It turned out not taking that long. Mere days later, Sansa's brother, Robb, self-proclaimed King in the North, won a crushing victory over Lannister forces at Oxcross, and Jaime Lannister had been taken prisoner. Sandor knew, as Joffrey's face purpled with incandescent fury, that the king would seek to take it out on the most convenient Stark he had to hand.
"Bring her to me," Joffrey hissed at Boros Blount, who skipped right off to bring the girl to the throne room.
When she'd been manhandled into the huge chamber, Joffrey raged at her, shrieking that she would pay for her brother's success while she wept and pleaded with him. Meryn stepped forward with unseemly eagerness, landing a punch to her belly and a slap across the thighs with his sword that Sandor knew would bloom with bruises the next day.
Once Joffrey had calmed, however, he seemed to recall his game of trying to make the wolf burst from Sansa's skin. And beating her hadn't made it happen.
"Trant, I think my lady is overdressed," he declared, settling back with a sly smirk on his hideous throne. "Unburden her."
Meryn obediently wrenched at her gown until she was bared to the waist, all sunset hair cascading over pale-glowing skin. Sansa sobbed, hunching over to shield her bareness.
And then she arched away from Meryn, moaning in a way that could not come from a human throat. She dropped the shreds of silk she had clutched close and fell forward onto her hands. A shudder, a ripple rolling from head to toe, and then the girl was gone, and a silver wolf stood in her place, slipping free of the ruined gown and shaking out its fur.
Wary yellow eyes surveyed all who surrounded her, and black lips peeled back from ivory fangs.
Joffrey giggled. "Finally!" he gloated. "Finally, we get to see what a beast you truly are, Lady Sansa."
A murmur susurrated through the crowd, the hissing of snakes as they slithered forward to attack. Sandor felt every muscle tense, his fingers twitching madly, longing for the solid heft of his sword-hilt in his grasp. He knew not one of these fools knew the danger they were in, as long as Sansa's mind was that of a wolf and not a human.
"Meryn, Boros," Joffrey drawled, "we can't have beasts in the throne room." His amused gaze flicked toward Sandor. "My Hound notwithstanding, of course."
Sandor ignored him, his eyes fixed on the careful way Sansa picked her way around the empty center of the room, her senses exquisitely alert as she tried to track every possible threat. The other three kingsguard approached her, trying to hem her in between them, blades naked and gleaming dully.
Sandor began to shake, conflict roiling in his belly and a growl trying to fight free from between clenched teeth. He wanted to protect her, to save her, but his duty was to obey his king, and he was a dog, he was loyal, obeying was what dogs did—
He was being torn apart—
Sandor snarled in a way that could not come from a human throat, and then he was on all fours. The layers of his mind, the things that made him human, were peeling away. He had just enough time to feel a knee-weakening relief— Yes! Yes!— and then he was… something else.
Something Sandor, and something other. Something more. But still, always, something just as big as before, just as deadly.
A huge deerhound, with rather more brindling on one half of its shaggy face than the other, sprang between the kingsguards and their prey.
"Clegane, really? You can shift?" Joffrey was almost in hysterics of laughter. Sandor couldn't think, in this form, not really, but he could feel, and a tide of contempt rose within him at the boy's ignorance and stupidity.
Boros and Meryn froze, waiting for their king to stop guffawing before they continued.
"Step back, men!" Joffrey shouted, gleeful. "Let the Hound tear her apart!"
Sandor turned toward Sansa. She was still crouched, watchful, yellow eyes darting without cease as she evaluated her situation and the newest threat. He padded toward her, cautious, head a little low to indicate he was not a danger to her. He stopped a few feet away, waiting.
Their audience waited, silent, scarcely breathing.
Sansa sniffed, then again. Those yellow eyes widened, showing as much surprise on a lupine face as possible. She sniffed once more, then took a halting step toward the deerhound.
"Clegane, enough," Joffrey commanded, sounding peevish. "Either attack her, or move aside so the others can."
He gave an impatient gesture to the other guards, who all approached with grim determination.
The deerhound spun around and clamped its jaws around Meryn's forearm. The bone crunched and Meryn shrieked in agony, falling back. Boros edged away, eyes rolling in fear, but Sandor managed to catch his leg between sharp teeth and rip. Boros' scream of pain echoed off the stone walls.
Ser Preston Greenfield inched forward from behind Sandor, hoping to use the deerhound's distraction to his advantage, but the wolf sprang at him. He waved his sword at her, his moves clumsy and bumbling in contrast to her effortless grace as she ducked below a ungainly sweep of steel to fly at his throat. Her teeth had just closed around it when the tall doors behind them flew open with a crash.
