Thank you, TopShelfCrazy, for proof reading this particular piece of my fictional mind.

Rating is up for a reason.

The song to go with this chapter is, quite obviously, the very silent, very quiet version of Cucurrucucu paloma as performed by Caetano Veloso for the painfully beautiful Spanish film Talk to Her (Hable con ella)

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"They had bound his wrists with hempen rope, strung a noose around his neck, and pulled a sack down over his head, but even so there was danger in a man." Arya Stark, about the Hound, ASOIAF

Ten

Father was dead.

Except that her Father had been murdered years ago, ages of the world ago; and the ambitious man killed by the new knight of the Queen Regent's Kingsguard had never been her father. Yet this man provided safety and shelter for Sansa. No one had beaten her in the Vale. No one had taken her maidenhead.

Yet.

It would happen soon, Sansa knew, in her impending marriage to Harry the Heir. And sometimes she wondered if Littlefinger too did not have other things in mind when he asked for and took her kisses as no father should do with his daughter.

But now both friendly, reasonable Petyr Baelish and dangerous, calculating Littlefinger were gone and Sansa was equal part joyful, ashamed and afraid. Joyful because she was more afraid of Lord Baelish than of Joffrey at times, ashamed because it was awful to rejoice at someone's horrendous death and afraid because… she was repetitively told she was weak and stupid since her father died. It was probably the truth. With her family gone, it was only a matter of time before she became another man's ward and pawn.

Maybe she should give herself to this… Ser Robert Strong… and return to Cersei. Her life would end swiftly on the headsman's block, as it should have happened, maybe, after they killed her true father. Yet Sansa found that right now, just like back then, she lacked courage to take the Moon Door out of her life.

And the man who now slept in her bed should have been dead as well, was dead, or so she had thought, as dead as her little sister Arya, lost in the slaughter of the Stark household after Sansa had betrayed her father. One could not run away from the wrath of the crown and stay alive without help, no matter how strong…

Or so she had believed… The man in her bed contraried her assumptions, as so many times before.

Not my bed, she corrected nervously her meandering thoughts. The high bed of the Arryns. She had never slept in it before. She avoided her aunt's room, the one she had shared with her now late lord husband.

Her murderer. Sansa carefully avoided the thought that she had been unwillingly the cause of her aunt's abrupt end.

Now that she saw how large this bed was first hand, it was no wonder Sweetrobin could never sleep in it all by himself after his mother's death; no wonder he wandered the corridors of the Eyrie until he found the warmth of Sansa's much smaller room. She felt sorry for all the times she had bolted her door and left her cousin to his own devices. But only a little. His pawing was repulsive, childlike or not. He would drool on her breasts if he could and she could not stand it. She could not. She might burn for it in seven hells, but she could not.

And Littlefinger who had helped her, although for reasons entirely of his own, was now dead. Cersei's new knight of the Kingsguard mounted a siege to the Gates of the Moon, ruining Sansa's best efforts to stage a tourney, which would seal her betrothal and marriage to Harry the Heir.

Ser Robert Strong brought a letter with him, from the Queen Regent, saying the giant knight had sworn a sacred vow he would not leave until the lords of the Vale delivered to him Lady Sansa Stark, posing as natural daughter of Lord Petyr Baelish, Alayne Stone, who was to be trialled in the capital for the murder of King Joffrey Baratheon, First of His Name.

Ser Robert Strong. What kind of name is that? Sansa had never heard about it in her childhood lessons about the noble houses of Westeros, great and small. Yet she could not believe what the Hound had just said that the crown had simply lied about the death of his brother to the Prince of Dorne. Sansa was a good girl and she learned from Petyr when he acted kindly. It was one thing if the players in the game of thrones lied to poor, helpless Sansa and quite another to deceive a powerful ally, or rather, an enemy.

And the ravens brought to Petyr this other letter, just today... Or was it yesterday? Time slipped through her fingers, fickle as sand since the queen's men appeared demanding her head. It was foolish to believe she would ever be safe. Sansa found the letter only after Petyr had ridden to his premature death. In it, Lord Varys, who no longer served Queen Regent nor her small council, it seemed, offered to send a living dragon to the Vale to liberate it from the yoke of the Whore Queen, as he now called Cersei. On the condition that Sansa Stark married Prince Aegon, Sixth of His Name, the only son and heir of Rhaegar Targaryen… As his second wife. His first one, Daenerys Targaryen, was barren, and thus unable to bear heirs to the crown.

