HARE AND HOUND GAMES

up with the roof!

Hymenaios—

lift it, carpenters!

Hymenaios—

the bridegroom is coming up

equal to Ares,

Hymenaios—

much bigger than a big man!

Hymenaios!

Sappho, Fragment 111

Sandor Clegane carried her, slung over his shoulder, into a tent and dumped her onto a featherbed. It was soft and warm and deep, piled high with furs that breathed out puffs of comfort. She resisted the urge to sink down into it, scrambling up, supporting her weight on her elbows. "Lion pelts … you bloodthirsty wolf-bitch," he rasped, rubbing the fur against her cheek. Fur to skin, the pelts were divine. Sansa ran her tongue against the back of her front teeth as she caressed the fur with her fingers: golden and soft, the thickest, most extravagant material she had ever felt.

With his free hand, he brushed a strand of hair that had drifted onto her cheek. Her eyes widened while her caresses, so shockingly bold, began to move between the fur and the splayed fingers of the mailed hand that held it to her.

He moved to shape the contours of the bones of her face, his palm so large he could touch both corners of her jaw with the tips of his thumb and forefinger. Sansa grew perfectly still, her tummy lifting, her cheeks on fire. He still wore his dog's head helm but it was if she had the power to pierce steel. She could read the play of emotions on his face. Saw the boy crouching in the shadows, fascinated by the brightness of an intolerably alluring toy yet terrified to touch it indelicately.

Her lips parted, forming a little 'oh' of anticipation. He lifted his thumb and ran it across her bottom lip, brushing back and forth. Her heart pounded violently against the wall of her chest, mouth dry from merely breathing. Involuntarily, her tongue darted out to lick her chapped lips, coming into contact ever so briefly with his thumb. She tasted the bitter saltiness of the metal and swallowed hard.

With the weight of his thumb, he rolled her lip down, exposing the deep pink of the inner lining. She ran her tongue along the edge of his thumb, eyes shutting violently tight. How appalling that he should make her taste it, make it slippery and wet.

"Little bird," he sputtered. "Little bird …"

He pushed her back onto the bed. She felt the press of a cold knife against her throat, its bite no sharper than a pinch.

It should have made her panic but instead a languid limpness flowed everywhere, pooling most especially at the base of her tummy. The knife moved downwards into the opening of her gown. He was undressing her, peeling back the remnants of her clothing as if he was skinning a hare. She felt the coolness of the air and made a move to cover her breasts but he swatted her hands aside. Her right palm flew to shield her face instead, the last storehouse of her modesty.

His cold mailed hands began to sweep across her upper body, her neck, her collarbone, before resting anxiously against the place where her breasts met her underarms. His hands trembled to cup first one breast, then the other—a gentle fondling as if he was petting a dove. His hands felt … pleasing. Strong, more than strong, more than healthy to be sure. Her nipples contracted under his touch. He grunted, pushing her breasts tightly together, bouncing them as if he was trying to judge their weight. Then his hands smoothed down her sides, one hand going between her legs …

"Take these off. Let me look at you." He pushed the scrap of cotton to the side before she had time to comply. The lacy edge pressed between her slit, half revealing, half concealing her. His forefinger traced along the material, stroking up and down the crevice, the band of fabric narrowing and narrowing as she squirmed. She began to shake her head from side to side, unable to gather up the words to make him stop. But either he didn't notice or he didn't care. His fingers hooked into the strings of her smallclothes, untying the knot and pulling them down.

She pictured that day. The howling mob had hemmed her in and thrown filth at her and tried to pull her off her horse and would have done worse if the Hound had not cut his way to her side. How hard she had clung to his back as they rode her horse into the Red Keep. Her left fist bunched hard in the furs that lined the bed, her nerves on fire at the memory of the scratchy white wool of his Kingsguard cloak, finer than any velvet. I could keep you safe. No one would hurt you again, or I'd kill them.

"Oh Gods!" she made a sound like a breathless sob. It was abominable and it was wonderful to be covered by him. She hardly knew what to do …

He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her up so that she sat astride him, twisting her right arm until it lay tucked behind her back.

Sansa was forced to look, staring directly into his dog's head helm. The sight made her light-headed. His palms then slid down her back before curling under her buttocks, massaging them for long moments. His closeness was suffocating. Her breathing became audible, hard pants as if she was still winded from the chase. Too fast. Everything is moving too fast, she thought.

She made a furtive glance down and watched where the cloth bulged. She hadn't been bold enough to look before but suspected his erection had been there from their first encounter in the wilderness. Sandor Clegane missed nothing: she had the complete attention of those grey eyes behind the helm. He brusquely shoved his hips towards her with a dirty chuckle.

"Oh," she cried out, at a loss for words to describe the commotion inside of her. She squirmed, her body moving in confusion, tottering between invitation and denial. That only seemed to excite him further. He let out a low animal groan, gripping her buttocks fiercely in both his hands, spreading the cheeks wide so that she could feel a pulling tension at the little hole in her bottom.

