She had never looked so lovely than when she was clothed in black and yellow. Perhaps it was how the brightness of the yellow sought out the gold strands in her auburn hair. Perhaps it was how the black dogs of House Clegane stretched across her narrow back screamed she is mine .
Or perhaps it was that she was simply beautiful, glorious in her furs and simple white gown. Lady Clegane.
They had wed during a very short, simple ceremony in the godswood; Sansa was truly Winter's daughter and a southron ceremony would have been as unsuitable as her lord husband would be as a whore. And as Sandor had no home to call his own, north or south, it fell to Sansa's own beliefs to shape the manner of their union.
The hall was stuffy, heavy with sweat and laughter and wine. He stole a glance towards his lady wife, sitting beside him and a full head and shoulders shorter. Her little hand was hot in his. He could feel how slender her fingers were, utterly breakable in his grasp. So fragile. She's like glass. I could snap her with a twist of my fingers.
He could feel her trembling next to him. Her body was like a live wire, hot and tight and ready. Why? No sane woman would smile in her place, yet that radiant smile had been playing on her face all day long, and he was loath to part from her for even a few minutes. Her small, full mouth had turned down at the corners when he had excused himself from the celebrations to cool down in the courtyard, and when he returned she had slipped her hand into his with a wide smile and a sweaty sheen above her lip. She's excited. Why isn't she frightened? Does her idea of a bedding include a game of cyvasse and a tray of lemoncakes? He found he didn't want to know. She's too innocent to want this. I'll have her maiden blood on my cock and she'll cry. I'll fuck her bloody, and then she'll tell me she had no idea what was to come, that she didn't know she was to spread her legs for a dog. Only a whore could bear the touch of his burned face against her skin, the thrust of his hips against hers. Only a whore would willingly fuck a dog, a dog with a purse full of gold and a bloodied sword at his side. Only a whore.
And my little bird is no such thing. She looked so chaste, damn her. She was clothed in creamy white, her demure dress clinging to her slender waist like running water. His hands could easily wrap around that tiny midriff of hers and lift her as effortlessly as picking up a goblet of wine. That might come in useful tonight. Lifting her by her hips and sheathing her on him would be the most natural thing in the world, as basic as breathing and as beautiful as the ancient spangle of stars in the winter sky. I could make her sing, tonight and every night. Mayhaps I'll be singing too. Or howling. A bird and her dog; a dog and his bird. It was tragic, cataclysmic, a lemon in his eye and a longsword through his guts. And yet he craved her like a man half-mad, craved her like sweet wine on a weeping wound. Aye, and how could I not?
She was beautiful, his pretty little bird, laughing delicately with those pink lips of hers and her slim hand branding her desire into the inside of his thigh. She wants me, damn me. Wants me. His past, present and future had shrunk to the fingers curling around his thigh and the painful swell of his manhood straining against his breeches. Blood thundered through his brain, through his loins like white hot fire. Gods, let me have her.
She turned to him with a laugh on her lips, and he shattered there in her gaze. Fuck this. Fuck this, I'm not waiting any longer. I need her. He stood up so suddenly his chair tipped backwards and fell with a crash that bought all eyes to the dais. Sansa looked at him with wide blue eyes, her mouth agape as the room around them fell silent.
Seven Hells. He offered her his hand, completely out of his depth, but knowing she would appreciate the pretence. I'd sooner fling her over my shoulder. No man acts like this in the bedroom.
"My lady?"
His voice was harsh and cracked, and the hand he held out to her was damp with sweat. Get me out of here. Get me out of this mummer's farce. He could feel half a hundred eyes boring into the profile of his ruined face, and the other at the crutch of his breeches.
Her face split into a dazzling smile, all white teeth and rosy lips and flushed cheeks. She slipped her hand into his and rose gracefully, beaming as she turned to the crowd of guests waiting expectantly in front of them. "Our noble guests," she sang as she squeezed Sandor's hand. "Thank you for sharing the joy of our union with my lord and I today. There is no higher honour than receiving such esteemed guests at our table tonight." Her voice rang clear, sweet and pure. She's bloody good at this.
He gave her a tug. Come on, little bird.
