The first half of the drive back to the property was silent. Petyr was no longer smiling, but Sansa didn't think he was annoyed; in point of fact, she found the change to be a relief. What Petyr offered Stannis Baratheon wasn't a smile – it was a grin made of oil and false promises. It turned her stomach. She'd much rather see him quiet, his mind whirling. The girl alternated looking at her attorney and staring out the window of the car.

Once they got off the highway for the suburban roads, Sansa found her voice again. "Petyr." He did not look at her, eyes on the road, and only grunted to show he had heard her. "If I had killed Joffrey, would you still be doing all this?"

"Absolutely."

His complete lack of hesitation surprised her. "But I'd be guilty."

"I find guilt and innocence to be restrictive, limited concepts. After all, everyone is guilty of something, aren't they?"

"But not of murder."

"Arguable." His eyes just barely flicked in her direction as he switched on his turn signal. "If I were debating that case, I would go philosophical: that all those who do not do their utmost to help their fellow man – say aid work in Africa, or wherever – are, in their own way, complicit in murder, the same as watching a mugger shoot down an investment banker on the street without acting."

Sansa felt unreasonably frustrated with this (rather stupid, to her mind) response, her hands twisting in her lap. "Petyr, we're not talking about crazy hypothetical situations!"

"We absolutely are." He turned to face her for a full two seconds, and it made Sansa's stomach flip, though she was unsure why. It was the flat, even grey of his gaze. It was disconcerting. "Because you didn't kill Joffrey. And even if you did, pardon my French, you'd deserve a fucking medal, not a prison sentence." The girl was quiet for a long moment, and so he pressed her. "Would you rather be in jail?"

Sansa huffed. "Of course not."

"But you do feel guilty. This is all internalized regret, isn't it?"

"I'm not Sigmund Freud, I don't know."

"Of course you know." His grip on the steering wheel tightened, and for a moment, Sansa thought he meant to pull the car over. "Good girls don't fall in with abusive pricks like Joffrey Baratheon, isn't that it? And good girls are loyal to a fault, and good girls don't wish their abusers dead. Is that what all this is about?"

Why do I feel like I'm about to cry? Sansa bit at her lip. "It is not!"

"I forbid you to go soft on me now," he told her, and she wasn't sure if she was relieved when they pulled onto the familiar street that led to the house. "Your father probably told you a lot of stories about justice being blind, and right overcoming wrong. Stannis and I tainted that sweet picture of the justice system, didn't we?" He did not demand a response for a moment, pulling into the driveway. He put on the brake and turned off the engine, but made no move to enter the dark garage, instead turning to the girl. "Look at me, Sansa."

Her chin was tilted down, but Sansa just managed to flick her blue eyes to look up at her lawyer and her accuser. If she had been able to see the change that came over his face just by her looking at him, she would have been amazed, but of course that was impossible for her to gauge. All the same, Petyr gathered his focus as though she did nothing at all, and his voice was a quiet hiss in the shadowy garage. "I don't care that we did." Sansa wanted to look away again, but found she could not. "Do you want to know why? Because your father lied to you." She opened her mouth to protest any defamation of her father, but the man pressed on. "Life isn't just, or right, or beautiful. In reality, it is the worst of us who win and survive. Are you angry?" She refused to answer, but her blue eyes were hot, and she chewed a little more aggressively at her lip. "Good! I want you to be angry. Because that's reality. I did not get you this far to see you waste yourself in a women's correctional institution. You want to be the bitch of some queen dyke while you languish away in prison?"

That shocked her into speaking. "Petyr, that's a horrible thing to say!"

"I won't let you waste yourself out of this idiotic, misplaced sense of guilt. Not when you could be so much more."

Sansa blinked rapidly, unsure of what to say, unsure of what he was talking about. "...Like what?"

"Like everything." He must have unbuckled his seat belt without her notice, for he reached across the front seat and crashed his mouth down onto hers. Sansa might have squirmed, but she was in far too much shock. Petyr was kissing her. Her lawyer was kissing her. The man who had practically been raised under her mother's roof, the man who would have loved to have been her father (but wasn't, oh thank God, wasn't) was kissing her. Those last two designations mattered less, oddly enough, though she had no idea why; Petyr was kissing her.