He ground himself against her as low, gravelly grunts escaped from his throat, like the crooning of a bullfrog in heat. She would have giggled had she not understood their source—what a delirious experience, funny and incredible and strange. She wanted to close her legs. She wanted to spread them wide open. A knuckle brushed against the crease of her buttocks before a finger unfurled to move inwards, parting the folds, caressing the slit, entering her in a slow slide—

—in a part of her never felt by anyone. Sensation shifted. A frightening breach of privacy. Sansa closed her eyes as the taste of mint overwhelmed her for a moment, huge fears that rolled up out of nowhere.

"Easy, easy," he said as she writhed violently against him, pushing with her hands and knees. He clutched at her arms to control her which made her flail, swing and thrash harder. Panic gnawed her, a prey animal caught in a trap. Her waking hours were spent as a bagged rabbit, scrambling to get free, barely enduring her own hopeless captivity. Oh, if he insisted … she'd chew off her own leg.

"Sansa, open your eyes, open your eyes." When she complied, she saw that he had his hands up, palms facing her as if in surrender. "Just a game, girl … hare and hound games of your own devising. My power is just a pretense. Look, look at me."

She looked at him, really looked. He wasn't the bad man with the minty kisses, the mockingbird who cast a giant's shadow. He was her Hound. What was this between them? Sansa didn't quite understand her tangled feelings for him. Was it love? No. She loved her parents, her brothers, Arya, Lady. She knew what love was. This fancy was closer to love than any infatuation that had formerly possessed her. She had kept his blood-stained white cloak hidden in a cedar chest, separating it from her clean summer silks with a sheet of linen spread with strawberry leaves and rose petals. There had been some private emotion between them, a confiding intimacy that was too tender for her to abandon. She had conjured him up because …

"You want to be with a man and you're looking at the one you want." He shook his head in disbelief. "Aren't you the perverse one, little bird? So dark," he rasped.

"Who would have imagined it? Not me. Not in a thousand years." He then actually laughed, a sudden loud chortle, bahahaha, that the helm turned into a hollow rumble. The laugh was mean, making her feel as if he was pinching her all over her body. She narrowed her eyes at him. This was her dream. He was a butcher but she was nobody's meat.

Then she too burst into laughter, gleeful giggles, slightly breathy, entertained by her own bewildering imagination. Her body shivered, a fearsome jolt of excitation just from looking at him. There was some mysterious force of personality inside of him, a hidden key that loosened the locks inside of her. Sansa laid back on the bed and parted her legs slightly. She wanted him to take care of her there, in that way.

He stared intently at the place between her legs for a long time. "Just as I imagined: young and delicate, as pink as the inside of a seashell. The last, best piece of cunt in the world. Sopping wet and all for me." His rasp was barely above a whisper, as if he was speaking to himself rather than to her.

He cupped her between her legs, fingers digging into the soft hair, rubbing her with slow, deliberate pressure. A finger reached inside of her then slid out again, in and out, a delicate invasion, the drive and retreat easier each time. She sighed, her will lax, her muscles coiling. He started rubbing some other secret part of her: that startlingly sensitive bundle of nerves that made her arch her body, made the liquid abundant until a tiny drop trickled down into the curve of her buttocks, as ticklish as a tongue along her skin. He did it until feminine, faint grunts that she would have never thought to utter in another's company tumbled from her throat.

"Bloody hell, I'm going to spurt," he cursed in a shaky voice. He nudged her knees farther apart and fell on top of her. A hard erection covered in worsted wool rubbed against the rise of her pubis and she felt his knuckles brush against her folds as he fumbled with his belt. An image came to her, unbidden, of seeing Hodor emerge naked from the godswood after bathing in one of the hot pools. He had been massive, his manhood swinging long and heavy.

Sansa swallowed, blinked, breathed. The Hound was near as tall …

"Oh, you can take it, girl. Your cunt was made to drop squalling brats, it can handle my cock."

She wrinkled her face at him. He could try to be more gallant. What was wrong with him? He was always saying the wrong things. She felt him rub her tummy, a ridiculous gesture—she was a nervous maid, not a child with a bellyache. Yet it calmed her, it was so oddly protective.

Then his hand was gone and he was rubbing something else against her: a very naked, warm and hard male erection. He dropped it lower between her folds, rubbing against the slit, up and down, up and down. She felt herself swollen, so slick and wet. Empty. In that place where she certainly never felt empty before.

Yes, no, yes, no. Do I want to?

"Just a dream," the Hound said with a trace of bitterness. "A secret, private game that doesn't count. You'll have your do-over in real life."

He used the vee of his fingers to spread her apart and with a sure movement of his hips, he began to push into her slowly, rocking himself back and forth. Her eyes grew large. Oh it was huge! Smoother, rounder than his finger but so long and thick that no part of his body could have matched it. Except for his entire arm, she thought.

