Chapter 8: Testing the Waters
Gendry couldn't take his eyes off the woman standing before him smirking at him as though she thought she was the cleverest in all the Realm. The sight of her standing there with nought but that little bit of cloth strapped around her breasts and her sodden britches made him want to take her right there against the wall of his forge where she leaned so provocatively.
It was hardly fair and the urge to have his way with her beat at him furiously, demanding his strength of will to keep from doing so, lest she stab him with the pair of daggers he could see strapped to her belt. Her britches hung low on her bony hips, weighed down by the water from the rain and exposing her sharp hipbones. Her flat toned stomach was on display and her britches flirted with the idea of slipping right off her and down her long legs to the floor. Gendry wished they would.
"You really should get out of those too, you know?" he said, nodding his head towards the strip of cloth she had bound around her breasts and her sodden britches. He told himself it was a suggestion made out of concern for her health, but the fact of the matter was that he wanted to see all of her.
The look on her face told him she knew it too.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" she sneered though she flashed a grin at him. Gendry found himself grinning back wolfishly.
"Yes," he admitted, "But you really do need to take them off or you're going to get sick. Put this on."
He snagged his discarded undershirt from the wall behind him and held it out to Arya, who eyed it warily. When she didn't make any move to take it or to remove the rest of her wet clothing, in spite of the way she'd begun to shiver despite the warmth of the forge Gendry narrowed his eyes on her.
"Do I need to relieve you of those the way I did with your tunic?" he asked, doing his best not to sound too hopeful.
"Do I need to stab you with something to make sure you don't go trying to manhandle me into doing whatever you think is best?" she retorted, narrowing her grey eyes on him.
"Won't have to manhandle you if you do what's good for you," Gendry shrugged.
He hid his grin when Arya moved forward away from the wall to snatch the offered shirt from his grip. He also did his best to keep his eyes on her face rather than on the sinewy grace she exuded when she moved. He was surprised when she went to the door of the forge and closed it, sealing them both inside it before standing with her back to him.
Gendry bit his lip on a groan when she slowly unravelled the strip of cloth binding her breasts, revealing the smooth expanse of her back and shoulders to his gaze. He knew it was too much to hope for that she might turn and give him a full frontal view of her breasts too, but that didn't stop him wishing it would be a reality.
He consoled himself with the knowledge that come what may he was going to marry the little urchin. And when he did he'd have her any way he wanted her. He wouldn't just get to see her naked. He'd get to run his hands and mouth over that tight little body of hers and do all the unspeakable things he'd been imagining himself doing to her since the minute he'd laid eyes on her.
Gendry jumped in surprise when she tossed the balled up cloth over her shoulder at him, catching it one handed and nearly braining himself with his hammer in the process.
"Wring that out, would you?" she asked without looking at him as she slipped his shirt over her head, concealing her body beneath the folds.
While he put down his hammer and began to do so, he caught the way she slipped her hands under the hem of the shirt and began to wiggle out of her sodden britches, toeing her boots off her feet as she did so. Without them on the shirt came to mid-thigh on Arya and completely overwhelmed her slim frame, hiding every curve he'd just been admiring. Just like the rest of her, the legs poking out the bottom of his shirt were long and toned, hardened from years of use fighting and horse-riding Gendry suspected. With her feet bare, she turned towards him, clutching the now balled up pair of britches.
Gendry held his hand out for them, intending to wring the water from them too after having hung up the strip of binding cloth alongside her tunic and cloak.
"Put your boots back on," he instructed when she made to step towards him, "Or you'll get metal shavings in your feet."
Arya narrowed her eyes at him again at being told what to do but Gendry just stared at her. She didn't have to do it. He wasn't going to make her. But he would make fun of her if she'd didn't and then got a metal splinter in her foot. He suspected she realised that too, because though she continued to glare at him, she slipped her boots back on her dainty little feet before walking towards him.
When she tossed the sodden britches at him Gendry caught them. And he began to smirk when he noticed that she clearly hadn't been wearing any kind of undergarment that ladies usually wore. He could see from the outline of her hip through his shirt that she was totally bare beneath the folds of fabric, and there were no undergarments amid the ball of cloth he began twisting, watching the water cascade out of them.
"Why do you keep looking at me like that?" she asked him when he was done and Gendry raised his eyebrows at her. She'd wandered away from him a little and begun inspecting the many complete works lying about his forge.
"How do you know I'm looking at you?" he asked since she had her back turned and was studying the intricate detail he'd put into making a collection of metal arrow heads that he intended to gift to Mya on her next name-day.
"I can feel you looking at me," she replied without returning the gaze he had trained on her and Gendry wasn't sure if he should be pleased or concerned that she was so aware of his attentions, "Not to mention you've been routinely staring at me since I walked into the Great Hall inside earlier. I assumed it was the tunic, but you're still staring."
