came to mind, that even in Westeros not all marriages were the blissful unions she described. She, better than any woman in the Seven Kingdoms, knew what it is to be sold for an alliance at the cost of her own happiness. And even he, with two marriages under his belt that no one would deem successes, was not yet totally jaded. He still believed such a marriage was possible.

Or would be…if Daenerys Targaryen were free to wed a husband of her own choosing.

Though it was folly to entertain such thoughts.

"What would our wedding have been like, Jorah?"

His back grew suddenly cold as her fingers left it, her palms resting instead against his chest. He forced himself to draw deep, slow breaths to steady his quickening heart.

"Such a thing could never be, Princess. I am too lowborn for you, even before my exile. A bannerman to a liege-lord who himself serves-"

Daenerys silenced him with a kiss. As her sweet tongue swept into his mouth, Jorah found himself pushed onto his back, the naked girl leaning over him so that her forearms rested upon his chest. The hardened peaks of her nipples pressed against his skin, and the curling ends of her unbraided hair tickled it.

"Just tell me about weddings in the Seven Kingdoms," she said.

Jorah swallowed, his throat rolling beneath her fingertips which rested lightly in the hollow. He could never deny her anything she asked of him with those wide shining eyes. They were the reason for his sleeping with the khaleesi in the first place, appealing to him thus when she asked him to show her the love of which her husband deprived her.

"That depends on whether you're married in the North or the South," he said, "according to the rites of the Old Gods or the New."

As his voice rumbled in his chest, Jorah imagined that if anyone were to pass by the tent they would hear him speaking to her in much the same tones as those nights when she used to come to him for the sole purpose of discussing the books he gave her from their homeland. He tried to think of it as a history lesson now, lest his recounting of the marriage ceremonies performed in the septs turn his heart too much to when he uttered the seven promises and the seven vows to Lynesse.

"I suppose when you get past all the trappings," he concluded, covering Daenerys' hand where it rested on his chest, stroking her knuckles with his thumb, "Northern weddings aren't so different from Southron. Simpler-as everything is. The couple speak their vows before a heart tree instead of a septon, but the groom still places his cloak about his bride's shoulders, to symbolize the transference of protection from her father's House to her husband's."

"I think that's a lovely tradition," she said, sighing, and Jorah wondered if she compared it to the Dothraki marriage ceremony which she endured rather than enjoyed.

She smiled, though, and leaned in to kiss him again. He stretched up to meet her, but before he could do more than touch his lips to hers, she withdrew, pushing lightly off him to stand, and he was the one who sighed as she inevitably tiptoes nude across the floor of rush mats to retrieve her discarded clothing so she could go back to her own tent. Stretching out his arm, Jorah found his own things in a rumpled heap near the pallet of blankets, and as he sat up, tugging the yellow linen shirt over his head, wrinkled and perpetually smelling of sweat and horse, he tried to content himself with the memory of how eagerly Daenerys untied the laces to get it off him, her hands and lips exploring his body with as much delight as he enjoyed hers, Doreah's lessons for pleasing a man-and thus herself-not going to waste after all.

As his head emerged through the neck, however, he looked up to see that the princess has not donned her bedrobe after all. Instead, she stood before the crackling leather case in which he stored his armor and few meager belongings. Jorah's eyes swept over her shapely calves and thighs and the swell of her buttocks, the muscles harder as she grew fit from weeks in the saddle, the cinch of her waist, not quite obscured by the cascade of silver hair down her back, the curve of her breast which-it must have been the angle at which she stands-seemed fuller than usual. But while he appreciated his lover's form, even felt himself grow hard in response, what took his breath away was the garment she clutched in her hands.

Daenerys turned to him, unfurling his grey woolen cloak before her.

Not daring to think-or to hope-what meaning this might have in light of the preceding conversation, Jorah deflected with a jape. "Packing that showed little foresight on my part about the climate in the Dothraki Sea."