Sandor tried to shout a warning to Sansa, but all that came out was a bark. With a last growl down at Ser Preston's terrified face, she leapt off him and went to stand, shoulder to shoulder, with the deerhound.
Tyrion strode in, three and a half feet of leonine fury, followed by an impassive Bronn and a panicky Shae.
Abruptly, the fight went out of Sansa, and she collapsed to the ground. Sandor moved to stand right over her, straddling her unconscious form; they'd not get to her but through him, now that she were even more vulnerable than before.
"Who is that?" Tyrion demanded.
"It's… it's Clegane, my lord," gasped Ser Preston. A wet patch had spread across the front of his tunic and trousers, and blood trickled down his neck from where Sansa's fangs had scraped him. "He fought off Ser Meryn and Ser Boros when they went to follow His Grace's orders."
"To beat Lady Sansa, you mean?" was Tyrion's wry comment. He studied the deerhound for a long moment, a spark of something, nostalgia or wistfulness perhaps, in his eyes before turning to Joffrey. The Imp, at least, knew the truth of the Change, and its significance if the gods found Sandor deserving of it.
"You haven't the sense of a squirrel, nephew, but at least Clegane does," he said, voice calm, but his anger was evident. "It's one thing to be unkind to Lady Sansa, Joffrey, but physical violence? We are already losing this war! Thanks to your the imprudencies, and Robert's before you, our own allies are thin on the ground these days. The Starks have more than we do, now, and it shows with each victory they gain over us."
"The Mormont bears each fight like ten, and the Umber bears are nothing to sneeze at, either. The Tully merfolk will fuck up our waterfront properties, the flying Arryns will rain death from the sky, and the Martell serpents will poison whatever is left. And that's if the Targaryens don't decide to get interested and char-broil our corpses into a fine ash.
"All we have left are the Tyrells, and…" He trailed off, blowing a dismissive huff of air out through his teeth. "Elves. Good for growing things, not much good for anything else." He stepped up to his nephew and made pointed eye contact. "Probably the only thing keeping Robb Stark from assaulting King's Landing and either razing it to the ground, or starving us out of it, is the fact that we have his sister. And if you beat her to death, we will have nothing at all with which to bargain."
Tyrion heaved a sigh and glanced back over his shoulder at where the deerhound was guarding Sansa.
"Clegane, get her back to her room. Shae, help her recuperate from today's… events. And bar the door to ensure no more take place today."
"No!" shrieked Joffrey in rage. "She's mine, to do with as I please! I am the the king! I-"
Tyrion strode onto the throne dais and slapped him into a shocked silence. "Listen to me, you little shit. Your lunacy is going to get us all killed. Your death wouldn't inconvenience me- it would likely be an enormous help, to be honest- but my death certainly would. So you are going to shut up and stop acting like a madman. I will not have our family destroyed because you're too stupid to control your base urges."
Sandor forced his canine mind to focus and release its hold over him. He felt his bones shift, felt fur rustle once before it was gone, and then he was a man again. He stood, unconcerned with his nudity, and scooped Sansa's furry body into his arms before striding from the room.
"Go to my room and get me more clothes," he rumbled at Shae as he passed her, almost laughing at the expression on her face since she and the rest of the court's women seemed unable to pull their gazes from his groin. Even the other men appeared to be having trouble looking elsewhere.
For all Joffrey's golden beauty, he was built like a pre-pubescent girl and had a dick like Sandor's little finger. Meryn and Boros were paunchy and soft and white, like masses of unrisen dough. Sandor, in contrast, had the musculature of a half-giant and a body fat percentage in the single digits.
Aye, he might not be much to look at in the face, but he had nothing to be ashamed of, below the neck.
He was halfway through the castle's winding corridors when the furry bundle in his arms transformed into the smooth form of a young woman. Not long thereafter, she began to stir, and he tightened his grasp in anticipation of her upset when she woke. Her eyes flew open, and then her limbs began to flail.
"Calm down," he rumbled at her, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the stairs as he began to ascend them, and most definitely not on her chest, which was jiggling in a most appealing fashion as she squirmed in his arms. Her nipples looked like wild strawberries, he thought grimly, small and red and succulent, and he bet they'd be just as sweet, too. Images from his lewd fantasies of the past few months assailed him and he made himself breathe evenly in an effort to maintain control.
Sansa fell back against his arm, panting from exertion. "What happened? Where are we going?" She paused, her eyes traveling over what she could see of him before glancing down at herself. "Are you- why are you naked? Why am I naked?"
