Embarrassment painted her cheeks scarlet, and she dunked under the bath water hoping to extinguish her burning face. The steaming water only flamed it higher.
"I've acted like a common strumpet," Sansa groaned and scrubbed at the dirt between her toes. Ladies did not throw themselves at men, they did not beg for kisses, and they did not allow men to touch their intimate parts before marriage. They also certainly did not stroke or gaze upon the intimate parts of men with enjoyment.
Sandor must think her a loose woman. What if he was less kind to her, now that he knew her true crass nature? She could not bear it if he scorned her. She rose from the tub and dismissed that foolish thought. Sandor had shown he held a certain degree of affection for her and was not the sort to be cruel for the sake of cruelty. He scoffed sers and m'lords often enough to prove the little regard he held for courtly manners and standards. She knew he would not toss her aside for something as little as behaving too boldly.
And besides, she was a lady no longer so she ought not to worry over highborn concerns. As a common chambermaid she was free to be as bold as she chose. She shook her head and finished fastening her bodice. She was fretting over nothing, she knew, but it was hard not to expect something terrible to take away her bubble of happiness.
Sansa closed the bath door behind her and followed the smell of baking bread to the kitchens. She knew bathing in the morning would leave no time to break her fast before her work started, but it was a needed sacrifice after last night. She felt her cheeks redden again at the memory. She had awoken this morning to an empty bed, but she was neither disappointed nor surprised by it. Sandor was always gone before she woke, and now that he was recovered from his illness they would naturally return to their usual pattern.
The kitchen was a bustling frenzy, filled with swirling skirts and clanging cookware and cursing shouts. Sansa smiled at the familiarity and ignored her growling belly. She fetched her cleaning bucket from the corner and made her way to the washing well.
"Good morning, Grette," she called to the scowling girl hunched by the well. "Have you heard where we shall clean today? It's the Northern section's turn, but there's naught but rubble to scrub there."
"Your lucky arse is off to the Tower of The Hand. My miserable self is back to the king's chambers. They've finally noticed Lady Margaery is settled fine enough without me, and so I've been called back to tidy up after the rotting corpse of a king. Now, come over here and I'll fill your bucket."
"I shall miss cleaning with you," Sansa did not know what compelled her to say it, but she knew it was true. She set her bucket down beside the thin girl and knelt down.
"You could come with me, you know," Grette shaved off a curl of soap into Sansa's bucket. "Up to the king's chambers. It's easy work- just scrubbing and fetching and sitting out of the maester's way."
Sansa swirled her hand in the bucket, mixing the soap in. "I don't think I could bear being locked in there day after day. I rather enjoy wandering, and my own room, and..."
"And your man's warm arms and massive cock? Of course, I understand completely," the thin girl cackled loudly.
"Grette!" Sansa scolded, wide eyed at her crude words.
"Well, it's true enough, ain't it? Listen, the girls all have a running bet going. Some say a giant man like The Hound must have a tiny prick as a jape from the gods," she twirled her knife in the air. "But me and Hinny are of a mind that a big man like that must be big everywhere. So go on, say it true. Will I be three coppers richer?"
"You are acting terribly improper this morning," Sansa stood abruptly, heedless to the washing water she sloshed onto her own skirt. "I shall not speak of such things any further. And besides, who is to say Sandor is my man?"
Grette cackled again and called after Sansa's retreating back, "You're a shit liar."
Sansa did not turn around.
The entire walk from the kitchens to the tower was a struggle. Dread dogged her every step and she found it difficult to swallow past the lump in her throat. She forced her feet to move forward, but it was a hard battle not to flee back to Sandor's room. She had not set foot inside the tower since before her banishment to the servant's quarters and she had hoped to never do so again.
Too many ghosts lurked in the tower corners.
She shifted her heavy bucket to her other hand and knocked on the tower's main door. A small, homely woman opened the door and squinted up at Sansa.
"I've come to clean," Sansa pushed past stiff lips. The small woman had a string of rotting ears looped around her neck, and she fought against the urge to dry heave.
"Hm," the short woman grunted and stood to the side, allowing Sansa to slip past her and into the hallway.
"Chella?" A man's voice drifted from the closed door of the nearest bedchamber. "Why do I hear voices? I told you to allow no one in while my guest visits.
"Cleaner is here," Chella shouted back and stalked back to her post outside the same closed bedchamber door.
