Thank you, TopShelfCrazy, for a beta read.
xxxxx
"If this Young Wolf has the wits the gods gave a toad, he'll make me a lordling and beg me to enter his service. He needs me, though he may not know it yet." Sandor Clegane the Hound, ASOIAF.
Eleven
Sandor woke heavily from little sleep with the first light of a new, sunny winter morning in the Eyrie. Drowsy and slow, he staggered to the hearth and rekindled the dying fire. Lazy to go out in the cold and take a piss, he returned to bed, underdressed and conscious of the acid reek of his own body. It had been a while since he had been truly warm, and sweaty.
She didn't mind it in the night, he thought stubbornly. Why should it bother her now?
He lay on his back and avoided looking at his side where a mass of long, unnaturally brown hair protruded gently from under the blankets. There were two feet of space between him and Sansa in the great four-poster featherbed of the Arryns.
But she didn't push the boy in the middle, did she now?
After… after what he and Sansa did in the darkness he had been the first one to fall asleep, again, and for the third time that night, for as much as he tried hard to stay awake, curious to see what she would do; if she would lie close to him or as far as possible. To see if she would show regret. But emptying his cock always made him sleep, just like too much wine eventually did.
Now, he was the first one awake and in painful need to continue where they had stopped in the night, from the mere thought of Sansa in his bed. He pointedly didn't look in her direction. He did not. Try as he might, it was useless. He still knew she was there. His cock knew it just the same.
So much for pissing, he mocked himself. It would have to wait.
He could help himself, but the notion was unappealing in Sansa's presence, and if that was not enough, there was also the boy. The sun was up and either of them could wake at any time. So he closed his eyes, took comfort from the uncommon warmth around him and wandered into the safe corners of his twisted mind.
Since he'd renounced his masters and left them, that bloody night when the Blackwater burned, the Hound had only coupled with his right hand.
A solitary craven on the run avoided inns; those very few that were left in business on the way north from the capital, scattered through the lands thoroughly devastated by the War of The Five Kings. He would not give the boy king the joy of having his head on a spike. He would not trade his life for a fuck, knowing as he did that he was prone to sleep after he was done.
Not before he killed his brother. And Gregor was out there somewhere, burning the riverlands. It was only a matter of time before Sandor found him.
He'd told himself many times this was the only reason he ran north after the bloody battle, and not anywhere else.
So he paid for his wine and drank it in the fields, staying alive. But the wine must have been eating his brains and not only his belly or that buggering Huntsman would have never caught him sleeping from drunk, nor delivered him to the flaming Beric Dondarrion.
After, he couldn't really go looking for a woman with Sansa's little sister in tow, could he? The thought of a child seeing him rutting was just as unappealing back then as it was now. It was not that he had misgivings about it as a septon might, because it was a sin of some kind or because it wasn't proper, no; the mental image of a child, watching, simply watered down any needs he had for fucking, into his hand or elsewhere.
Later, on the Quiet Isle, he was weak for long. As soon as he was up and about, he started digging graves. Besides, the gods-forsaken septry became a river island in autumn. It was cut off from the land by the flooded streams and more devoid of women than any other place in Westeros he'd been to.
So at first, when Sansa woke him for the second time that night, he thought he was having one of those dreams of her he'd been haunted with. But she never… she never straddled him in his sleep. And her hair was never brown, always auburn as in King's Landing. And she never tasted as intensely sweet as the real Sansa in his arms.
He woke with her cunt on his cock...
He thought she knew what she was doing. She was a woman bedded. Maybe the dwarf wanted it that way or Sansa wanted it like that with the dwarf, though the Hound couldn't fathom why. Sansa would have squashed the little man if she lay on top of him.
The tip of his cock somehow got into the beginning of her wet cleft. She teased him, moved away, asking him oddly if that was done in bed when there was love. At that moment he could not pay any attention to her question, registering it with barely an inch of his brain present.
But he remembered it now and he could not answer it still.
It was fortunate that he wasn't instantly able to fuck her and he was immensely glad for it now. He never thought he'd be glad for not fucking a woman, but there it was.
