ｅｉｇｈｔ
𝓈𝑜 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓈𝒶𝓎
╚══ ❀•°❀°•❀ ══╝
Time ate away at many things: it would bring rust to metal, cause a beautiful flower to become shriveled and dead, age an animal towards decay. Aemma Targaryen hadn't been taken by time or decay or anything that could slowly set in like rot. It had been sudden and random and over. The pain, however, was left behind for others, which was susceptible to the increase of time. It withered her daughter, and on the day of the funeral, there had been little else but skin and bone and a thin layer of blood left.
Rhaenyra had went through the motions, unable to remember where each step was supposed to go. She had sat through the sermon, her father just next to her, however, he might as well have never left the hospital. Instead, the stranger next to her hadn't so much as looked at her for a week. And the pain had yet to settle, rotting away at her insides as she sat, staring into nothing, hearing nothing, and drifting further and further away.
She followed the crowd, ignoring the sympathies of family that she could barely see.
"So you say," Aemma had told her, the last words she'd ever hear her mom speak.
The memory was a broken thing, which was how she found herself leaning her entire weight against the church, taking deep breaths as if it would chase away the decay. She slid down the church, her back scraping against the wood as her hair dragged a moment behind, falling over her face until it draped around her. Her black dress fell down her thighs, but she didn't care about modesty or much of anything at all. She just stared into nothing, as if she could will herself to merge with it.
When she closed her eyes, she remembered her mother sitting at the edge of the white-sheeted hospital bed with the muscle in her arms taunt as she gripped the linen. She had tried not to scream. She had tried to hold in sound for her daughter, but her teeth clenched together so hard that they might have cracked and Rhaenyra would never know. Then, Rhaenyra would open her eyes, and her mother was gone and she was the one with taunt muscles, gripping blades of grass as if they'd somehow burrow deeper to hold her strength.
Alicent approached, carefully, as if she were a wounded animal. Rhaenyra barely saw her, barely saw anything. "Hey," she whispered, stroking down the length of Rhaenyra's hair. It should have been comforting, but Rhaenyra was a living ghost, this dead thing above ground. "Sweetheart, the guests are leaving now and your dad needs you," Alicent whispered, and the way she spoke to her, like she was this fragile thing, only seemed to make the pain grow.
She came to get away, but it seemed she couldn't get a moment to grieve in peace.
"I'll take it from here, Alicent." The grass Daemon walked on was new and she could smell the sweet scent that clung to his suit as he stood before the two girls. Alicent, reluctant, and Rhaenyra, indifferent. Whether it was her uncle or Satan himself before her, she'd let them eat her whole, just so she could disappear.
"Are you sure?" Alicent whispered, uncertainty clinging to her as much as the grass clung to Rhaenyra's dress.
"It's alright," Daemon stated, not bothering to kneel down to Rhaenyra's height. He didn't approach her like she was this wild thing, and instead, held out his hand as if to say, 'are you done?'
Rhaenyra stared at it for a long moment, blinked languidly as she finally placed her palm into his. Alicent let out a relieved sigh, and ran her hand up Rhaenyra's arm. "Call me when you can or when you wish to."
Rhaenyra only nodded, unable to find words or express thoughts. However, the night seemed to be made of silence, as even the crunching of her shoes against fallen leaves and cars along the pavement behind them all sounded as soft as raindrops. It was a small reprieve, likely the only one she'd get.
The rowan tree's leaves had a graceful sway as if they were speaking to her as he led her to them. Her dad still stood there, alone. She might not have been able to approach had her uncle not placed his hand on the small of her back, had not rubbed circles up, his face for once holding the slightest hint of sorrow. It was unlike her father, who had yet to speak to her, even as she stood near him. There were two urns at the base of the tree, and as she walked closer, the soft white flowers brushed along her arm like a whisper.
Her hand trembled as it raised to her face, her eyes heavy with the need to close them. Her father was fifteen steps away, but he seemed farther than that and Rhaenyra hardly knew how to reach him. When Daemon had leaned in, his hand scooting to rest upon her shoulder, she was already close to the tears she didn't want to shed.
When Daemon spoke, it was in Valyrian, soft and for her, "You don't have to do it alone, but you will have to do it. Your father needs you."
Rhaenyra stared at the swaying leaves and the urn of the baby brother whom her mother's sacrifice was made for. "I will never be a son, but I can show respect to the one he wanted. Send off what my mother traded her life for," Rhaenyra whispered, stepping out of her uncle's palm, barely hearing the crunching under her feet as she carefully bent down and lifted her little brother's urn.