Sandor just gripped her tighter and kept plodding up the damned endless steps. Now her breasts were pressed right up against him, their soft shape conforming to the hairy muscled expanse of his chest. This was torture. He had no doubt it was punishment for all his myriad sins, past and present.
"You shifted. I shifted. Now I'm bringing you to your room."
"Put me down," she wheezed, her breath sounding shallow and odd. He steeled himself and looked down at her; she was staring at him with a fixed, glazed stare, and a wild glint in her eyes told him she was feeling the same heightened primitive urges that were plaguing him after shifting back from his animal form.
He had a hard enough time controlling himself around her when she was fully clothed. Now they were nude, and their blood was up, and he had to get away from her as soon as possible or they were going to end up fucking each other stupid.
Then she began licking him. His neck, to be specific, and his collarbone. And her fingers were plucking insistently at his nipple when they weren't combing through his chest hair.
"Stop that," he demanded, sounding on the wheezy side as well. Fucking hell. He began running up the last flight of stairs, desperate to get away before he flung himself on top of her and ravished her like a beast.
Finally on the fifth floor, he jogged down the hallway and kicked in her door, dashing to the bed and dropping her on it before backing to the far side of the room. She lay there, blinking up at him in shock, her bright hair tumbling all around her, long legs sprawled out and- oh gods- he could see between them. She looked debauched, or at least ripe for debauching, and he hadn't done any for a very long time.
Too long.
Sandor had always enjoyed a good, thorough debauching.
Fucking, bleeding hell.
Chest heaving from exertion, he panted, "Stay over there."
"Don't go," she said, her voice hoarse in a way that shot heat right to his groin. Her pupils were blown, only a thin rim of brilliant blue to be seen. "I've been thinking about you. All the time. I need you."
The last of his fragile resistance melted away, like dew with the morning sun.
Which was when Shae skidded into the room with an armful of clothing. She saw his gigantic erection- not that she could miss it, it was like a sodding Maypole in the middle of the room- and made a choking sound, like she was drowning.
"Get the fuck out," Sandor rasped, never taking his eyes from the display of lush beauty on the bed.
"B-but-" Shae stammered in alarm.
He whipped his head around to glare at her. He knew his eyes were wild. He was barely hanging on to his human form.
"Get. The fuck. Out," he ground out between his teeth, and with a whimper, Shae dropped the pile of clothes and fled, slamming the door shut behind her.
Sandor prowled over and locked the door, then jammed a chair under the handle for good measure.
"Show me," he growled, turning back to Sansa.
"Show you what?"
"Everything."
She knew what he wanted to see, and leaned back on her hands, then let her legs fall apart. Her labia parted gently, showing a sliver of wet pink flesh, just enough to tantalize, and Sandor was so hard it burned.
Hesitantly, as if she didn't really want to but couldn't help herself, she slid a hand down her body, detouring to squeeze a breast and pinch a nipple, before coming to a halt between her thighs, where she cupped herself and slid her middle finger between her plump folds.
Her gaze dropped to his groin. She took a deep breath, eyes fixed on his cock, and said, "You.. it… it looks…"
"Looks like what, girl," Sandor barked. His impatience, never immense to begin with, had dipped into dangerously low territory. "Tell me what you want me to do."
"It looks delicious." Sansa dragged her lambent gaze up to meet his. "I want you to come here so I can suck on you."
Sandor was hit by a wave of lust so strong it almost crumpled him to his knees. He didn't remember directing his body to move across the room, but one second he was by the door, and the next he was standing by the bed, his hands in her hair, and he was directing his prick into her mouth.
Sansa took the plum-sized head of it between her lips, sucking gently while lashing her tongue against the very tip.
"Ohgodsyes," he hissed and threw his head back in ecstasy.
Sansa felt another flood of wetness between her legs and took more of him into her mouth, relishing the hardness against her palate. She'd never performed this act before, but she'd given the matter a great deal of thought, especially in last few months as the Hound— Clegane— Sandor— had become more and more tempting to her.
The wolf within her responded to him, to his size and strength and dominance, in a way that she had no idea how to handle except to submit to it. She'd spent many an hour contemplating him as her lover. She'd suspected, from the first moment things had altered between them, on the Serpentine, that he'd be magnificently endowed, and she been just as magnificently correct. Even curling both hands around it at the same time couldn't cover the length entirely, and she couldn't reach her fingertips with her thumb.
By far.
It was probably going to hurt, when he finally slid it into her.
She couldn't wait.
Sansa was hazily certain that what they were doing was a terrible idea, but she couldn't muster any energy toward stopping, not when it was what she most needed to do at that moment. She wanted to run her hands over the breadth of his shoulders, rake her teeth along the tendons of his throat, rub her face against the slabs of muscle on his chest. She wanted to bury her face in his pubic hair and inhale the musk he was exuding.