It had been a long time since Sansa was kissed, really kissed. Joffrey still pawed at her, but he hadn't kissed her in ages. He'd nip and bite at her throat or collarbone, but his mouth never met hers, and she had been happy about that then. Before, she had thought he was the best kisser, all insistence and wild passion, but no, Sansa now changed her mind. Petyr's lips weren't thin and wet like Joffrey's. They were firm and dry, and somehow intensely more masculine. He smelled nicer, his breath tasted like mint as opposed to cheap beer, and the wet press of his tongue at her lips didn't feel like an eel trying to choke her, the way Joffrey did. He just lightly flicked at her mouth, and she opened up beneath him like it was the most natural thing in the world. Petyr's tongue teased at her, it did not invade; like he was coaxing her tongue out to play – and it did, it responded without her consciously willing it at all, coming to explore him. She had no idea that her hands were gripping the smooth silk of his shirt, she had no idea that she hadn't breathed in far too many seconds. Sansa only came awake again when Petyr's mouth disengaged with her own, and she almost whimpered from the loss (So long, it's been so long since I felt this nice, this safe, since I felt someone's arms around me, I-). She caught sight of Petyr's face, and his pupils were huge in the darkness. She was actually a little surprised to see how heavily he was breathing, the flush of his face, the dampness of his lower lip – and that that could be her doing, that could have been from her tongue sweeping against his lip. She wanted to taste him again, to see if he really was like mint, or if that had been the desperation of her mind. She wanted and deserved every ounce of comfort she could get her hands on, and at that moment, all sense of guilt had completely vanished. She didn't even register the thought of how her mother would have scolded her, or her father would have been disappointed. Who cared? They weren't there for her, and Petyr was, and he kissed her.

Baelish said nothing – until his fingers found the automatic lock, and pulled at the button. The doors could be opened now. They stared at one another's faces for another moment in the dark – and then opened the car doors. They walked into the house without a word.


Petyr didn't cook much; well, Sansa had never seen him cook at all. She had no idea if he knew how. Most of his meals came from the freezer, things ordered from restaurants and carefully saved for later. His kitchen was stocked with fresh foods – eggs, milk, fruits, vegetables, even choice cuts of meat and fish – but Sansa was the only one who seemed to make any use of them. Otherwise, if they ate at home, the food was cooked in large aluminum trays in the oven. Good, but a little impersonal. Tonight, Sansa was chopping different items up to make into a salad to go with the pre-made meal.

Petyr was not with her. He was looking over papers in the dining room – drinking. Not wine this time, he had gotten out the good Irish whiskey, which Sansa knew to be his favorite. It made her a little nervous. His brain had to be particularly frazzled to warrant that. She wasn't sure if he was reading through all those documents spread across the tabletop so much as looking at them. Sansa sat on the counter and waited for the timer to go off on the oven; something her family would have scolded her for, but Petyr never cared about.

She called to him from that spot in the kitchen. "Have you ever defended a guilty person?"

"By what definition?"

Sansa rolled her eyes. "Have you ever defended a person whom you knew had committed the crime they were being charged with."

There was a soft sigh, the scraping of a chair against the wood floor, and Petyr was leaning in the doorway of the kitchen. Sansa thought about hopping off the counter top, but as he said nothing about it, she did not. "It wouldn't matter if I knew."

The girl's brow furrowed. "Why not?"

"Because the sheer beauty of the American justice system is that everyone is innocent until the prosecuting attorney proves otherwise, whatever anyone else knows or doesn't know; and that everyone is entitled to, and must be given, a spirited defense. If I was asked to defend Osama bin Laden, it would be my duty to do so with everything I had."

Sansa's mouth twitched toward a smile in spite of herself. There was something pretty about that. "How did you know Mr. Baratheon would go with your plan? Wasn't it a risk?"