The bedchamber door wrenched open viciously. Tyrion Lannister glared up at Chella, completely naked. "When I said no one, I meant no one! I'd have thought you'd have a proficiency for listening well- you have the extra ears for it."
"I've only let the servants in," she protested sourly.
Sansa kept her gaze fixed on the cracked stone above Chella's shoulder, refusing to look at the nude dwarf. She hoped they'd finish arguing soon.
"Come, my lion. The bed grows cold without you," a lilting voice cooed from behind Tyrion. He looked over his shoulder with longing, then glared back up at Chella.
"Do try your best to keep the riffraff out. I shall be thoroughly indisposed for the next hour."
"Or two!" The lilting voice chuckled as Tyrion closed the door behind himself.
She was glad he had not bothered to study her too closely. The absence of scorn and scrutiny felt refreshing. She nodded politely at Chella and set about her work.
She scrubbed the solar, the small gathering hall, and Lord Mace Tyrell's bedchamber without coming across another soul. She was settling in to scrub the stone floors outside the chamber a few doors past Lord Mace's rooms when a voice carried over to her.
"Tell me, my stupid girl, do you know your numbers?"
Sansa paused with her hand suspended over her bucket.
"O-of course I do, my lady. And my letters as well," a tremulous voice replied.
"Then count! How many days has he been ill? How much longer do you think he can stay that way before they start asking questions?" The furious voice rose.
"Nine, my lady. He has been ill for nine days, but I know not h-how much longer-" the wavering voice broke off into whimpering sobs. Sansa could not quite place why the voices sounded so familiar. If she could just hear a bit better, she might be able to place them. She crept to the nearest door and listened, but heard nothing stirring.
The second door she approached held much better results.
"Oh stop your incessant sniveling, girl. It is no one's fault but your own. I gave you the bottle to use and you failed to use it properly. You must fix what you botched, do you understand?"
Suddenly, she knew the speakers.
"The gods punished us so terribly for what we did. They've struck down Megga and Elinor already!" The sobs had slowed but hysteria still laced the handmaid's voice.
"I shall strike you down if you do not do as you're told!" Lady Olenna snarled.
She shivered and scurried back to her bucket. She had heard enough and had no taste to listen further. Her heart pounded in her throat and a bitter taste coated her tongue. She had vowed to speak with Sandor about what she had heard before in Margaery's rooms but had failed to. With this new information the need became all the more pressing.
She hurried through the halls and twisting stairs of the tower, only slowing her pace past Chella for a show of normalcy. Once the tower's main door was shut behind her, she ran as hard as her tired legs and tight skirts would allow.
She could not be certain where Sandor was posted today for guard duty, but Maegor's Holdfast seemed the most likely. She paused before the walkway over the spiked moat and fought to catch her breath. She squinted in the mid-day light, trying to make out who was guarding the other side and nearly shouted in delight at the sight of the hulking man. She pushed down that unladylike urge and hurried across the bridge.
"Sandor," she hissed. "Could we speak? This cannot wait until tonight."
"What has happened? Is all well?" Sandor frowned down at her and wrapped her left arm in his strong hand. A thrill shot down her spine at his touch.
"All is fine," she replied carefully. "Is there a private spot we might speak? I don't wish to say this in the open."
His back stiffened and he nodded curtly, snatching his hand back as though she had burnt him. He led her into the holdfast, round a twisting corner and then ducked them both behind a dusty suite of decorative armor down an empty hallway. He crossed his arms and stood as far away as the cramped space allowed. He was very close, and it was hard to concentrate with his warm smell of leather and smoke wrapping around her.
"They'll not miss me until the changing of the guard, and that won't be for some time. Now spit it out," he snapped, his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth spasming lightly.
"You see, I meant to tell you earlier, only when I awoke you were already gone-"
"Regretting letting a filthy dog paw at you?" He snarled, his lips twitching madly and his scars pulled taught in a grimace.
"No!" Sansa shook her head vigorously and frowned up at him. "I...well, to be bold I quite enjoyed last night."
"Ah, then you must be fretting for your maidenhead. Do you take me for my brother, that I would fuck you bloody while you struggled?" His voice rose with his temper.
"Of course not! I know you would not take anything I did not gladly give. You won't hurt me," Sansa tilted her chin and refused to look away from his fierce glare. "And besides, from the sound of the gossip half of the keep has the notion we've been sharing a bed for a great length of time. Not a single person has raised a fuss, so I hardly think either you or I will be punished for our actions. There is nothing to fret about."
"You have a mind to make true a gossiped lie? For why? To prove a point?"