It was gold with specs of red, and light considering the sacrifice that had been so heavy. Rhaenyra's breath shook as she opened it, dropping the lid to the ground as her arm fell limply to her side. The guests had gone, leaving her immediate family with this privacy, but she still felt as if the world was crowding her. She turned over the urn, allowing the ashes to scatter around the tree as she slowly made a circle around it.
She wasn't breathing at the end, wasn't able to feel the leaves and little flowers brush along her face. Everything was going numb and she was there with it.
She placed the empty ern carefully in its place. Her hands shook when she grabbed her mother's, holding it in her flat palms. It was a mirror of her little brother's, but, despite the size of her heart, the intensity of her laugh, the strength of her embrace, the urn was as light as a feather. Her eyes were on her father, who was staring at the rowan trees, breathing heavily and swaying. Her bottom lip trembled as she opened the lid, and just as she almost lost her grip on it, Daemon carefully wrapped his hand around hers and took it from her.
It was a featherlight touch, but the first one she felt all day.
She didn't look at him, she just tipped the urn and began to walk. Her vision grew blurry with each step, bits of ashes swept away in the wind. She could feel some of it in her lungs, clouding her vision all the more. She was staggering by the time she made the circle, and once she was done, her father had turned and walked away, his steps swift down the hill.
Her hands were tremblings, her eyes watering as her lips finally opened to let out a small and shaking breath, on the verge of losing her grip as she knelt down and set the urn next to her brothers. She had to brace her hands on her knees to get back up, her bottom lip quivering with each shaking breath.
She heard the first step fall into the second until she was swept up in a tight embrace. She could smell the grass and the sweet rowan flowers cling onto Daemon's suit as her face settled into his neck. His arms were tightly wound around her and she barely remembered the movement of her arms to clutch his back, only that the motion was instinctual. She was now all too aware of the frost that stiffened her hair, crunching in his grasp, aware of the biting cold that settled over her skin since the beginning, each part coming alive to hurt her with every moment passing.
The sun had already begun to set, and the bits of orange and red on the horizon draped the fertile landscape as if the colors were a damp sheet, hanging over the trees to dry. She saw them all, as her arms tightened around him, using his body to keep her organs from ripping out, from circling the tree with her family, so she could never leave them.
She closed her eyes shut, feeling his face in her neck, holding her, washing away the emptiness, and filling it with pain.
─────•~❉᯽❉~•─────
Rhaenyra put a portrait up on the wall where Daemon had kissed her and called it healing. It was a piece she had picked out at an art gallery the week before last, a gorgeous blend of oil paints that made up shapes and squiggles and designs not unlike that of a woman.
If Rhaenyra squinted, she could make out the long legs, bent out of proportion yet somehow fitting into the piece so seamlessly. The arms were wiry things, holding out in different directions. It was, according to many of the other attendees, a unique and priceless work.
In hindsight, it creeped her out when she waddled through her place in the dead of night, just to see its beady eyes and twisted limbs staring back at her. She wasn't, however, about to take it down because healing and it was not priceless. Instead, it was 24K of her daddy's money. She told her dad she loved it, absentmindedly, not really meaning it because she hadn't been listening when he was talking. Instead, she had been checking her phone, scrolling through random numbers who somehow found her own, sliding into her DMs. Of course, none from who she wanted, but three from Criston Cole.
It's not like she was ghosting him, but his messages made her nauseated. They ranged from 'you looked beautiful today' to 'you've been studying all day, would you like me to bring you lunch.' When she told Laenor her plight during brunch, he had just slid his eyes up to her with a scowl.
"Oh, I'm so sorry that a nice, successful, and handsome man cares about you. Boo hoo," Laenor told her, shaking his head back and forth. "What do women even want?"
She thought she knew what she wanted, but it had been four months now and she shifted between varying emotions in her attempt to quit fixating on every last word and gesture he ever made for the entirety of her life. She even signed herself back into Twitter, just to see updates for his comings and goings from her friendly neighborhood stalkers. She promptly logged back out, hating that he could consume her mind from a distance.
