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I.
MARCH
Spouse of the Prime Minister isn’t even an official title — just a statement of fact. The people elected the Prime Minister. You just happen to be married to him.
Cersei Lannister hadn't even been allotted a private office in Parliament House. But she had demanded it anyway. It became a thing at the time when she asked for it, a first. Spouses are not government officials.
A thinly-plucked eyebrow, raised. Give me. A fucking. Office.
It had been Cersei’s family’s money that had put Robert Baratheon in the big chair. Cersei’s father’s foresight that predicted the hot-button issues. And Petyr Baelish’s machiavellian whispers that ensured the almost comical fall of the opposition — thirty-six hours before pre-election silence kicked in over the nation so the Targaeryan party floundered like idiots without a plan or a clue before losing the right of response altogether. That stroke of genius had actually brought a tear to Robert’s eye. Robert hadn’t even cried when any of their children were born.
The clock in the hallway chimes three. She never hears that clock in the day, drowned as it easily is by the hive of activity in the building. But in the dead of night, in the resounding silence, everything is always amplified.
The ice in her glass tinkles as she brings the rim to her lips. Cersei pauses before she pulls the brown envelope out from under the stack before her. She undoes the string-tie clasp. The fourteenth time she’s done that today. Maybe more.
Cersei should be used to infidelity. Robert Baratheon has fathered enough bastards, their silence each paid for with Lannister money and the timely reminder that Lannisters always pay their debts. Such a non-issue between the First husband and wife now, these indiscretions. A cost of business, really.
Cersei should be used to infidelity. But as she pulls these grainy photos out and stares at her twin brother in mid-fuck with a fugly she-giant, something deep in Cersei twists painfully and her hand grips the glass so hard that she starts to shake.
One level down and the floor is thick with darkness, save for the light at the end of the corridor. The National Treasurer, apparently, is still hard at work.
Sensor lights blink on as Cersei walks down the length of the corridor, her spike heels tapping a hollow announcement like Morse code.
She opens the door to The Hon. Petyr Baelish’s office without so much as a knock. He hardly seems surprised, but he doesn’t look up from his screen. His office is draped in shadows; he hadn’t turned the overhead lights on. Apart from the glow of his monitor, the green vintage bankers lamp on his desk is the only other light source preserving his 20/20 vision. That, and the full moon yawning in from the floor-to-ceiling wall of window. A strange aesthetic choice for a man so full of secrets.
The way the moonlight hits the planes of his profile accentuate his cheekbone and sharpens the look of distracted hunger etched on Petyr Baelish’s face. Cersei crosses over to his drinks trolley and helps herself to his crystal decanter. She pours him a glass without asking.
“How can I help you, Mrs Baratheon.” He doesn’t look up from his screen. Cersei places the glass of cognac beside him before sauntering over to lean against the window and stare across the manicured lawns now eerily bathed in black and silver.
His tie is still taut around his neck. Cersei loosens the oversized bow around hers, then undoes the first three buttons. Her silk white blouse falls open lazily, revealing a hint of lace underneath.
Cersei is restless, bottled anger. Petyr is still engrossed with whatever cunting detail that commands his undivided attention. The gall of the man riles her to another level of pique.
“Was it you who dropped that envelope on my desk today?” she asks, staring out at the lawn. There is no one out there of course, but Cersei squints into the night anyway.
“You had asked to be kept informed.” He shrugged. “I do as I’m told.”
Neither of them mentions the fact that the National Treasurer has no business doing spy business. Nor do they mention that she had asked for Petyr to report on Robert’s clandestine activities. And not Jaime’s.
Petyr closes his laptop and finally looks at her. He doesn’t say a word, just looks at her. Waiting.
Cersei clenches her jaw.