Sansa could be queen...

Second queen, she corrected herself.

She might be safe if she said yes.

Sansa had the letter in her bodice now, and she had not shown it to any other lord of the Vale. At all times it felt as though it burned her skin with the promise of dragonfire ever since she'd laid her eyes on it.

Besides, how could she have told anyone? As soon as Littlefinger was returned in a bag, and Sansa's tummy still turned at the mere thought of it, Lord Nestor Royce insisted she and Sweetrobin took shelter in the Eyrie.

"It is impregnable," he had said with shine in his old eyes. "It is best if young Lord Arryn and Lady Stark wait there."

Mya Stone could not be found in time so Sansa and Robin were sent up alone, with six servants and eight mules.

When they found the tunnel in the Sky closed by the avalanche, Sansa was scared to death of going back. And when the chain began turning against all odds, after the servants stood on each other's shoulders and strived to set it in motion, she was the first one in the basket, pulling her cousin with her, before he had time for any complaints and much less for a fit.

During their flight, Sansa never questioned Lord Royce's arrangement, eager to leave in haste, but now it struck her as odd. Yes, there was not enough food left up here for more than ten people for long, but shouldn't the Lord of the Eyrie merit a better or at least safer escort back up to his castle, such as Mya Stone?

What did Lord Royce hope to achieve? He said he would let the queen's men search his castle and see Sansa was not there. They would lift the siege and leave.

On the top of the mountain, in bed with the Hound and Sweetrobin who were both sound asleep, with Petyr six hundred feet below in the bag, and with the terrifying suspicion it was Ser Gregor who mounted the siege, Lord Nestor's plan seemed very, very childish all of a sudden. As something old Sansa would think of. And Myranda's father was many things, but he had never struck Sansa as being simple.

Her thoughts drifted back from the conundrum Nestor Royce's actions represented to the man sleeping in her bed, as they did every second moment since she dared lay down herself, completely dressed and with her bodice laced up to the point of choking. Because she was still afraid of Sandor Clegane's intentions towards her person, but also because it wouldn't do, it just wouldn't do to lose Lord Varys' letter. Somehow she doubted Lord Royce would make the necessary arrangements for her to be able to take that generous offer, should she favour it. He surely had other plans for her. She found that all men did.

There was nothing she could do about any of it right now. She was in the Eyrie and the world would have to wait. She could let her thoughts be free.

And that meant returning, every now and then, to the Hound's confession of love.

Sansa believed that a true maiden should faint at this admission from any man who wasn't her betrothed. But just like she couldn't look away or close her eyes when they killed her father, her legs did become wobbly at the Hound's ardent, utterly unexpected words, yet they remained firm, at first. She had to look at him, study him, read what was in his eyes.

He came to her dressed as a beggar this time, yet even so there was danger in him. He could snap her in two with bare hands if he so wanted, she realised, needing no headsman's sword. She had to say something and she could not find her courtesies. She knew that only the truth would avail her. She did not know what to tell him, what he wanted of her now.

What she wanted of him.

And that last thing frightened her most of all.

And from the sudden realisation he may have simply lied, Sansa finally fainted, only to wake in his strong arms in the snowy courtyard of the Eyrie. She had kept her eyes closed. She knew he must have been there to take her back to the queen, yet being carried by him brought her odd joy. She didn't want to spoil it for herself before time by talking.

That morning, she had woken from the most incredible dream involving a man. Him. Sandor Clegane. The Hound. She could not remember it in detail any longer but she knew what it entailed.

She had known for a while.

Sweetrobin slept firmly, it seemed. Sansa rolled him gently to the edge of the bed where she had been lying, and wrapped him in blankets and furs so that he looked more like an oversized bear cub, buried in its lair. His face was tucked in, only the tip of his head was out and he faced away from the Hound now. The boy did not move.

Sansa's faith in the gods was not as fervent as it used to be, but she prayed to them all the same, to the old and the new. Please. Let Robin sleep… he must be exhausted from his ailment.

