Chapter 2: Silent Surrender in the Bolton Camp
The tent wasn’t hers. It smelled of him—oiled leather, horse, a faint, expensive cologne buried under the sweat of travel. It also smelled of her now, the scent of their joining on the furs beneath them. It was a violation, her presence here among the crimson and gold, but it was his violation, and he’d commanded it. Safer than her own tent, he’d said. Fewer eyes. She knew it was a lie. He wanted her close. A part of her, the part that coiled like a snake in her gut, wanted to be close too.
Outside, the army of Lannister men was a living, breathing beast settling for the night. The clatter of cook-pots, the snort of horses, the distant call of sentries. King’s Landing was a day’s ride away. The thought turned the food in her stomach to stone.
Jaime sat on a campaign chest, sharpening a dagger with a slow, rhythmic shhhhk, shhhhk of whetstone on steel. Firelight danced along the blade and caught the green of his eyes. He was clean now, the infection in his stump beaten back by a maester’s careful knives and foul poultices. The golden stubble on his jaw glinted. He wore only breeches, his torso a landscape of old scars and taut muscle. The Kingslayer, at rest. A lion in its den.
She watched him from the pallet, the wool blanket pulled to her chin. “What will happen tomorrow?”
The sharpening didn’t stop. “They’ll give us a parade. Dirt will be swept. They’ll hang some banners. My father will smile his thinnest smile. You’ll be presented as a ward of the Crown. A reconciled relic.”
“A trophy.”
“A live one. More valuable.” Shhhhk.
“And you?”
The sound stopped. He looked up, the firelight hollowing his cheeks. “I’ll stand beside the throne. The Kingslayer, back where he belongs. Proof that even the most treasonable dog can be called to heel with the right leverage.” His gaze flicked to her, then back to the blade.
“My life for your loyalty.”
“Your life for my compliance,” he corrected softly. “There’s a difference.”
Silence stretched, filled with the murmur of the camp. Rhaenys pushed the blanket off, the cool air raising bumps on her skin. She was naked. She saw his eyes track the movement, darken. She stood, walking to the small, scarred table where a flagon of wine sat. She poured a cup, her back to him, feeling his stare like a physical touch between her shoulder blades. She took a long drink, the wine sour and cheap. When she turned, she leaned against the table, leaving herself open, displayed.
“I’m afraid,” she said, the admission flat and stark.
“I know.”
“It’s not a cowering fear. It’s a cold fear. It sits in my bones. It feels like… like waiting for the blow to fall.”
He set the dagger and stone aside. They made a soft clunk on the wood. “It won’t. I won’t let it.”
She laughed, a short, brittle sound. “You? The one-handed man? Against your father, the Queen, the entire fucking realm?”
He stood in one fluid motion. The power in him was still there, even maimed. It was in the breadth of his shoulders, the controlled tension in his stance. He crossed the space between them, stopping just inches away. She could feel the heat coming off his skin.
“You think this is all I have?” He lifted his left hand, flexing the fingers. “This is the hand that shoved a sword through Aerys Targaryen’s back. It’s the hand that held you down in the straw last night while you came apart on my cock. It’s enough.”
His crudeness was a weapon, a deliberate provocation. It stripped away the courtly pretense, leaving only the raw, ugly truth of what they were doing. She liked it. It was honest.
Her own fear was morphing, melting in the furnace of his nearness, twisting into something else—a need for annihilation, for forgetfulness. To feel something other than that icy dread.
She reached out and traced the scar that cut across his ribs. “You promised to be my shield,” she whispered. “I don’t need a shield right now.”
“What do you need?”
She took his left hand and guided it down her stomach, past the trail of dark curls, to the heat between her legs. She was already slick. “I need your weight. I need you to fuck the fear out of me.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. He let her guide his fingers, let her show him the wet evidence of her want. He pressed two fingers inside her, a shallow, testing penetration that made her hips jerk. “Like this?” he murmured, his voice a graveled rumble. “You want to be distracted? To feel used?”
“Yes.”
He removed his fingers, brought them to his mouth, and tasted her. His eyes never left hers. “Liar.”
Before she could retort, his arm hooked around her waist and spun her around. The edge of the table bit into her hips. He kicked her legs wider, the movement rough, efficient. He leaned over her, his chest against her back, his mouth at her ear. His free hand snaked around her front, cupping her breast, pinching her nipple hard enough to make her gasp.