She thinks she knows him by now. Two years on the campaign trail and she thinks she’s got him pegged. Petyr is a shapeshifter, a snake, a two-faced liar, a slippery, handsome, charming sonofabitch. He is made for politics. Her father thinks he’s useful. Her husband thinks he’s a hoot. Ned hates him. There is history with the wife there, when it comes to Ned. Petyr was the jilted. No love lost between the two, and Petyr’s had to bite his tongue ever since Ned became Chief of Staff and, effectively, his boss.
And then there’s the daughter. Cersei’s mouth turns up cruelly at the reminder.
The photos on her desk don’t only say that Jaime’s found a bigger, uglier model to warm his bed, mortifying as that is. Fucking asshole in front of her knew all along about their inappropriate relationship. Brother and sister.
Her dirtiest, oldest little secret.
This is his way of rubbing his power in her face. Knowledge is Power, he had crowed to her once, arrogant shit. Petyr leans back in his chair and looks almost bored. But his eyes are glinting.
It sounds like a complete non sequitur when she says, “My son Joffrey has finally noticed Ned’s older daughter. Sweet little thing, Sansa Stark. Little Dove.” Her eyes narrow viciously, sweeping across Petyr’s cool countenance for hints of jealousy that she already knows lurks beneath.
“Think he’s finally going to ask her out, I hear. She’s always had the biggest crush on my Joffrey, you know. Young love. Adorable to watch, don’t you think? You remember being young once... ” Cersei’s generous mouth splits into a wide, cruel smile.
Petyr says nothing, just watches her. He does that a lot, just watching and waiting. He misses nothing and never gives anything away for free. In that regard, he is irritatingly like her father.
But he doesn’t fool her for a second. Her words make their mark. His eyes harden for a fraction. It is enough. Her smile widens even as his face turns serious. I have your number now, fucker.
Her gaze sweeps over him cursorily. He’s younger than she is, though not by much. Lean and toned but not particularly muscly. Average height, far shorter than Jaime, but taller than she on most days. Almost comical machiavellian facial hair that she wants to rip from his face some days. Eyes that see entirely too much. A mouth that seems always on the precipice of taunting cruelty.
On that mouth, Cersei now settles her gaze. She blinks away a thought, and then another. The room seems to bend for a split second before righting itself. Cersei closes her eyes and pulls herself together. Tamps down the white of anger licking the fringe of her consciousness. The last person she could ever cede control to sits slouched in front of her now, legs open wide. A lazy smile playing now on his lips.
Cersei’s spike heels wobble a fraction on the soft carpet as she rounds his desk. She turns his chair to face her squarely and drops to her knees.
Cersei Lannister had never taken Robert's name when she married him. The Office of the Prime Minister willed that she be officially addressed as Mrs Baratheon. But Cersei belongs to no one. Answers to no one. Not even to Jaime.
She wonders now if she keeps her maiden name because she feels bound to no one else except her twin. Jaime, soul-of-her-soul, flesh-of-her-flesh. She is Cersei Lannister. She is wed to Jaime Lannister in spirit if not in deed. She is Cersei Lannister.
“You’re pissed off,” Petyr says now. It is not a question, but a statement of fact.
“Says you,” Cersei replies coolly. It is a lie to detract.
“You’re getting hard,” she adds. It is not a question, but a statement of fact. Cersei is on her knees, between his legs spread wide and waiting. She is behind his desk, the wall of window behind her to the side. A precarious marriage of private and public spaces.
He says nothing. Perhaps any answer will incriminate him. And suddenly Cersei wants nothing more than to watch his restraint, his careful control shatter under her touch.
He’s starting to sway from side to side in his chair, just slightly, almost as a taunt. But when she places her hands on his knees, he stills completely. She flicks her eyes up to look at him and smiles. She has his fullest attention.
When she slides her hand up the inside of his thigh, she hears a sharp intake of breath. And that is even before she gets her mouth on him over his trousers.
“Fuck,” he breathes and she feels him hardening as she mouths him through the wool, her red Dior lipstick delivering on its promise never to smear. Even through the layers, she can smell his musk rising off of him, heavy and spiced. It is not unpleasant at all.