Sansa set her jaw, lowered her bucket to the floor, and pressed her hands against his cheeks.
"You are not to twist this into something horrible. I will not let you," she rubbed against his ruined cheek with her thumb. "I will not let you. I care for you too deeply to allow that."
Sandor opened his mouth, as though to dismiss her affection. Sansa continued before he could interrupt.
"I love you, can't you see? You don't have to love me in return, just please know that I speak the truth. When we lay together proper I will not regret my maidenhead, nor will we do so to prove anything to anybody. We shall do so because we want to. I know not how to make this any clearer."
She could not be certain, but she thought his eyes were damp when he crashed his lips onto her own. A small voice in the back of her head reminded her of the urgent reason she had rushed to find Sandor, but then he nipped at her lip and his grip was at her hip and he was pressing into her so deliciously that she could think of nothing else but his taste, his smell, his touch.
She gasped when he ground his hips against hers and cupped the back of her neck with his other hand. He pulled back from their kiss and braced his forehead against hers, panting.
"Can't you see?" He rasped, his voice hoarse from words unsaid and his gray eyes burning brighter than she had ever seen them. She felt as though she was drowning in him, but she would not have it any other way.
"I do," Sansa assured him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders before raising up on her toes and pressing her lips against his once more. She sucked on his bottom lip, then nudged at the crease of his lips with her tongue. He eagerly parted and allowed her to explore. She found she was quite fond of his taste, so warm and nearly sweet.
His long fingers trailed down her hip to her thigh, then gathered up her skirts until her leg was free enough to wrap around his hip. She lifted her freed leg and hooked it around him, pulling him closer. His armor dug into her chest, but she cared not.
He groaned and thrust forward, urging the burning fire inside Sansa even higher. She broke from their kiss and ghosted her lips down to his jaw, peppering small kisses along the stubble there. She moved lower, pressing her lips against the soft skin of his throat.
"Oh, little bird," he rumbled when she experimentally flicked her tongue out against his pulse point. She trailed a hand down his armored chest, then further down to his cloth covered hip. He jumped and hissed when her touch brushed against his hard length through the fabric of his trousers.
"Please, I wish to see you," she whispered, half shocked by her own boldness.
"Don't tempt me, little bird. I'm of a mind to take you against this wall," he ground his hardness against her center and groaned. "But you deserve better than a stone wall."
Sansa was of a mind to argue that a stone wall would do fine, just to feel him inside her and to have relief from her achingly empty womanhood. As though he read her mind, he shook his head and slipped his hand beneath her skirts and into her smallclothes.
His long fingers cupped her mound for a moment, then moved lower and skimmed across her sensitive nub. Unlike last time, he did not stop there. He explored further, swirling her wetness around her folds. She felt him nudge at her opening with a finger, then slip inside easily with her slickness. She gasped into his shoulder, the intrusion a wholly unfamiliar sensation. There was a sting of discomfort at first, but then he crooked his finger and she was seeing stars. She slumped into him and braced her toes against the stone floor, desperately eager for the feeling to continue.
She dimly registered being pushed against the wall, but the cool stones did nothing to extinguish her scorching need. Sandor pumped into her gently, curling his finger in the most lovely spot each time. The sensation was nearly unbearably wonderful, then he added a second finger and it felt as though the floor had dropped away from her feet.
A building wave of pleasure broke and washed through her, sending her limbs trembling and pulling a keen of delight from her lips. Sandor swallowed her little noises and kissed down to the corner of her mouth, then further down to the crook of her neck. They stayed still for some moments, enjoying the warm press of each other.
Sansa lifted a hand to the waist band of his trousers, intending to untie his laces and return the pleasure he had shown her. His throbbing member strained against the thick fabric. She was fiddling with the lace knot when the mid-day bells rang overhead.
Sandor jumped back, his eyes wide and panicked.
"Changing of the guard," he gasped, his eyebrows knitted together in worry.
"Go quickly," Sansa urged. "I will follow shortly."
He nodded and sent a lingering, searing look down the length of her body. He seemed to shake himself from a stupor, then readjusted his hard member until it was tucked upright, hidden by his long tunic and armor. He slipped out from their hidden nook and stalked down the length of the hall.
As she had promised, she followed after his steps had faded away from hearing. Her heart was thrumming happily and her steps felt light as air. It was only while scrubbing the steps of the gardens hours later that she realized she had not told Sandor of the whispers she heard from Lady Olenna's room.