Chapter 15: A Humiliation in Oldtown
The warmth of their bedchamber felt like a lie. Naerys slept, one hand curled near her face, the other resting protectively over the slight curve of her stomach where their second child grew. Gwayne lay awake, watching the firelight dance across the cobalt dragon egg in its cradle. Alicent’s intervention had held, for now. The King’s wrath had been averted, but the egg remained a coiled threat in the corner of their lives.
Every time he looked at it, he didn’t see a dragon. He saw Ormund’s face.
The memory didn’t arrive as a whole, but in shattered pieces—the scent of cheap perfume, the grain of a warped table under his palms, the deafening roar of his own blood in his ears. It had been five years ago, in a shit-stained tavern in the shadow of the Hightower, a place where the heir could slum without his father’s knights noticing.
Ormund, already broad and bluff with a conqueror’s arrogance, had slammed down three cups of sour ale. “A toast! To my cousin the scholar! The knight who reads more scrolls than he swings swords!”
Gwayne had forced a smile, the praise barbed. “You swing enough for both of us, Ormund.”
“Aye, and I fuck enough for both of us, too.” Ormund’s smile was a razor. His eyes, the same Hightower hazel, held none of their shared warmth. They were evaluating, cold. “Which is the problem. Father worries. Whispers. Says you’re too gentle. That you don’t have the fire.” He leaned in, ale on his breath. “I told him you just need the right flint. To strike a spark.”
Before Gwayne could protest, Ormund had snapped his fingers. A woman emerged from the smoky gloom. She wasn’t a maiden; her beauty was worn at the edges, her smile practiced. Her dress was green silk, too fine for this place, and it clung to generous curves.
“This is Liana,” Ormund said, his voice a low purr. “She’s going to help us with your education.”
Gwayne’s stomach turned to ice. “Ormund, no. This isn’t—”
“It is.” His cousin’s hand clamped on his shoulder, a vise of false camaraderie. “Consider it a nameday gift. My treat. Now stand up. Let her have a look at you.”
Humiliation, hot and sour, rose in Gwayne’s throat. He was a man, two-and-twenty, a knight, and he felt like a scared boy. To refuse would be to confirm every whispered suspicion. To submit was a violation he couldn’t name. He stood, wooden, as the woman—Liana—approached. Her fingers, deft and impersonal, began working on the fastenings of his trousers.
“Look at him,” Ormund chuckled, settling back in his chair. “Stiff as a board. And not where it counts. Let’s see if we can fix that.”
The tavern room was small, airless. The woolen rug was scratchy under his boots. Liana pushed his trousers and smallclothes down to his thighs. His cock lay soft against his leg, utterly unresponsive. She took it in her hand, a clinical grip, and began to stroke.
“See?” Ormund said, swirling his ale. “Nothing. Like fondling a sleeping eel. Use your mouth, girl. Warm it up.”
Gwayne wanted to vomit. He wanted to die. He fixed his eyes on a crack in the plaster ceiling, dissociating from the wet heat of her mouth as she engulfed him. It was skill without soul, a mechanical suction that felt distant and vaguely repellent. His body remained a traitor, limp. Shame was a cold sweat on his skin.
Ormund watched, his initial amusement fading into something darker, more intense. He set his cup down slowly.
“You’re not doing it right,” he said, his voice dropping. It wasn’t addressed to Gwayne. It was for her. “Take him deeper. Get your tongue under the ridge. Yes. Like that.”
The command in his voice was absolute. At the sound, something flickered in Gwayne’s gut. A treacherous, unwinding wire of heat.
Liana obeyed, hollowing her cheeks, her throat working as she took him deeper. Gwayne’s breath hitched. It wasn’t her. It was the low, graveled tone of Ormund’s observation.
“Good,” Ormund murmured, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. His eyes were locked on the junction of her lips and Gwayne’s flesh. “Now suck. Properly. Make it filthy. Let him hear it.”
Slurp. Click. Gulp.