Sansa was tired as well, but for as much as she had tossed and turned in the great bed of the Arryns, sleep would not come. She stepped out, walked to the hearth and put a log in it, then slowly went back towards the bed.

She did not lay in the middle, between the man and the boy as she had first intended. Instead, she stood next to the man who had climbed alone and muleless all the way to the Eyrie to tell her he loved her; listening to his quiet, rhythmic breathing.

Her being danced as it had the first time that day when she had heard his words, spoken in a voice which had a power to cut her soul.

He was lying on his back. Huge hands clutched a brown fur under his chin. Head was completely visible, the good side and the bad side. Sansa stood purposefully on his ruined side now; she had avoided it before.

Daintily, she lowered herself to sit on the edge of the bed next to him. Her side touched his. He was very warm. As warm or warmer than the faceless man in her marriage bed in her dreams, who was always so much taller than her real husband, Tyrion, had any right to be.

Now, now… her throat constricted from a turmoil of emotions.

She had always wanted to be loved. And yet, now, the first time a man confessed his love for her, she did not love him back. She had never felt for the burnt man in front of her eyes what she had as a young girl for Joffrey before he cut off her father's head, or for gallant Ser Loras. No, that had been a different, singing, happy love and her handsome men were not worthy of it, none of them. Joffrey was a monster and Ser Loras could have given his rose to any other lady, he had never seen Sansa, only a pretty shell of herself to whom courtesies were due.

These days she would settle for Harry liking her a little if she could seduce him and it seemed that she could, at least for a while. She suspected her charm might wear off when he had had her maidenhead. But he will still love my claim, will he not? Time would show.

But here was this other man who had kissed her and left her and forgotten all about her. As she forgot him. Except that she did not. She just couldn't think about him as she could not think about Father, her real Father, because then Alayne would know she was Sansa and Sansa could only be reborn when Petyr said, not any sooner. It would be too dangerous to say who she was before the time was right.

But Petyr was also Littlefinger and he was dead now and it had always been dangerous to be Sansa Stark. Alayne Stone could never protect her; that was just another illusion Sansa had.

"Enough," she said aloud to herself and studied the man before her, occasionally glancing at the bundled boy. They both slept tightly. It was what the snow did; fighting with the snow, walking through the snow, Sansa knew. She had never slept better than when she was a very small child, after playing in the summer snows of her home. She should be asleep as well but she was not. How could she be? But neither her losses nor her petty fears were the reason she was sleepless now.

Slowly, she pulled the covers from the Hound's body, very careful not to wake him, much more cautious than before, when Robin first held the knife for chopping turnips on his throat as she busied herself making good, strong knots that would keep anyone in place. Even a dangerous man as he was, muscled as the oxen that once pulled the great winch leading to the Eyrie and, unlike the poor animals, alive. Her heart elated at that thought, painfully so.

She pressed her hand at the little black mark under his chin, gentle as a bird's touch. She had cut him there, or rather, he had cut himself, laughing at her attempt to threaten him. Her chest widened to be impossibly large, unexpectedly so. And her fear of him sat quietly in her throat like an old friend. No, she did not love him… She had those other feelings for him, those that a true lady should never have.

He had stopped laughing when he saw she meant it… He was impossibly still… And she had meant it… Gods did she mean it! Her cold determination on the matter almost frightened her more than he always had and still did.

Had she seen for herself that he served the queen again as she expected, she would have done it, she would have killed him, she would. And not only for herself. If the Hound was here, sent by the queen, maybe she wanted Sansa's cousin dead as well, in order to grant the Vale to one of her own cousins, blond and handsome. The Hound… the Hound did not think twice when commanded to kill a child, Sansa knew, remembering the butcher's boy, Arya's dead friend.

She looked straight into his sleeping face. It was ugly, to be sure, very ugly even. It hadn't become better with time. His good side was plain and his nose hooked. His hair was longer than she remembered it, black and matted; plastered to his skin and to his scars. She touched it briefly and it was sweaty. Just as his chest was when she removed the blanket and the furs and left him exposed to her eyes as he had been before; when helpless and tied.