When the first scandal came about that her uncle was cheating on his new wife with a model by the familiar name of Mysaria, Rhaenyra had stared at the photos of them seen together for nearly twenty minutes, scrolling in and out to spot any sign that the image was old. Her father hadn't minded the cheating, but what he had minded was this same uncle taking Mysaria to Dragonstone as an unofficial honeymoon for a couple not married. That had successfully chipped away something fragile in Rhaenyra's heart, shattering it at the thought that he'd dare take some random woman to her home. That he had fucked this woman in her ancestrial home.
Daemon's second slight to his brother had been his actions in shutting down the green energy company by the name of SunCo with new trade restrictions. An ingenious work of red tape. A normal occurrence except the business had been funded by Viserys, and now he was out millions that only went straight to her uncle.
"There's nothing wrong with messages," Rhaenyra admitted, glancing in between Laenor and Laena Velaryon. "Obviously it's nice to hear how gorgeous I am."
"Then what's the problem? Was he bad in bed?" Laena asked, and Rhaenyra breathed out through her nose, already feeling as if she wouldn't be able to pass a Bechdel Test.
"Did he sweat heavily or start crying?" Laenor continued, taking a sip from his straw that held his caramel macchiato. Rhaenyra glanced up at him from her phone.
"No, is that common for you?" Rhaenyra asked, in between texting back Criston after six hours of silence.
"This isn't about me, Rhaenyra," Laenor told her with a huff that caused both girls to arch their brows in his direction.
She was about to respond when she heard her phone ring in the tone set aside for her father. Rhaenyra stared at it for a long moment, as if bracing herself as a child having a good time might. She stood, smiling at her cousins. "I better take this."
"I got the check today, Rhae," Laena stated, and Rhaenyra sent her a final smile as she stood up and walked towards the bathrooms, answering the call just as she opened the door and turned on the lights.
"Rhaenyra, I have a favor," were her father's first words to her, making Rhaenyra's lips quirk up as she reapplied her lipstick in the mirror. She held the phone up with her left hand, gliding the nude tube over her top lip and swiping it at her bottom.
"I do hope it won't require business clothes," she stated, glancing down at the casual floral dress that made her rather feel like a little girl. Certainly, it did not scream professional, but Rhaenyra thought it fitting for brunch. It also went with the wicker sun hat, which in hindsight was perhaps not the best idea since it was December and it was cold.
"Not exactly. I just need some new contracts signed by Monday," her father said, now letting out a frustrated sigh. "And your uncle has refused to answer any of my assistant's calls."
"Have you tried calling?" Rhaenyra said carefully, knowing the subject was a sensitive one, but she also knew Daemon quite well. It didn't help her in the end and she still dreamed of him most nights.
Her father was silent on the other end, which solidified her suspicion that he had Otto Hightower attempt to handle this amicably. She nearly snorted, the very idea a ridiculous one. Her father had better luck getting her uncle's attention by burning down his Noho penthouse. She was nearly ready to suggest it, but halted the rising impulse for arson.
"I won't be speaking to him," Viserys said with a harsh fire in his voice that only Daemon could arise from her father. Rhaenyra glanced at herself through the mirror, one hand leaning against the sink with an expression that was not hers. Whoever this person was, Rhaenyra wasn't certain if she liked her. "Considering he had ignored my other attempts, I thought it might be worth a try sending you."
Rhaenyra hung her head, attempting to control the breathing that came out staggered. She didn't know what she was expecting. They were family, and she'd have no choice but to see him eventually. She had just been hoping it wouldn't be like this. It would be in a crowded room, where she was given the singular option of acting as if nothing had happened.
"He won't listen to me either, dad," Rhaenyra said carefully, keeping all her secrets hidden from her voice. Those feelings had an impressive ability to diffuse back inside her like she was a fucking membrane.
"Nonsense," Viserys said, brushing off her complaint as if she was talking crazy and because he had no idea the terrible implications of what he was asking of her. If he did know, there was likely no mending the brother's relationship that was deteriorating before her eyes. "He's always been quite fond of you. It might be just enough for us to come to terms."
She put herself on mute, letting out a loud groan while tapping her head against the sink as she attempted to control the trepidation and foreboding that was lighting beneath her skin. She felt like a matchbook, and certainly not one who would survive the inevitable combustion. What was she supposed to even say to get out of it? Her father almost never gave her any responsibilities on her own. It was as if he named her heir, set to take over the companies when he stepped down but refused to let her show him she could. Would he think her an emotional child should she disagree now?