“You don’t want to be used,” he breathed, his cock, already hard and heavy, pressing against the cleft of her ass. “You want to be owned. You want everyone in that fucking city to look at you and know you belong to me. That your cunt is mine. That your screams are mine. That’s your armor.”
He didn’t enter her gently. He spat into his palm, slicked himself, and without ceremony, drove into her in one brutal, deep thrust.
She cried out, her hands scrambling for purchase on the table, overturning the wine cup. The liquid spread, dark as blood. He was enormous inside her, stretching her, filling her completely. There was no tender prelude, no gentle rocking. This was a claiming.
He set a punishing rhythm, each drive of his hips slamming her into the table’s edge. It hurt in the best way—a bright, piercing sensation that burned through the cold dread. His hand stayed on her breast, mauling it, while his mouth bit at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. His teeth breaking skin.
“Tell me,” he grunted, his breath hot on her ear. “Tell me who you belong to.”
She was mindless, reduced to a series of sensations: the slap of his skin against hers, the solid wood digging into her pelvis, the exquisite friction of him pistoning in and out of her soaked, clutching heat. “You,” she panted. “Fuck. You.”
“Louder.”
“You! I belong to you!” Her shout was swallowed by the tent’s fabric, by the noises of the camp outside.
“And what am I?”
“My villain,” she moaned, the words torn from her. “My shield. Mine.”
That unlocked something in him. A growl ripped from his throat. His arm tightened around her waist, holding her impossibly closer as his thrusts lost all rhythm, becoming frantic, urgent. His other hand slid down from her breast, through her curls, finding the swollen peak of her clit. He rubbed it in hard, rough circles, perfectly in time with his deep, vicious strokes.
It was too much. The pain, the pleasure, the utter fullness, the raw declaration—it coalesced into a detonation. Her climax ripped through her without warning, a silent, screaming convulsion that locked her muscles and shook her whole body. She shuddered against him, her inner walls clamping and fluttering around his driving cock.
The feel of her clenching around him tipped him over the edge. With a final, ragged shout that was half her name, half a curse, he buried himself to the hilt and spilled. She felt the hot, pulsing rush of his release inside her, a final, profound violation that left her breathless and trembling.
He collapsed over her, his weight pressing her into the table, both of them slick with sweat and spent. His forehead rested between her shoulder blades, his breathing harsh against her skin.
Slowly, carefully, he pulled out. The sound was obscenely wet. He turned her around, his hands gentler now, cradling her face. He looked as wrecked as she felt.
“I have you,” he said, the words raw. “In that city of liars and killers, I have you. And you have me. It’s the one true thing in the whole damn world.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He lifted her, carrying her the few steps back to the pallet, laying her down on the furs that smelled of them. He lay beside her, pulling a blanket over them both. He arranged her against his body, her back to his chest, his left arm a heavy band across her ribs. His lips brushed the spot on her shoulder where his teeth had marked her.
Outside, a horse whinnied. A man laughed. The world went on.
In the dark, with the solid reality of him wrapped around her, the cold fear receded. It was still there, waiting in the wings. But for now, it was held at bay by the heat of his skin, the steady beat of his heart against her back, and the deep, aching soreness between her legs that felt, strangely, like a promise. Tomorrow, they would ride into the dragon’s maw. But tonight, in the scent of sex and safety, she slept.
Sleep was a black river, and she sank into it. It was dreamless, heavy, a reprieve from the cold fear that waited on the road ahead. Her body, worn raw from him and from worry, held no space for ghosts.
She surfaced to heat and movement.
A hard, insistent pressure was grinding against the cleft of her ass. It was thick, hot, already slick. Jaime was pressed tight against her back, his breath coming in shallow, ragged puffs against her neck. His arm, slung over her ribs, held her with a limp, sleeping tightness. But his hips were moving in a slow, relentless rhythm, his cock sliding against her skin through the thin film of sweat between them.
“Jaime?” Her voice was thick with sleep.
He didn’t answer. The grinding intensified. He was still asleep, she realized. Trapped in some fever-dream, his body moving with a mind of its own. The infection, perhaps, or the ghosts he carried. He let out a low, pained groan into her hair, his thrusts becoming more urgent, more frustrated against the barrier of her body.