"No risk at all. Despite what Frank Capra would have you believe, fighting a battle you cannot win is not noble. It's idiotic; worse, its irresponsible."

"That's not an answer."

He strode over to her with languid, lazy steps, taking a piece of apple off the cutting board and popping it into his mouth. Sansa watched the movement with more intensity than perhaps was advisable. "Baratheon has a duty to save the taxpayers money whenever possible. So fighting battles he cannot win sounds pretty, but it won't get him re-elected."

"He said he doesn't care about that."

Petyr snorted. "Of course he cares." His fingers brushed a lock of still-dark hair behind her ears, and his green eyes went just a little foggy. Sansa's lips parted. "People aren't as noble as you think they are, sweetling. They care about defeats."

Sansa's eyes lingered along his thin wrist, the tendons that showed through the skin. "Have you defended any murders?"

"A couple," he murmured.

"Grand larceny?" He nodded. "Assault? Manslaughter?"

"All of the above."

"W-what about rapists?"

Petyr paused, eyes looking thoughtful. "...No, I don't think so. I can't think of any."

Sansa made a bold move; she gripped his wrist, the one still raised by her ear, with her hand, holding him in place. She didn't feel particularly bad about biting at her lower lip or widening her eyes in a begging gesture. Moreover, she didn't think he'd want her to feel bad. "Would you promise me something?"

Mr. Baelish was transfixed, his voice very low. "Perhaps."

"Promise you won't defend any rapists? At least, as long as you know they're actually guilty. If they didn't do it...that's fine, then, that's good."

The corner of his mouth ticked up in a smile. "Alright."

Sansa breathed a heavy sigh of relief, fingers falling away from the man's wrist. He seemed disappointed by the gesture. "I have another question – about what you said earlier."

Baelish at last pulled his hand away from her mottled hair. "What is it?"

Sansa hesitated, but only momentarily. "You said there was nothing beautiful in the world – but then you said the American justice system was beautiful."

The man snorted, almost rolled his eyes. "Well, I was lying."

"About which?"

"The first one. Of course there are beautiful things in the world."

She hesitated again, and wondered why she said anything at all. "Like what?"

He was staring at her. Sansa regretted opening her mouth, regretted everything; regretted letting him kiss her, regretted going into the boutique and seeing Cersei Lannister, regretted agreeing to go out with Joffrey, regretted the time she called Arya "horse-faced-"

"You are the most beautiful thing there is, Sansa."

The Stark girl froze, like a prey animal in the sights of a predator. She could not move under the look Petyr was giving her. Her breathing was pained and shallow. "What?"

"You. Nothing like you exists anywhere else."

"There are lots of pretty girls in the world."

"Who cares about pretty girls? They aren't you."

She looked up at him at last, at the gaping, hungry stare in his eyes. Breathing became more painful. "But, um, you...m-my mother-"

Petyr's lithe, warm, dry hands framed her face, and she almost leaned into his touch. "Not like you. And you're sitting on my counter top."

Sansa's breath brushed against his hands; she knew it did, she could see him twitch every time her exhalation touched his wrists, like that alone was a delicious torture. "Do you want me to get down?"

"I want you – all ways."

Sansa's blue eyes closed, her lips parted further, like she was deliberately tempting him; she wondered if she was, and didn't know it? "D-dinner might burn."

She could feel him smile that smug smirk of his, even without seeing it. "I could take it out of the oven."

The girl swallowed, thought for a moment – nodded. "That might be alright."

His right hand twitched against her cheek. "Might it?"

Sansa licked her lips and nodded again. "Mm."

There was a long silence – then his hands moved from off her face. Sansa kept her eyes closed, but she could hear the oven door opening, heard the thud of the heavy aluminum against the stove top. Then Petyr's hands were at her hips and she gasped, eyes flying open. The look on his face took her breath away; Petyr, looking hungry, looking wild, without a word or a motion. She had a fleeting thought that she could have asked him to do anything in that moment, and he would have done what she wanted, without hesitation – murder, arson, or getting on his knees and kissing his way up her calf and thigh...The notion of such power was distressingly arousing. Sansa's hands slid to his shoulders of their own accord.