She had never thought she would see him like that. She had never thought she would succeed in that. She was Sansa and anything she attempted went wrong, she was weak and she could not fight back. Not with strength. Maybe, now and then, with lies and Arbor gold…

She supposed that the main reason she succeeded in making him helpless was that there was never any need to do this to him, and that on the next occasion when a man truly wanted to hurt her again she would be as helpless as she had always been. A perfect, innocent victim for all times.

She cupped his bad cheek as she had done years ago when the sky burned green, wanting, needing to remember. She exhaled at the feeling of it. This, was not a lie. This, was as she had known it. A tapestry of suffering woven of skin and bone. This was him. And she had never thought of him often in the two years gone by, but whenever she did she wondered where he was, what he did and she… missed him and she was angry with him. Almost as she missed and was angry with all her dead family because they left her and they died.

Except with him it was different than that. He was the only one who took the place of her husband in her dreams.

She stared at his face again, at her hand on his scars, happy he was asleep.

At the beginning, on the kingsroad, she had thought him as old as her father. Lord Baelish had said that younger girls were best matched with older men and Alayne sometimes thought he was right, and usually after Sansa had one of those dreams.

But now, now, he looked both older and younger, older than when they met, for certain, yet quite a bit younger than how she remembered him. He was nowhere near as old as her Father would be now...

She thought of this contrast, a bit, and very soon she knew.

I am older.

Alayne had met many people and she was a better judge of age and men than Sansa had ever been. Alayne was already five and ten and Sansa would reach that age only in a few months.

She traced a ridge of one of his scars, starting from his chin, avoiding the protruding bone on his jaw which was simply too ugly and glistening in the firelight. Her finger travelled to his forehead and scalp until the place where his hair began growing, continuing down the unmarred half to the unburnt corner of his lips.

She had known those lips.

The Hound's head stirred slightly. At the thought that he could wake at any moment, yank her hand, pinch her chin, pin her down to the bed and force her to sing for him, her heart and throat constricted. Fresh fear coiled in her stomach and climbed into her lungs until it nearly choked her. Yes, that was what he would do. That was what he had done before. She was stupid to hope otherwise.

But now he said he loved her. He had never said that before. And he could have probably done anything he wanted to her as soon as she released him. He chose to hold Sweetrobin instead.

Stupid, stupid Sansa, she scorned herself and her hopes. Still so eager to be loved. Maybe there was no love. And truth be told, she was being unfair now. How could she take pleasure in his confession when she did not correspond him?

And yet if love was just another lie told among men to sweeten the ugliness of their existence, there was this other feeling in the depths of her stomach, the one which was not fear and which could not be denied. It woke now when both the only man who'd ever caused it and her poor cousin slept.

What would Mother say? She wrung her hands in her lap. How could she be like this, all of this? Scared witless of him and of this other thing which was not love?

There was a way to find out. They were alone in the Eyrie and she might never have another opportunity. Even if he stayed with her, he would be awake and she would shy away from him. She would fear him. She would never know. She wanted to know. Unseemly as it was, she had to know. No other man had given her this sensation. It had to mean something.

And she could not even ruin herself, could she, if she did only what she had in mind.

He will wake from it, she knew. Maybe. But not immediately.

She rolled up the sleeves of her gown, Brown and dull as most dresses Alayne wore.

Goosebumps came out softly on the pale skin of her forearm. Uninvited, her nipples hardened on their own despite the oppression of the bodice. She sat petrified on the same spot, even more quiet than before despite that all her insides had turned to jelly from fear and anticipation of what she would try to do.

She could not take off his tunic without waking him, so she just lifted it up, to his neck. Smallclothes proved to be less of a challenge. She could slide them down his too long, muscled legs with small movements at a time. He stirred again, and snored in his sleep. She froze and waited with her eyes closed until his breathing calmed and all movement of his body stopped.

When her confidence was reborn, she looked again. He was as naked as she could make him in his sleep. His manhood was soft and limp and this gave her more courage, the knowledge that he must be sleeping. Tyrion's was different, red and awful, when he, when he… She swallowed hard to suppress the repulsive memory of her wedding night; the horrifying sight of her dwarf husband's aroused, twisted body; her marriage bed cold as a grave.

Sansa stood up. Close to the fire, she disrobed, silent as the tombs of her forefathers in the crypts under Winterfell until nothing, nothing was left. Her skirts made a puddle next to his rags.

