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Chapter 11: Kissing
Sansa was exhausted.
As always when confronted with Joffrey, it felt as if she had done battle. As if every word, every gesture had cost strength, as if every one of his jabs and questions had drawn blood.
As always, she wanted nothing more than for Sandor to take her to the relative safety of her chambers... or their house now, to be able to lick her wounds and sleep it off.
Unfortunately, she was suddenly ringed by people who barred her access to her one source of peace. People with concern wrinkling their brows and pity oozing from their gazes,
She was torn between wanting to laugh or to scream.
You think this was bad? she wanted to spit at them. You think that's the worst he can do?
But when she found them eyeing her neck, she knew they weren't even bothered by Joffrey's behaviour, they only cared about what Sandor had supposedly done to her.
She brusquely bent to retrieve her shawl and wound it around her neck.
Had she known how this would turn out, how much of public spectacle Joffrey would turn this into, she would not have let Sandor do what he'd done. She would have walked into this den with her head high and a smile on her face. She wouldn't have exposed Sandor to a censure he deserved least of all the people assembled in this room.
Now, when it was way past being too late, they thought to play knights in shining armour and rescue the damsel out of her pretended distress.
If it wasn't so infuriatingly annoying, she'd laugh in their faces.
They led her out of the throne room and into the chambers of the small council. She was offered refreshments and – finally – a place to sit.
"Please allow me to express my deepest regrets regarding the injuries inflicted on you by the Hound," Petyr Baelish said to her, his face so disconcertingly close to hers, she smelled the mint on his breath.
She drew back as far as the chair in which she sat allowed.
"Courtesy of King Joffrey bestowing such honours on his late brother; Sandor Clegane is lord of his own lands," she said tartly, "a property superior to your own if I remember correctly, Lord Baelish, so you might be well advised to address him correctly in my presence."
Baelish stepped back with a smile that looked a tad forced.
"And that aside," she continued, taking a look around, "those injuries you mentioned are nothing in comparison to what I've suffered before, as all of you well know."
"Alas, you are quite right, my lady," Kevan Lannister cut in. "And the small council owes you an apology for that."
Sansa waited, but the owed apology never came.
"You might be glad to know that the small council has devised a way to remove you from your… unfortunate situation," Lannister droned on instead. "Lord Baelish has generously offered to escort you to the Vale, where you will stay with Lady Lysa Arryn. Neither Joffrey nor the Tyrells could object to this arrangement, since Lady Arryn is your aunt and has declared allegiance to King Joffrey, so he needn't fear that he would have no influence over any decision made regarding your future."
She was about to tell them where Lord Baelish could put his generosity and exactly what sort of influence Joffrey needed to have over her, when the door to the council's chamber flew open to reveal a fuming Joffrey and an equally enraged Sandor.
"What is the meaning of this?" Joffrey demanded. "Is the council now second guessing the king's orders?"
Behind him, Sandor smirked darkly at Lord Baelish.
"Your Grace," Baelish said unperturbed, bowing to Joffrey. "We only just now received quite disturbing news regarding Lord Bolton's wife and son which might make it necessary to reconsider your decision regarding Lady Sansa's… uhm… position."
Joffrey was clearly in no mood to reconsider anything.
"What news?"
"The woman the bastard married might not be Arya Stark as we originally were led to believe," Kevan Lannister explained.
Joffrey's brow furrowed.
"That means that Lady Sansa's claim is still valid and worthy of protection," Baelish pressed his point. "And my suggestion would be..."
"He means to take her away from here," Sandor cut in.
Joffrey rounded on Baelish.
"She's a prisoner of the crown and she will stay in King's Landing," he hissed at Littlefinger who in turn gave Sandor a dirty look as soon as Joffrey had turned his back.
Actually, I am a ward of the crown, Sansa thought. Not that it had ever made any difference to Joffrey.
"Your Grace, Sansa Stark needs to be legally married, I am sure you'll see the wisdom of that," Lannister tried.
Joffrey turned again, this time to her and a grin spread over his face.
"Did you sleep through the last hour, uncle?" he asked maliciously, not taking his eyes off her. "She's ruined, dozens of people have seen it today, who would still marry her?"
Since it seemed to serve her purpose, Sansa tried to look sufficiently embarrassed.
"Lancel would be willing...," Ser Kevan started.
"No," Joffrey cut him off, sneering. "She might well be carrying the Hound's get by now and I will not have a pup called a lion."