When he pulled her back down onto his cock, he even hurt himself briefly because by chance he found some wrong angle for sliding into her. It was unheard of. It had never happened before. Well, if the woman was under him, or pressed to the wall, he could find the cunt easy enough, feel for the opening a bit with his fingers and get on with it.
The discomfort he experienced with Sansa was brief and unimportant because her wet cunt began caressing the tip of his cock without fucking him. He was never sheathed inside her, or maybe a tiniest bit. It was too wet, terribly tight and too bloody warm to know with precision. And when she lay fully over him and when they kissed, he just let all of himself go into that, whatever that was, in a way he would normally fight when drunk, not thinking. Her warm mouth on his scars, on his tongue, her cunt on his cock, her breast in his hand. He didn't know why he touched her arse in the end, it was also not something he would do, it just happened, but the probing made her move wilder against him and he, he…
It's no wonder, he thought, laughing at himself in the bright light of the morning.
After all the time with his right hand for company, he spilled his seed like a green boy.
Maybe I should return the favour and wake her by laying on top of her now.
In response to that, the true bloody boy turned and tossed in bed before he blessedly continued sleeping. His closed eyes now looked up to the ceiling and not away from Sandor and Sansa.
Aye, dog. Some other time.
He wished she would want to have him on top of her. He wished she would ask him to do with her as he wanted. He didn't think he would hear her say that any time soon.
Maybe one day?
To learn that the Imp did not touch her felt like a well-placed knife in his guts. He should be happy for it, but he wasn't or not entirely. Because if Sansa was a maid, then it was his fault if she wasn't any more. To make it worse, he did not even know. He wasn't inside her, but he was not away from her cunt either, and he didn't know how deep or how shallow the bloody veil should be.
One way to know for certain, he couldn't help thinking. Do it properly. She wouldn't mind, being that wet.
But she would, he realised instantly. It was the only thing she wanted to know, after. About her precious maidenhead. There were no tender words of love for her enamoured dog. And if he pushed himself into her all the way, with or without that piece of skin proving her innocence, it would probably hurt her as seven hells if the Imp had missed his chance. Sandor had never given much consideration to his size down there; he was as he was. But, faced with the prospect that Sansa wasn't bedded, the awareness of his body acquired a strident, dreadful proportion; he was not a small man.
He remembered the dead Littlefinger in Gregor's bag with awful suspicion. Did he force Sansa to have lessons in his houses as he had done with that other northern girl the Hound stupidly saved in the slaughter of the Stark household? Was he preparing Sansa to please a lord husband of his choosing? She was so confident when she straddled him. She had always been afraid of him before. It could not be she had never done such a thing to a man.
But what if he insulted Sansa profoundly by voicing his suspicions, ruining his good fortune when it barely started?
He had never hesitated to mock Sansa before, but he had been in the court long enough to know that women who were not whores took offence in being compared to them, even when they behaved much worse.
Those very few women who sought him out for his cock over the years, and not for his coin, also knew where to find it, and Sansa both did and didn't know. It all led him to believe….
That, if she was the only woman he ever loved, he was her first man in this…
The notion did not bear believing. It was too much to hope for, and it would crush him if he embraced it and if it was a lie in the end.
He wanted to burst. On a whim, he decided. He would go out in the snow. That should take care of all his troubles for a while. He needed the cold. Plenty of cold. He would piss and he would be alright.
Sansa stirred.
At a safe distance from him in bed, she squinted through her eyes, opened them widely and blushed. Her gaze timidly found his under the furs, both looking at him and through him as was her wont.
On an instinct, he wrapped one of his long arms around the small of her back, pulled her into his sweaty body, felt her freezing in place. Somewhat repentant, he released his grip, and let her retract back to where she was. Sansa relaxed in her stiffness, as far se he could see, but not fully, only a bit.
To be sure. Changing your mind in the morning, are you?
The rare, brave wenches and not-so-well born ladies who very occasionally favoured the monster with the big cock over a pretty knight always found Sandor in the night, in the dark corners of the royal palace, often after the feasts when wine messed with everyone's heads. It had yet to happen in the morning. And from those few encounters with women other than whores, the burned youth was demanded first hand to observe the practical courtesy of pulling out; not all wenches could easily find and afford moon tea and not every brew worked in preventing women from becoming with child. It didn't take him long to figure that if he pulled out, he might be able to fuck for free and sometimes, a prettier woman.
