Chapter Summary: She insists on always making it about the children, when all he wants to talk about is the two of them. Cersei and Jaime—that is family, that is what he understands. Everything else is a distraction.

Notes: Thank you for all the follows, favs, kudos, and especially the kind comments, which are really encouraging and help drive me along.

Chapter Three: Jaime

Jaime rubs the white hotel towel roughly over his hair with his right hand until his hair no longer lies slick and wet against his head, balls the towel up, and tosses it on the black granite bathroom sink before hitting the lights and sauntering barefoot from the room, from white, cool tile, to plush beige carpet. When he came up from the lobby, he cranked the room's air up, making the difference between the humid, heated air of the bathroom after a hot shower marked, particularly only with a wet bath towel slung low over his hips. He goes to the controls to adjust it so that Cersei won't have an excuse for keeping any of her clothes on.

He's used to fucking his ex-wife quick with her skirt up around her waist and her panties pulled to the side, but he has every intention of taking advantage of the anonymity of this Michigan hotel room and the time afforded him by Robert's drunken stupor.

He's only just changed the setting, when three soft knocks rattle the door.

Cersei.

He doesn't hurry to get it, though his heart is already beginning to pound within his chest in anticipation of having his lips on her and her legs wrapped around his waist. She'll comment on his eagerness if he opens the door too quickly just as he would have commented if she followed him from the lobby too soon. They both want the same thing, but there is this game they play, that they have always played, and there are rules that must be observed. The rules extend the battle, drawing it out until they're at each other tooth and nail. What Jaime came to learn early on is that the fight is nearly as good as the kill.

He makes a show of only opening the door partway. He leans his shoulder into the doorframe, blocking her entrance, while she stands in the hall with her red lips pursed.

He raises his brows and lazily pulls his lower lip through his teeth, as he slowly checks her out. "Cersei. Are you lost?"

"Don't be stupid. Someone could walk by."

She puts her hand square in the middle of his chest and pushes him backward into the room. He allows her to win this battle, giving way to the pressure of her hand and standing back as she breezes past him, her fingers grazing the hairs on his chest with the briefest of contact. He can smell her perfume as she strides into the room, all bold confidence, and sinks down without invitation on white down comforter draped over the king sized bed.

He kicks the door shut behind him, shaking the gilded mirror that hangs on the wall, and walks over to the silver ice bucket, pretending to ignore her presence. But he's still watching. He's always watching. It sometimes feels as if he was born watching her. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see her reaching down to slip her red soled heels off, revealing one manicured foot and then another.

Fuck. Everything about her is sexy, even the arch of her damn foot.

He drops three round, hollow cubes into each tumbler and grabs for the chilled vodka he had room service deliver. She lies back on the bed and stares up at the ceiling, as he pours first one and then another drink. Two doubles. He picks up both glasses and without seemingly needing to glance up at him, she stretches out a hand to take one from him.

She drinks more than she used to. But, he would drown himself if he was married to Robert Baratheon.

Drink in hand, he wanders silently over the carpet to the window, which is bathed in the late afternoon sun. It's the perfect light to see every little golden hair on her body. Under his body she'll be all tan skin against white cotton of the bed linens once they stop this waiting, this excruciating torture of feigned indifference.

He hears the ice clink in her glass and he brings his own to his lips, staring out over the grey water of the cold lake.

She is the first to break the silence, acknowledging his presence—the first step in ending their stalemate. "I had a little chat with your brother. About family."

Not what he was hoping to talk about. "Family," he repeats, between slow sips.

"Yes, I think we need to work together. Lannister Mercantile and Baratheon Industries."

Jaime reaches up to scratch his brow with his index finger. "A business proposition." Which she took to my brother, not to me. Shouldn't she come to me to handle something so important?

"Not quite. It was more of a suggestion for shared prosperity."

"And how did that little suggestion go over?"

"I don't think your brother knows the meaning of family."

He rocks on his heels, jostling the ice in his glass as he looks down at his feet. "Maybe he's confused by your insistence that anyone named Baratheon could possibly be our family."

"Joffrey inherits the one and Tommen the other. That's what makes this a family issue, you know that."

Joffrey and Tommen. Tommen and Joffrey. She insists on always making it about the children, when all he wants to talk about is the two of them. Cersei and Jaime—that is family, that is what he understands. Everything else is a distraction. Especially her disrespectful husband.

He clutches his glass tighter. "I think we could all do without Robert. Even you."

"Lower your voice. These walls are paper thin," she hisses.