Baelish pulled the girl from off the counter so that she was flush against him; his fingers dug into her hips and tickled slightly. All the same, he did not immediately kiss her, which was what Sansa was expecting. He almost looked...nervous. Overwhelmed. Their mouths hovered near one another, but for the time being, nothing happened. After a silence, he said, "The kitchen isn't very comfortable."

"No, it isn't."

"Perhaps we should go someplace else." Sansa nodded. They stood there a moment more – and then his hand knit with hers and he pulled her into that lounge room, to the soft, suede sofa. Petyr's mouth was softer on hers now, less hurried. He seemed to want to plot this course with great care. Even so, one hand went to her shoulder and pressed downward, trying to usher her onto the couch. Sansa's knees wouldn't bend, and he didn't force the issue for several moments, too interested in trading kisses, in threading his hands through her red hair. When they broke to breathe, his eyes looked green and glassy, and a very strange thought flashed through the girl's mind: I could do anything. It was the most heady and exciting notion she'd ever had. The most powerful lawyer in the state held her future in his hands, and none of that mattered, because she was the one in control. Petyr was speaking again. "You don't want to sit down, then?"

She had never felt this way with Joffrey, like she had any kind of power in a situation. She'd never really felt this way ever before. She had no idea if that was how relationships were supposed to work, if her mother felt similarly with her father – but she really didn't care. Sansa only knew she enjoyed it. She ran her index finger over the small triangle of his beard. "I don't."

For a moment, Sansa thought she could hear him purr, the fingers of her free hand weaving at the hairs near his temple, where the wings of grey were. So distinguished. She had no idea she liked it, but the slickness between her legs was a dead giveaway. "What do you want, Sansa?" His voice was so husky, she almost grinned. That's me, I did that. She didn't want this to stop.

Her lips brushed his, and she could feel him leaning into the touch. Hers, all hers. God, it was so... "I..." She kissed him more fiercely, just barely touched her tongue to his lips and felt him buckle under her hands. "Want to go upstairs."

"Upstairs..." The repeated word was a whisper against her lips. "...I'm not sure that's a good idea."

Both her hands were in his hair now, it gave her leverage to part her mouth against his and feel their tongues dance together – and something else, too. A hard press against her stomach. She had seen Joffrey a few times, he'd made her fist her hand against him so that he could use it to his satisfaction, but it had always been more revolting than arousing. She wanted to see Petyr, though, wanted to know how he compared to her boy prince...Petyr isn't a prince. She liked that about him. "I think it is."

His mouth slowly pulled from hers with a damp sound, his breathing hard. Sansa liked that, too. "I might not be able to stop."

Sansa barely had to blink before she knew the answer. "I don't want you to stop, Petyr."

If she contemplated the moment later, she might have thought it was her saying his name that drove him over the edge; that made him wrap his arms about her torso and crush her to him, devouring her mouth with an insane hunger. The girl would have expected to deconstruct this experience from every possible angle, after the fact – yet that never happened. Sansa did not pour over stumbling up the winding staircase with her attorney-cum-lover. She did not dwell on how his hand fiddled with the door to the guest room, her room, until she shoved it off and dragged him toward the door she knew was his. She did not even reflect on the first time she entered Mr. Baelish's bedroom (a cool, dark space, with black bed linens to match the black leather headboard, a desk, a wardrobe and shelves, and little else, save a mockingbird hung in hammered silver on one wall). Girlish Sansa might have done such a thing, made a mental scrapbook of her first time. Womanly Sansa was content to experience, to savor, and then to create new, exciting memories.

Though this would certainly be among them; the bedroom was chilly, a refreshing shock to her hot skin, but enough so that, for a moment, she expected her breath to fog in the air. Petyr had paused behind her, his hands still fitted at her waist, his breath waving locks of her darkened hair over one shoulder. She wondered if he was still nervous? The arousal pressed to her back indicated he was less nervous than he was enticed by the young woman who had just charged her way into his inner-sanctum. Sansa's fingers found his at her sides. "Is this ethical?"