She will enjoy taking him in her mouth. He does not help her when she starts undoing his belt, his zip. His eyes have narrowed to slits and he looks almost furious. But he does not stop her.
At first they are at an impasse, where he refuses to be impressed, to even touch her. He is hot and heavy in her hand and he twitches when she runs her tongue along the underside of him. But he still looks furious.
Fury eventually melts to grudging acquiescence, and from grudging acquiescence to curiosity, to this — his head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut and every muscle tensed, causing his chair to creak. His hands are white-knuckled over the ends of his armrests and when he finally groans, Cersei squeezes her thighs together and shifts, seeking a special friction of her own.
The taste of him is different from Jaime, and yet it is eerily familiar. He is shorter but thicker and her jaw now aches as his own need grows. Now he’s pushing up into her mouth, hungry for depth. And she is just as hungry for him.
He fucks her in the mouth too hard so she starts to choke but he doesn’t seem to care. He is unravelling and the knowledge alone soaks her Bordelle panties through to her pencil skirt. Now he's grabbing her hair and holds her still as he bucks into her mouth again. Her eyes start to water, but she is triumphant. He is losing control, not she. She is in control. She is. She is in control, everything in hand, even as his hand in her hair is pulling her away before brutally pushing her head back on him. Her crown is starting to hurt, the golden blonde roots of her hair screaming in pain even as her soaking cunt is clenching with want and throbbing with neglect.
Control, control, control, I am in control, control, contr—
He hits the back of her throat when he comes, his hips lifting off the chair entirely. A string of unusual expletives as stringy ribbons shoot down her throat. She is sure to swallow. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and wonders idly if he was thinking of Sansa when he came. If she wants to twist the knife further, maybe she should ask that. She wonders if he’ll backhand her. She smiles.
But now he’s pulling her up to standing, lifting her onto his desk. For a moment she thinks he’s leaning in to kiss her and her eyes widen, but no. He knows better than to do that. He knows everything, after all. He’s a fucking know-it-all. Cersei's madder now than even before she started, but she cannot bring herself to ask who that fucking ugly whore fucking Jaime is. The fact he knows the whore’s name even before she does...
Petyr's fingers pull the triangle of her now trash-worthy panties aside and sinks his fingers knuckle deep so she groans into the still, recycled office air. He starts flicking quickly now in a come-hither motion, giving relief to her poor, aching cunt when she presses her hand on his wrist.
“No,” she rasps. Her teeth are gritted as she hisses her explanation. “I take, but I sure as hell do not give.”
Cersei hops from his desk, shrugs out of her Bordelles and tosses it in his trash can. Her lipstick is finally smudged. She turns and leaves without saying goodbye.
II.
TWO YEARS, EIGHT MONTHS LATER
Petyr is counting the months and smirks humourlessly as he realises all that has happened in between. Everything, fucking everything.
Prime Minister Robert Baratheon had died sometime while his wife’s mouth was wrapped around his National Treasurer’s cock. Heart attack, the fat bastard. Died happy, is the gentle euphemism. The last little nugget had been the hardest to hide after all that. Lannister money only went so far, but a tidbit as juicy as the Prime Minister passing this realm in flagrante delicto with some floozy from the third-world country whose economy he was helping resuscitate… There were many jokes in the media after that about his economic policy failing to rise to the occasion. Something about not being great at finishing.
Petyr had left while the verdict was out on who was to take the helm, the future of the party now writ plain on the wall amidst the scandal. An internal coup between the deputy prime minister and a four-way challenge — instigated by Petyr — for party leadership had neatly created an opening for Petyr in the private sector. Best to wait it out there until the dust settled and he could pick a side once more.