He turns around, stalking towards her, where she sits coolly on the bed, one long leg crossed over the other, her drink held out from where her elbow rests on her hip. He sets his own drink down on the shiny ebony hotel desk, leaving the vodka largely untouched, and comes the last few steps to the bed, where she waits with her eyes slightly narrowed in challenge.

He stands, feet planted on either side of her legs, and bends down until he's balanced on one hand and she's forced to lean back, her glass tipping and spilling colorless liquid on the comforter as her neck bows. He brushes the shell of her ear with his nose and whispers, "Let them hear."

Never satisfied to suffer a reaction—a prickle of goose bumps along her arms from his breath against her neck—without prompting something similar in him, Cersei presses the cold glass against the heated skin of his chest, making him flinch.

"Don't be stupid. My room with Robert is only one room down."

He swears to himself then and there that she's going to scream loud enough to wake anyone who might be sleeping this afternoon. Even if that happens to be her fat husband snoring one floor below them.

"Get rid of him," Jaime hums against her skin. "Divorce him."

She wraps her slim fingers around his neck, holding him back, as one perfect nail scratches over his skin. Her green eyes, a shade strikingly similar to his own, stare back at him. "What about Tommen?"

Tommen, Tommen, Tommen. "What about him?"

She rolls her eyes. "He won't inherit his share of Baratheon Industries until he's twenty-five. You know how Renly hates me. He'd be whispering lies in Robert's ear in the meantime, endangering Tommen's place."

Lies or just the truth, which is just as damning in this case. There might be a paternity test if Robert's younger brother got his way. That's what she's afraid of. She has this dream for her boys, which involves the pair of them dominating the two most powerful companies in New York City, probably with her dominating it all, when Jaime's dream has always been about her. The truth would place all of that in danger, although Jaime doesn't see how the loss of Baratheon Industries would be so terrible a fate for their chubby little boy.

If the divorce and Tommen's paternity caused a scandal they didn't want to ride out in the city, they could leave, use some of the family money to live in the islands and forget the rest. They could take Myrcella and Tommen. He could scout for some ball club. No one would know them.

"I'll see to it that Tommen is taken care of," he promises through gritted teeth, sick of this conversation, sick of anything besides being inside of her, but he's barely said it when Cersei throatily laughs, her long neck tipping back in amusement, as if he's said the funniest thing she's heard all day.

He bites at the slope of her neck, cutting off her infuriating amusement. He bites hard, taking some satisfaction in the give of her flesh under his teeth. He still has the power to affect her. She lets her glass drop—it rolls and hits the carpet with a dull thud—and then her hands are at his towel, pulling it loose, but even as it puddles on the floor and she digs her fingers into his ass, she scolds, "No marks, Jaime."

When she was his alone, when they beloned to each other, he didn't need to mark her, and now that he shares her, he's not allowed.

He grunts, as he fists her delicate sweater, yanking it over her head, exposing her smooth skin and black lacy bra he could only just glimpse through the loose knit of her sweater, teasing him ever since she appeared in the lobby. "Skirt. Off," he demands, and her face is appropriately serious as she slips a hand behind her back to unzip it.

Her hand moves so slowly that he can hear each individual tooth give way, and then she stops, when the zipper reaches the seam, one brow arched in defiance, as she leans back on bent elbows. He could stand naked before her and make her wait, leave her to make another move to advance their mutual seduction, but he's done with this game of waiting and wanting.

He grabs her by the hips, pulling her to the edge of the bed. Tugging at her loosened skirt, he hauls it down over her ass and down her hips. He expects that she'll be wearing little matching panties, a lacy scrap of fabric begging to be kissed and then tossed aside, because she's always perfectly put together right down to her lingerie, but when the skirt slides past her knees and is kicked free of her ankles, there are no panties—black or otherwise.

"Fuck me," he murmurs.

"That's the idea," she agrees with a smirk, as she falls back in the bed with her legs invitingly spread for him.

The point of today's rendezvous was that they'd have all the time in the world, but Jaime is seized by such an intense need not to know where he stops and Cersei begins, that he dives in as if they have only a few stolen minutes, while Robert is distracted by a secretary or waitress he wants to fuck.

It's all need and no finesse, when he leans over her, pushing the cups of her bra up over her breasts so he can close his mouth around one pebbled, rosy nipple. Looking up at her, he can see annoyance twisting her lips at the impatience that has left her bra trapped tightly around her chest warring with the pleasure of his mouth on her and his teeth scraping her nipple, but the pressure of his cock against her stomach is enough to have him growing hard, which is what he needs to be inside of her, so that she'll forget any and all aggravation.