"Pardon?" He very well may not have heard her, busy planting kisses to the slope of her neck. Sansa's blue eyes closed and she hummed a bit of repressed pleasure.

"Ethical...a lawyer sleeping with his clients." Petyr's laugh ghosted over her shoulder, a husky thing from his lusts. Sansa's red brows furrowed. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just-" His kiss lingered at her throat before he slowly turned her around to face him. His eyes were still very green, though less glassy. Far more...hot. They burned emerald in his face. The tip of Sansa's tongue darted out to taste where his lips had just pressed against her own. "You don't know me very well."

The girl still look consternated. "I'm not sure what that has to do with anything."

"Ethics concern me less than results."

Her breath left her in a short gasp as his mouth bent once more to suck upon her neck – but this time with additional nips of his teeth. Will he leave marks? She wanted him to leave marks. She used to wear turtlenecks or wrap scarves around herself to hide Joffrey's suckling, bruising attentions from her family. With Petyr, she wanted to display his mark of ownership like a proud brand, a tattoo she had designed and placed herself. She intended to similarly mark him before the evening was over. "What result were you looking for..."

The attorney's breath was erratic at best, shallow now, and Sansa could see him losing himself to the ancient instincts of man coming out to play in the continuation of the species. One of his hands was leaving her waist and stretching oh-so-slowly toward the apex of her thighs, waiting to be stopped at any moment. "Whatever you wished, Miss Stark."

She had no idea what she wanted, but she felt she would know it when she found it. It was for this reason she wrapped her hands around her protector's neck once more, let his fingers lift the hem of her black skirt to play against the soft skin of her thigh, the near-invisible downy hairs that trailed up it, to where her legs and pelvis met- The girl gasped into his mouth, which only allowed his tongue better access. Oh, this was right, this was so right in its very wrongness, as if the world simply did not understand its own necessities. The experienced leading the innocent, corrupting and defiling – but only fools would see it so black and white. Sansa was sure, she knew, she was corrupting him as much as he was corrupting her, in her own pure and simple ways. Her attorney's fingers played over the smooth cotton of her undergarments, rubbing her through the cloth and succeeding in soaking it through as well as eliciting shocked, pleased gasps from the girl. Sansa's fingers slipped back around from his neck, smoothing along his tie and holding him by it like a lead. It was perfect – he had power and so did she. She felt like she understood everything, and everything seemed much more simple than it ever had before.

Sansa didn't know she had wanted silk ties between her fingers until she had them, did not know she would experience a pulsing, erotic feel from pulling her soon-to-be lover even closer by his and quickly untying it with deft fingers. Petyr was moaning into her mouth, the bottom of his throat exposed by the opened button of his dress shirt. The young woman backed up and the man stepped with her, reluctant to part from her lips for even a moment, moving in an intricate dance even as his fingers slipped beneath the elastic of her panties. Sansa had either end of his tie wrapped around her fists so that only about six inches of the dark silk remained between her hands; this she looped over a hook that might have otherwise been a resting place for a bathrobe, but tonight could bear some of her weight as the girl presented herself like a meal to be consumed. It sounded heavenly, to give up that control for a moment and simply allow life to happen around her, to trust Petyr's hands and lips and tongue. Mr. Baelish paused only in enraptured astonishment, taking her in and breathing heavily. Sansa's blouse had been pulled free of her skirt, her long, dark hair hung about her face in tangles, she was a vision of sensual beauty, as if his reward for proper sacrifices to the mercurial gods. "Petyr..." She whispered his name teasingly in the half-dark of the bedroom, easing a foot forward to catch him just above the knee and pull him closer. "I didn't want you to stop..."