And then Ned had died from a freak accident that insiders say was not so freaky nor much of an accident. Petyr remains quiet on the subject when pressed. Cat is single now, but so is her daughter. Sansa had finally seen Joffrey for the monstrously entitled mummy’s boy he is and had waited a whole year to be dumped by the little shit. Petyr had taken to foisting the grasping Tyrell girl on Joffrey just to speed things along.
He is far too old to care, to get himself involved in child's play like that. But the heart wants what the heart wants.
He’s with Lysa again, an off-and-on relationship that provides the occasional cringy sex but plenty of valuable contacts and resources. When Ned had died, they had attended the service as a couple. And in an unguarded moment, Sansa had allowed him to comfort her in her grief.
He had kissed her. And for the brightest moment of time, she had kissed him back. And something in the cavity where his heart should be had actually fluttered.
But she would not have him. He didn’t know if it was his age, or the fact that he was with her aunt, or the small matter of him once having an infatuation with her mother, or whether it was just because she could not see him as her lover…
She would not have him. They had kissed a couple more times. Once by a tree, another time under a bridge when it first started to snow. It was... perfection. His cynical heart had been close to bursting and he had kissed her soft and slow as if she would break with anything more. But she would not have him.
That had been last Tuesday.
He sees Cersei across the ballroom now and he edges his way slowly to her — a casual conversation to the left, a pumping handshake on his right. An introduction, a wink, a joke. A promise of a follow-up call about a thing that can wait. She makes her way slowly to him likewise. Neither of them is keen to seem keen.
They meet somewhere in the centre of the room, off to the side. She fires first, the starting shot.
“Petyr Baelish, lobbyist,” she sneers, biting off the consonants with a hiss. “The last bastion of democracy for those too feeble and whiny to make the big time.”
She is one to talk, disgraced Spouse of the Former Prime Minister that she is. But Cersei has never let the irony of personal scandal and humiliation get in the way of a bitchy putdown. Such a healthy ego. Good on her.
“How have you been?” Petyr replies pleasantly, and looks around the room. “Jaime about?” He steps closer and lets the silk of his voice caress her ear when he adds. “I was at their wedding, you know. I didn’t see you there. Brienne looked happy.” He steps away and smiles. It doesn't touch his eyes until Cersei’s mouth pulls into a decided scowl.
Her warpaint is different now. Gone is the blood-red lips. She is all nude tones and artificially-bronzed skin. But her hair is still long and wavy and she wears it down tonight like a gold veil. It’s a cocktail fundraiser and she is startlingly overdressed, the plunge of her neckline snaking down to just above her belly button. On any other woman, it would look cheap. Crass. On Cersei, it only makes her look formidable. Armoured. Untouchable.
“Word on the street is that you’re fucking Ned’s sister-in-law.” She smirks. “Like to keep it in the family, don’t you. Redheads. Tullys.” Her mouth twitches. "Stark.” The K is loud, emphasising the use of the singular on the name. “How is the Little Dove? See her much?” And because it’s Cersei and she’s about as subtle as a fork in a dick, she adds quite unnecessarily, “Fucked her at last? At all? Hmm?”
He doesn’t even deign to answer the question, or rise to the bait. Petyr feels his heartbeat slow the way it always does when he’s about to enter a dirty little fight.
“The night is getting on,” he says instead. He stifles a polite yawn and tilts his head towards the elevator lobby apologetically. “Good catching up with you, Ms Lannister. Best be going up to my room. Early flight and all."
Cersei's bodyguard is a wall of human muscle and savagery with cold beady eyes that reflect an infamous mean streak. A new accompaniment after the death of her late beloved husband. Speak softly and strut about with a mountain. The media had left her right alone after he was added to her entourage.
Mountain Man stands outside Cersei’s door now. Of course she would take one of the penthouses. And of course she would get the nicer view. Her card-swiping ends in beeps and whirrs and refuses to green light her door, and her irritation mounts. It is a small victory for Petyr when he smoothly slips the card from her hand and presses the handle down on his very first try.