This is how husband and wife are carried to the marriage bed, to find joy in each other, she told herself to boost her courage, remembering the two things she knew clearly about how bedding was done. The other thing… the other thing she would not do, she had to save that for her lord husband. She took a very deep breath.

Naked, she considered his poor clothing once more. He has come here in this. He had no boots… She couldn't tell how knowing that made her feel, but it was not pretty at all.

Yet he spoke of it as if it was nothing. She would have died, probably. Or not. She hadn't died up to now as she well could have.

She sat next to him again. Some scars on his body looked fresher and uglier than the others, old and forgotten; on the back of his neck and on his thigh, where very little hair was growing. And his shield arm had been most definitely burned. She would go and fetch help for his pain if she could. She would cradle him as he cried if he wanted. Her mother used to hold her and it was what women did. But men did not want her compassion, Sansa had learned. Joffrey had only the vilest loathing for her offer of help when Nymeria bit him, and the Hound cried the night of the battle, yes, but then he just left.

It was time and she would gain nothing by waiting.

Her throat constricted terribly, from fear of him, from what she wanted of him, from everything. She forgot her life down the mountain and slowly lowered herself on him so that her body covered his, or as much as it could because he was so much taller than her, no matter how tall she had become for a girl.

It was just as she hoped and just as she feared. All his body was radiating heat and her own skin was slowly warming up where it was pressed to his. Her nipples softened at first, but when she accidentally brushed them against the coarse black hair and the taut plains of his chest, they turned very stiff, as if she had bathed in very cold water, though all she felt from him was heat, and not the cold.

Bewildered by her reaction, Sansa lifted up onto her elbows and cupped her face to study his own, now slightly above and in front of her, with new eyes. It was still ugly, but in a different way. The tension, she realised, the tension was gone from him in his sleep.

And when she closed her eyes…. She did it only for a second. The confirmation of how she thought she might feel if she did this did not tardy. The vivid sensation in her entire body was so much stronger than when he had been carrying her earlier that day through the castle, which was already excruciatingly pleasant, with all the layers of clothing between them.

But this, this was ineffable. So much better than when he haunted her odd dreams, scarred and cloaked, always ending up pressing his cruel lips to hers.

She realised she was right in doing this, whatever this was. She hoped he would not be angry for it. He didn't seem angry with her when she'd untied him for tying him in the first place. He obeyed her and went to sleep. Like a dog he always said he was. She hated her thought yet it was there, unbidden. She didn't want a dog. She had Lady once but that was different.

She could not ruin herself this way, could she? If she only stayed like this a bit with him? She hadn't planned to do more. For her to be ruined, she had to lay down, she knew, that was that other thing she knew for certain; her future husband would be on top of her, to do as he pleased every night until her womb quickened.

But before that she just had to know another thing, only for herself. She had to learn why almost anyone in the Vale told jokes in front of Alayne, the bastard girl, about how sweet it was to be bedded, yet she had never felt anything remotely sweetened from a man's touch, except in her memories and in her dreams. Was it already a sin if she only wanted to know if people were right or wrong?

If it could be sweet...

She felt a hardening under her legs and froze again. He will wake now. He has to. This could not happen when men slept, she told herself. Could it? Maybe it could.

Or maybe he is paying me back, pretending as I did earlier today, and then he will pin me to the bed and ruin me. Fear was back in her throat. She didn't want that. She didn't know what she wanted, but it wasn't that.

She was very, very, very still.

She didn't dare sit up, and much less look down, under her belly and woman's place. She didn't want to see how his manhood looked now, for fear it would be exactly the same as Tyrion's, and that she would be repulsed by it. She didn't want to be repulsed. Not by him. And when she lay like this, and when she closed her eyes, the sensation of his changing member under her was anything but repulsive.

She felt so very warm, and soft, and aching.

When she opened her eyes again, she felt more like herself, aware of the room, of the cold on her back, of the bundle on the far side of the enormous bed which was a sleeping boy, not moving, thankfully, not moving.

She closed her eyes again and only the heat in her body existed. Maybe she had no body and was only there in spirit, soft and hovering.