"How long ago was the first time you took her?" Pycelle asked Sandor, "it might not be too late for moon tea."
"About a week ago," Sandor mumbled and gave her a guilty look which she didn't understand.
"Have you always spilled inside her?"
Sandor didn't answer right away. Instead his eyes sought hers again. With a start, she understood that he was leaving the decision to her. That he was prepared to let her go if she wanted to. That he was giving her something very precious, something she rarely had before.
He was giving her a choice.
If she told the truth, that the only time he spilled inside her had just been mere hours ago, that she had taken other precautions as well, she would be free of Sandor Clegane, free to be given to yet another man not of her own choosing, to whom she would be sold with the most profit for all involved. She would be respectably married, maybe even redeemed in the eyes of others.
If she lied...
"He... took me every night," she said haltingly, feeling a painful blush creeping up her neck at the boldness of her lie. But maybe they would just think her shy and embarrassed at having to confess to her downfall. "And he... spilled in me every time."
As always, Sandor's eyes were carefully devoid of expression, but she saw him holding the hilt of his sword in a white-knuckled grip.
Joffrey lifted his hands as if in surrender.
"See, as I told you, there's nothing to be done," he said. "The Hound gets his whore back and if any of you ever so much as breathes her name to me again, I'll have his head."
Baelish, quite astoundingly brave, opened his mouth to make a last protest.
"Your Grace…"
"The King of Westeros," Joffrey yelled, making Baelish swallow whatever he had intended to say, "doesn't need the help of a cunt to claim Winterfell."
...
Sandor's hand rested at the small of her back as he led her from the council chambers and at first she was too preoccupied with her own thoughts to really take note of anything around her.
When she forcefully shook herself out of her unproductive musings, she not only noticed that they were long past the stables she had thought were their destination, but that Sandor was in a state she wouldn't even know how to name.
The steps he was taking seemed wooden and jerky, every muscle in his face was drawn tight, the good corner of his mouth bloodless from his lips being pressed together in a thin line. The hand on her back was shaking.
He kept something terrifying inside and she feared she would be there when he let it loose.
It soon enough became apparent that he was taking her to the white tower and she wondered what his Kingsguard brothers would say to him bringing a woman to his quarters. The halls were empty, though, and they reached what apparently was the door to his chambers without meeting a single soul. She would have liked to take a look around the room, to see how he lived when not with her, but she was given no chance to do so.
The moment he had closed and locked the door behind them, he pinned her against it, the frightful expression still on his face as it hovered closely over hers, holding her still with his gaze alone.
"Why?" he asked hoarsely, crowding her even closer against the door with his body, his eyes glittering with something she could not identify. "Why did you lie when it meant you'd have to stay with me?"
"Because," she said, lifting her hand cautiously to his face, "of all the men in that room, I preferred to trust my fate to you."
For a moment, his gaze drilled into hers, as if trying to get through to her brain to see whether or not she meant what she said. Then he closed his eyes and leaned his face minutely to the side, into her hand, as if savouring her touch.
His whole stance softened a bit, although whatever raged inside him was still there, but although volatile and clearly directed at her, it didn't seem dangerous.
"After all I did to you?" he asked quietly when he opened his eyes again.
"After everything you did for me," she corrected and then moved her hand to his neck, pulling him toward her to place a light kiss on his lips.
It seemed the right thing to do, considering how much they had already shared. It was meant to be a thank you, a declaration of trust, of friendship, maybe.
His lips were soft under hers, at least the unscarred part of them, but closed and unmoving.
She pulled back, intending to end the kiss he didn't seem to like, when his mouth followed hers, seeking her lips again as if drawn by a magnetism he couldn't resist.
At first it was only a restrained meeting of lips, not unpleasant but somewhat disappointing in the light of what great fuss people made about it all the time. Then he pulled back a fraction, relieving some of the pressure and slowly moved his lips against hers as if exploring the shape and texture of them, much like he had done last night with her scar and breasts.
And just as he had back then, at one point he opened his mouth a little, his tongue flicking out to taste her, to feel with the tip of his tongue what before he had touched with his lips.
The careful caress brought back what she had felt when he had paid the same focused attention to her breasts, that sensation of melting heat that lazily crawled through her veins to converge in a core of heavy warmth in the pit of her belly.