“One down,” he purrs before he crowds her into the nearest wall barely after the door clicks close.
He doesn’t kiss her on the lips. It is not their thing. But he devours her neck, biting and licking on his way down. She is not wearing a bra, not even one of those stuck-on gels. His nose pushes aside the velvet and it is almost too easy to take a nipple in his mouth and suck hard until she makes a noise that sounds either like pain or pleasure.
Her dress falls off her shoulders with little to no effort. It’s a miracle it stayed on all night at all. When his hand dives under the thin, flimsy mesh — the sum total of what passes for women’s underwear these days — he feels the elastic stretch tight over him as his fingers find her folds and starts to burrow.
He's standing straight and stares down at her now. She is not so tall without her punishing heels. Not so hard when she’s all bronze-brushed flesh and woman and curves.
His movements are deliberate, his fingers skilled and practised. His eyes are narrowed in single-minded determination, and his goal is writ clear in the creases of his forehead. He will make her yield. He will break her. Watch her shatter. It is his turn. He will tame this mouthy little bitch.
Her back is pressed into the wall now, a leg wrapped around his waist. The other foot is arching on tiptoe. It’s a graceful pose like a ballerina’s, except she’s about to crawl up the wall. She’s starting to scratch his back like a feral feline anyway. And still he pumps her, rubs her. His gaze pins her head and holds it fast like a powerful magnet. A force unavoidable. Neither of them is smiling. Her mouth is twisted down in a snarl. Together they stare unblinking, only too aware of the rhythmic squelch of his fingers in her. He feels her need start to trickle down his hand.
And just when he hears the telltale hitch in her voice, sees the telltale way she bites back a moan, he withdraws altogether, pulling out completely so her cunt, her body misses him and she shouts at him in outrage.
“FUCKING FUCKER! What the f—“
But he silences her with a kiss that is neither kind nor unkind, just brutal and demanding. And then they’re stumbling across the room, him half-dragging her. And then he’s pushing her face down on her own bed, nudging her legs apart with his knee. Within seconds he’s shucked his own pants, even his shirt. He wants, he needs to feel her smooth, bare flesh against his own.
She’s actually trembling with anticipation now, her legs on the verge of buckling and the sight excites him more than he will ever care to admit. There is a quiet desperation within him that meets her own when he finally slams full tilt inside her and they both groan aloud.
He builds a new rhythm that is harsh and satisfying, and the tiny grunts from her punctuate their shared, reluctant pleasure. He’s leaning over her now, movement kept to a minimum except from his hips which continue to thrust into her as his hands grip her buttocks tight. It’s almost unnerving, this silence. Two bodies coming together almost as if they are each doing the other a huge fucking favour.
They did just meet at a charity event after all.
So he changes all that when he finally leans over the length of her, his mouth at her ear as he murmurs the first real compliment of the evening.
"Blondes," he rasps, "not just redheads." He squeezes his eyes shut as the final admission is wrenched from his throat. "I've been waiting to fuck you all night.”
He pulls her head back roughly by her hair so her neck is exposed to him. Before he can bite her, she comes noisily. His name, ripped from her throat.
Petyr fucks her through it, even when her knees completely buckle so the angle changes and he has to adjust. He fucks her through it, even when she’s shaking so hard because she’s reached that sharpest point of her pleasure where anything — a graze, soft air, a feather — is unbearable. He doesn’t care. She’s squirming and whimpering, fallen apart — and it’s precisely what he came for. Job done. He fucks her through it and she comes yet again, her shouting scream loud, animalistic. Honest.
His name is ripped from her throat once more, a quivering whimper as she stumbles across the line and it is then and only then that Petyr pulls out and spills, shooting across her back, her sides. Her golden, golden hair.
He slumps across her back for a moment, leaning his full weight across her, breath ragged still. He pushes himself back up to standing eventually, just when Cersei rolls over, the dazed look in her eyes fading.