"Maybe I like the way you look," Gendry suggested.
"I'm not surprised that you're totally damaged," she replied and Gendry frowned at her words, wondering what she meant.
"Damaged?" he asked, "You think I'm damaged?"
"I know you're damaged," she said, moving on to the armour he'd forged for his destrier the day his father had come to tell him he'd asked Arya Stark to meet with him as his potential bride.
"You're insulting me?" he asked, his hands itching with the need to cross the room and touch her, to turn her to look at him. He was surprised when she lifted the heavy war-horse armour from the bench where is rested so she could turn it to study the symmetry of the piece. Gendry had to admit he was a little impressed. One of his youngest brothers, Roland, had tried to do so just days ago and had almost fallen on his face for his trouble. Not that the lad was weak. Gendry was more than impressed that she was able to turn it this way and that and as he watched her he was learning there was a good deal more to Arya Stark than simply unladylike behaviour.
"Of course I'm insulting you," she laughed, this time actually choosing to glance at him as she put the armour back on the bench and continued on to inspect a sword he'd forged for his brother Edric.
"For looking at you?" Gendry asked, feeling entirely confused. Of course when she began swinging the long sword in a combat stance he got turned on too.
He'd never met any female as interested in his work or in weaponry at all the way Arya was and it was a surprising and refreshing change. One that made his cock throb painfully in his britches.
"Your continued staring and your statement to the idea that you're doing so because you like the way I look indicate that you're a little weird. On top of the fact that you rejected the idea of marrying one of those pretty simpering ladies more interested than me in smiling at you and shining your knob in the hopes of giving you sons indicates that you are entirely damaged. Probably because you're so big. You mustn't be getting enough blood to your brain to think rationally," she explained as though it made total sense and Gendry kind of wanted to hit her with something.
She'd basically just accused him of having as much intelligence as the average fool and to make matters worse, she'd done so with a smile, still toying with the sword. He narrowed his eyes on her when she proceeded to whack the blade against the padded practice post he'd brought in here to test the balance of his weapons.
"Oh I see, the idea of wanting to spend my life dealing with someone who has half a brain and an idea of how to run a kingdom rather than some stupid little idiot with no use but letting me fuck them makes me damaged?" He asked hotly, his hand clenched around his hammer in annoyance.
As though sensing his mood the huge wolf that had followed Arya into his forge got to its feet at that moment and let out a very low, very threatening growl, warning him away from her mistress.
"Not at all," Arya disagreed with his summation, glancing at him now as though she was very much enjoying herself and letting Gendry know she had already begun testing him, tormenting him to see how he dealt with his temper which she seemed so capable of inspiring in everyone.
"But wanting you instead does?" he challenged, blue eyes flashing.
"Now you're getting it," she grinned at him, replacing the sword she'd been playing with, "What are you making?"
Gendry had to put down his hammer.
Not because he wanted to hit her with it after one minor moment of torment, but because he got the feeling that if he didn't her wolf might bite him. It was eyeing him as though it wasn't sure whether to simply tear his throat out or to come over and sniff his hand and maybe let him pat it.
"Pair of gauntlets," he told her evasively. He'd come out here simply to find something to do, knowing he wouldn't be able to sleep without dreaming of fucking the fierce woman currently walking towards him in naught but his shirt. However, once he'd started working the metal, he'd realised he'd begun to make something. They were small. Far too small to fit any man he knew and he hoped the little urchin wouldn't notice that fact. He meant to gift them to her when she was a little more used to him.
Perhaps he'd even make her an entire suit of armour and arsenal of weapons and gift it to her on their wedding night.
"They're small," she commented, picking up the still warm metal as though the heat in them didn't bother her and inspecting them. They were barely begun, he was still in the process of shaping the metal, but she clearly had an eye for blacksmithing if she'd been able to tell that from a half-shaped hunk of metal.
"They're for a small person," Gendry shrugged, his eyes fixed on her hands as she clutched the piece, noting the width of them and the length. It would be hard to make them to fit her without knowing the measurements he needed from her, but he would do so. It would give him an excuse to study her closely.
He was so fixated on her hands in fact that Gendry had to blink to suddenly find her very much in his personal space. She come to stand very close to him and was looking up at him with a sly grin on her face. Sensing some other kind of test from her on his patience as she attempted to goad him into sending her packing back to Winterfell, Gendry held his ground and simply stared back at her. He suspected from the way her grey eyes darted over his face that she could see how badly he wanted to fuck her.