But none as beautiful as the girl in his bed now. He put his hand on her back again, slightly, without drawing her closer this time, spying for reaction. Sansa stretched, arched, yawned, almost relaxed, looked at him stiffly and offered him a perfectly false, forced smile.
"You want us to…" she could never quite finish her sentences when he was too close to her, it seemed. That was the same as he remembered.
To her credit, she continued stuttering. "You want us… To lay as husband and wife now. Because of what I… what I did. Do you?"
And yet at times she was as blunt with him as when her nature betrayed her in court in order to speak against Joff's orders and her own good. He had almost forgotten how this part of her felt. To see her speak up to him from such closeness brought him a wave of quiet pleasure.
"I do," he informed her truthfully, "but it doesn't mean I will do anything."
It was not enough for him. He always needed to say more.
"I didn't fuck you bloody last night," he reminded her, "and not because you didn't want me to."
Sansa buried her face into the sheets, trying to hide.
He regretted his words as soon as they left his unguarded mouth.
"Sansa," he rasped more carefully now, consumed by a terrifying doubt, "you do not expect me to…. to forget what you did? No, not what you bloody did. What we did? I was all for it, remember. You don't mean for us to pretend we did nothing?"
Shyly, slowly, she raised her head again and met his eyes. "No," she said, "I don't think it is possible," she whispered fearfully. "I know this now. I know what this is to me. I only wanted to know."
"Know what?" he wanted to know what this was as well.
She ghosted his bare chest with her hand, moving it up and down once, stopping at the border of his smallclothes, afraid to go further down as he would have wished. She didn't touch it, but she did look at his cock.
"I… I needed to see how your body felt next to my own," she said with scathing honesty and no pretence. Sandor's heart began pounding. "I've never felt this way before… If I may say so… I resented the proximity and the sight of a man's body. But with you, I… it would please me to feel it again. But... laying with you is more than I am willing to do… I... I fear it is not love, the feeling I have for you. I am sorry."
"Not love?" he asked back, hating how weak he sounded, as weak as when he told her about his scars.
"I don't think so," first she murmured, and then she protested, colouring more than she already did before. "I don't know! I don't know what this is, I don't know how or where to take it. You are not to be my husband. It isn't right."
"But you want this?" he whispered hoarsely, placing his large hand over hers and pressing both into his ribcage.
Sansa nodded with her eyes, lacking strength to answer, red as the Lannister crimson. He surmised that what she did say was by now becoming far too much for a lady.
And far less than what he wanted to hear.
On an impulse, Sandor kissed her, closing the distance between them only with his ugly face, keeping his body apart. Kissing wouldn't hurt her and after last night it was worth a try.
In the past, he extremely rarely kissed women, more out of curiosity as to how they would react to it than for wanting to kiss them for long, and even that only when he was younger, hoping, hoping... For a response he craved. For one of them to look through the mask of the beast he was both forced to wear and donned willingly, all the way down to the man beneath. Not one of them had ever kissed him back, no. They'd tolerated it or wriggled away.
He'd suspected for long that Sansa would be different in everything. She opened her mouth for him and it was warm and tight as her cunt had been before. Her eyes closed immediately, but she was kissing him back now, tongue battling with his. Palms digging into his shoulders. Palms grabbing his face. Both sides. Lips nibbling on his good and on his ruined lip as though he was one of those damned iced cakes she ate so daintily on royal feasts. She didn't look at him, no, the lady would never do that, while taking her pleasure from the dog, would she? But she had to feel all of it, the difference and the ruin of his face, she had to have a good long taste of it in her mouth.
And she didn't seem to care.
She wanted to feel, she'd said. Well, he would let her. He found he wanted to feel too. Everything.
To hear he was the only one she was ever tempted to touch of her own will… as she had become the only one for him in everything… It was as if he had found Gregor's wooden knight once more and played with it for as long as he wanted.
Half way into the new wonder of kissing Sansa, of being kissed by Sansa, he still had half his mind present to ask himself when and in which way his joy would be taken away from him this time.
As if she could sense that his restless, churning thoughts had run away from her lips, Sansa sat up in bed, ruining the moment, hopping away from him as a bird in truth. "We should go to the winch and bring the servants up", she declared. "My cousin is frail. He requires constant attendance to his needs."
