Disclaimer: Just somebody's characters with my words...that is all.
Notes: The next instalment of this story, it might be a chapter or two before our characters meet up, but as usual I'm looking to keep this short. This is setting the scene, and building the story (what little there is). I hope you enjoy it! Hugs!
Chapter 2: Daddy's Little Girl
Alayne
The morning time was Alayne's favorite time in the brothel. In some ways watching the men and women who worked their go about their mundane morning business was much more intimate than watching the things they did at night. Whether hungover from the night before, cleaning their rooms or just simply talking and laughing with one another Alayne felt comfort in the fact that the house her father ran was a happy one. Though Lord Baelish was aloof at best, she and the people working there were all a tight knit family from the four corners of the world, living, eating and fucking under the same roof.
She always made sure to do the accounting early in the morning, so that her employees would receive their payment in the late morning when most woke up. There were no early starts in a brothel, only late nights that could stretch into early mornings.
'It's such a different feeling than being at King's Landing,' Alayne thought to herself as she walked through the halls and courtyards of the beautiful Dornish estate, gold purses in a basket.
While father was in charge of the quality of his wares and enforcing the rules of the house on both patrons and staff, Alayne took it upon herself to give a more friendly touch to their combined managerial style. She was always smiling, hugging, talking and teasing with those under the their employment. So it was no surprise that she walked smiling through the brothel to the greetings, hellos and come hither stares of her friends. Sansa Stark would have never befriended prostitutes, never would have been able to look at the men and women who had sex for money without blushing through her silks. Alayne, on the other hand, walked through the house handing out the salaries to her friends with no judgement. No matter how she found them or who she found them with, she always greeted, smiled and laughed with them.
For those who believed in the Seven, they took to calling Alayne the Maiden. For it was no secret that her father purposely kept her a maid. She had never seen Lord Baelish so angry as when some of the ladies had lured her to their rooms to instruct her on the finer points of feeling womanly pleasure. They were right, there was something about kissing a woman, feeling her soft curves against your skin that excited Alayne's instinct for sex. The ladies were gentle, approachable and above all, there was no looming fear of being forced into something you were not sure about. The two Dornish girls and one from Pentos had been in the full throws of teaching her about her own sexual anatomy, in the middle of pleasuring her with their hands and mouths. Her dress had been pulled down to her waist, some of the women's hands up her skirt when her father burst through the door and pulled her away. He questioned them intensely as to whether they had taken her maidenhood by putting something inside of her or not. They had not, they had merely wanted to show her how women could enjoy sex even more than men without penetration, and nothing more. He had docked the girls two days pay and threatened to beat them if they tried something like that again.
Lord Baelish had then admonished her for being so stupid, for if they had seen the fire colored hair between her legs they would have asked questions. It served to frustrate Alayne further. It was as if she lived in a glass box. Seeing everything but not being able to touch or feel anything. She yearned to be free, as free as those around her. Though Alayne knew that could never be, part of her value to her father was not only her trueborn name and lands, but her maidenhood as well. So when the young men of the brothel came to her, gently inquiring about instructing her in the arts of loving men, she had to reluctantly but politely decline. That wouldn't stop her from teasing them incessantly and flirting with them behind her father's back. They knew they could not touch her, but, as she had learned in her time there, sometimes anticipation was much more alluring than the act itself.
"How's my pretty little maid this morning?" Came a booming voice from Alayne's right side.
It was Erios from the Summer Islands. He was a tall, muscular mountain of a black man, menacing in stature alone, sweet in nature. Above all he was a good man, loved by male and female patrons alike, he was protective and fearless. Once he had heard Magda being beaten by a drunk patron in another room, so he stopped what he was doing, broke the door down and beat the man within an inch of his life. That's what' Alayne liked so much about this place, unlike King's Landing, everybody here looked after one another. It was because the nature of what they did, did not put them in the high esteems of many, so all they could do was cling to one another.
Alayne smiled at the broad, tall man, wrapped an arm around his neck and hugged him. "Unfortunately still very much a maid, but otherwise fine." She smiled and handed him a purse of gold, his payment from the last evening.
"Anytime you need me to help you with that…" he trailed off, his smile so big, broad and genuine, you just couldn't help but smile back in return.