He would wish me to look at him, she remembered, suddenly feeling guilty for doing this with him, to him. She opened her eyes again. Looking at his face now, its ugliness mattered little; she was so happy it was this face and not any other.

As she changed position, the lower part of her body moved by chance until her woman's place was on his hardness, pulsating against her folds. She stilled again. Moved again. Felt herself wet. Opened her mouth in shock and dread. This had never happened in her dreams. She moved herself up and down on him, only a little, very little each time, making small, shallow breaths, unable to close her eyes, unable to keep them open. It was well. It was more than well. It was good.

And as any dream, it was soon over, before she could withdraw from him and hoard the memory of her daring for future times.

"Fuck," he said, opening his grey eyes impossibly wide. She had never thought he had big eyes, she believed his were much smaller than hers. And maybe they were, but not now.

The look in his eyes was lost and it became more so with every moment that passed. She felt a little bit colder than before, and afraid, again, of what he would say, of what he would do. What could she possibly say to him about this? She realised she didn't think of this beforehand. Then again, she never planned this, no, she had just wanted to lay on him, not with him, as a woman.

So she said nothing and she kept looking at him, afraid.

To her surprise, he closed his eyes again.

"Fuck," he repeated.

The word was vile and she couldn't understand why he had to use it twice now.

Both his hands closed the small of her back in an iron grip. And she was both more afraid and felt better than before when she had dared move against him on her own. She gave herself to the feeling, not daring to move now, staying firmly in place where he had locked her.

A bit of him was in her, she thought, or no, surely she had imagined that; it was a very little tip of something, warm and soft and hard at the same time. She was very, very, very still. She had not thought she could lose her maidenhead this way.

She moved a bit away from him, imperceptibly so, trying to wriggle unnoticeably out of his grip. Her action, slow and shy and unsuccessful as it was against the iron hold he maintained on her, caused him to speak for the third time.

"Fuck," he muttered.

All other words seemed to have left him; normally he had more of them for her, cruel, mocking ones. But that was before today, today he had spoken to her differently.

Suddenly, she wanted to remember, no, she wanted to relive their kiss from the night of the battle. But his grip was even more firm on her back now, restraining her every movement. She jerked violently the upper part of her body against him until he allowed the lower part to slide up, onto his stomach. Her woman's place felt wet on him as if she had made water, but she did not, she knew that she did not. Her cheeks warmed and turned crimson, more like than not. But at least she was far enough up now.

Slowly, she placed her face above his, forgetting she had long hair, which fell all over both of them. He, he wrapped one of his fists in her hair to move it out of the way, gently tugging at her scalp. He looked as if he was keeping his eyes closed by force.

"Look at me," she said, hating the trembling sound of her voice. She was a child no longer. She should not act like one. "Is this…" she stuttered, hating it still. "Is this what is being done when… when there is love?"

"I don't know," he muttered instantly, obviously more awake than he let show. He opened his eyes and also his mouth, very slightly, against the side of her face so close to his, where he held her by her hair. He smelled as warm as he felt, she realised. Though not clean. It did not matter. It was perhaps good that he didn't smell clean though she couldn't say why for the life of her.

His other arm, the one that was not entangled in her hair, roamed up and down her back, ending finally on one of her breasts. His touch there made her want to move her woman's place up and down on his belly, so she did it and that… that was good and horrifying at the same time. Her thighs spasmed of their own accord, once, twice, unused to any of this, from being stretched and from something completely new.

"Fuck," he repeated again, left her hair, pulled her back down on his manhood. The tip was in her, she could not deny it now, and she pressed herself on it, just a bit more, because she felt this new need; a need to burst.

To lay on her back and spread her legs wide open for him.

She stilled herself again, crawled back up toward his face. He made no attempt to restrain her this time. His eyes were wild now, and almost black.

"What you want," he rasped, "as you want it."

As I want it?

It was a very strange offer to Sansa, one she didn't know how to use. Men always told her what she should do. She didn't honestly think he would be any different. He had directed her before, always back to her cage, in no uncertain terms.

"I don't know myself what to do," she reacted honestly, as he seemed to have done so far. She didn't know.

She knew one thing, but it could make him hateful. She decided to ask, looking as straight as she could into his blackened eyes.

