Chapter 9: Restless nights
The feast to present Visenya was a blur of torchlight and scrutinizing stares. They returned to their chambers hours later, the silence a physical relief after the hall's cacophony. Rhaenys, still aching from the birth and weary from performance, collapsed onto the bed still in her gown.
She fell into a deep, immediate sleep where the weight of his body settled over her, a welcome dream. In the dream, his calloused hand pushed her skirts up her thighs, his mouth hot on her neck. "I need to be inside you," his dream-voice growled, rough with want, and she arched against the phantom touch.
She felt the thick, blunt pressure of him against her entrance, a stretch that was both impossible and perfect. He sank into her with a single, relentless thrust, filling the empty ache the dream had conjured. "Fuck, you're so wet," he breathed, his hips setting a deep, claiming rhythm.
She woke with a soft gasp, the sensation overwhelmingly real. The weight was true, the heat was true. Jaime was above her, his tunic discarded, his eyes dark in the moonlit room. He was buried to the hilt inside her, her body already slick and accommodating from sleep.
"You were dreaming," he murmured, his voice thick. His thumb brushed her lower lip. "You were moving against me. Talking." He withdrew almost completely, then pushed back in, a slow, devastating stroke that made her nails bite into his shoulders. "Was it this?"
"Yes," she choked out, her hips lifting to meet his next thrust. "Don't stop."
He didn’t. He fucked her with a steady, intense pace, each drive hitting a place that unspooled her. "Tell me," he demanded, his breath coming harder. "Tell me what you dreamed."
"That you took me," she panted, her head thrashing on the pillow. "Just like this. That you needed it."
"I do need it," he grunted, his control fraying. His movements became harder, faster, the bedframe groaning in protest. "I need to feel you. All of you. Mine." The crude, possessive words ignited her, and her climax ripped through her, a silent, seizing wave. He followed with a sharp groan, pulsing deep inside her, his forehead damp against her throat. They lay tangled, the dream and reality fused into one sweat-slicked truth.
The silence after his father’s footsteps faded was a different creature, thick and humming with shared defiance. Jaime’s hand, still covering hers on the baby’s back, tightened its grip. “Look at me,” he whispered into the dark.
She turned her head on the pillow. His eyes were close, his breath warm. The fear in her chest began to twist, molten, into something else entirely.
“He doesn’t get this,” Jaime said, his voice rough. “This is mine. You are mine.” He said it not as a lord claiming property, but as a man clinging to a truth that felt more real than his own name. His mouth found hers, not with the earlier tenderness, but with a hungry, possessive need that sparked an immediate answer in her blood.
She kissed him back, a low sound catching in her throat. The careful distance they’d maintained since the wedding, the respectful guilt, shattered. His tongue pushed past her lips, tasting her, claiming the inside of her mouth with a ferocity that made her hips shift against the sheets. One of his hands left the baby to fist in her wild hair, tilting her head back, while the other slid down the curve of her waist, over the swell of her hip, pulling her flush against him.
She could feel him, hard and urgent through his breeches, pressing against her thigh. “Jaime,” she gasped, breaking the kiss, her own hands moving to the laces of his tunic. Her fingers, usually so deft, fumbled.
“Let me,” he growled, shucking the garment off with impatient force. The candlelight danced over the scarred landscape of his torso, the powerful shoulders, the flat planes of his stomach. He yanked the linen shift from her body in one sharp movement, the fabric tearing at the neckline. The cool air hit her skin, followed instantly by the scorching heat of his palms on her breasts.
He took a nipple into his mouth, his tongue circling the peak before sucking hard, making her arch off the bed with a sharp cry. Visenya stirred between them with a muffled whimper. They froze, a suspended tableau of want and duty, until the baby settled. His eyes, dark with lust, locked on hers. “Quiet,” he breathed, a filthy, thrilling command.
He moved down her body, his kisses a burning trail over her stomach, ignoring the lingering softness from the birth. He pushed her thighs apart with his shoulders, his stubble rough against her inner skin. She tensed for a heartbeat, a flash of old, childish fear surfacing, but then his mouth was on her, his tongue finding her clit with devastating precision.
“Gods,” she choked out, her hand slapping over her own mouth to stifle the scream he was licking from her. He fucked her with his tongue, deep and relentless, then sucked that sensitive nub until her legs shook. The orgasm ripped through her, violent and silent, her back bowing off the mattress.
Before the last tremor faded, he was moving up her body, positioning himself. The broad head of his cock pressed against her, slick with her release and his own need. He didn’t ask. He looked her in the eye, his expression raw and open. “Tell me you’re mine,” he demanded, his voice wrecked.
“I am,” she panted, pulling him closer. “We are.”
He drove into her, a single, deep, claiming stroke that filled her completely. She gasped, her nails biting into the scars on his back. He stilled, buried to the hilt, letting her adjust, his forehead damp against hers. “Fuck,” he whispered, the word shuddering out of him. “Rhaenys.”
Then he began to move.