"When it does finally happen," she teased, "I do want to be able to walk afterwards." Her eyes dropped down to the front of his pants, knowing the size of his most sought after part. She patted him on the shoulder as he laughed and continued on her way.
Alayne made her way past the pool in the courtyard, shielding her eyes from the baking sun already high in the sky. She was on her way to the "Westerosi" part of the brothel. It was always funny to look at these things from the Dornish perspective. Being so close to Essos and so physically different from the rest of Westeros, the Dornish did not see themselves as from Westeros. Rather they were Dornish and everything else on the island was then considered Westeros. So that meant that fair skinned women with blondish hair were often the Dornish idea of a "Westerosi" woman. Exotic, cold and different from the tanned, dark haired women they were used to.
She could hear the women chattering already about the night before. "...so he pulled down his trousers and out springs the absolutely biggest cock I ever saw. I mean Stranger take his face, he was the ugliest man I ever seen, but with a piece like that between his legs you could forgive him."
"Another satisfied customer Magda?" Alayne said, smiling at the animated redhead from the Riverlands. Her hair was a lighter red than Sansa Stark's, almost a strawberry blonde instead of the full bronze color so rare it was even hard to find in the Riverlands themselves.
Magda, Sasha and Daniela were all from the 'northern part' of Westeros, meaning above Dorne and not from the free cities. Magda from the Riverlands, Sasha a sweet blonde from Highgarden and Daniella a hearty black haired northern beauty, who could have easily have worked on a farm as in a whore house. The women greeted her with kisses and took their money with smiles on their faces.
Then Sasha said, continuing the conversation, "Alayne, perhaps you know this mysterious Westerosi knight from yesterday that Magda is swooning over?"
The girls knew that she and her father had been in King's Landing and ran a brothel there, so they often asked these kinds of questions about knights and Sers and all sorts of people that Sansa had known in the capital but Alayne had to pretend not to know.
Alayne cocked her head to the side, "Oh wait, let me guess his name...Ser Fucks-a-lot?"
The women all roared with laughter at her making light of the subject, but the fact that a Westerosi man came into the brothel was always a cause to be alert. Who knew if they were coming in to try to find her or father. So as the women continued on about their night, Alayne listened with veiled concern.
"He was probably the biggest man I've ever seen, took up the whole door frame." Daniela began, filling in for Magda. "I greeted him, you know with my usual smile and a kiss...but I gotta say it wasn't easy lookin' at that face."
"Oh ugly never bothered you before." Alayne teased, seeing if she could get more out of the women as to his looks. Big and ugly were not the best descriptors of man one could come up with.
Daniela swatted Alayne on shoulder before Magda finally chimed in, "Oh it was gruesome, like some kind of battle wounds. I mean the man was so muscled and so strong he had to be a knight, or a sellsword. But that face, looked half burned off like he'd stuck his face in a torch."
"A face only the Mother could love." The other two chimed in at the same time, giggling to themselves.
Alayne felt her heart beating a little faster, nervousness coursing through her veins. She knew a man that fit this description, she knew him better than they even suspected. Calming herself she remembered, lots of warriors were burned and disfigured from war. Perhaps it was just coincidence.
"So then he demands wine and a redhead." Sasha continued for the women, looking over to Magda and smiling. Magda made good money, the Dornish liked her fair skin, blue eyes and reddish hair. Father always told her though that Magda's nightly intake would be peanuts compared to Alayne's. He would always say that if he let her be a whore with her natural hair, she'd be his best little money maker. If there was one thing Petyr Baelish liked more than his own sweet daughter, it was money. Alayne shuddered at the thought and kept listening.
"Sasha comes to get me and warns me about his face. I mean...thank the Seven she did." Magda continued, "So I take him into the back room and pour him some wine and get to know him a bit better. He literally drank the whole flagon in one go then gave me a look over." Magda was watching to see if Alayne was listening to her, then her eyes narrowed a bit. "So the weird thing happened next, he told me that he was going to call me Sansa. You know as in Sansa Stark."
Alayne's eyes flew open in shock, both genuine and for the satisfaction of her story teller. This was not good, not one bit. "But isn't she dead?" Alayne asked, with a kind of mock shock that had all the women leaning in to hear more of the story. Testing the waters to see what rumors were circulating about her and her father.