She sighed at the feeling and their breaths mingled as she did. Only then did it occur to her that she might do with him as he did with her. Slowly, carefully, she opened her mouth a little further and tentatively touched the tip of her tongue to his.
The effect on him was as frightfully immediate as it was on her. While her knees almost gave beneath her at the sudden flash of almost terrifying excitement that went through her, Sandor reacted with shoving his whole body flush against her with so much force, the door behind them creaked in protest.
She didn't mind, though.
It meant she wouldn't have to hold herself upright on her unsteady legs and there had never been anything wrong with the feeling of having his huge body close to hers, shielding her from everything around them.
Where his mouth had been gentle and questing before, as if he, too, didn't quite know what to do, he slanted it over hers now, pushing his tongue deeply inside her mouth to delve into her in a way that turned the ball of warmth in her belly into a furnace.
She tried to match him in ardour, as fascinated by this new discovery as he appeared to be. Letting her tongue glide against his, she heard him groan very deeply in his throat, the vibration felt all along her body.
In some way and for a reason unclear to her, all of this seemed way more intimate, even way more indecent than anything they had done before.
Not that she was complaining.
Was this still what people called kissing or was it something entirely different? And if it was, why had Sibyl never told her about it? If she'd known, she might have tried it earlier. Much earlier.
It certainly was way more thrilling and exciting than anything else. And since Sandor very much seemed to enjoy it too, it surely might have been preferable to all the painful and humiliating experiences she had to go through.
Probably fed up with having to stoop to reach her mouth, Sandor suddenly grabbed her bottom with both hands and lifted her against him, directing her to open her legs so he could settle between them, all the while never breaking contact to her mouth.
It truly was more comfortable that way. Her back rested against the door and she could wrap her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his hips. She felt a very secret but nonetheless profound thrill at having him handle her as if she weighted nothing at all, at realizing he was so strong he barely seemed to notice the weight resting on his arms.
With her legs spread like they were and his hips in between them, her body reacted with readying itself for being taken. She felt a disconcerting rush of warm wetness seeping through her smallclothes and hoped he wouldn't notice. She did not want this to end any time soon.
He stilled for a moment and took a very deep breath through his nose. For a panicked moment, she was afraid he could smell her, that he would somehow be appalled by it, but he resumed kissing her with even more fervour and the silly thought dissipated in a cloud of heady excitement.
So enthralled was she by his kisses, she noticed only after a while that he was shoving his hips against her in a rhythm by now familiar to her. She wouldn't have minded either, if not for the way parts of his armour started to dig into the flesh of her thighs in a rather painful manner.
She made a small sound of discomfort, which had him draw back so abruptly, she yelped with fear that he would drop her.
"Your… your armour," she panted, entirely more breathless than she had thought she would be. "It hurts."
He didn't let go of her then as she had expected, but instead firmed his grip on her thighs and slowly walked toward the large bed that stood across the room.
His eyes were pools of darkness, their usual colour only a slim silvery corona around unrelieved black. That something that had frightened her before still worked inside him, still shone from out of the blackness, all-consuming and powerful.
With heartrending care, he placed her on the bed and then proceeded to fumble at the buckles holding his armour with trembling fingers.
He was almost done with ridding himself of all the plate he was wearing, when it finally dawned on her that instead of gawking at him as he shed his armour, she might have used the time to rid herself of some of her own clothing as well for what surely was to come.
She had barely unlaced the front of her dress, when he deemed himself sufficiently undressed for whatever he had in mind – not that this was much of a secret, looking at him – and crawled over her on all fours to claim her mouth once again.
Her body answered with a new rush of heat through her veins, another kick to her heart that sent it galloping like a spooked horse and a pulling sensation low in her belly that she had never felt before.
His mouth left her then, blazing a wet trail of kisses down her chin and neck, only to travel up to her ear.
"I want you, Sansa," he murmured. "I want you so very badly I am burning up with it."
"I know," she said stupidly, the thought the only one in her mind at the moment.
She knew he did, had known for a long time; had always known on some level, even if her mind felt fit to acknowledge the notion only just now, only now letting her realize that the force raging inside him was undiluted passion and desperate need, born out of the experience of nearly having lost her today.
It must have been strange for him, a man used to decide things for himself, to be at the mercy of a woman's decision and she could not even begin to understand what it must have done to him. She could only observe the symptoms.
Being the object of so much desire was at once exhilarating and frightening, so she desperately thought of what to say to tell him he could have her, even if she'd much rather just kept kissing.