The sounds were obscenely loud. Gwayne’s fingers curled into fists. A faint, damning stiffness stirred within the wet cavern of her mouth.
“There it is,” Ormund breathed, a hunter spotting his quarry. “See him twitch? He likes being told. He likes being watched.” His own hand drifted to his lap, palming the obvious bulge in his breeches. He didn’t look away. “Use your hand too. Twist it at the tip when you come up. Make him fucking feel it.”
Gwayne was dissolving. The ceiling crack blurred. The only real things were the pressure of her mouth, the slick friction of her hand, and Ormund’s voice, painting the act with crude, compelling authority. Each instruction was a spark on tinder. His blood was molten lead, rushing south. His cock thickened, hardened, rising to fill her mouth until her lips strained around the girth.
“Gods,” Gwayne gasped, the first sound he’d made. His hips jerked, involuntarily.
“That’s it,” Ormund coaxed, his voice thick. His hand was still kneading himself through the fabric, a frantic, restrained rhythm. “Fuck her face. She can take it. Show me you know how to use it.”
Permission. Command. Gwayne’s hands, which had been frozen at his sides, moved. One tangled in Liana’s hair, not gently. He pulled her head forward, forcing his cock deeper into her throat. She gagged, tears springing to her eyes, but Ormund made a sharp, approving sound.
“Yes. Like that. Own it.”
Gwayne fucked her mouth in earnest, shallow, brutal thrusts that made her choke and sputter. Pleasure, sharp and shocking, razored up his spine. It was conflated, twisted—the physical sensation woven inextricably with the illicit thrill of Ormund’s gaze, the dark approval in his cousin’s voice. This was wrong. This was broken. It was the most potent arousal he’d ever known.
“He’s close,” Ormund narrated, his breathing ragged. “Look at his balls, drawn up tight. He’s going to pump that pretty throat full. Aren’t you, coz?”
Gwayne couldn’t speak. A guttural noise was torn from him. His thighs trembled. He was poised on a precipice of profound, degrading release.
“Do it,” Ormund hissed, his own restraint fraying. “Come in her mouth. Let me see it.”
The words were the final stroke. Gwayne’s climax detonated, a raw, shuddering convulsion. He held Liana’s head firmly, hips stuttering as he emptied himself in hot, pulsing jets down her constricted throat. He watched, through a haze, as Ormund watched, his cousin’s hazel eyes black with a hunger that mirrored his own shame. Ormund’s hand was still, gripping his own cock so tightly his knuckles were white, denying himself the same finish.
It was over. Gwayne staggered back, pulling himself from her mouth with a wet pop. Liana coughed, wiping her chin. Ormund slowly leaned back, adjusting his tunic over the persistent bulge, his face a mask of strained satisfaction.
“There,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Now you know. Remember the lesson. Sometimes a man needs to hear how it’s done.”
Sometimes a man needs to hear how it’s done.”
The words hung in the pipe-smoke haze. Ormund fished a silver stag from his purse and tossed it onto the table where it spun, wobbling to a stop beside a wet ring of ale. He didn’t look at the woman. “Get out.”
Liana scooped up the coin, her practiced composure reassembling itself. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, gave a curt nod, and slipped through the door without a sound. The latch clicked shut, a final, delicate sound.
Silence, heavy and buzzing, flooded the small room. Gwayne’s trousers were still around his thighs. The cool air prickled against his damp skin. He was panting, each breath a shaky affront, his spent cock already softening. Across from him, Ormund hadn’t moved. He was staring, his hazel eyes glassy and fixed. His own breathing was ragged, torn from his chest. The thick outline of his cock pressed insistently against the front of his breeches, a blatant, unfinished demand.
Gwayne’s mind was white static. Shame curdled in his gut, hot and slick, but beneath it ran a current of terrified recognition. He had seen the hunger in Ormund’s gaze as he’d come. It hadn’t been for the whore. The understanding was a door swinging open onto a precipice. His body moved before his mind could forbid it.