She blinks and looks at him properly, and her face contorts into the unmistakable visage of a woman bitterly disappointed.
Petyr shouldn’t be surprised, he supposed. She had just called for Jaime twice, after all.
“Get out,” she fairly snarls, and jumps up from her bed. She scrambles about, balling his clothes in her fists, flinging them at his chest with vim and venom. “Get out!” she hisses again. The thing about Cersei — the deadlier she feels, the quieter she becomes.
He barely gets his pants and shoes on before she slams the door behind him.
III.
ONE YEAR, SEVEN MONTHS LATER
Cersei has three phones now. The one she always ignores, the one which those in her work and “inner circle” have except she still doesn’t trust any of them not to leak the number. Which leaves the only one she truly uses.
Jaime has the number to the last, but he doesn’t use it and he never calls. Not since Cersei’s little unannounced visit to Jaime’s new office that culminated in Mrs Brienne Lannister’s own little unannounced visit. Brienne saw a lot of Cersei that day that she can no longer unsee.
And then the media gets wind about the affair somehow.
BOOM. And the late Prime Minister’s own infidelity now looks like a harmless bit of fun compared to the rumoured sordid, longstanding incest between his own wife and his dashing brother-in-law.
BOOM, BOOM. And the parentage of her children is called into question. Joffrey is hunted down and alternates between crying and disowning his mother publicly. Myrcella is studying in France and despite the purported open minds of her host family, her engagement to Trystane Martell is all but dissolved now. Tommen is in a boarding school in Austria with nuns that whisper behind his back about the sins of his parents and he has not talked to anyone since, not even the counsellor.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. And Colonel Brienne Tarth leaves Jaime Lannister — if not in name, then at least in spirit. The Colonel grabs an overseas deployment like a woman starved and parched, and the last anyone’s heard, she’s gone quiet.
And Jaime hates his sister. His soul-of-his-soul, his flesh-of-his-flesh.
Tywin is tightlipped and for once, he looks to be in pain. Their father refuses to believe the press, but something in his heart of hearts knows. He cannot even look at his daughter; his lip curls up with thinly veiled repulsion if she so much as breathes the air in the room he inhabits. But he squirrels her away anyhow back to Cornwall, to the remote romance of Casterly Rock. The Cornish sea forms a dramatic backdrop to her troubles but that is all the drama here. She is now an ocean and a half away from anyone who cares.
It’s a whole month in before she thinks to fuck it all. On a whim, in a moment of weakness, on a dark and lonely night, Cersei sends Petyr her coordinates and nothing more.
Cornwall to London is just over an hour away by plane, but Petyr likes to drive fast cars and he claims he wants to be in Bristol anyway for a thing.
And so she drives to fucking Bristol. The anonymity is something she will never get used to. Cersei Lannister no longer lives in the spotlight, even if she craves it still. But the spotlight only gives the self-righteous plebes far better aim for their potshots. One day, she promises herself, one day she will make them all pay.
The pub he chooses is provincial and vanilla enough, but she sticks right out as she walks into the room. Spike heels on, another dress that clings and leaves nothing to the imagination. But her beautiful golden sheet of hair is now shorn short to a tight pixie. Oversized sunnies add a dramatic air and the lips are still nude and painted with a sneer.
She is all angles now, monochrome and skinny. Cut-glass cheekbones and the hint of her spine through her almost translucent skin. Gone are the curves before, the tan before, or so it seems to Petyr in this atrocious light. Cersei is even harsher now, if that were ever possible. Meaner. Leaner. Older, and restless. Brittle.
They skip the drinks, her clear distaste for the establishment grounds enough to drop the pretence and head straight to the car. Petyr drives in silence, and she does not ask him where he’s taking her.
The hotel is more English country house meets Anatolia; a red-brick mansion with original Edwardian oak features filled with rich, colourful upholstery and surprising mosaics. Petyr’s marbled bathroom is styled as a tasteful reminiscence of a Lycian hammam, and is large enough to rival some of Casterly Rock’s. It is surprising to find this in Bristol, though less surprising that Petyr should find it.
