Fanfiction only. I own no part of Game of Thrones.

Bolton's Kiss

Clegane carried Sansa all the way back to her rooms, glaring at anyone who got in his way so fiercely that they scuttled away. He sat her on a chair by the fire and then bolted the door.

"Little Bird, this is killing both of us, and it can't go on." Clegane knelt before her. "Tell me what you want to do."

Sansa's stomach twisted and churned, but she was relieved that for the moment, at least, it was just the two of them. She pushed Clegane's hair back so that the entirety of his scarred face was bared, from his crown nearly to his jaw. She reached out to lay her hand upon his face, but Clegane's iron grip captured her wrist, grinding the bones together.

He growled angrily, "I thought you were past seeing that."

"I am, but you still don't believe that it could be true."

Clegane released her, and Sansa caressed his face, gently tracing the ridges of puckered and distorted flesh with her finger tips. When he quietly protested with an embarassed, "No!", Sansa shushed him. He closed his eyes and held his breath, expecting her to withdraw from him in revulsion any moment. Instead, she pressed her lips to the most brutal of the scarring, once, twice, a dozen times, and he choked back a sob of humiliation. She covered his face with her kisses, not even shying away from where his ear had been brutally melted away.

Sansa laid her forehead against his. "Sandor, look at me." He opened his eyes, and instead of rage, she saw his fear and self-loathing. "I went to King's Landing as a girl, hoping to find a true knight that would carry me away and love me for the rest of my days. In all the halls of the Red Keep, you were the only true knight. You are not the monster that they made you believe you are. The real monsters were all golden and beautiful."

She pressed a kiss against his lips and held it there until he returned it. "The beautiful monsters with their forked, lying tongues and hands full of gold have found me again, and still you are the only person willing to stand between them and me. I trust only you."

Leaning back, she took his hands in her own. "Tell me true. If you could have me for your own, would you want me?"

It took several long minutes for Clegane to work up the courage to rasp a barely audible, "Yes." He took a deep breath. "Yes, damn it, I'd have you!"

Clegane took Sansa's face in his hands and kissed her, and this time it was firm, possessive. Sansa thought she'd erupt in flame. At first he was gentle, holding her face in the depths of his cavernous hands, but as the moments slipped by and his passion had been stoked, his kisses had deepened and become rougher. He had held her waist to keep her at a careful distance, and his hands had trembled with the effort of restraining himself.

Suddenly, he broke away from her, panting, and stood towering over Sansa. "Are you sure, my Lady?"

Sansa threaded her fingers between his and stood beside him. "I won't be traded away again to a man that doesn't love me." She stepped closer and pressed her body against his and felt his desire rigid against her. "You are the only man I've ever known that cared nothing at all for my title, and I think that you love me." Clegane's eyes were dark and he didn't move, didn't speak, didn't breathe. Suddenly uncertain, she caught her lip between her teeth. "I hope that you do . . ."

Clegane captured her face between his hands again and bent to lay his forehead against hers. "I've always loved you, little bird, even though you were never mine to love. I've always known you could never be mine."

Sansa kissed him gently. "Winterfell may be Jon's to barter away, but my heart is mine alone to give. If you'd accept it, I'd place that into your protection as well."

Clegane lifted her chin gently and reclaimed her mouth. Still, he held his desires in check, waiting to be invited to touch her. She guided his hands around her body, and when she released them, he spread long fingers across her back. His kisses deepened and Sansa lost any sense of her surroundings. There was only Sandor Clegane's strong arms around her and his mouth pressing against hers. When Sansa found her back pressed against the stone wall, Sandor groaned with something like frustration tangled with lust and regret. He broke their kiss and pressed his forehead to the cool, damp stone. He squeezed his eyes shut and spread his hands across the wall, trying to recall himself, his honor warring with his desire.

Deprived of the pleasure of his mouth, Sansa explored his body. She pressed kisses into his weathered throat and into the coarse curls revealed by his open shirt. Her hands travelled down his ribs and across his belly. When she caressed her palm down the length of his burning arousal, he groaned and couldn't restrain himself from pressing into her touch.

