A/N: Updating the rules-allowing myself two five hundred word drabbles per season.

Interlude—Season Two

In the aftermath Jorah collapses back against the pillows, drawing air into his heaving lungs. His chest is wet with perspiration, and he pushes his hair back from his forehead, throwing the covers from his body to let the blessedly cool air lap at him. By contrast, Daenerys lounges languid and sated. She turns to watch him with a lazy smile, reaching out to rest her palm against his stomach.

"Thank you, ser," she says.

"I aim to please," he replies dryly, repressing a shiver as her fingernails scratch him lightly. He knows what she's trying to do. She's as insatiable as any dragon.

"You please me well, ser," she says, crooking a flirty eyebrow.

He loves to see her this way in the morning, dishevelled and pinked beneath the sheets. Never in his wildest dreams had he ever imagined he could be so lucky. First he was her friend, then he was spurned; after being allowed back into her ranks he had promised himself that he would always be grateful for that and would never again crave anything more.

It was a folly, of course. The heart wants what the heart wants. Despite what he'd told himself, his head had no control over what his heart felt.

In the barren Red Waste, in the opulence of Qarth, in the claustrophobia of the Slaver Cities, he would never have expected that they would ever be here.

He had been too fervid in those days in the greatest city that ever was or will be; she had shrunk away from it like a mimosa pudica, ill-equipped for such intensity. And thus he suffered his first rejection, his first burns at her hands. If the Warlocks had ever tempted him with such a vision he would have thought them cruel. But here they are: in a luxurious bedchamber in King's Landing, in a world all of their own. He turns on his side to face her and, despite the stifling heaviness of the air, accepts her embrace as she winds her arms around his neck and pulls him to her once more.