Above her, Sandor made a sound like a heaving bellows, and she glanced up to find his face a rictus of agony, looking as if he were being tortured.
"Is this enough?" she asked, moving one hand from encircling his shaft to slide her fingers between her legs again.
"Is what enough?" Sandor asked, breathless, clearly having trouble focusing on her question when such bliss was to be had.
She held her hand up to him. "Is there enough… am I… will it work?"
Sandor stared down at her, then at the hand she held up to him, drenched and gleaming with her slick. He grabbed her wrist and began to lap her fingers clean, groaning as he did so, as if she were breaking him.
"I just… don't want to wait any more. To have you. Inside me." Sansa stumbled over the words, unsure, feeling ignorant and empty and knowing that he had what would fill her but he was just going so slow and—
"You'll have me soon enough, girl," he rasped, and advanced, crawling across the bed as she scooted back to make room for his massive body. He palmed her knees and pulled them apart, inhaling deeply from her ankle to the join of her hip. In one swift motion, he tugged her legs over his shoulders and drove his tongue into the liquid core of her.
Sansa yelped in shocked pleasure. He knew just where she needed him, how to lick around and over her, his intuition shocking in its accuracy. She thrashed beneath him, and all the while, he continued to pant against her, lapping at her slowly like a happy hound.
She couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed, and when Sandor pulled his mouth away and looked up at her, Sansa felt a smidgen of apprehension. The hungry look on Sandor's face was intensifying to an alarming degree as he slowly crawled up her prone body. Sansa inched backwards slightly as he braced himself on his forearms above her.
"Er…" she began, even as her trembling fingers reached down of their own will to trace the muscles of his stomach. Sandor made a soft hum of anticipation, moving his hips so her fingers brushed where he ached the most for her touch.
"Shae could come back…" Despite her sudden bashfulness, Sansa couldn't stop her wide-eyed stare from moving over his wet mouth, down to the rippling muscles of his chest and stomach, and then the rather aggressive erection before her. "O-or someone else…"
"I told her to go away," he said thickly. "Doesn't matter if they do come back. If they interrupt us, I'll kill them."
"Oh," she murmured. Sansa's eyes rounded as Sandor parted her legs further so that he could kneel between them. She gasped as the slippery head of his arousal stroked against her in one long, smooth movement.
Sandor wrapped his fingers around his shaft and used it to rub the tight bead above her opening in short strokes. Her fingernails sank into his thighs deeply enough to leave marks as she tipped her head back and moaned.
Sansa held her breath as he stopped his teasing motions and then started to press into her, slow and sure. She bit her lip and stared down at where he entered her. It burned, not too badly, but the feel of her body stretching for him was almost too intense. The sight of his arousal spreading her only added to the feeling of invasion.
Slowly, the dull pain that accompanied his slow, careful penetration was joined by a growing pleasure. She had thought about him - his hands, his mouth, his body - so many times. And this time, he was here with her. She wasn't alone in the dark anymore, body burning for him, wondering. . .
The strain of holding back for her pulled his features taut, and the way he was looking at her made her feel like he wanted to devour her whole. The thought that Sandor, so stoic and self-assured, could want her that much sent fire racing through her body.
The slow, hot stroke of his entry went dark and sharp with pleasure as he glided against the part of her that he'd found with his tongue before. She made a noise that she was shocked to hear from herself, something primal-sounding, almost wild. Sansa found herself arching against him in a movement that she hadn't directed her body to make.
Arms aching from the tension, the sight of his aroused flesh slipping into her only drove him closer to losing his control. His senses sharpened at the sounds Sansa was making and how she was beginning to press up to meet him, breathing in shallow pants. She was starting to enjoy him, he realized, and was shocked at the violent surge of lust he felt at the thought.
It was impossible to hold back his groans of pleasure, though he tried; he was panting, each breath a sob as he forced his lungs to keep powering him through an event that he was starting to think might kill him. Below him, Sansa was arching and moaning, an exclamation pushed out of her with each of his thrusts, her whimpers rising in pitch and urgency as her nails bit into his skin. They'd leave marks on him, and he was glad of it, liking the idea of her marking him as hers.
He lowered his head, catching a nipple between his teeth, and Sansa keened in delight. She raked her fingers through his hair and yanked his lips to hers, kissing him with a ferocity he hadn't thought her capable of. She wanted roughness? Sandor could give her roughness.
He withdrew from her abruptly, and her eyes flashed yellow in irritation.
