Work Text:
They say the Starks are cursed; “They” meaning everyone in the English-speaking world, practically. It’s a running joke in the press for decades, a well-meaning rib at the expense of a good old family. The Starks of the North, a good old Irish Catholic family with hunting dogs and old money and the compound upstate, the manor named Winterfell and the private-school educations for each of their kids. For decades, the Stark Curse is nothing more than a tossed-off in-joke in the newspapers. A failed senate race? A dead grandparent? Must be the Stark Curse.
Sansa is fourteen when her father accepts the Secretary of Defense post and moves the family to Washington. Sansa is sixteen when the international press discovers her, declares her a woman and gushes in columns and full-page photos of her long legs and shy, blushing smile, too young to be an object of desire in lace dresses at charity balls. They scour her social media for clues into her personal life; they breathlessly report on her burgeoning relationship with President Baratheon’s teen-dream son. Sansa is eighteen when she loses her father and her little brothers; she’s nineteen when her sister goes missing, presumed dead, and her half-brother turns up M.I.A. in Afghanistan; she’s twenty when her mother and her big brother are brutally murdered. She’s twenty-one when her ex-boyfriend goes into cardiac arrest from a bad batch of ecstasy, and she catches his new girlfriend's eye at the funeral and notices that she's not crying. Sansa is the Stark Curse incarnate, a survivor’s survivor.
She holds her head high and she finishes her degree at Princeton and takes the LSATs and enrolls at Columbia Law, because it’s what her parents would have wanted her to do. Her father would have looked at her in his serious, I’m-trusting-you manner, and told her to carry on. Her mother would have simply expected it. She steels herself, lifts her chin, and carries on.
She considers selling the old family home, but she can’t bring herself to consult the family accountants or call a realtor. “There must always be a Stark in Winterfell,” says the plaque over the grand front doors, and so she lets it sit empty, rents an apartment in the city, and reconsiders.
*
From: Sansa Stark ([email protected])
To: Petyr Baelish ([email protected])
Subject: Thanks Again!
Mr. Baelish,
I just wanted to express my utmost appreciation for your help over the past few months. I’m afraid life has plunged me in far over my head, and I can’t imagine how difficult it’s been for you, to advise someone with such a glaring lack of understanding with regard to how fiduciary relationships work. Your expertise has been invaluable, and I appreciate it more than I can say.
Regards,
Sansa Stark
*
To: Sansa Stark
From: Petyr Baelish
Re: Thanks Again!
Sansa,
You don’t need to thank me. As I’ve told you countless times, it’s the least I can do to help out the daughter of an old friend.
If you find yourself in need of any more advice, don’t hesitate to give me a call.
Petyr Baelish
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Vale Capital Management, L.P.
*
To: Petyr Baelish
From: Sansa Stark
Re: Thanks Again!
Mr. Baelish,
Well, let me know if there is anything I can do to demonstrate my gratitude.
Regards,
Sansa Stark
*
To: Sansa Stark
From: Petyr Baelish
Re: Thanks Again!
How about letting me take you to dinner? I’ll expense it, of course.
PB
*
Sansa rubs her temples as she looks over the latest email. Was there something in her phrasing that indicated a come-on? “Demonstrate my gratitude,” yikes. It does sound a bit like a set-up for an erotic short story, now that she thinks about it, and she briefly considers writing back a note to clarify her position. She wasn’t – isn’t – propositioning him. She doesn’t do that. She’s a cool-headed Irish Catholic from upstate New York, for God’s sake; forwardness runs neither in her blood nor her marrow.
Though, in fairness, there are far worse things she could do than allow Petyr Baelish to take her out to dinner. An old family friend, someone who always treated her well during their family’s time in D.C., a proper grown man with impeccable financial instincts and a certain rakish, if refined, charm. She chews the inside of her cheek, considering the possible outcomes and consequences, weighing them against each other in the measured way she always does.
She returns to her laptop and taps out a response:
Mr. Baelish,
I’d very much enjoy that. My schedule is open up until the end of the week. Let me know a date and time that will work for you.
Looking forward to it,
Sansa Stark
Frowning, she rereads it to check for spelling errors, and on second thought, deletes the line “Looking forward to it” and replaces it with a standard “Regards.” When she hits send, she stands, stretches, her heartbeat inexplicably quicker than normal.
She doesn’t have many friends in New York. The few that she made in high school are all still back in D.C., or scattered at schools across the country, some close to graduating, others about to start grad school. Even as a child, she preferred solitude, or the company of her siblings – even when they fought, she found that she simply related to them better than strangers. The trait stuck. She prefers her own thoughts, the company of her own brain, to the chatter of loose acquaintances.