A boy required a good beating in the training yard by other boys, in Sandor's opinion.
But before he could offer his honest advice on that, Sansa roused the boy. Under her guidance and with her words of encouragement, the lordling got up, went and made water, dressed and ate the cold, stone-hard oats from yesterday, while Sandor was brooding in bed. By the time Sansa was finished mothering his lordship, Sandor's cock deflated sufficiently for him to take a piss.
They walked to the cellars, all three of them, through the path in the snow the Hound had cleaned out the day before and it was good that he did...
Winter conquered the castle during night. The Eyrie was seven white towers buried in the snow. At some places, the layers of it were taller than Sansa.
In the cellars, the chain which the Hound used to climb up, and on which Sansa and Lord Arryn returned to the Eyrie in the basket, hung limp and loose.
"The blizzard must have broken it," Sansa said.
Sandor was not convinced. "Or your men," he thought aloud. "My lady," he added mockingly as an afterthought.
"Why would they do that?" Sansa asked, not reacting to his hateful tone, wringing her hands prettily as when she had him tied to the bed pondering what to do with him.
"You tell me," he muttered, distracted by her wondrous curves, hugged by her simple brown gown and cloak in daylight. The colour hid well who she was, not enhancing her Tully features, but the darkness of it underlined the shape of her breasts and the beginning of her hips. He felt increasingly unable to keep his hands to himself. The cold was very welcome to him today. His cock remained conveniently small in the rags he wore. This was well because the boy was suddenly looking him up and down.
"It was you," Lord Arryn accused the Hound with the unspoiled, unflattering arrogance of a child. "You are strong as a monster. Everyone at court always said so. You must have broken it when you turned the winch."
Sansa appeared lost in her thoughts. Dreamily, she supplied an explanation, "Maybe the servants were trying to come after us on their own and broke it by chance."
"Or maybe they did it on purpose," Sandor begged to differ. "How much food is there?
There wasn't much, that much was clear to him since he arrived. As it turned, Sansa and the boy had no idea what food there was. He supposed the servants knew with great precision that there wasn't anything and he could not blame the buggers for not wanting to come up here. No one in their right mind would want it in winter.
"I am their lord!" the boy bellowed as Sandor wondered if this was another little highborn believing in true knights in his head. "They should bring the shovels and clear out the tunnel from the Sky to the Eyrie to come and find me."
"This could take days, weeks," Sansa said, uncertain.
"Or my brother could be the first one to show up after some digging," Sandor said. He never thought Gregor could or would climb up as he did on a chain, risking his neck for Cersei. But he surely had pets whom he could command to dig rubble for days while he and Sansa were weakened by the hunger. "There has to be another way down."
"There isn't," Sansa said, and Sandor saw a flash of a very distinct concern in her eyes. He had seen it before, in the eyes of those he would kill in the next moment. The fear of death.
She was not lying.
They could just as well start digging through the tunnel and never make it down to the Sky before Sandor's strength failed. Or run into Gregor without a sword in his arm.
Or wait. And lose all his forces from starving.
There is no way down.
On any other day Sandor would accept the bitter truth as a given but today he could not. He was with Sansa in the Eyrie and there had to be a way.
"Let me take a good look at these cellars," he said to say something, contrary to his habit to speak only out of necessity or to deliver a nasty blow by his words.
Aimlessly, he walked on.
Sansa and the lordling followed freely. It had never taken him less effort to direct his charges. Except that they were not his charges and that he would hate it if they were. He was his own dog for too long and he began to like it. For as much as he knew in his guts that he would probably have to become a guard again if he wanted to stay with Sansa, in the world as it was. He didn't want this. He didn't know what he wanted from the realm of possible.
Cellars became dungeons at some point of their pointless stroll; the ice cells of the Arryns. The floor of each new cell was more slanted, leading to the open door out of the prison and from there further down, to the slope of the Giant's Lance six hundred feet below. From one of the last cells, the narrowest and perhaps the most dangerous one, with the floor almost hanging rather than sliding down, he could see the bloody waterfall…
Alyssa's tears.
Sansa and the boy were always one step behind him, peeking after him into every new cellar or cell, probably seeing this part of the castle in detail for the first time.