"You..." The sharp tongued attorney was wordless in front of this display. Sansa submissively offered herself up to his approval, but her flashing blue eyes told a different story – that the power was all in her hands, wrapped as they were with his tie, and maybe she knew it and maybe she didn't. His cautious nature screamed to slow down, to tread carefully; his biology was straining his trousers fit to break the seams, and that was the side of him that was winning when Sansa carefully pulled him closer. Her skirt rucked up about her hips, her mouth opening beneath his own like a fruit, there was only a few thin, easily permeated barriers between them. She would be able to feel his hardness now, with her legs wrapped around his hips and his hands supporting her by gripping at her bottom. She would feel – intimately – the press and gentle rocking of him against her. He could feel, more dully, the heat of her body, but not the waiting damp that was all and entirely for his benefit. The lawyer caught his charge's lower lip and sucked greedily. He was becoming hungry for sensation, starved for her.

It was only when he felt like he was going to fuck her right there against the wall that he pulled back slightly; not that it would have been bad, it would have been perfect. The confluence of two beings pulled inexorably to one another, desperate in their passion and their absolute need to consummate – but that could wait. Sansa might still have some virginal fantasies about first-time sex, and Petyr didn't want to spoil too much for her. Instead, with the serious control of one leading the dance, he pulled the tie from off the coat hook, watched it twist out of her fingers and supported her back as he turned and half-dropped her onto the bed. Sansa's legs didn't leave his form, they merely accommodated his shifting, his torso stretching over her so he could reach into his nightstand. The girl heard a crinkling sound and grabbed at her partner's wrist. "Petyr, please, I want to feel everything."

Baelish held the prophylactic between two lithe fingers; he pulled back toward her slightly with a confused look painted on his sharp face. "What?"

The girl rolled her hips upward against him, so that his eyes closed and a moan escaped his lips. "I want to experience everything. Please?" She nuzzled at his nose, so that his mouth parted again and her tongue darted out to touch his own. She wondered how much she could get out of him when she was like this, beneath him. "In the morning we can go to the pharmacy and get a pill, and I promise after that I'll behave, but just this one time..."

Petyr's hand was shaking, he was only able to stop it by gripping at the girl's hip, and even then, he didn't know if he was pressing her down or pulling her closer. "You're being very foolish."

"I know..." She batted her red eyelashes at him, let the low light play over her blue eyes, and the man sank. "But I can trust you, can't I?"

"You shouldn't."

"Why? Don't you trust me?" Her hair spread like an auburn fan over his duvet, her lips red and full from being kissed, one hand trailing along her full, perfect breast – oh no, he didn't trust her at all, but the man just did not care.

Petyr's mouth sank against her own, he groaned at the way she kissed him back, so fully, so devotedly. "I don't believe you will behave...but you can always be properly punished..." Sansa gasped at the warning, leaned up to nip at his ear slightly, and the man totally relented. Aching, timeless moments, passages of actions, went by with rolling hips and searching mouth, fingers pulling the various vestiges of clothing from one another. Sansa was like a goddess undressed beneath him. He felt like he couldn't get enough of looking at her; that he could set her about the house naked, like some breathing piece of artwork, and he would still be transfixed every moment his eyes lingered on her flesh, smooth as polished marble. He took a pink nipple into his mouth, each in their turn, and Sansa's fingers buried themselves in his closely cut hair, her naked hips bucking up against his own, sliding her wetness over the length of him. The man moaned into her, pressed those delightful little hips into the bed. "Easy, sweetling...You'll have us finish before we've even begun."

"I'm ready, Petyr, I really am..." It was possible she wasn't, but no girl could do much more to prepare for this. He found his gaze swimming in those ocean eyes of hers, drowning as his hands stroked down her sides to meet at her hips, to angle her properly for what came next.

"It will only hurt for a moment," he assured her, the hot tip of him pressed against her readily. "Move as soon as you feel you can and it will subside."

The girl's hands ran up his naked torso, through the light dusting of dark hair across his chest, over a massive scar that she was far too heated to ask about now. "I'm not frightened."

"Brave girl..." He leaned forward, his mouth lingering near her ear, bit gently yet sharply at the lobe as he entered her. Sansa gasped for a moment, struggled, but very soon did as bid, moving hesitantly against the man on top of her. Baelish was too overwhelmed by the feel of her to do much more than savor for several moments. She was right, oh God was she right to want to forgo any barrier to this sensation. A man so careful, with every contingency possible, but she undid him into risks – could do it again, would, he felt certain, perhaps just out of curiosity to see how far she could push him. Better not to let her know how far, how dangerous the girl could be. Whatever. He couldn't care, with Sansa Stark wrapped around him. It was only what he'd been angling for most of his life, so the cost of it would be minimal whatever it was.