Sansa brushes her hair into a ponytail, puts on her sunglasses, and leaves her apartment with no end goal in sight. She walks down Riverside Drive, looking west to New Jersey and squinting into the late-afternoon sunlight gleaming off the Hudson. She stops at a bodega and buys an armful of yellow roses. No one speaks to her. No one recognizes her. She likes it this way.
*
The reservation is under Baelish, but Sansa arrives first, and the hostess seats her immediately, in one of the prime seats in a dark corner near the back of the restaurant. Leaning back in her chair, she runs her finger down the wine list appraisingly. It somehow manages to be both vast and disappointing – she developed a taste for French wines during her year abroad in Paris, but the good ones, she notices, are difficult to find in New York. She huffs and settles on a Spanish red, a 2004 Sierra Cantabria, something she’s had before and knows to be tolerable.
Has she become a snob about wine? Good. Better a wine snob than an indiscriminate alcoholic like Cersei, who taught her to drink the bad stuff, glass by glass at state dinners and White House functions. At the time, she felt so bad, sneaking drinks at the bar with the First Lady, who was always clad in blood red and flashed smiles of shark’s teeth, Lady Macbeth in the Lincoln Bedroom. “If you’re going to be a part of the family, you might as well learn to drink like it,” Cersei would smirk, pouring Sansa another glass. Later Joffrey would drag her into some dark corner and shove his tongue down her throat and press his cock up against her, hard and hot through his trousers, and she’d squirm away – not like this, not here, have some sense, Joffrey – and he’d just laugh, grabbing her by the wrist and leaving half-moon nail marks in her pale skin, and she’d bite her tongue and let herself float away, let him debase them both as she disengaged.
So yes, if she’s a snob about wine, it’s because she’s seen the alternative and she’d rather never live that way again. She likes to have the best of everything, or at least the best that is afforded to her, because she can control what she owns and in a world where she controls very little, this is a rare comfort.
“You’re early, Sansa.”
She looks up from the wine list and smiles. Petyr’s silk tie is patterned green and silver, ornate little six-pointed stars. His cuff links, she notices, are shaped like birds.
“I’m a very punctual person,” she says, as he takes the seat opposite her. “Timeliness is next to godliness. I think my mother used to say that.”
“I never heard her say such a thing,” says Petyr. “But I’ll take your word for it. Ah. You’ve got the wine list, then?”
“It is what it is,” Sansa says, as he reaches across the table and takes it from her outstretched hand. “If you’re looking at the Spanish reds, there are a few interesting selections there, but overall –”
“Don’t tell me you’ve become a snob,” Petyr says playfully, scanning the pages. “You’re too young, and an Irish girl to boot – it’s not becoming, Sansa.” She bristles internally at his words; she loathes being called precocious. “But you’re probably right. Incredible. Three Michelin stars for this spread? New York, you never fail to surprise me.”
“I guess we’re both snobs,” Sansa says archly. “What do you do when you’re doing trade in Russia, and all you’re offered is cheap vodka?”
“With cheap vodka, I know exactly what I’m getting.” To the attendant waiter, he glances up and adds, “We’ll take a bottle of the ’03 Château d' Yquem Bordeaux, if you don’t mind.” He turns back to Sansa and adds, “Just trust me.”
“I trust you implicitly,” she says. “I assume that’s the best on the menu?”
“It’s the most palatable, which, I assume you already know, is far more important than being the best.”
“Fair enough.” Sansa glances at her own menu, not particularly hungry; she’d holed herself up in the library all day, forgotten to eat lunch and instead had choked down a protein bar during the subway ride back to her apartment to stave off a blood sugar attack before dinner. But now the idea of eating is a distinctly unpleasant one, and she wonders if it would look tacky just to order a salad. She lets Petyr monologue politely about his workday, asks him gentle, bland questions to keep him talking, knowing he’s saying little of note. When the waiter arrives with their wine, she takes her glass and waits for Petyr to raise his.
“To the devil in the details,” he says pensively. “As ever.”
“Right.” She takes a sip. It’s much better than she anticipated.
Petyr sets down his glass and fixes her with a serious look. “How are you, Sansa?”
She thinks about the question and all of its possible answers – not fantastic being the first that comes to mind. But she settles on a polite lie instead. “I’m doing well,” she says thoughtfully. “I just started law school, you know, so I’m a bit busy.”
“Aha. Columbia, right? What’s your focus?”
“Mhm, Columbia. I’m looking at international law, with a concentration on diplomatic engagement in the Middle East. But it’s early. I may discover another passion entirely.”
“Any thought as to what you might like to do when you graduate?”