There was no way out.
The Hound turned back, sulking, never speaking. He wanted to smash one of the walls, but he should better keep his strength. He stood to lose it soon enough.
So instead of breaking things he turned to boiling oxen meat for hours, until it softened enough that it could serve as a meal. There was also still a bag of bloody oats and more water than the three of them could drink in a lifetime.
We shall not go hungry today.
Mail clinked behind his back. The sound made him turn brusquely and almost reach for the hilt of the sword he didn't have. He reined in the reflex on time. In his darkest brooding over the boiling meat and the limited choices he had, which could be summed up to being fucked one way or the other, he had almost forgotten about Sansa and the boy.
But they remembered him. Between them, Sansa and Lord Arryn dragged a large curtain filled with loose pieces of armour and even a few blades. The transport was cleverly planned and executed as they would never be able to carry that much plate and mail in their hands.
Sansa was not the girl he left.
"If Ser Robert Strong comes up-"
"If Gregor shows up and sooner or later he will," Sandor shut her up with black anger in his voice.
"I thought you could use this," Sansa finished lamely, trying not to flinch. Her eyes filled with concern and apprehension.
He effectively could.
"Who lived here in the past, boy?" he almost exclaimed when he spread the curtain's contents on the floor. "Giants?" The Hound rarely found pieces of armour that could fit him without first being reworked and extended by a master smith.
"The Winged Knight was the first King of the Vale," the boy spoke of the legend as if it was history written down by the maesters, and not with little adoration. "He was taller than giants."
Sandor snorted. The armour was old, but the steel was still good. He doubted very much that any of the lordling's forefathers was a giant, but at least they were not short.
The blades were a different matter. They were all too small for him, and none remotely suited for facing Gregor.
Sooner than he would have thought, and before he finished examining the mail and plate at hand, it turned dark, and yet he was none the wiser as to what he should do.
Sansa had made the boy eat some oxen and put him to bed before he turned to take his part of the meal.
As he ate, she studied him quietly with that horrible manner of hers, never fully open, always reserved. Her observation made him feel like a caged animal. He wanted to growl and sneer at her, but she gave him no reason to, never speaking, and he didn't find it in him to bring his anger out all by himself.
Also, he began worrying because he never saw her eating and he had no knowledge whether she ate before or not, when he was checking the armour. He hoped that she did. He was not a wet nurse to anyone, nor a gallant prince to put food on her plate. If she couldn't stomach what he made, he gave a rat's arse about it.
Or that's what the Hound told himself.
When he was done eating, she spoke.
"I think…" she hesitated and nervously folded her hands in her lap. "I think Lord Nestor sent us here to… Gods forgive me!"
There was no way in seven hells Sansa could finish that thought.
"He sent you up here to get rid of you and so that you both die, one way or another," Sandor helped, illuminated by his clear view of life. "It would solve his problem with Cersei's army on his doorstep. And he wouldn't have to bloody his hands or anyone else's. How gallant."
"Yes," Sansa said, exhaling deeply. "And Harrold Harding would be the Lord of the Vale instead of sickly Robert Arryn. Most nobles seem to favour that choice."
Her face fell with sadness and disappointment, adopting that lifeless expression she wore when Joffrey forced her to look at her father's head. The Hound could not fathom how after everything she had been through, contemplating the average dishonesty of men still brought her that much sorrow.
Then again, he had to admit to himself, if only in his mind, those same truths she suffered for never brought him any joy either. He just took them as they were. It could not be any different.
The silence between them became thick with dust and cold and the sharp scent of snow drifting in through the high windows. The shutters were closed, but they could not keep winter out on a clear, freezing evening in the Eyrie.
At least it won't snow again during night.
"So we share the bedding with the boy again," Sandor said carelessly, needing to cut through that silence just as he sometimes needed to cut a man down.
To his surprise, Sansa walked to the bed, pulled some blankets and furs loose and brought it all in front of the hearth.
"If you don't mind," she said, pointing politely at the fire.
"No," he laughed, "No" he said. "This whole bloody castle should be on fire for me to become as I was when… when I left."
"We will die," she said suddenly.
"One day," he conceded. They had not died yet. He didn't see why they would die now. They just didn't know yet what to do.