She unmuted herself, swallowing all of it down, "Fax me the documents. I'll look over them and bring them by his place." Maybe if she walked with pedestrian entitlement, she could get hit by a car on the way. The possibilities were limitless in Connecticut or New York.
So, instead of enjoying brunch with her cousins, one of which she never got to see, she was instead rushing home to grab the contracts faxed over. And yeah, maybe she changed into a more professional outfit, maybe she made certain to wear her hottest pencil skirt, and yeah, she probably didn't need to put on perfume or reapply her makeup.
She had a two hour drive to unravel the knot in her stomach, but each mile was met with more string, tangling around and around until it had grown so large in the base of her belly that there wasn't room for anything else. By the time she pulled up to the penthouse, approached the entryway, she prayed he wasn't home. Those same hopes were battling against the desire to see him that only furthered the shame that added more string around the fibrous knot.
The doorway man who stood in the grand entryway was polite, greeting her with respect before confirming that Daemon Targaryen was in fact in the building. Rhaenyra wanted to go to the roof and toss herself off of it. So, now, she was trying not to pace back and forth, waiting for the older gentleman to tell her that her uncle was going to send her away.
She didn't know how she'd react if he did or if there'd be a relationship left to salvage. What trust she had in him was dwindling down to its last kindling. She thought it would be distinguished for good when the older man told her, "he said you may come up. I'll open the elevator for you."
The older man pressed a few keys on his computer, and she watched the golden elevator with solid iron doors slowly open. Rhaenyra walked into the lift, feeling as if she were walking straight into the jaws of a dragon. She stood still, taking calming breaths, already so exhausted that she felt soluble. It was as if she were so insubstantial that she had begun to evaporate into the air, not made of flesh and blood, but instead, vapor and fog.
And, of course, the elevator doors had to open eventually, even if she wasn't at all ready. She watched them as if in slow motion, revealing the pristine entryway to her uncle's penthouse. She exhaled, stepping inside where the light hit every angle from the windows. Every wall was filled with windows on the first floor, overlooking Noho so long as the blinds remained open. As it was, most were closed, and the chestnut floor was half obstructed in shadow as her heels clicked against it. The entire room was exposed, revealing a rather desolate home, with modern furniture of light beige. It was likely Daemon hadn't picked out a thing, having always said he had little time for something so frivolous.
His interior decorator certainly needed a raise, but Rhaenyra almost immediately felt sick at the notion of where she was standing. The huff she let out was a derisive one, with her clutching the folder of the contracts to her side and walking closer to the staircase with glass railings. The surrounding entry steps to the stairs were made of marble, designed to look like iron. The panels that led up the stairs were that light chestnut and must have been newly waxed considering she nearly slipped.
She climbed up, past the living shrubbery that was on each side, leading up. She spotted another empty floor at the top, but her legs moved for her, remembering the place from the cocktail parties where she'd stayed to one side of the home, new to the feelings for Daemon back then.
She nearly smiled at the memory of her avoidance, as if there was ever a chance of these feelings going away just by never talking to him. It didn't matter. Even with these last few months without him, she still felt him.
She walked near the piano, running her hands along the wood, its soft touch beneath her skin. She dragged her hand over the fallboard, hating the tears slamming against the backs of her eyes when she closed them and sat down. She placed both her hands against the fallboard, her long nails clicking against the wood as she pushed it up, sliding it into place to reveal the keys beneath.
Her long, silver hair fell in loose waves over her shoulders when she moved, and the dark had eased a little as the clouds began to uncover the sun, allowing it to shine through the large windows as it lit the threads of her lacy scarf, tied loosely around her neck. That light turns a soft pink, fading into a light yellow. It creeps against her, against her hands that hover over the keys when she brushes along each one, careful to not make a sound.
Slowly she pressed on a key, noting its lack of usual richness as she moved on to the next, hearing the pitch cut into a shifting sharpness when she held the key down.
"Never had a problem making yourself at home," Daemon's voice rang out through the empty silence, shattering it with noise so loud that she nearly didn't hear her own scramble to close the fall board. It slammed shut on her fingers and she let a small sound, nearly a squeak, looking away from him and up toward the ceiling. Her brows drew together in pain as her lips pressed against one another to hide any noise.
She felt his voice like a soft caress on her skin or the crinkle of his suit as it was fisted in between her fingers, clutching him to her. It held a darkness in it and one that hovered rather close to the chestnut wood beneath her, as if she had to lower herself just to hear it. It reverberated inside her, but she only stood from the piano, refusing to lower herself once more.