She'd boldly untied the lacings of his trousers, and when her cool fingers met the blaze in his flesh, Sandor's restraint broke entirely. He'd crushed Sansa to his chest, and ground into her, moaning her name into her neck. Sansa's hands wrapped around his trim hips and buttocks hardened from years of riding and fighting, and pressed her body against his.

"Clegane, untie me."

Thick fingers used to gripping the hilt of a sword fumbled to untie her bodice. Drunk on the musk of his desire, Sansa's hands followed the arch of his back hungrily and she writhed against his solid warmth. When her questing fingers found his broad shoulders beneath his shirt, Sandor lifted her into his arms and tore through the laces with a growl of frustration. He toed out of his boots and kicked off his trousers as he bore Sansa to her bed. She released his shoulders only long enough to push the bodice of her gown and her shift off her shoulders.

Sandor pulled away what remained of Sansa's clothes and tossed them aside with his shirt, returning to her with kisses that devoured. When he took her in his arms and pressed her against him, she shivered in pleasure at the enveloping warmth of his body.

Sandor trailed kisses down her neck, but when he gently nipped at her shoulder, for a moment he was Ramsay. Sandor's eyes darkened with passion were Ramsay's black with malice. Sandor's soft bite was Ramsay's snarling teeth sinking deep into her flesh.

Sansa scuttled back from a shocked Sandor, and she covered herself and cowered in the corner of the bed and the wall, wrapping her arms around herself. "No, Ramsay, please! Don't!"

Devastated, Sandor choked, "Sansa! I'd never . . ." Sansa covered her mouth and choked on a sob. Sandor knelt beside her and held up his hands in surrender. His face crumpled with concern. "Gods, woman, what did he do to you?"

Sansa covered her face with her hands and wept into them. When Sandor reached for her, she pressed into the cold stone beside her bed and sobbed harder. Sandor sighed heavily and shifted his weight, intending to retreat and dress. Sansa's hand locked around his wrist.

"Please don't go. I'm sorry."

Sandor coaxed Sansa away from the wall and back into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body to his. After a few minutes, Sandor began to carefully unwind her from around his body.

"Forgive me, my Lady. I should never have been so presumptuous."

Sansa turned imploring crystal eyes on Sandor, and she refused to release him. She turned her shoulder into the flickering firelight to reveal a ring of twisted flesh, unmistakably the scar from a human bite. Her lip trembled. "He would bite me until the blood flowed freely. He beat me with riding crops and pokers hot from the fire. He'd cut me with his knife and once a saw," Sansa extended a foot across the fine white sheets and Sandor grimaced at a deep indentation in the side of her calf, "but Roose burst in and stopped him." Sansa laughed convulsively and mopped snot away from her nose. "Lord Bolton said my bannermen were likely to notice if he took off my foot, and I'd be of no value at all if the wound festered and I died before producing an heir. When he'd had enough of my screaming, he'd rape me in the bed I was born in until I thought my flesh would tear away from my bones. I thought my bones would splinter and be ground into dust."

Sansa turned imploring eyes on her shield. "There was blood on the sheets every time, and they changed my sheets several times a day." Sandor gathered her to him again, and he rocked her. Sansa locked her arms around his neck and pressed her perfect face against his ruined flesh. She pressed her eyes shut and whispered into his neck, "I'll have you, and gladly, but don't let Jon force me to marry again."

Sandor nodded. "Do you want me to take you away from Winterfell?"

Reassured, Sansa sighed and let herself go limp against the protection of her shield's body. "There must always be a Stark at Winterfell."

Sandor pressed kisses into her hair, and Sansa let him lay her down and cover her. As the embers in the hearth smoldered and the light faded from the room, Sansa clung to him. Her breaths had lengthened, and he had thought she was asleep when she whispered, "I wished every day that I had let you carry me away after the Blackwater."

When Sansa woke in the morning, Sandor was gone. She refused to allow the maid to change the sheets, as they held his scent, and it was a comfort that kept her nightmares of Ramsay at bay.