"I'm not stopping." He sat back on his heels and studied the scene spread out before him on the bed. She was a delicacy on a tray, to be relished and devoured, her hair a ruddy starburst around her head, a glory he never in his life thought could be his for the taking.
"Turn over," he said, his voice thick.
Comprehension turned annoyance into delight. "Yes," she agreed immediately. "This is how I've been wanting it." Sansa eagerly shifted onto her hands and knees, slinking like a cat, arse in the air.
It was the very image of his fantasies these past few months, and his mouth went dry to see how she was saturated between her legs. He plunged two fingers into her, up to the last knuckle. Sansa let out a choked cry and his eyes almost crossed at the way she rippled around his fingers.
"Cover me," she demanded, but there was a pleading tone to her voice, almost as if she were in pain. He knew what she needed, because he felt it, too: a desperation to mount her, to tuck her body under his and surround her as she would once again enclose him. The primal nature of it appealed to Sandor on a level he hadn't thought possible, not to humans. He wanted to dance in the woods, he wanted to beat a drum, he wanted to chase down prey while washed in the silver light of the moon.
He pressed deep inside her, his thighs pressed to hers, groin to her arse, chest to her back, and dropped his face into her hair, inhaling the perfume of her sweat.
Sansa had been right; this is how he had been wanting it, too. This was best, this was right. There was nothing outside this room, nothing that existed but the scalding clasp of her body around the burning length of his cock, the slap of skin against skin. Sandor draped himself over her and she hissed, rocking back to meet his thrusts. The feel of her under him, sweat making their skin slide easily, her body bearing his weight with surprising strength, was intoxicating.
Sansa felt on the verge of fainting, or climax; she couldn't tell which would occur first. Her arousal was almost unbearable. Nothing had prepared her for this act of utter possession; he was taking her, but she knew that she was taking him as well. He was at her mercy, needing her for the release he wanted so desperately. This was something he could only get from her, no one else would ever satisfy him, not after this melding of human and animal natures, just as no other man would surpass him. They were imprinted on each other for all time.
She needed something in her mouth, something to sink her teeth into, or to brace herself against when his thrusts started jostling her across the bed. When she reached the wall, she reared up and braced her palms against it. Sitting back that way shifted her center of gravity and drove her further down around his prick, already so deeply embedded. She gave a shout of agonized pleasure.
Sandor moved her forward, inexorable, until she was pressed up against the wall, sandwiched between the cold stones and his powerful, scalding-hot body as he lunged into her again and again. He wrapped his arms around her, filling one hand with a breast and the other with her cunt, cupping its plumpness in his palm and sliding his middle finger through all the slick to find the center of her pleasure.
Sansa slammed into a sudden climax, her entire being locking in a cycle of spasm and release. Sensations rolled through her, making her body feel thoroughly alive and present, and at the same time she was detached, floating above it all, watching the violent beauty of their coupling from a distance.
Behind her, Sandor's powerful form shuddered once, twice, thrice. He pulsed thickly inside her, and called out what he probably intended to be her name.
"Ssssaaaaaaah!"
As soon as he had control over his limbs again, Sandor let himself fall onto his back, Sansa still wrapped in his arms. He rolled them over, withdrew from her, flipped her onto her back and slid inside to the root once more, while he was still hard enough to do so. His legs wouldn't hold him up any longer, but he wanted to prolong the time he spent buried in her.
She seemed to have no objections, since she slung her arms around his neck and hitched her knees a bit higher, the better for him to sink in just that little bit more.
"Sandor…." She sighed and smiled, eyes closed in bliss.
He trailed kisses over her face, her throat, her shoulders. "… 'm not too heavy?" he slurred, sounding more drunk than he'd ever managed in his life, and propping himself on his elbows with the last of his strength.
She shook her head, still smiling.
"…so happy about?" Sandor managed.
"I didn't understand, before," she whispered, as if she were sharing a secret, or like speaking too loudly would disturb the sanctity of a holy place. "Now I know."
"Know what?" He forced his muddled, pleasure-soaked mind to clear, trying to follow her words.
"This is what we're here for." Sansa opened her eyes, piercing him to the soul with her earnest sweetness. She placed a hand over the center of his chest, where the hair grew thickest and his heart still pounded wildly. "This is why we're alive. All of us. We dress it up in fancy clothes, we complicate everything until life doesn't resemble itself any more."
Sandor stared down at her in silence. She was so loving, so kind, so hopelessly naive. Irresistible in her vulnerability and kindness, a magnet to those who loved despoiling beauty. This openness of heart would be her downfall, if he could not protect her, and his ruin, because there was no life for him without her. Not anymore.
Fear, such as he'd never felt before, gripped him.
There was no time to lose.
"We must go."