And Seven Hells he wanted to. From so close to him he could smell that floral scent that clung to her skin. It was the same one he'd noticed when he'd caught her bounding over the table towards his would-be assassin at dinner, and if he had to guess he would say it was a result of the ladies maids who'd drawn her bath mistakenly thinking she'd like it. Beneath that smell he caught the warm, womanly scent of her that betrayed her gender despite the yards of loose-fitting cloth shrouding her body from his gaze.
"So," she began her voice light as her wolf came over to butt against her arm, clearly wondering if her mistress required help and wanting a scratch. Gendry heard the beast groan delightedly when Arya dug her hands into the wolf's fur and scratched behind her ears.
"So?" he asked when she grew distracted by the beast, unable to keep from smirking a little when she had to repeatedly roll back the sleeves on his shirt as they flopped over her hands. She glanced up at him again and Gendry felt his breath catch in his throat at the way the firelight from the forge behind him danced in her grey eyes, alighting the slyness there.
"How many of those other visiting little idiots that you turned down did you fuck before sending them away?" she asked bluntly and Gendry was grateful he'd already put down his hammer, otherwise he might've dropped it on his foot in shock.
Before his mouth could fall open or his shock could show, Gendry narrowed his eyes a little bit, knowing she was testing him again.
"Not one," he replied.
Arya rolled her eyes as though she didn't believe him.
"Yeah, that's why Larissa Lannister is sending assassins here to murder you. Because you didn't fuck her before telling her you wanted nothing to do with her," she snarked.
"I'd say that's exactly the reason she sent me an assassin. She tried to fuck me every day she was here and every single time I told her to fuck off. I'm no fool. Had I fucked her, she'd have also gone out and fucked as many other men as she could to ensure she was knocked up and then I would've been forced to marry the scheming whore."
Gendry felt his cock shrink a little at the very idea of getting anywhere near the Lannister bitch.
"You expect me to believe you spurned her and my cousin Rhaenrya Targaryen and Margery Tyrell and all those other ladies you had here vying for the chance to be Lady Baratheon?" she demanded and Gendry wondered if she was offended by the idea of him fucking other women or simply trying to work out what he wanted from her.
"I don't fuck anyone unless I'm paying them or mean to marry them. And since paid whores around here tend to have fucked my Father and like to giggle over the idea of seeing how many Baratheon lords they can fuck, I tend to avoid them too," Gendry warned, "Meaning that since I mean to marry you, you're fair game."
"Now you're going to tell me you want to fuck me too?" she rolled her eyes, "Laying it on a little thick, aren't you?"
As he stared at her, frowning and unsure of what she meant by that, Gendry realised that she'd called him damaged for staring at her and perhaps liking to look at her, and was now insulted by having him say he wanted to fuck her because she didn't believe he, perhaps anyone, could actually mean it.
Gendry stared at her with widening eyes at the very idea. He supposed that having grown up in the shadow of her sister's beauty, surrounded by the beauty of her mother and always hearing of the beauty and poise of her sister, her cousins, her mother, her aunt; that perhaps Arya Stark thought she was naught but a woman who didn't want to be a lady not only because she despised the customs and ideals surrounding such a title, but also because she didn't think herself beautiful enough.
"Let me put it this way, Stark," Gendry said, his voice low and husky, his desire to have her returning tenfold, "Of all the women I've ever met, you're the only one I've ever imagined myself fucking repeatedly against every flat surface I see."
She stared at him for that and Gendry could see a shadow of doubt in her eyes, but also a spark of something else. He hoped it was desire. When her gaze left his and skidded down his body to the prominent bulge in his britches Gendry felt like she might as well have rubbed herself all over him for the effect it had. He had to clench his fists to keep from grabbing her and pulling her to him when she glanced back up at him, a smirk playing on her lips now.
"You probably say that to all the girls," she said, and Gendry could tell she believed it to be true. He wanted to prove it to her, but he didn't trust himself not to fuck her on the floor of his forge should he even lay a finger on her right that moment.
"Seeing as how I usually don't even talk to the ladies brought here hoping to be my wife, I have to deny that," he answered tightly, "But the only way you'll believe it is if I prove it by actually fucking you, which will really only confirm that you think I fuck them all before sending them away."
"And here I thought you were all bull and no brain," she needled him, stepping back and away from him, "You know I'm keeping this, right?"
Gendry raised his eyebrows at the change in topic and watch the way she plucked at his shirt hanging about her slim frame.
"Are you just?" He asked, amused in spite of the fact that he desperately wanted to fuck her and prove to her how badly he yearned for the chance to prove to her that he was more infatuated and intrigued with her than he'd been with any other woman he'd ever laid eyes on. He barely knew her, to be sure, but for all that she was a conniving, cunning, unladylike little urchin, she was the only woman he'd ever imagined himself fucking. The only woman he'd ever imagined being able to lie with afterwards and discuss battle tactics or how best to run a castle when the peasants constantly called for something.