"Oh Gods … I can't …" Her voice was strained and she felt the emotion of distress but there was only a little pain to accompany it. Just a faint burning and an enormous pressure, a stretching of herself as if she was a too-small glove. Then with one last push, he was inside her to the hilt. He let out a great groaning burst of air as if she had hurt him, rather than the other way around.

The Hound sat up, holding her legs against his shoulders, driving into her. The wetness where they were joined became lavish, making slick, messy noises. The faint burn continued, the smarting ache and the wetness telling her that he was sliding in both her blood and her excitement. She watched him possess her, wearing his fearsome snarling dog's head helm, fully clothed except for the flashes of his manhood she could see as it moved in and out of her. He grabbed at one of her breasts, squeezing it as he began to grunt, animal sounds in time to the advance and withdrawal. She pictured it, the thick head of his manhood moving inside of her, impaling her like a lance. Why, she should receive some sort of reward: the crowd's applause and a champion's purse for swallowing it whole.

Sansa felt her victory soon enough. He lifted her buttocks, grinding himself in small tight circles before he let out a long, slow, satisfied moan and she felt a warm burst of wetness. He shoved his hips fiercely two or three more times before he slowly withdrew, her swollen tissues releasing him with slippery, wet sounds.

He leaned on her, rubbing his seed onto her wincing nerves, his weight like a ton of water, so heavy the nervous movements of her hands and squirming body stilled completely. She laid under him, rattle-brained, her body stiffening with each minute as if trying to find a comfortable position on a bed of nails. All those songs and all those poems about something that had not lasted long. Nor was it particularly sweet. At least not for her. That ill feeling—that she should be exiled from the pleasure in which he seemed to be drowning—grew stronger and stronger until it erupted in a small reprimanding snort.

He withdrew his hand and rolled off her, crouching on the side of the bed. She watched him take off his helm. Sweat beaded his skin, his breath came in sporadic rushes of recalled respiration, as if he had forgotten how to inhale and exhale. Is there any more to the act of sexual love? I thought it would be different … more magical, less messy. Already his seed was leaking out of her, a milk-like flood that made her itchy. She hadn't known about that, nobody had told her.

Sansa touched him lightly on the back of his shoulder. Say something, please. He made no movement to gather her up into his arms and whisper sweet tender words. Instead, with his mailed hand, he brushed at her face as if he was brushing dirt off a child.

"Summer's blood, little bird." The left side of his mouth twitched.

She felt a wet stickiness on her cheek, wiping it away with her thumb. It was a light reddish-colored mixture—her blood, his seed. "You are so bizarre," she sniffed at him. Yet the self-deception was not invisible to her. She was the strange one, the outlaw.

He turned away after she spoke to him. The transitional silence stretched into an ugly little quiet. Sansa rose from the bed and walked towards a side table in the tent where sat an upright mirror, washcloths and a basin filled with flower-scented water. She washed her face and between her legs, all the while staring at the mirror in which she could see his reflection behind her. He still sat, holding his head in his hands as if a melee of thoughts and feelings were raging inside of him. He is ugly, so ugly and hateful and crude. That I should dream of laying with him … what is wrong with me?

Sandor Clegane met her stare in his reflection. There was some inept, unspoken speech brooding behind his eyes. "I've never hunted before," he said in a low voice.

She turned to face him with a confused look. A blush so deep it seemed to have come from her bones rose up. His breeches still hung off his hips. He was increasing. Again. His manhood betraying its pleading need by an imploring kick.

"It's not hunting if you pay for it. I haven't ever fucked a woman sober either. Did you like it?" he asked, frowning at her.

Sansa blinked, trying to think of a courteous response.

"It wasn't that bad. What was it, a minute, sixty seconds? Second for second the closest to the Seven Heavens as I'll ever get." He laughed—then tried to cover his laugh with a cough when he saw the look on her face—sucking in air at precisely the wrong moment, so that the coughing became real. She returned to his side, patting his back until the fit ended.

"Are you alright, girl?" The question made the admission that it had been some kind of ordeal. She nodded, though she did feel unsettled and confused, as if she had survived a disaster. One greater than laying with the Hound. A shipwreck, perhaps, from the look of him. His hair clung in damp wisps to his face. She pulled a piece from his mouth and then cupped his scarred left cheek. He bent his head to the back of her palm and pressed a soft kiss on her skin. "The greatest disaster would be to fuck once and once poorly."

No, she did not fancy Sandor Clegane. Not one bit. Then she heard herself say, "Yes, I liked it. I'll do it again if it would please you."

His shoulders, face, eyes all rose a fraction together, suggesting surprise. His mouth pulled into a wide smirk, parting to show large slightly yellow teeth, a top one chipped. The smile made him look like a bear, one that would devour her in a single bite and then pick his teeth clean.

With a twist, he turned her around so that her back faced him. Deftly, he entwined her hands together, binding them tight with hempen rope. Protests came to her lips but died there. Why ponder and fret? He isn't real, she thought. These were only hare and hound games: secret, private, with no substance and no consequences. The Hound picked her up, cradling her in his arms as he carried her out of the tent.