She is all suspicion and wariness and distrust when he strips off his clothing and sinks into the bath in the floor.
“What the hell are you doing!” she demands to know.
“I’ve driven three hours and I had a long night before,” he shrugs. “I will fuck you. But I will wash the day’s grime off me first.” He pats the space beside him, splashing the water as if it were a seat. “Plenty of room.”
She continues to glare at him and he watches her complacently as she strips right down. She’s let her bush grow because Jaime will eat her no more. And as far as she can help it, no one else will ever get the privilege to either.
She sits beside him, but she does not touch him and he proffers a small washcloth that she refuses with a snort. Again he shrugs, and she watches as he works a bar of soap into a lather before scrubbing himself down brusquely. This is no seduction act, but it feels almost worse: it’s a careless ritual too intimate and familiar by half, borne of a smug sense of entitlement and arrogant presumption...
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Lannister. Stop overthinking this and take a goddamn bath before we fuck,” he replies as if listening to her thoughts. She stiffens visibly and he smirks before clipping wet hands on both her arms firmly and turning her so that her back is to him.
He lathers his soap and scrubs her back down, washes her neck and behind her ears. Massages her scalp so masterfully that she stifles a moan.
Why are you doing this, she doesn’t ask. Instead, she remembers aloud that Sansa Stark is about to be married.
He stops suddenly, the hand clipped tight around her left arm squeezing her harder as he pauses in mid-scrub. And then like a burst soap bubble, the moment is over and he starts to scrub her back, her sides again.
“Yes I heard,” he replies blandly.
“Do you know who it is?” Cersei pushes like a finger on a sore.
“Yes I do,” he replies like the aggravating shit he can be. And then adds conversationally, “Harrold Hardyng. Distant relation through Lysa’s previous marriage. Right class, right money, fucking pretty…” he clears his throat, “…and young.”
“Sounds wonderful,” Cersei drawls. But she’s watching Petyr closely now, curious in spite of not caring.
“I agree,” he replies in that same bland tone. “That’s why I’d set them up in the first place.”
She whips her head around to stare at him as if he were mad or she misheard. “Wait. This is your idea?"
He smirks again.
“What’s in it for you,” she demands to know as her mind kicks into gear, probing for angles.
“Nothing,” he smiles and it’s another empty one that doesn’t touch the eyes. “I’m just that kinda guy. Generous to a fault.”
She snorts and he has the temerity to chuckle. Biting, bitter humour. They have that in common now.
Cersei thinks about Jaime as she always does. She thinks about Brienne and how it felt to have Jaime deep inside of her as his giantess wife walked through the door.
Fucking surrounded by saints all the time. Even here.
“Just as well for Little Dove, I suppose,” Cersei muses aloud, words buttery and light. “Goodness knows she wouldn’t have married you."
There’s a terrible pause after that, a moment that is ugly and shrieking with danger. Cersei almost yelps when Petyr spins her to face him fully now. The water sloshes noisily from the motion and he jams his leg between her knees, pushing them open before his hand covers her mound. Two fingers slip inside of her before she is ready. She gasps from the discomfort that disappears almost immediately as he starts flicking up repeatedly.
His eyes are dark and she can tell she just crossed some kind of line. She cannot look away from him. It’s the first time in their history of knowing of each other and of knowing each other that he’s ever come close to terrifying her. She swallows slowly, even as her traitorous, contrary sex grows slick in the water.
He fucks her with his fingers until he doesn’t, suddenly losing interest.
They dry off in silence, the tension bowstring tight between them still and Cersei feels almost contrite, which just makes her even crankier and prone to even bitchier foot-in-mouths.
When he pushes her on the bed and drops to his knees as a matter of course, she closes her legs and tells him flatly that he will not be eating her bush today. Or any day.