"Yes. I am," she said in a straightforward manner even as she began gathering her damp clothing as though she was intending to leave, "You'd do well to remember it the next time you think of giving me something. If you want it back, don't give it to me."
"So now you're a thief?" he asked her, realising she did mean to leave the forge and that if he wanted to spend any more time in her company he'd have to follow her.
"Don't be ridiculous. You offered this to me, like a gift," she argued, smirking again. Gendry felt himself smirk back. He didn't know why, but he sort of liked the way she looked so smug about it.
"Of course," he chuckled. He chose not to mention how much he wanted to fuck her at the sight of her wearing his shirt, or how she looked so sexy in the oversized garment. He'd seen his fair share of naked women and painted whores in his time, and yet the sight of Arya Stark in his too-big-on-her undershirt made him harder than steel.
He doused the forge fire quickly while Arya gathered her things and made for the door. He smirked at the fact that it took her a while to work out how to open it once it had been closed. He needed to replace the frame. It had gotten wet in a wild storm a few moons ago and since then the door and been getting stuck in the frame. However, right then he was thankful he'd been putting it off because it kept the woman from escaping into the night without him.
"You're not going to offer me your arm to escort me to my chambers, Lord Baratheon?" she sneered when he strode along beside her, trying to keep his gaze on the road where he walked rather than on the sinewy bunch and release of her legs as she moved in the dark.
"Why is it that when you use my title like that, I feel like I need to bathe?" He asked her, glancing sideways at her in the dark. Most of the torches had been doused for the night, so he was relying on his memory of the castle layout as he led her in through the many long hallways.
"Maybe you're unclean," she suggested and Gendry narrowed his eyes at her though she couldn't see him in the dark.
Before he could think of a witty reply, she tripped on the stairs the led to the chamber she was staying in and Gendry smirked at the way she cursed up a storm about it.
"Having some trouble there, Lady Stark?" he replied in the same sneering voice she'd used to pronounce his title.
"Screw you," she snapped, huffing in annoyance.
"Anytime you like," he offered before he could catch the words dripping from his tongue. He glanced at her wide-eyed, for a moment fearing she would react like any other lady, storming off in a huff and lamenting his crass behaviour. Then he remembered this was Arya Stark and that not an hour past she'd asked him if he'd fucked all the women he'd entertained as his potential bride before she arrived.
In spite of her bad mood, he heard her snort at the offer and felt her jump when he reached out and took her hand, realising she was falling behind because she couldn't see to climb the stairs. She flinched at his touch and almost immediately tried to jerk her hand out of his grip, but Gendry simply held tighter, refusing to release her.
"Stop wriggling before you make us both fall down the steps," he scolded her when she tugged so hard she overbalanced herself and would've gone toppling back down if it weren't for his tight grip on her.
"Stop trying to tell me what to do," she retorted coldly, though she stopped trying to pull her hand from his.
"You've got a real problem with authority, don't you?" Gendry asked, his own temper flaring a little in response to her tone.
"Fuck off Baratheon," she snarled immediately, her voice loud and echoing in the dark corridor. Gendry knew that if he didn't do something they were going to fight. He could tell she was itching for one, and realised it must be a common occurrence for Arya Stark to offend and annoy others with her wild moods. Rather than responding verbally, Gendry did the only thing he could think of to keep her from saying anything else to further irk him. He shoved her sideways in the narrow corridor until she was pressed against the stone wall and he ducked his head in the dark, his lips crashing down on hers roughly and completely claiming her mouth.
She made a noise of surprised protest and then one of outrage when he slipped his tongue between her lips to tangle with her own, his weight pinning her to the wall even though she writhed like a hellcat, her hands coming up to claw at his bare chest thanks to the fact that she had his shirt. She raked them into his skin, no doubt drawing blood if the sting was any indication. Gendry ignored the pain and kissed her harder, leaning into her and forcing one of his knees between both of hers, pressing his throbbing, britches-clad cock against her stomach to keep her from being able to knee him, which she'd begun trying to do.
She seemed more intent of fighting him off than kissing him back, but Gendry didn't really mind. He just kept right on kissing her until she started fighting back with her tongue as much as the rest of her body. Wielding it like a sword she fought him for dominance of the kiss they shared and he felt himself grow impossibly harder. He was all too aware that she wore naught but his shirt and more than anything he wanted to hike her up his body, free his cock and bury it inside her.
Her wolf was growling beside them, though she'd yet to attack. Gendry didn't really care if the beast did. He would stand here and snog this wild woman all night long. When she tried to shove him away, Gendry snarled one of his hands into her loose, damp hair, using the grip to tilt her head and hold her there, right where he wanted her until he was good and done kissing her.