A flicker of alarm cut through her grogginess. She tried to twist, to get an arm free. “Jaime. Wake up.”
His response was immediate and violent. His left arm, the one across her, snapped tight like a band of iron, pinning her. His other hand came down on her shoulder, pressing her face into the furs. The movement was not conscious, not the calculated dominance of before. It was something feral, a sleep-drunk strength fueled by whatever phantom rode him. He shifted his weight, his knee forcing her legs apart.
“No, wait—” she tried, but the words were muffled.
He was not listening. He was not there. With a ragged intake of breath, he positioned himself, the blunt head of his cock pushing against her entrance. She was still wet from their earlier fucking, swollen and sensitive. He pushed inside in one unyielding, deep stroke.
A sharp sound escaped her, part gasp, part shock. He was fully sheathed in an instant, his body molding to her back, his teeth finding the curve of her shoulder with a soft, unconscious bite. He stayed there for a second, buried to the hilt, a low, satisfying hum vibrating in his chest. Then he began to move.
This was different. There was no conversation, no cruel taunts, no declarations of ownership. It was pure, unthinking instinct. His hips drove forward with a piston-like regularity, each thrust jolting her against the pallet. The wet, rhythmic slap of skin filled the tent. His grip on her was absolute, immobilizing, as if he were anchoring himself against a storm only he could feel.
The initial shock burned away, replaced by a coiling, disgraceful heat. His delirium stripped away all pretense. This was not the Kingslayer, nor her shield, nor her villain. This was an animal, claiming its mate in the dark. The raw simplicity of it, the complete lack of artifice, unraveled her. A treacherous warmth flooded her veins, pooling low in her belly. Her body, traitor to all reason, began to clench around him, welcoming each deep, mindless plunge.
She stopped resisting. She let her head fall to the side, giving his mouth better access to her neck. A soft, surrendering moan leaked from her lips. She pushed back against him, meeting his thrusts.
It seemed to trigger something in his sleeping mind. A guttural sound ripped from his throat. His pace quickened, becoming frenzied, almost brutal. One of his hands slid from her shoulder, down her side, over the curve of her hip, coming to clutch the juncture of her thigh and pelvis, holding her open for him. The other remained locked across her chest, a binding.
“Fuck,” he slurred into her skin, a sleep-talker’s curse.
His rhythm broke, becoming erratic, and with a series of short, sharp jerks of his hips, he came. She felt the hot pulse deep inside her, the twitch of his cock, his body seizing against hers. A shuddering sigh left him. He stilled, his weight going heavy but his grip not loosening.
He wasn’t done. He slipped from her, wet and spent, but remained lodged against her. His breathing was still ragged, still wrong. He adjusted his angle slightly, his half-hardness finding the slippery wetness between her thighs. He began moving again, slower now, grinding against her sensitive flesh, his previous release slicking the way.
The friction was electric, maddening. Her own climax, ignored and impatient, coiled tight within her. She was achingly close, teetering on an edge made sharper by his utter lack of awareness. He was using her body to chase his own lingering dream, and she was letting him, her hips circling now, seeking the perfect pressure.
“Yes,” she whispered, a secret to the night.
He drove into her again. This time, he was softer, but the angle was deeper. He fucked her with a determined, drowsy persistence, as if trying to lose himself completely. His hand on her hip guided her, his fingers digging into her flesh. The build was slower, more torturous. It gathered in her spine, a rising wave of heat and tension.
When his end came again, it was not a sudden burst. It was a rolling, powerful release that seemed to pull from the very core of him. He cried out, a wordless, choked sound, and his body arched against her back, every muscle locked. She felt him spill inside her again, a second, weaker flood that nonetheless sent her tumbling over the edge with him. Her orgasm was a silent, shuddering convulsion, a bright white seizure that left her blind and gasping.
He collapsed onto her, a dead weight of sweat-heated muscle and bone. His breathing, harsh and open-mouthed, was loud in her ear. Her own lungs fought for air beneath him.
Slowly, the world seeped back in. The rough wool of the furs against her cheek. The distant call of a night bird. The cooling stickiness between her thighs. The solid, unbearable weight of him.
He stirred, a vague, confused shift. His head lifted slightly. “Rhaenys?” His voice was hoarse, thick with disorientation.
She couldn’t answer. She just lay there, pinned and thoroughly fucked, trying to remember how to breathe.