He stepped out of his tangled clothes, his movements clumsy. The rough wool of the rug scraped his knees as he dropped before Ormund’s chair. He looked up. Ormund looked down, his expression unreadable, a storm held behind a wall of stone. A muscle feathered in his jaw.
With trembling fingers, Gwayne worked the laces of Ormund’s breeches. The leather ties resisted, slippery. He finally loosened them, pushing the fabric aside. Ormund’s cock sprang free, thick and flushed, the head gleaming. It smelled of sweat and salt and power. Gwayne leaned forward, closing his eyes, and took it into his mouth.
The taste was bitter, musky. He tried to replicate what the whore had done, the hollowed cheeks, the suction. It was clumsy, unpracticed.
A hand, rough and large, fisted violently in his hair. Ormund’s control shattered. “Oh, fuck,” he gasped, a raw expulsion of air.
He didn’t guide. He used. He pulled Gwayne’s head forward, driving his cock deep into the constricted heat of his throat. Gwayne gagged, tears springing to his eyes, his own hands flying up to brace against Ormund’s muscular thighs.
“Yes,” Ormund hissed, his hips pumping up from the chair. He set a brutal, relentless pace, fucking into the wet tightness of Gwayne’s mouth. Each thrust hit the back of his throat, a punishing, claiming rhythm. “Take it. Just fucking take it.”
Gwayne couldn’t breathe. Spit dripped from his stretched lips. The sounds were obscene—wet slaps, choked gags, Ormund’s low, continuous groans. Pleasure and degradation fused into a single, blinding wire of sensation. Ormund was lost, his head thrown back against the chair, his other hand clawing at the wood arm.
“I’m gonna… right there, don’t you stop…” Ormund’s warnings were fractured grunts.
His thrusts grew jerky, wild. His grip on Gwayne’s hair became vicelike, holding him immobile as he drove himself to the hilt. A guttural roar ripped from Ormund’s chest as he came, his body bowing. Hot, bitter spurts flooded Gwayne’s mouth, coating his tongue, the back of his throat.
Ormund shuddered through the last pulses, his hips stuttering. He held Gwayne there, impaled, for a long moment, both of them shaking. Then he pushed him back, his cock sliding out with a slick pop.
“Swallow it,” Ormund commanded, his voice wrecked but absolute. His eyes were dark, demanding. “Every drop. Let me see.”
Gwayne, his throat burning, obeyed. He swallowed convulsively, the salty tang clinging to his palate. He opened his mouth, a silent exhibit.
A slow, satiated smile spread across Ormund’s face. He reached out and patted Gwayne’s cheek, a condescending, proprietary gesture. “Good boy.”
He slumped back into his chair, a massive, spent force. His breeches were still open, his softening cock glistening in the lamplight. He exhaled, a long, complete sigh of fulfillment, and closed his eyes. Completely sated.
Gwayne knelt on the rough rug, the taste of his cousin sour in his mouth, the phantom grip still tight in his hair. The lesson was learned, branded onto his soul. He was not a man. He was an instrument, a secret, a good boy who obeyed. The silence now was not just empty. It was complicit.
It was complicit. That silence followed them out of the tavern and up the back stair of a rented room, where the air smelled of mildew and old straw. Ormund had paid for the whole night, a gold dragon tossed to a leering innkeeper. He said nothing as he lit a single tallow candle, its flame guttering and spitting.
The bed was narrow, the mattress lumpy. Ormund stretched out on his back, boots still on, tunic unlaced. He stared at the smoke-stained beams above. “She wasn’t the first, you know,” he said, his voice a low rumble in the dark. “The one with the red hair, in Lannisport. Gods, she had a mouth on her. Could suck the soul right out of a septon.”
Gwayne lay beside him, rigid, still tasting bitterness. He said nothing.
“Told me she loved the taste,” Ormund continued, a faint, smug smile in his words. “Liked to swirl it around on her tongue like fine wine. Said my seed was sweeter than most. Thicker, too. Filled her up proper.”