"The lord is eager to attend his own bedding!" Raucous laughter sprang up from the benches. Like wildfire, the excitement of performing the bedding swept through the crowd, and Sandor suddenly found himself swarmed by sweating bodies, stinking of wine and piss and an ill-feigned interest in what he would manage to accomplish with his cock tonight.
"The bedding!"
"The bedding!"
"Bed them! Bed them! Let's see what goes where!"
Gods. "There will be no fucking bedding," he snarled as he tore himself free from the damp hands that had begun to paw at his clothing. "Fuck off, before someone dies tonight."
"It's tradition!" Some idiot was either soft in the head or wasn't man enough to handle his drink; no sane or sober man would dare contradict Sandor Clegane. I could crush his head with my fist. His fingers twitched.
"Tradition means fuck all in this household, you bloody buggering fool." His hand had been ripped away from Sansa's as the bedding had commenced, and he shoved his way back to her with a face like thunder. She was breathless, flushed with embarrassment as he grasped her wrist and tugged her towards him. A man held onto her other wrist as she was pulled into Sandor's chest, relentless in his determination to provide the baying guests a traditional bedding ritual. He started as he suddenly felt the kiss of metal against his skin, and hot breath against the back of his neck as Sandor wrenched him away from Sansa with enough force to rip his am out of the socket. I might before the night is over. I'd make him fucking eat it after as well.
"If you lay one more finger on her, I'll rip you your own cunt to play with." He growled, laying his dagger at the small of the man's back, the blade sinking into his soft white skin. Can't remember even unsheathing it. "Believe that, you piece of fucking filth."
His fingers were iron around her wrist as he ploughed his way through the throng of drunken guests, every demand for a proper bedding bringing his brows lower and lower over the fury that were his eyes. Keep asking, and there'll be another Red Wedding on our hands.
His little bird squeaked as he dragged her like a sack full of potatoes towards the door, mumbling apologies to anyone who could hear her over the din. He strode out of the door and no sooner had the reach the privacy of the empty corridor did he grip her narrow shoulders with an intensity that made her flinch.
"Did you want to take part in the bedding?" His voice whipped out much harder than he had meant it to, cutting her to the bone. Her lips were trembling.
"No." Her face was flushed, high colour spreading over her fine cheekbones. "Their hands... they were all over me. Thank you for taking me away, my lord."
"Sandor." He pulled her close, their breath mingling as one. "You're my lady wife now, little bird. You may not want them to touch you and look at you, but I can." He smoothed his hands over her spine, and she shuddered, her mouth forming a little o as she dragged in a ragged breath. He was hard and tight against his breeches again, just looking at that plump mouth of hers and the bead of sweat that lay shivering on her collarbone. Seven fucking Hells.
Her eyes were wide in the dim light. "I know, Sandor." She took his hand, soft skin against his callused palm. "I know." Her autumnal hair shone in the light thrown from the torchlight above. She's the Maiden herself. But not for long.
His chest was tight, his breeches were tight; Seven save me, I need to make her mine. Tonight. Now. His hand closed around hers with a decisive slap, tugging her towards the stairs as desperately as a half-drowned sailor clings to driftwood. She gasped as he suddenly scooped her up in his arms, as effortlessly and as fluidly as molten gold.
"Sandor!"
He took the stairs two at a time, struggling on his ruined leg, his breath sawing in his chest.
"Put me down, ser - " He shouldered his way into their bedchamber, hardly noticing the flames that licked the hearth, hardly noticing the flagon of wine that stood on their bedside table. Aye, she's all the wine I need. She's all woman, damn her, she's all a man could ever need. She was small and warm in his arms, struggling like a wolf pup and so bloody insistent, she barely stopped squirming and he liked it, he liked it when she fought back and showed him the wolf inside, the she-wolf buried under her plumage.
She staggered when he set her down, her eyes icy. "There was absolutely no need - "
He cut her off, his hands palming her hips as he chafed his low rasp, deep and intense and dark. "You say you know you're mine, girl." His eyes devoured her in the light of the hearth; her hair was alight, red and orange and golden, pure gold. Such a pretty, pretty little bird. "Then show me. Show me how you know you're mine. Gods, girl, I've waited long enough." She shuddered under his hands. "Show me."
