Sansa crawled between his knees, nudging them apart to make room, the bedclothes a rich mantle of warmth over her shoulders. She quaked from nerves, but then, so did he.
"What I want," she said, "is to touch you ."
"Do as you must," he croaked. "Wife." The new word hung between them, resonating like a bell into silence, and she smiled.
His bare torso was a feast for her eyes, and a knife to her heart. Violence and pain had carved their way across the map of his skin, paths she traced with her fingers, watching him jump.
The scars on his face were not so bad. Well, they were , but not to her, not anymore. They were a familiar landmark on the only face that had ever been kind to her in the lions' den, however long it had taken her to recognize that kindness buried under sarcasm and derision. His breath hitched as she ghosted her fingers across them, and then bent to kiss each cheek, saltwater-wet.
His hair was a spill of ink across the pillowcase, the silver of his eyes narrowed and unfathomable in the near-dark, but everything about him radiated hunger .
Yet he was patient still, unmoving but for the involuntary twitches from her touch, silent except for the muted noises outside of his control. She found herself increasing her efforts to hear them.
He finally broke. " Please , Sansa."
She had no wish to be cruel, at last taking his hands as he'd asked. The calluses were rough under her fingertips as she explored his palms, drawing them closer, uncertain. Where did she want him to touch her?
She started just above her knees, dragging slowly up each thigh. He gasped at the silk of her, so smooth he feared his fighter's hands would snag on it. Leaving one hand curled around her hip, she drew the other up over her belly, slowly, across her breastbone and the to the back of her neck, into her hair, sighing.
He tightened his fingers into her hair, then backed off and asked, "That okay?"
"Yes," she breathed. She closed her fingers around his and pulled, tugging the fistful of strands firmly, but not roughly.
The rasp of his fingers over her skin caught like a match, scattering sparks along her spine, igniting a thing she couldn't yet name. Heat pooled in her belly, and lower.
She directed him next to her breasts, lightly, for she could bear only the gentlest of touches there, after everything. For now.
And it was enough, as she'd never felt any touch like it before. Without thought, she reversed their limbs, her knees outside his thighs. Leaning forward, her body wanted to push against him, to relieve the ache he'd kindled.
His back arched off of the bed as she pressed against the hardness of him, wrenching a raw sound from his throat.
" Yes , woman. Gods , yes."
She wanted, she wanted…
She wanted to rock against him, a sweet friction gone undiscovered her whole life until now. She wanted his hands on her hips as she did so, the span of his grip so huge he reached almost to the core of her from behind. She wanted the sounds he made at her mercy, the incredulous pleasure in each catch and sigh.
The sensation built, and built, like climbing a mountain, nearing the summit with his fervent encouragement in her ears, and then it became the long, agonizing moment of an ocean current pulling away from shore - away, and away, until finally rushing back in to crash-
She screamed, a full-throated sound, a thing she didn't know could happen apart from pain, and
He bucked under her, desperate, neck corded and every muscle taut. "Fuck! Oh, fuck!"
It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, all of him vulnerable and straining beneath her, from what she had done. The Warrior himself under her power, subject to her, quivering for her.
She was a conqueror, finally the victor , and this was a battle she wanted to win again, and again, and again.
When she collapsed against him, the storm of weeping was inevitable, because it should always have been this way, for her, and for him, for every soul in this world that deserved to love and be loved. But gods, what they had each gone through to find it, and the tears that came were not hers alone.