Petyr looks slightly bemused but mostly curious. “I know how to do this,” he ventures, eliciting yet another eyeroll and a snort.
“Your confidence is touching,” she bites off. “But I will not allow it, do you hear me.”
“Yes m’lady,” he replies and, stretching out, settles beside her instead. His gaze is still penetrating like an X-ray and she privately really hates it.
“Bloody rude to stare."
“You are one truly unlikable wasp,” he observes, ignoring the last comment. “A bit too skinny now, but still very beautiful…” He waves his hand side to side noncommittally. "Some strategic thought I suppose, though you’re not as brilliant as you think. But above all, fucking unpleasant.”
“A lion doesn’t concern herself with the opinions of sheep.”
“Well you should,” he replies sharply. “How else would you know how and where to hunt more sheep?”
She grasps at the next best thing to change the subject.
“Did you do it? Tell the press about Jaime and me? The incest?” She says the last with a hint of reckless daring and relish. “Brienne swore up and down that she didn’t do it. And I’m inclined to believe that oaf. But it sounds like a typically Littlefinger thing to me.”
Petyr stares at her and neither confirms nor denies. Instead he points out the ludicrousness of expecting such a secret to stay underground. “Look at Robert’s seventeen bastards, Cersei. Black beauties, most of them. There are two ugly ones, and they’re still brunette. And then there’s all three of your children, golden as golden can be.”
“The Lannister genes have always been dominant.”
“Yeah. Two doses by Lannister-fucking will guarantee that."
She wants to ask him if he had been jealous. If the knowledge of her rutting her own twin brother in his office so recently after their own last interlude had produced any sort of violent feeling. She doesn’t love Petyr. But she wants to feel as if someone at least gave a bit of a fuck.
Instead she brushes her hand down the length of his body before wrapping her fingers around him. She starts pumping. And then as an afterthought, her mouth drifts upwards until she meets his face and her lips are hovering over his. He does nothing. Doesn’t move them. But he doesn’t move away either.
At first she feels nothing when she presses her lips to his. His breath is warm and not unpleasant. Obviously prepped beforehand with mints he keeps in his pocket, that he pops into his mouth the way she popped valium in hers most of last year.
She lifts her head slightly, offended. He surges up suddenly and then he’s kissing her.
There’s a pause as both of them think about it clinically before lips part and tongues meet. The rhythm she keeps over his length is still steady and they make small smacking sounds as they taste one another. He is not a bad kisser, Petyr Baelish. He does not love her, but at least he’s finally not kissing her face like he’s trying to eat her whole.
It’s the closest thing to tenderness that she’s had in, oh, whenever...
He’s brushing her entrance lazily now with up-down strokes. His thumb is smooth like any white-collar worker’s and it plays her now like a finely tuned instrument. He’s slow and deliberate and this feels different from the last two times. There is less competition. Or something. They’d both shattered each other to prove a point before, and maybe it’s just for fun now. Or something.
He flips her so she’s now lying on her back. When he enters her slowly, she allows herself to moan low and long into the high pitched roof. And then they are silent, their bodies sliding against each other, their breaths growing laboured and short. He props himself up suddenly, his arms flanking her head as he stares down at her, even as he quickens the thrust of his hips and she wraps her legs around his torso, locking her ankles and resting them on his back, his arse. She clenches all of her muscles within her, imagines her channel narrowing for him and heightening his pleasure.
Petyr thinks for what feels like an eternity before his mouth descends and catches hers slowly. And inexplicably, Cersei suddenly has to swallow a cry.
They fuck and kiss and fuck some more and kiss until she falls apart. A gentle sort of orgasm this time that rolls over her like a warm bath. He tries harder later and only stops when she explodes in a sob of expletives.
This is new and yet it’s supposed to be the way normal people fuck, they suppose. Some kind of emotion. Some temporary tenderness. A connection. Doesn’t have to be love. Only better than loneliness.