"It needs tuning," she said, not looking at him as she grabbed the contracts. In and out, she reminded herself, the back of her calves sliding against the bench when she finally faced him.
Daemon looked well in his element, his amusement dark as he leaned against the doorway, the light half obstructing him from the partly closed blinds. He was stunning, with white sleeves pushed up to his elbows, the cotton button-up tucked into grey striped pants that rested on his hips. She stared at every part of him, from the brown belt, to the black dress shoes. His hair was styled to be mostly pushed back, but little strands had cupped his temples in a way that made her want to run her fingers through them.
"You would find something to criticize within five minutes of arriving," he said, his lips twitching up as his shoulder continued to rest on the entryway.
She wouldn't laugh. She wouldn't fall back into teasing banter and if he expected her to, then he respected her far less than she thought.
She walked closer, aware of his dark eyes scanning her every approaching movement. "Dad sent me." She held out the contracts. "Sign please."
He clicked his tongue, his gaze barely grazing across the folder of contracts on the green energy deal with SunCo. It seemed like her father had been reaching his limit on Daemon's promises of renewable energy, just to turn around and buy out smaller green companies and shut them down. Viserys talked about making a cleaner future, one that she would inherit. Daemon said he'd be dead anyway in that future, and there was money to be made now.
"Dreams don't make men richer, Rhaenyra," Daemon said with a smirk, not bothering to grab the folder. Even the way he said her name slid across her skin like warm oil. She walked with two girls, battling for dominance: one who bit her tongue and let him have his way, and another who was fearless. Where the hell had the other gone?
"Sign the documents so I can go home," she said, taking a step closer, digging her brave girl out from the claws of the coward.
"Is that mutually exclusive? If so, it's surely going to be a long night. I have a guest bedroom," Daemon said with a quick smile and even quicker wit that reminded her of the compulsion to hit him with her car. As if he saw the violence in her expression, his own became darker.
"Do you? I thought that was for your wife. Or maybe your mistress. It's so hard to keep track," she snapped, ready to claw his eyes out.
"Don't be silly. On Saturdays we share a bed," he said, his voice low and deep, a grumble of a sound that made visions of his lips on her neck resurface. As if he saw it too, the heat between them became a flammable thing and he pushed off the doorway, walking around her and yanking the folder from her grasp as his shoulder grazed her own in the passing. He paused, his gaze ran down her cream blouse, where it hung off her chest in a bow, but his attention and his fingers traced the pendant he gave her. There and gone. He moved past her.
"I suppose there are advantages to sharing a bed. Mandatory cuddling and all that might do you well," Rhaenyra said, closing her eyes briefly to breathe him in. "Your father probably hugged you less than mine."
She was hit with his unique smell, a mixture of cologne and chemistry that went into creating a creature that would destroy her. It turned on all five of her god damned senses until she could practically hear the sounds he made when he kissed her, when she tasted him, touched his naked body, and felt his hungry kiss as he fucked her.
"Someone put their claws on this morning," Daemon said in return.
Her nostrils flared as he opened up the folder, walking past her towards the next room, forcing her to follow him through the doorless archway that led to the kitchen where the long wood table rested. He tossed it on the surface and picked up a random page. He was leaning back against the table, part of his weight against the edge as his palm laid flat behind him.
"Your father approved this?" Daemon asked, snorting as his eyes scanned over the document. He looked so delectable that Rhaenyra's mouth went dry with desire that flooded her with equal parts frustration. She wondered how it was possible to desire something that you also wanted to also set on fire.
"He said it best if I bring it to you," Rhaenyra said, taking slow steps, keeping her eyes on him until she was walking past him to open his fridge.
"And why is that?" Daemon's question was met with a brief silence on her part as she scanned the contents of his fridge. She shouldn't have been surprised that it was nearly empty since her uncle had as little life skills as she did. Mostly there were just glass water bottles and condiments that reminded her of her own, forcing her to put away her judgment. She grabbed a water.
"A fondness you have for me was mentioned," she stated, twisting open the water and walking around the island and toward the table. His eyes scanned her closely as she walked in his line of vision. Before him, she had never seen eyes like that. Dark indigo, much like her own. Ones that would smolder and gather in heat. It was as if he were always ready to undress a woman or a man with a single glance or kill them with another. "Don't worry. I did not tell him that it had an expiration date and conditions."