"But perhaps more than a little about what event might take place here." Her small bare feet just peeked from the hem of the cloak as she stepped nearer to him. "I want to wear your cloak, Jorah. Put it on me?"

His throat tied itself into a knot-of delight at the possibility she offered him, or of despair at what could never be-so that his voice came out too pinched to really convey the humorous tone he intended. "Don't you think that might make the nature of our relationship rather conspicuous, if you're seen in the khalasar wearing my cloak?"

"Only you need see me wear it. Only you and the gods."

Her fingers released the heavy wool, leaving her fully exposed before him as the cloak pooled in his lap.

"Put it on me," she told him again, her voice a pleading whisper…or a dragon's command. "You've already made me your woman. Now make me your wife, as well."

It was exactly how she spoke when she asked him to show her what love was, and Jorah could not stop himself from pushing to his feet, cloak in hands, to stand before her.

But he hesitated, bunching the wool in his sweaty fingers. "We have neither septon nor heart tree…Daenerys, you have already spoken vows that bind you to another husband."

Her radiantly hopeful expression fell into a frown-no, almost a snarl. Blood of the dragon.

"Not vows," she said. "Only words spoken in a tongue I did not understand, for the ears of gods I do not know." Softening, she lifted her hand, uncurling her fist to brush the backs of her fingers across Jorah's cheek. "I would be wed in the eyes of the true gods. The New or the Old, it makes no matter. Your gods shall be my gods."

"My god is love."

And, with scarcely another thought-except for the fleeting one that no bridegroom must ever have looked so absurd as he, clad only in a thin linen shirt that only just covered his arousal-Jorah moved to stand behind the princess and draped the drab plainspun wool over her slight shoulders. It should be velvet, he thought, dark green as the forests of Bear Island, trimmed with sable fur and emblazoned with his proud sigil. He brushed the thought aside as he gently pulled her impossibly long hair free from the neck of the cloak, the silver sheen making the garment look rich despite the simplicity of the cloth. In any case, it did not diminish what the ceremony signified; no king-certainly not her brother the Beggar King-nor khal could afford her more protection than he would give her.

He chose to ignore the irony that to be discovered at this moment would mean Daenerys' certain death, as well as his own.

The cloak-and his hands-resting securely on her shoulders, she turned beneath his touch, and Jorah bent to incline his head toward her upturned face.

"With this kiss," she said, in a voice as low and steady a voice as ever he'd heard her speak, "I pledge my love, and take you for my lord and husband."

"With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lady and wife."

The folds of the cloak slipped back over her shoulders as she raised her arms to twine them about Jorah's neck, drawing her exposed bare breasts against the open neck of his shirt, pressing her hips into his arousal. One of his arms wrapped around her waist, while the other hand slipped beneath her arse, his fingers squeezing as he hoisted her off the ground. A show of affection which would be inappropriate if he wed her in the Great Sept of Baelor, where by all rights a Targaryen princess should have been married, but which nevertheless felt so natural, and right to him that, with his eyes closed and the cool night air coming in through the gaps beneath the tent flaps, he could almost believe they stood before the heart tree back home.

Between kisses, he said, "I do solemnly proclaim Jorah of House Mormont and Daenerys of House Targyren to be man and wife. One flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever. And cursed be the one who comes between us."

Even Khal Drogo, he thought, claiming her mouth once more, her teeth raking his lower lip as he swept his tongue inside. I am hers and she is mine.

But when she pulled her lips from his, one of her hands leaving his neck to push gently against his chest, he groaned, remembering that she was only his within this tent. Already she had been here too long…

Reluctantly, he lowered her to the floor, only for her hands to grasp at the hem of his shirt, tugging it upward as she simultaneously pulled him toward the pile of blankets on the floor, stumbling a little over the trailing hem of his overlarge cloak.

"Take your bride to bed, husband."

Jorah lost no time stripping off his shirt, though when she started to remove his cloak, he stayed her hands.

For as long as she was here with him, he would have every reminder that she was his.