A log shifted in the hearth downstairs. Gwayne’s hand, resting on his own stomach, twitched. His breeches felt tight again. The crude, proprietary way Ormund spoke—the dark velvet of his voice describing such filth—wrapped around Gwayne’s guts and squeezed. Heat, shameful and immediate, pooled low in his belly.
“She’d beg for it,” Ormund murmured, his hand drifting down to cup himself through his leathers. “Get on her knees and whimper. ‘Please, ser, give it to me. I need it.’ And I’d make her wait. I’d make her tell me exactly where she wanted it.”
The sound of leather rasping was obscenely loud. Ormund unlaced his breeches, freeing his cock. It was half-hard, lying thick against his thigh. He began to stroke it slowly, his fist moving with a practiced, idle rhythm.
Gwayne’s breath hitched. He couldn’t look away from that motion. His own hand moved of its own volition, slipping inside his clothes, wrapping around his aching stiffness. He matched Ormund’s pace, stroke for stroke. The rough friction of his own palm was a pale echo of the heat he craved.
“Her tits were amazing,” Ormund said, his voice growing thicker, rougher. The storytelling cadence was gone, replaced by a raw, visual recitation. “Big, pale things with nipples the color of bruised plums. I’d come all over them, paint them white. She’d rub it in, smiling up at me, all sticky and used.”
Gwayne pumped his cock faster, his hips lifting off the mattress into his own fist. A soft, desperate sound escaped him. The images were vile. They were breathtaking. Ormund’s voice was the only thing that existed, a dark river pulling him under.
“I fucked her ass once,” Ormund grunted, his own strokes becoming urgent, his fist a blur. “Took her from behind while she squealed into the pillow. So tight. Like a fucking vise. I thought she’d tear.”
That did it. A violent tremor wracked Gwayne. He couldn’t bear the distance. He turned his face, burying it against Ormund’s neck, inhaling the scent of sweat, leather, and him. His mouth was open, panting hot, ragged breaths against Ormund’s skin as his hand worked furiously between his own legs.
“Yeah,” Ormund breathed, feeling the heat of Gwayne’s gasp. His free hand came up, not to push Gwayne away, but to grip the back of his head, holding him there. “That’s it. Listen.”
Gwayne was incoherent, lost. The combined sensations—the smell of him, the sound of him, the friction on his cock—built into an unbearable pressure. With a choked, muffled cry into Ormund’s neck, he came. His back arched, his whole body seizing as hot stripes of semen painted his own tunic and stomach in pulsing jets.
Ormund’s head turned. He looked down, his hazel eyes burning in the candlelight, and saw the proof of Gwayne’s release glistening there. The sight, the raw vulnerability of it, snapped his own control.
“Fuck!” he snarled.
His hips jerked off the bed. His cock throbbed violently in his fist, and he came with a guttural roar, his seed spurting over his knuckles and onto his own belly in thick, white ropes. The bed shook with the force of it. He shuddered through the climax, his grip on Gwayne’s head tightening painfully before going slack.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their labored breathing and the reek of sex in the close room. Gwayne stayed where he was, his face pressed into the damp hollow of Ormund’s shoulder, sticky and devastated. Ormund’s hand fell away from his head, resting limply on the mattress between them, glistening.
Finally, Ormund spoke, his voice flat, emptied. “Never speak of this.”
Gwayne didn’t. He never did. He carried the memory like a shard of hot iron lodged behind his ribs, a secret that burned every time he drew breath. It was that memory he tasted now, lying beside his sleeping wife in the Red Keep, staring at a dragon’s egg that held less terror for him than the man who had died in the war.
He carefully extricated himself from the furs, the phantom scent of mildew and tallow still in his nose. He walked to the hearth, kneeling before the iron cradle. The cobalt scales were cool under his fingertips, a serene, stony mockery of the fire it absorbed. His other hand, as if by its own volition, drifted to his lips. He could still, on certain nights, taste the bitter proof of his own corruption.