"I would go mad here and with Sweetrobin all by myself," Sansa said. "I am grateful for your presence."
Gratitude was not what he wanted.
She was looking at him under the eye. "May I… may I say something?"
She coloured, and Sandor was all ears.
"I would not have us do this just because we might die," she said dreamily.
"How would you have us do this?" he dared a question of his own, in his mocking voice, wondering what exactly she had in mind, hoping it might include him tasting her body.
She could not answer him, pale and stiff and afraid all at once. He was very angry now, not understanding the change. He hadn't done anything to cause it. Or not much. Not today at least. In the past… He did not wish to dwell on that. He could not. If he did, he would leave her. He could not leave her again. He could not.
"What?" he said, almost snarling. "Do you need to tie me first?"
Her eyes twinkled brightly before they lost expression and died, faced with his tone. She couldn't possibly want that.
Could she?
A highly unusual puzzlement mingled itself surreptitiously with the Hound's rage. He was… intrigued.
Sansa.
If that is what it takes for you to fuck me, just say it. I might consider it.
As one possessed by demons from seven hells, he undressed rapidly and lay naked on his back over the furs Sansa had stretched in front of the fire. He was not ashamed of his body as he sometimes was of his face. He had made it into what it was by choice. He did not have that luxury with regard to his face. Weak. I don't want to be weak. His exposed skin pricked slightly. It was colder than during daytime. He pretended to be asleep and did not say a word.
He listened, waiting…
The little bird could be quiet when she wanted.
He thought he heard the rustling of fabric, or maybe it was only what he wanted to hear.
He was painfully still and tense, unused to inaction.
He felt her soon enough. He wished they could stay in the Eyrie forever and do this every night. He knew that they could not. He thought very hard about his new mismatched body armour and how to assort it, but nothing could stop his swelling now.
She was on him, just like the night before. He wanted to feel her cunt with his fingers, to see if she was wet and how much, but he didn't, afraid of breaking her veil against her will, if he hadn't done so already. He contented himself by moving her over his cock in faster, shallow, more decisive motions, never searching for the way in. She guided one of his hands on her breast and kissed him. They had kissed in the morning, but that seemed like ages ago.
He needed to increase the speed, but she, she… she wanted to glide painfully slowly over him. She was killing him. It was not what he was used to. It was still better than anything else.
She made a sound then, a sharp little cry, her cunt sliding from the tip of his cock to his stomach.
It was too much.
He flipped her on her back and pressed at her cunt, never entering, or entering perhaps just a little bit more than when she was on top of him, past the point of caring. She first spread her legs impossibly wide, but then she stiffened again, closed her eyes forcefully and covered them with both her hands. She seemed lost and leagues away.
"Sansa," he called to her, calming down, leaning on his arms for good support, remembering that armour as much as he could.
This was not what he wanted either.
"Please don't," she said.
He pulled her up, sat on his arse. She was straddling him in his lap now, but he kept her away from his cock because he just realised that in this latest position he would slip inside her whether he wanted it or not. He never tried it before, but it felt too similar to fucking wenches against the stable wall, with the exception that he wasn't standing. Sansa was thawing slowly, coming back from her distance, back to him. Her eyes were now open and completely wild, as they were when she saw him first in the cellars of the Eyrie. One of her hands brushed his cock. By mere chance, it seemed. From that, she stiffened some more.
"I didn't do anything," he rasped in his defence.
To his shock, Sansa tried to sit on his cock. On an instinct, he stopped her.
"You do this, and we have done this for good," he warned her.
"Even when I am not on my back?" she asked very timidly.
The Hound laughed. "Much easier like this than when you are on your back," he informed her.
Sansa's shoulders slumped. But on the next moment, she squatted, putting her weight on her feet and grasped his shoulders. Painfully slowly as she did before, she rubbed her warm cunt on the tip of his cock without ever sitting on it, creating unbelievable friction. His left hand caught her weight, resting on her bottom. He decided to feel her arse like the previous night, but his fingers wandered in the wet path between her curls and ghosted the surface of it, not venturing deep, never deep, causing her to slide over his cock and then against his hand. Or both at the same time.