"May I… may I close my eyes?"

"If you wish," he said, but his grip on her hips loosened and his gaze fell.

"Not for not wanting to look," she hurried to explain, "for wanting to feel."

She grabbed his hands and pressed them exactly where they were before, until her flesh hurt, deciding on a whim they should be just there. "This," she said. Her voice was deeper now and he grinned from it. The expression made him so ugly that her heart hurt for him.

She moved involuntarily under the pressure of his hands, huge and gentle. It was so much better like this than when she had been seated on the hard plain of his stomach. She sank down on him, spreading a little more, and felt a brief stab of pain. So she moved away, only a bit, and it was good again, his manhood against her weeping folds. She looked him in the eyes and he seemed to be done talking.

She couldn't be more wrong.

"Still looking?" he asked, avidly.

She wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and lose herself in the weeping of her body, but it was not what he wanted, she could tell.

So she brought her face close to his lips. He must have curled up his body, lifted his head or something, because she could now reach his mouth with their middles joined. Her breasts brushed his chest. As if on command, his hand now cupped her second breast, the one which had not yet had his attention. Two sensations together, on her breast and in her woman's place, became almost too much to bear. She rubbed herself on him. She thought he moved with her now, but she could not be certain. Her lips ended up on the burned part of his chin, full of her own hair. She fought for the way through, to his skin, and then traced the scar to his mouth which tasted warm and wet, as it occurred to her she must have been down there, between her legs.

His tongue found hers, welcoming her mouth on his, and it was not at all cruel, as before. His hand never left her breast, her hips swayed back and forth and her entire body hummed. When she thought she could not possibly feel more than what she was feeling now, his other hand wandered to the hole of her behind, probed it gently and prodded it open a tiniest bit. She rocked against him and delved with her tongue into his mouth because it felt as the most natural thing to do. Her legs trembled uncontrollably now, her woman's place throbbed. She was being sucked into him and she finally, finally closed her eyes.

"Damn it," he cursed briefly against her lips and everything stopped.

She was being pulled away. His hardness brushed against the lower part of her belly as he set her aside, not ungently. He stood up brusquely, holding his manhood, leaving her in the state she had never known, aching and hurting and lacking all over. She was a maiden still, she thought, because surely the little pang of something she had felt in her was not nearly enough pain it should take to lose her gift.

He grabbed one of his rags from by the fire and wiped his manhood clean of something. She touched her belly, just above the soft hair on her woman's place and it was sticky. His seed, she realised.

"Don't!" he exclaimed with sudden, unfeigned concern.

He took another of his rags, cleaned her hand, wiped her belly, until she was warm and dry.

"A great lady like you does not want a dog's whelp," he said.

She didn't. She wanted them to be as they were before, with the intensity and nervousness that frightened her.

But her body began slowly cooling down, especially her feet, and he made no move to return to bed. Fire dwindled in the hearth. The winter chill was palpable between the cold stone walls of the castle and under the high ceiling of the bedchamber.

Sansa stood up, walked naked, felt his gaze on her, following her steps. Slowly she put her shift and smallclothes back on, but not the gown. She should feel ashamed and she did, but much less than she thought she would be.

"Was it any good?" he asked lazily and she didn't like his tone. For a second it sounded as if they were both in the Red Keep, she a captive and he a servant of the Lannisters.

"Am I still a maid?" she answered with a question of her own, an honest one, needing to know.

"You should have asked the Imp that question, don't you think?"

"What does Tyrion have to do with us?" she didn't understand.

"Tyrion, see," he slurred though he was completely sober. "You call him by his name. You only ever call me, me."

She did. He was right. To call him only by his first name would be unimaginably intimate. Just like what they just did. She had never called him by his first name, not even in her dreams of him after he'd left. She was too afraid of it. As if it would change something, seal something, make it impossible to go back.

But now, now, she could not go back on this either. He'd said he loved her and she started this. She should have waited to know if she could love him back, surely that was what he wanted. Why else would he come all this way if not for her love?

"Don't be hateful," she said, dry, dressed for sleeping and very well touched. Her body felt differently, moved differently, sounded differently. She was both sorry and glad it was all over. Does this make me a woman?

Does this make me your woman?

Will anyone want to marry me now?