Perhaps that was where the excitement came from, for she never knew which one she faced.
His eyes were on her again, slow, perusing her in a way that took her back four months. Slowly, he set the document down next to him, standing straight and walking towards her. "Are you angry with me, Rhaenyra?"
Both brows raised, and she licked her bottom lip, as if she couldn't believe that could ever be in question. "No, I was angry when I had to drive two hours on my day off to deliver a contract. I was angry when Colton didn't choose Tayshia on the Bachelor. With you?" She snorted, throwing her hand up. "You make me infuriated."
Daemon scoffed, but only grabbed the contract. "Tell your father I won't sign, especially with his weak attempts to manipulate me with his daughter, to whom I am so fond."
Her nostrils flared, watching him shut down, shut her down, ignore the fight they were obviously in. She slammed the water bottle on the table and stepped in front of him, her hand on his chest as he attempted to turn away from her. Her hair was in her face, her breathing staggered as she realized that her chest was rapidly rising and falling. The threading and knotting ball in her stomach was untangling the more she touched him. With the wicked heat from his chest, from his rapid heart beneath her palm, she was undone.
"You don't get the luxury of treating me like an object you can toss aside when I don't act how you want," she said, now in his face and watching his cat-like eyes narrow down at her. "You insufferable arse. I am your niece. Did you think we'd just never see one another again?"
His eyes dragged down to her palm that rested on his chest, and she could feel it expand and constrict with each of his breaths.
"Or do you think you can do whatever you want with no consequence?" Rhaenyra's voice was in a hiss, all the anger and hurt beginning to unwind as his own irritation grew sharper with every passing second. The tension between them grew with his silence.
"Are you done?" Daemon asked lowly, and she didn't get a chance to answer when his hands were on her shoulders, dragging over her arms and he had practically pushed her down on the wooden table. Her back hit the teak, her head thumping lightly against it, reverberating the brain in her skull. She barely felt it when he caged her, one hand on her waist, his body flush against her as his leg dug in between her own until she could feel it all but rubbing against her.
He had steady, strong hands, and Rhaenyra had always looked at them like there was little that he couldn't do. Her mother used to say that you could tell everything you need about a man through them. Some, she once told her, were the punishing hands that could hit a woman and make her bleed or take her apart and scatter the pieces. Some were the passing hands, they were the ones you held onto in the meantime, good for quick moments in between lovers. Then there were the hands that soothe a woman, taking her apart and putting her back together with pieces of themselves. Aemma would tell her to wait for a man like that.
Daemon had hands that could wander into all the places he shouldn't, holding her like he was punishing her or loving her. His could just as easily wander right off again, too restless to ever stay still.
His breath was against her lips, so close that her chest brushed his every time it raised and fell.
His left hand was on her waist, dragging her blouse up from her skirt and slipping underneath, just to feel her skin. "I wasn't done," she whispered, and he was so close that when her lips moved, she felt his feather across them. The motion was so light, all electrons and polarity and magnets that brought them this close, despite their own best intentions.
"I don't care," he said, and that was when he kissed her.
Daemon's hands rested on Rhaenyra's neck and he rubbed his thumbs along the sharp edges of her jaw as his tongue seemed to disappear inside her mouth as if he needed a to consume a part of her in order to breathe himself. It was almost soft, as if he had spent the many months dreaming of her, thinking of her, wanting her, all as much as she had him.
Her fingers wrapped around him, looping in such a way that caged him as much as he had her. His body crushed against her own, but she wanted it to flatten her, to meet in a collision that made them one. She wanted to slap him, to hit him until the anger dissipated and the lust replaced it. His hand was flat against her stomach, and when it moved up, it was met without any barrier or resistance. He separated from her lips, head against head as he whispered, "Are you trying to kill me, Rhaenyra?"
He had seemed so reluctant to unclasp her bra four months ago, so perhaps subconsciously, she had done away with it entirely.
She cracked open her eyes, only to see him staring down at her. He had bought her first cigarette, taught her how to pick a lock, and how to rollerblade. The wrongness that should have been there was nowhere in her body, that wreathed for him, that needed him, that hated him too.