"I… I want this, too," she finally said, hoping he wouldn't notice that this wasn't exactly the truth.
She wanted… something, of that she was sure, but giving him what he wanted was nice enough for now.
If he'd noticed the untruth of her words, he didn't acknowledge it. He certainly didn't second guess her statement, because he all but tore her skirts in his haste to ruck them up to her waist.
When his fingers dipped in between her legs, he let out something that sounded like a sob.
"So… so wet… so wet for me," he murmured insanely against her neck and his words proved to be entirely true when he slid inside her as smoothly as a key into a well-oiled lock. She would've been embarrassed at her body's response, at the wet sounds it made when he moved in and out of her, if it hadn't been for his obvious enjoyment of it.
Wet and ready.
Wasn't that what Sibyl had said how he preferred his… women?
A sharp bite of something nasty came with the thought, but she shoved it away, concentrating instead on his movements inside her, on the bliss on his sweat-covered face.
The hunger I have for you could not be sated by anyone else.
That was what he'd told her and he would never lie to her. She had no reason to have this ruined for her by the thought of women he'd been with before.
The almost painful, pulling sensation she had felt before intensified with every one of his powerful movements, drawing every muscle inside her taut with the expectation of she didn't know what, despite her trying her best to keep herself soft and relaxed as she had been told she should.
When she felt him near his climax, she wound her legs tighter around his hips to keep him from pulling away and to her delight, he stayed with her this time. His release came on him with a sobbing groan and the familiar shaking of his big frame, something she would probably never tire of experiencing.
To have this powerful man so much at the mercy of an ecstasy she was the cause of was a potent reward in itself, despite a nagging feeling that there ought to be more, that she had missed out on something.
He rolled to his side after a moment, brought her with him and tucked her as close to him as he could, his chin resting on top of her head.
The storm, it seemed, had calmed, the urgency vanished from the way he held and touched her and she listened with fascination as his heartrate slowed back to normal.
His shirt was soaked with sweat and she wondered why he had not taken the short moment to remove it. She really wished to see him undressed and – even more than that – she wished to feel his naked skin under her hands when she touched him. Maybe she should tell him at one point, maybe he tried to preserve some modesty, although that seemed rather ridiculous, all things considered.
"Did you…" she started, but was interrupted.
"Don't," he rasped. "I am sick and tired of that question."
She snapped her mouth shut. Sure, the question seemed somewhat superfluous, but it shouldn't be too much to ask for him to tell her he liked it. She would have liked to hear it.
"But…"
He drew away from her then and if she had been able to, she would have shrunk back from the anger blazing in his eyes, unguarded for the moment.
"Sansa, I enjoy being with you every single fucking time," he pressed through gritted teeth. "I enjoy just sitting down for a meal, just talking. And the Seven help me, but I even enjoyed repairing those bloody window frames.
"I enjoy being able to touch you whenever I feel like it without it having anything to do with dragging you to Joffrey or carrying you bleeding back to your chambers. And I feel like dying when my cock is in your sweet wet cunt, so please for the love of the Seven, do not ever ask me that again."
This unexpected deluge of words left her speechless, while she carefully picked through what he had been saying.
He felt like dying? Was that supposed to be a compliment?
"So it was only bad for you the first time?" she finally asked,
He turned fully to her then, looming over her.
"Did you expect me to enjoy seeing you in that much pain?" he asked with a pained frown. "Knowing I am the one hurting you, knowing I could make it stop and still somehow not wanting to?"
She shook her head, speech momentarily impossible due to a lump in her throat.
Shame suffused her at the realization that she'd been wrong all this time. Despite the fact that she should've known better, she had thought all men the same in this. Thought that rape came natural to each of them, that a woman's pain was of no account and therefore wouldn't impede their enjoyment of the act.
Why, with everything she knew of Sandor, had she only for a second considered this to be true for him?
"It hurt so much to hear you say that, to think you didn't want me," she whispered her feeble attempt at an explanation. "To think you might come to regret…"
A large hand clamped over her mouth.
"Not another word," he grated. "Do you really not know…"
He shook his head and growled in frustration. Then he abruptly let go of her, turned and swung his legs out of the bed. There he sat motionless, face in his hands, his broad back to her.
"You're driving me insane, girl," he mumbled after a while, sighing deeply. "This feels like getting my guts ripped out and I've no idea how to help it."
...
tbc