Things only really make sense when they're fucking. That's been the case since he took her virginity in the men's changing room of his father's tennis club after she'd dressed in his polo and white pants on a lark that ended with her sucking at his pulse point and grabbing him through his boxers.

He's in a heady rush, but so is she. Her nails digging into his shoulders—marking him, because he's always hers to be marked—and her heel coming up to press sharply into his lower back are proof of her need for him, so he grabs her hip, angles her against him, and pushes into her. There's no resistance to his hard thrust. She's wet and hot and it's as perfect as always. This much is always right.

She agrees with his wordless assessment, gasping yes into the crown of his head as their bodies meet in the fast pace he's set, a pace that makes her breasts bounce and brush against his chest with each smack of their thighs. He worships each breast, teases each nipple, making her moan and thrash. He kisses between them, licking a slow path upwards until her bra prevents him from going any farther and he groans in frustration.

"You're the one who had no patience," she archly reminds him.

He only wants her exclaiming her pleasure, so he kisses her hard, but she bites—she always bites—and he bites back. She tastes like vodka and wine and lipstick. Her skin is more familiar, more her. Fisting what's left of her hair—since she cut it, his is nearly as long as hers, a fact that sometimes makes her tease that from behind they might be confused for each other—in his hand, he twistss her head to the side, so he might finish his tongue's trail to the sensitive spot behind her ear, while he continues his relentless drive into her until he can taste salt on her skin and he's panting with the effort of holding back his orgasm.

Her damn nails sting, distracting him from the coiling pleasure in his lower belly, and he knocks them off with a jerk of his shoulders, pausing in his thrusts to grasp her hands, stretch them up above her head, and pin them to the comforter.

"You're going to come for me," he growls, letting loose of her to stand upright. "We're going to come together."

Her legs wrap tightly around him, her ankles locking behind him, not allowing him much room to maneuver, but his fingers do the rest of the work, rubbing circles against her until he can feel her tightening around him and the rest is inevitable. He can finally give in to his own need, letting his hips snap fast and uneven against her.

She comes, thanking God, who she has no faith in, and he empties inside of her on a string of curses, allowing gravity to take his head back with his eyes closed, while his toes curl into the carpet. It's a rush so good, it almost feels like a punch in the gut. He can barely stand, as he twitches once more inside of her, his knees suddenly feeling like Jello.

He withdraws from her and semen spills out before he lowers her flat to the bed and collapses alongside her with his hand flopped over his pounding heart.

He should have used a condom. Joffrey was a mistake, an accident of youth, but there have been no mistakes since. Even Tommen was planned. But if something needs to be done about his recklessness, Cersei will know what to do.

"You might try shouting my name, you know," he teases, letting his head roll to the side to smile at her on a heavy exhalation.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Course I would."

She frowns. "That was careless." He assumes she means that he didn't put on a condom, until she adds, "You better hope no one heard us."

He scrubs his face. Not seconds later and she already feels too far away, the connection already a thing of the past, as she tugs her bra back down over her breasts and sits up to search for her discarded skirt.

"I don't care what anyone thinks," he insists wearily.

"You would after he ruined us," she says, grabbing for her sweater. "He's Robert Baratheon, Jaime. He's the king of military industry. You don't think he could do it?"

Maybe Cersei's bore of a husband could ruin them, maybe he could ruin everything, even Lannister Mercantile, but the problem is Jaime just doesn't care one way or the other, so long as he ends up with Cersei.

"I could take a quick ride on the elevator, knock on your hotel room door, and end this nonsense, and then we could see how it all plays out."

Her eyes dart to him, as she stands to step into her skirt and zip it back up, while he lies there, his penis softening against his stomach. He's seen this look on her face before. Cersei hates to be afraid, hates any sign of weakness in herself and others, but fear is etched on her face. She looks at him as if she isn't sure which wire to cut to disarm him.

She stands for a moment, frozen, her clothing not quite straight and her hair no longer its usual smooth style, and then something shifts in her, some other, stronger impulse takes control.

She takes control of him—it's what she always does—as she shimmies her skirt up higher around her thighs and kneels on the bed, crawling over his body until her thighs cage his shoulders and her fingers weave through his hair, tilting his head forward towards her body.

"Let me handle, Robert, darling, and you just take care of me."

Notes: When there are more than a few days break in updates, I'm likely to post a teaser to my tumblr (username justadram). You can also follow Sansa (makepinklemonade) and Margaery (ahighgardenrose). Feel free to contact them with questions or whatever you might have on your mind.

Next up is Cat's POV, as the Starks head back to NYC, minus one senator, who is going back to Washington.