He moved a finger up and down the entire length of her cunt, as it went up and descended to the tip of his cock, paying attention to stick to the moist surface and not venture any further. Sansa squeezed his shoulders. Her legs twitched and stiffened in a very different manner than when she was afraid. She dropped her head to his right shoulder. Her kiss on his skin became a bite. He could not understand why… He didn't have to stroke her many more times, or maybe he did, he couldn't tell. Sensations blurred, mounted. At one point, her entire body trembled. She pressed the upper part of her body into his chest as hard as she could, digging the tips of her fingers in the skin on his back, biting him harder, to the point that it almost hurt. She remained that way and touched his cock in very small, completely irregular motions, hanging on him, shying from his finger, unable to move with him or away from him.
She must have bit him to avoid making a sound, he realised, embarrassed, as he rarely was. He could fuck her then and there, and she wouldn't have cared, most definitely not. She seemed away in her own body, in her own pleasure, if that was what it was. To his sorrow, there was no song to go with it; only upset, telling silence.
He couldn't bring himself to fuck her, not like this, ready or not.
He just set her aside when it was all too much for him as it seemed to be for her, smelled his fingers, tasted them, and helped himself finish his own business at hand, as she stared him down, wide-eyed and lost. He was too far gone to care if she was watching him with his right hand.
"What was that?" she inquired after a while, when he finished cleaning himself, her voice deeper than ever.
"You or me?" he growled quietly, in a very low voice.
No answer was forthcoming. They were not in court. She was not bound to answer to him.
"A pleasure, I think. For both, I hope," he rasped on, assuming, not knowing. He could not tell her what it was precisely for women, they had no seed to spill. And he'd always believed that they needed a good fuck and some screaming to go where he hoped that Sansa had just gone. He'd just discovered that maybe they did not, much like men could spill their seed silently in their hand or in a woman's mouth.
Sansa stayed silent. To his utmost amazement, she put one of her own fingers between her damp, auburn curls and then smelled it. On an impulse, he took that finger, kissed it, kissed her mouth. They melted into each other for a moment, both getting terribly good at it after little practice.
After, when he manoeuvred her to proper bed in sparse, practical movements, in a way he used to direct her to the door of her chambers in the past, and when he pulled her into his embrace as he had tried to do in the morning, she didn't move away, though she did freeze with fright, quite a bit. He would ask about it, needing to understand, but the urge to sleep was too strong. He released his grip so that she could choose to wriggle out. She put a little distance between their dressed bodies, but she did not leave him fully, not even when he pulled the furs over them. She nonetheless carefully avoided his eyes, tucking his pretty head under his chin. He thought he saw her smile, but it was that damn Stark smile, the one that nearly didn't exist, not the crystal, unbound laughter she had gifted him the night before.
It was already more than he ever expected to find when he went searching for her. So much better than any of his dreams in either his sleeping or waking state. In the last mad dream he had of her, here in the Eyrie, before finding her for real, he had given her pleasure with his hand, of a different, stronger nature than what he thought he just gave her.
He pondered the distinction between a mere wet dream and this true something between them now; this, this was as well-behaved as only Sansa could be; a courteous, ladylike pleasure.
It was only a matter of time before they lay together, he realised, if they continued at this pace. He became semi-hard at the thought.
He was falling asleep restless, with a seed of a ridiculous notion being born in his head about how they might try to leave the Eyrie on the morrow … The Mad Dog of Saltpans… Maybe the title of Mad Dog he was awarded was not entirely misplaced, judging by the boyish adventure suggested by the mush he now had for brains. He would see if any of it was remotely possible at first light. He wanted to help Sansa, as he should have done before, if he could. And the bloody boy as well because there was no one else who would do it. He was loath to let another boy die as he was left to die. Only because he was ill and ill-suited for life.
He felt feverish, the same as when he secretly planned to serve Sansa's brother on his journey to the Twins, in order to see her again, growing delusions that the Stark boy king might task him with freeing his lady sister. Who better than the traitor to sneak back into the capital and do this? If he came carrying her brother's message, maybe she would go with him. All delusions… But now… now… This was real.
He wanted more of her.
For all his mad love for her, he could not understand why this, this that he had from her now was both too much, too soon for him, and at the same time incredibly little.
Not enough, never enough.