Of course they would. No one ever wanted to marry Sansa, only her claim.

"A maid you said," he sounded very uncertain now. "Fuck."

He returned to the bed, returned to where they were on it, felt and tousled the sky blue sheet with little moons embroidered on it. "Fuck!" he exclaimed, stronger than any time before she dared straddle him.

It struck her then he did not know if she was a maid or not before she came to him. Was it important to him? He said he loved her. She supposed he may have heard she was married if he was looking for her, so it should not matter. Not to him, she concluded. He cared not for the opinion of the world. And he could not be Sansa's lord husband. He could be Alayne's. But everyone knew now that Alayne had never existed.

"Tyrion wanted," she said. "I didn't. He was so ugly. And he was a Lannister. I couldn't possibly! He let me be."

"Enough," he said. "I don't want to hear about the dwarf and what he missed."

Yet it seemed to Sansa he did want to know. Her face fell. She never knew what to do with him when he was like this, impossible and awful.

"Fuck if I know if you are still a maid now," the Hound finally announced. "I didn't fuck you good and proper if that's what you are asking. But I can't tell you how much it takes to do what you are afraid of. There should be blood and there isn't, is all I know."

It gladdened her heart he seemed to know as much or as little as she did about what this, what they did, meant for her innocence.

"I'm not afraid," she said. It was only half a lie. She was afraid of losing the only value she had as a pawn. But once she was wedded and bedded, her claim would be her husband's, not hers. For the first time she realised she may have wanted it to remain hers. It was not only about being forced to marry a Lannister. It would be a final treason to her family if she handed it down to just anyone.

She had betrayed Father when she didn't know better. And the hardest thing of all was to know that perhaps she should have known better. If only she had let herself look, truly look at Joffrey and the queen.

She had learned something by now, and she needed to act as wisely as she knew how, in the name of honour, and of Father's memory. It was all she had of him. Memories were all she had from her entire family.

Besides, as long as her claim was hers, everyone would want her alive, she had come to realise. After, she was disposable. And the only thing poor Sansa was good at, she thought bitterly, was staying alive. She still wanted to live, weak and stupid as she was. Was that a sin as well? To want life and just a little bit of beauty in it?

If she wasn't a maid, she would lie, she decided, very firmly. It was known some ladies lost their gift from horse riding. The necessity bothered her. Will I always be a liar, as Arya said I was?

Yet she didn't regret this new knowledge of her body and of his. How could she? It was beautiful, though she suspected the Hound might find some hateful words about it if she said so, in order to ruin it all for her. Much like Arya would. She went to him where he was standing. He was still fumbling with the bedding.

"They don't tell about any of this to highborn girls in the north," she whispered, suddenly worried he might say she chirped and annoyed him, and send her away.

He let the blanket fall. His arms hung next to his body, muscled and unoccupied. He seemed to have trouble looking at her. But after a moment he did, and she wished he embraced her but he wouldn't. Maybe he didn't know how. Maybe all he knew was to put a blade on her throat when she displeased him, just like Joffrey used to have her beaten. But he came unarmed to me now. It was the first thing she checked extensively among his poor possessions after she and Robin had finished tying him up when he was asleep.

He had never made anything easy for her, she realised. Perhaps it was never easy for him. But this only explained how he acted with her. It didn't make her feel any better about how he had sometimes treated her in the past.

But he had made her feel good now. Or maybe she did it herself. It wasn't so difficult. No wonder everyone's mouth was so full of it in the Vale. It seemed unbelievable now how afraid she was of him at the beginning. Maybe she just had to stop being a simple child and he would treat her with respect.

As Father treated Mother.

The thought of the two of them as Mother and Father was unseemly, and yet strong. They were not married. They were not to be married.

She looked up to him, searching his face for answers, not knowing how to give voice to her doubts.

Staring her down from his superior height, the Hound whispered back, sounding terribly young, almost as Theon the betrayer once did with his stupid jokes improper for the ears of a lady.

"Guess what," he said, "they say even less to boys in the south."

Sansa Stark laughed as she hadn't done in years. When the throes of her laughter subsided, she brusquely put both her hands over her mouth.

Sweetrobin still slept and it wouldn't do, it just wouldn't do, to wake him.