Sansa was breathing heavily, moaning wantonly into the dark of the bedroom, pressing herself lasciviously against her lover. It was all the man could do to keep himself from finishing just from the knowledge of her. She was a brave girl, she moved with him haltingly, but with growing boldness, her murmurs of approval growing in volume along with her pleasure.

Neither had a clear indication of the passage of time, between entry and finish. Petyr only knew the intense clenching of the girl around him, that holy moment where her pleasure peaked and his efforts were rewarded with gorgeous songs conducted by his elegant fingers. He watched the girl finish and collapse beneath him, watched her shiver and the hot flush color her entire body. Beautiful, gorgeous. He lasted not even a moment more, tensed and thrusting hard against her, her soft hands trailing against his sweat-slicked back. He might have spoken first, or she might have: "That was...that was..."

Whoever hadn't said that agreed, a breathy, "Yes..." in the darkness. Their voices were as mingled as their skins, as their fluids. The attorney crashed slowly beside her, without the energy to even move his head onto his cool, waiting pillow. Sansa refused to be disentangled from him, however, her legs still twining with his and her fingers still searching experimentally across his flesh. Petyr found he minded this not at all, and at last was able to roll onto his back, skin still hot and breathing still heavy. The Stark girl fitted herself beside him, and now her fingers wandered over the scar. He said nothing; the girl hummed. "Will you tell me about this?"

"Whenever you want."

"Not tonight...it doesn't matter tonight." He supposed it didn't. Sansa's chin rested on his chest and she smiled sleepily. "Did I do alright?"

Girls could ask that without sounding needy; one of their little blessings to make up for all the detriments accorded them. "You were wonderful."

She believed it – at least partly because it was true, and her hand continued to run over his taught abdomen. "I'll get better, too. We can...practice." God, she was going to kill him.

Petyr stifled his groan and rolled to the side so that Sansa's hand slid down to the mattress. "You should really go use the restroom. Healthier that way."

The girl wrinkled her nose. "Not very romantic, is it?"

"Did you find this romantic?"

She flushed; he hoped it was a habit she would be unable to drop, because it was distressingly fitting on her, adorable and arousing. He ran the backs of his fingers over her red cheek. "Did you?"

Questions answered with questions, she was learning, clever little thing. Petyr squeezed her hip. "Go on, girl. I'll stay awake for you, hm?"

"Ugh." Sansa pulled herself from out of the warm nest of their bodies, her hips wiggling attractively as she walked. "I'm not a child, you know."

Oh, that was not something easily forgotten, not when he could see his seed dripping down her thigh. The things he was going to do to her, her promises of behavior...It was all wicked and excellent. The well-sated lawyer rearranged the bed, pulled back sheets and fluffed pillows. In only a minute or two, his conquest and his conqueror returned to him, slipping next to him again and setting her hands to wandering over his torso. Baelish hissed. "Your hands are cold."

"I wasn't going to wait to let the water warm up."

"Torturous little thing..." He could feel his eyelids drooping, his body both heavy and light simultaneously. He sank deeper into the mattress with Sansa's head pillowed on his chest. "Suppose I pay you back for that later?"

"There's nothing to pay back." She was growling sleepy as well, unsurprisingly. Her foot played absently against his leg and he felt dangerously happy. Terrible to get what was wanted, where would his caution be now? Was a slip of a girl worth it? Sansa nuzzled into him, and he could not tell himself that she was not. "We're partners now."

"Were we not before?"

"Not like this."

Sansa was right. He knew it as she fell asleep with her head nestled just below his shoulder. Strange and beautiful, how he could find an empty, sobbing girl in a prison cell and have her lying atop him now as a goddess of lust and vengeance.


A.N.: Kids, don't listen to Sansa. Always use protection.