Magda shook her head, "Don't know if she's dead, but if she's smart she's hiding for sure." All the women shook their head in agreement, then Magda continued, "The rest of the night he fucks the bloody Seven hells out of every hole on offer all the while calling me Sansa and making me look at him."
The women giggled, Alayne did her best to follow suit but couldn't stop her chest from tightening with fear and another emotion she couldn't quite place.
"I mean...he could have the biggest most perfect cock in the Seven Kingdoms to make me scream bloody murder like that." Magda had a cheeky grin on her face as she continued, "So once it's all said and done," she leaned into the girls and winked, "...many times over. I start to kind of ask some questions, you know kind of see why he's got such a thing for his Highborn maid."
'Good thinking,' Alayne smiled to herself.
"And he says he used to be a guard at the palace in King's Landing. That he used to watch over Sansa when she was betrothed to the King...that was before she killed the King that is." It was clear from Magda's words and from the responses of all the women that they were happy to see an end to Joffrey, particularly at the hands of a woman. For Alayne that was all she needed to hear, she was sure it was the Hound.
The thought of him forced her to relive some of her darker memories from her time in King's Landing, when she had lived in fear after the execution of her real father, when she had been a captive of the Lannisters. As she thought back on it all, and really tried her best to remember her interactions with the Hound at the palace, there was as sense that she'd been so naive at the time that she'd missed something between them.
'He was always near me.' she realized. Whether in the throne room, on the dias at a tourney or in her own private chambers, he had always been near. 'He rarely took his eyes off me either…' The realization hit her like lightning. 'Now he comes here, looking to fulfill his fantasy of me..'
A hand shook her softly, "Alayne ...hey!"
"Oh I was uh...just trying to remember if I saw anybody like that." Alayne lied to the women. "But perhaps I need to see him in real life. Is Ser Ugly Face Perfect Cock coming back?" She asked teasingly.
Magda smiled broadly, "Well of course he is, should be back in tonight I wager."
"Good." Alayne said with a smile, "Then I'll be sure give him a good look."
"At your own risk." Daniela cut in, sending the other two ladies into a wild fit of laughter.
Alayne merely smiled. "Father is waiting for me, I'll see you in a bit."
Handing out the last of the purses, Alayne soon lost herself in thought. It was so clear now she could have slapped herself for not seeing it before, the Hound had loved her. And if Magda's account was accurate, he probably loved her still. Even as a child in King's Landing, he'd looked at her the way a man looks at a woman when he has a desire for her. Not a desire for her lands, not for her station, not even for what the women sold here every night - but a desire to be near her and in her presence.
'I was so stupid not to see it, and too scared of him to care.' She realized. That had been partially Lord Baelish's doing. He would have noticed the Hound's attraction to her and drove a wedge immediately between them with his stories of the Hound's misdeeds. Things young girls like Sansa Stark would have nightmares of. She shook her head, angry she had fallen for her father's manipulation.
Sandor Clegane was the most fierce warrior in the Seven Kingdoms, having left the service of the Lannisters after the Battle of the Blackwater. He had been on the run ever since.
'Working as a sell sword suites him.' she mused, thinking of the Second Sons as an aptly named possible employer. They needed big strong men here, and he certainly fit the bill.
'He could be my ally, if he's not still put off from my rejection.' A smile crept across Alayne's face. 'Perhaps even a ticket to freedom if I'm willing to pay the price.'
The thought of giving herself to him as payment for his protection made her nipples hard and her belly ache. It was an erotic thought to be at his sexual mercy, riding with him through the war torn countryside of her homeland, their bond so strong that they would die for the other. It was a fantasy that she wouldn't mind playing out, even if just in her mind. Even now Alayne could not say if she loved the man, she only knew one side of him. But you didn't need to be in love to be drawn to a man. Alayne was interested in him and willing to feel out what his fantasy about her might entail, then use it to her advantage.
'I must see him tonight.' She was resolute on this point.
She snorted at herself before she pushed open the heavy wooden door to her father's office, acknowledging the fact that she had learned alot from him. There was no doubt in her mind that she was indeed, daddy's little girl.
