Next morning we broke our fast in the wheelhouse, we'd been on the road almost four weeks and the king wanted to make up time, and Cersei was in a foul mood. "What's wrong, mother?" Tommen said. "Would you like to hold the cat?"

"I didn't sleep well darling," she said, but she was glaring at me as she said it. "I could hear giggling all night."

That was ridiculous of course - we had talked for maybe twenty minutes the party had broken up - but I didn't respond. If Cersei hated me making friends she loathed any reference to Jaime and I as a couple. Sometimes I revelled in it. I taunted her with it; "Well Jaime thinks..." I'd say to Tommen, or; "Perhaps 'Jaimette' for a girl," when Myrcella pleaded with me about baby names.

Somehow sitting with Cersei on those wretched pillows day after day, I lost my fear of her. She was sad and vain and seemed to spend her hours carefully cotton-wrapping a monstrously proprotioned ego. What was there to be afraid of? I was already friendless, I had no money of my own, no ambitions... She couldn't turn Jaime against me because he wasn't for me in the first place. It was an oddly powerful position she'd landed me in. When she expressed displeasure it only fuelled me further. That night with Jaime, I turned my wit up high as I could and laughed free and easy at the thought of her fuming in the next room.

The only downside of it all was it left me feeling very close to Jaime. I was there in the dark each night listening to him breath, not quite touching but close enough to smell (horse, sweat, grass, tavern smoke and wet wool) and it was hard not to let my mind roam loose and fix him with some different personality and imagine to myself that he loved me, that I loved him, that he'd stand up for me if he could hear Cersei's snide remarks. The baby moving around in my stomach kept me up but not as much as those half-formed daydreams.

It was worse when we woke up in the mornings half-entangled; sometimes his mouth found odd spots behind my ears, at the crest of my neck, the crown of my head, and I woke up with him jerking out of these intimate positions. It was too much for me. Usually there was his arousal too, absent the first weeks of the journey but there every morning by the time we were close to Winterfell. I suppose it had been weeks since he'd had his paramour in King's Landing and any little thing seemed to set him off - seeing me undress, if I happened to brush past him taking my seat for dinner, if I even asked for my maid to run a bath. The inn rooms got smaller and colder the further North we went and they seemed to push us together, he felt the cold worse than I and there was nowhere to hide in those narrow beds and mouldy furs. We were both fed up of complaining by then but sometimes he delayed putting out the lamps; it was so much worse in the dark.

Once at the very end of trip, I woke up in the middle of the night and we were facing each other in bed, rolled in together. "Are you awake?" I whispered, even though I could tell by his breathing that he was.

"Yes." It came out strained, pained; a bare yelp.

I lay there a few seconds, contemplating. It was truly the middle of the night - the inn was silent but for some rustling, a cough in a distant room, a bed groaning as somebody turned over. The night was black, the heavy wooden shutters muffled all noise from outside. I propped myself up on one elbow and took a handful of his shirt and leaned over to kiss him.

For a moment he was startled and then he was pushing back at me, mechanically, as if his limbs moved of their own volition. His hands moved up to roam my body and he couldn't get close enough. It wasn't really comparable to the 'sex' we'd had previously. He broke a sweat even though the air was icy. My hands were not limp by my side but working to get him out of his clothes as fast as he tore mine. I bit my lip to hold back a giggle when I reached down to touch him and he quivered, he was rock hard, ready to go. And for once his fingers were not a means to an end. They felt different too; calloused from days on horseback, his thumb was rough tracing dry circles on me. He only broke the kiss to pull me up, to reposition himself above me. He'd always held himself back but I preferred this, this... he was not aggressive but it was a sort of aggression. He pushed himself in and oh, he began slow, not the steady rocking of a wheel as I remembered but the natural rhythm, slow at first, a heartbeat promising to speed up in time. His eyes were closed, head bent to administer to my throat, my collarbone, previously neglected hollows and crannies that were now set ablaze. My foot hooked over the back of his leg, my heel stroked his calf urgently, begging him to speed up. I had some feeling low in my stomach I needed him to reach, I pushed my hips up to meet him, trying to get him deeper, closer. "Jaime," it was a whine, a whisper, we were both going as fast as we could, and then he said it, breathless, hanging above me, eyes closed - "Cersei."

I heard it, he heard it. My stomach withdrew into itself, but I wanted to see it through. His eyes flew open and his rhythm faltered but I didn't want him to stop so I pulled him in to kiss me again and let out a low groan to spur him on. Perhaps he managed to push it out of his mind and lose himself again, but I didn't. Oh it still felt good, but it wasn't the same.

He rolled off afterward, still panting. One arm was beneath me and we lay like that on our backs in the dark. The sweat was cooling in a shiver all down my arms. "Cersei," I repeated. "Always her?"

He turned his head as if to burrow into my hair. "Sorry," he said indistinctly.

"No, no, really, it explains a lot," I said.

"You won't tell anyone, will you?"

"Who have I got to tell?" and it hung in the air, he didn't answer, only went to sleep after a while (what did I expect?) and I lay awake.

I'm sort of unsure about this chapter. I hadn't planned to go into detail during the story because I don't think smut is my strong point, but I decided it was necessary here. Anyways, let me know what you think!