Her eyes were forget-me-not blue. They were the last things he saw before she twined her arms around his neck and brought her lips to his.
[SANSA]
His mouth was hard on hers as he gripped her waist painfully, the hard hooks of his fingers digging into her soft flesh. I'll have bruises tomorrow morning. But she didn't care, and kissed him back with a wild abandon that made them die a hundred deaths there in the tangle of her arms and copper hair, as she kissed him with her heart on lips and fire in her stomach.
He groaned under her mouth, long and low and full of need, of hot desperate need that inflamed her and sent a flash of fire over her skin and down her spine. He was everything she knew in that very moment; she drowned in his lips and in his hard hands as he slowly dragged his fingers from waist to hips, from hips to her behind, cupping her and stroking her as she shuddered in her cage of hard muscle and hot, sweating flesh.
Her lips throbbed when he kissed her; they yearned more when he broke away. Come back. She shuddered as he leant close to her, his ragged breathing hot and heavy on her ear, his hard, callused hands drawing a blazing trail down into her loins.
"You're mine, little bird." I know. His voice was hot ash, harsh and broken and deep; he was like poison to her, sweet poison - her death, but what a beautiful death it was. Sansa died there in his arms; died and was reborn as one with him. She wasn't Sansa without him by her side, without his arms around her.
Her hands were full of his coarse black hair, long strands running though her fingers like water. She tugged at him, wanting to feel his mouth claim hers as his own, but he pulled against her.
"Look at me."
His thumb brushed her cheekbone like a whisper, gentler than she thought possible. Her eyes lingered on the dark hair creeping above the open neck of his shirt, then to the vast expanse of hard muscle across his chest... he was all man, and he was fire; he burned her, as flames long ago had burned him. Flames had claimed him as their own that day, and in turn he claimed her with his dark, fiery touch; he would never know how closely he resembled his own Hell.
His hand found her chin and dragged her face up to his own; his handling was rough, and she twisted in his grip.
His harsh voice was brutal against her sensitive ears. "Stop squirming, damn you, and look at me." His brows were pulled down close over the hollows of his eyes, hard and dark and desperate; something strange reared in those grey depths, a lonely fragility that fought and bit and twisted against itself, but was nevertheless there. Ashamned of his weakness, yet hateful of the mask created to hide it, he lay trapped in his own sorrow; it took Sansa's lips to draw him out of his darkness and make him the man he could have been.
All these things she knew as she looked at him with hard, clear eyes. She was an extension of him, no matter how many times he had tried to cut the thread that bound them together with angry words and violent gestures. He had given her a part of his soul the day the story of his long, slow descent into Hell had come tumbling from his scarred lips in a drunken stream.
His ruined mouth opened to form the words his throat was too choked to say. His lips twitching like a crushed spider, he looked her hard in the eyes with his brows set in that hard way she was so accustomed to.
"I'm yours, little bird. Gods know how much it shames me to say it. But I am. " He stared down at her with eyes full of that strange light; that same light that screamed I'm vulnerable. "And you've known it the whole time, you bloody buggering woman. You've always known." His rough lips were back under her ear and she sighed, her hands tightening in his hair as his nose skimmed the length of her jaw.
"We both have, ser." Her voice was tremulous under his touch.
He pulled away from her again, sliding one large hand down the front of her bodice and wrenching the fabric towards his chest with a loud rip; and suddenly her naked breasts were raised with goosepimples and her split gown hung low around her hips. He raked his eyes down her pale flesh and grinned; for a moment the ghost of the Hound lingered about his crooked, ruined smile and dark, hungry eyes.
Sandor Clegane drew her close and threw her over his broad shoulder in one fluid movement, striding to the bed standing in the corner of the room.
"Aye, you have the right of it, little bird." he growled, and Sansa felt the warmth between her legs burst into hot, desperate flames as he flung her down onto the mattress and knelt over her, ripping off his shirt to reveal his broad chest. His rough hands slid up her thighs and beyond. "I do believe I'll have a song from you tonight."
She moaned. I'll sing for you, all night.