His lips were back on hers, devouring her, consuming her, hating her. His palm climbed higher from under her shirt, and the sound she let out, a wreathing sigh, he ate up. A rumble reverberated in his chest as both his hands cupped her face and his head tilted to get better access as her legs wrapped around his waist. She could feel him against her, a sign that at least one part of him wanted her as much as she wanted him. The hard length of him was flush against her clit with a tiny layer of fabric to separate them as she ground against him. His hands were moving again, as if they wanted to feel every part, as if he had been deprived of her, as if it were her fault.
His hand was straining against the buttons of her blouse from underneath with his fingertips running along her breastbone. She didn't know when he had undone her scarf, only that he tossed it behind them by the time she closed her eyes and opened it. When he finally caressed her breasts, she let out a breathy sigh that sounded suspiciously like a beg that made his mouth rip from hers where he motioned to breathe into her neck, as if to stop.
She thought he might until he was hiking her blouse up with his hand and his mouth was against her neck. His tongue was against her collarbone, against her pulse where he lingered, inhaling her and dragging his teeth over the smoldering flesh. She let out embarrassing sounds and gasps when his fingers dusted over her hardening nipple.
His kissed up her neck, lingering at her ear where she could hear his staggered breath as his fingers began to circle her nipple. His other hand dislodged and untangled from her hair, pulling her blouse up when he separated from her. She felt the slow chill of his penthouse against the bare skin, her exposed stomach, her belly ring that his eyes scanned over. He was dragging it up so slowly that she thought he was about to leave her needing, but the way he stared at her made her feel akin to the matchbook that they were together.
"I hate you," he whispered, and then his mouth was against her stomach, kissing, dragging up, making her hips buck. His tongue circled the circumference of her belly button, finally causing her to release the moan that shattered her control.
That was when she heard the sound of footsteps from upstairs, heels, tapping against the hardwood floor. Rhaenyra's brows furrowed, half undone as Daemon stared up at her as if he were both wicked and innocent all at once. Rhaenyra's eyes narrowed, her tongue dragging along her canines before her jaw clenched shut.
He didn't give her the chance to push him off of her before he let go of her first, backing up two steps. She sat up, tucking her blouse back into her skirt as she fixed her hair with a scowl in his direction. Every part of her felt flush with him, and even the rising vexation did little to quell the heat between her legs that begged for more.
She had already lifted a document when the caramel-skinned model, known as Mysaria, walked down the stairs. "Oh," the woman said, her voice every bit as beautiful as she was. "I didn't realize we had guests."
Rhaenyra's heart was drumming against her chest, thumping against her ribs, and it was so hard to keep her face blank. "Is this the wife or the mistress?" Rhaenyra asked in Valyrian, as if she didn't know. Her words caused Daemon to run his hand through his hair as he leaned towards his niece, looking almost like an uncle with his stiff distance. Rhaenyra knew better. He was a devil instead.
"Jealousy is beneath you," he told her in return, whispering it in Valyrian so low Rhaenyra could barely hear it. It succeeded in making her nostrils flare as he turned towards Mysaria who watched the two of them with a blank expression as she made her way down the steps. "I forgot you were here."
Her lips quirked up. "He's such a romantic," Mysaria said, now approaching them both. Her eyes went to Rhaenyra with smile. "I'm the mistress," she said in Valyrian.
Mysaria seemed bored with the both of them, and already walked the opposite way, towards the other room. When she was out of sight, Rhaenyra's eyes went to Daemon. She was biting her tongue, her anger battling with her pride that he so easily crushed in his hands like clay.
Finally, she let out a laugh that might turn into a sob later in the night. "I'll tell you what, uncle. I will not be beneath you again," she whispered in Valyrian, slapping the document on the table. He watched her, perhaps listless, perhaps weary, perhaps he was even losing control. Rhaenyra could not tell since he was determined to shut her out.
"Don't worry, niece," he said, also determined to get the last word, she watched something pause in him, a disquieting stillness as he approached the cusp of saying something cruel. He stopped the words from approaching her, already turning away from her to lean his hands against the table. "Best you head home, Rhaenyra."
She clicked her tongue, shaking her head. She wanted him so badly, even now, even when she despised him. Her hands were shaking as she finally reached for the pendant around her neck, the one she absentmindedly clutched to remind her that he was there with her. She unclasped it, her heels clicking against the wood as her hands shook. She dropped the pendant next to him, onto the table.
He was tense, his muscle flexed, she could see it through his white dress shirt. He wouldn't look at her, but his tension increased when she finally let go of it.
She spared one last glance at the glinting Valyrian steel shining back at her, determined not to look back.