“Work for the State Department, ideally. In a decade or so, run for the Senate. I’ve got a few plans worked out,” Sansa says. “I’ll show you the Excel charts, if you like. They’re color-coded and all.”
Petyr laughs, but his tone is affectionate, not mocking. “Your mother would be proud of you,” he says gently.
The comment stings nonetheless.
“I’m sure she would be,” Sansa finally replies, just as the waiter returns to take their orders. As he retreats again, Petyr leans back in his chair.
“What do you think about Switzerland, Sansa?”
She shrugs. “I haven’t spent enough time there to form an educated opinion. I enjoyed skiing in Gstaad when I was fifteen. Why?”
Petyr fingers the stem of his wine glass thoughtfully. “There’s an opportunity. Vale is expanding our overseas division and we’re going to need international legal counsel. Not now, of course, but in two or three years, depending on how quickly you finish law school…” He trails off, and then adds, “It would be good for you, I think, speaking as a family friend, to get out of America for a few years.”
“Well, I was just in Paris,” Sansa says. Stating a fact, a point of clarification, but not an argument. Certainly not.
“Paris is the Disneyland of Europe.”
“I thought Euro Disney was the Disneyland of Europe.”
“What do you think about Switzerland?” Petyr repeats the question forcefully.
Sansa thinks about it. “Well, I don’t think I’d mind it,” she says finally. “The language barrier might be an issue, but I believe most people there are fluent in French and English, or at least one of the two, right?”
“Right,” says Petyr. “I don't know about your French, but if it's half as good as your English, you should be fine.”
“Fair enough,” Sansa says. “I don’t know. It’s awfully early to make a commitment –”
Petyr shakes his head and reaches across the table, touching her hand lightly. “You don’t have to commit to anything,” he says. “Consider it a suggestion. If the next two years take you in that direction, you’ll at least have a goal in sight.”
Her hand feels warm where he touched it, the skin on fire. Sansa nods and folds her hands back in front of her, trying not to allow her face to betray how flustered she feels. This reaction is thoroughly unusual, never mind that he’s the man who has spent the past nine months taking time out of his CEO schedule to help turn her trust fund and sudden bounty of inheritances into a respectable investment portfolio – he’s old enough to be her father, he’s her mom’s old friend, for Christ’s sake, and there is simply no logical reason why her stomach jumps when he fixes her with another one of those impenetrable, slightly mischievous stares.
Another sip of wine. She picks at her salad greens. He smiles.
*
It is October.
All over the city, leaves are starting to turn, and the air grows crisper with each passing day. Sansa hovers over the racks at Barney’s and finally leaves with a new coat, a dark emerald wool that she knows looks striking against her hair. Her backpack grows heavier with textbooks and she passes all of her midterms with flying colors.
On Wednesdays and Thursdays, she has a four-hour break between lectures, and she shuts herself up in the library studiously, hunched over her laptop and books and poring over hastily-scribbled notes. She sneaks lemon bars from the corner coffee shop into her little study nook and eats them slowly, carefully, nibbling piece by piece to avoid a rebuke from the library assistants prowling around the room.
On one of these occasions, a boy – well, a man, if she’s being factually accurate, but she’s still not used to calling boys her age men – hovers over the seat across from hers, at the little table by the north window. “Is this seat taken?” he asks, a charming little half-smile twisting his words into a come-on simply by virtue of coming out of his mouth. He’s handsome, undeniably so, but Sansa can sense that he is a child of privilege just like her, and so she immediately shuts down. She has no remaining interest in boys who grew up in privilege, stunted little man-children who can’t bear to be denied anything they want, even for a second. Once upon a time, she found forcefulness appealing, thought that getting what you want simply involve deciding you wanted it and then demanding it.
Not anymore.
“No, in fact, I was just about to leave,” she says politely, placidly, pleasantly. She gathers up her books and shoves her laptop back into her bag, as the boy deflates slightly and plunks down in the chair. She’s a lone wolf here – making polite conversation, never shutting people out, but never inviting them in, either. Her relationships are surface-level and polite, and while on one level, she understands that this just makes the constant, hollow ache of loneliness worse, on another, she understands it’s a necessary evil. She can’t get close to anyone else. Everyone she’s ever loved has either betrayed her or been betrayed, and if she gets close to anyone else, she’ll be leading them into danger. It’s an act of self-flagellation as self-preservation, and while that doesn’t make it feel any better, she can deal with that.
She takes her things back to the coffee shop and orders an espresso, sits at a table with only one chair and allows her thoughts to drift elsewhere.
She thinks about Petyr. They talk with increasing frequency, moving from once-a-week check-ins to every two or three days. At first, the conversations are polite and businesslike, but as the weeks go by, they become more casual, less mannered. There’s something lurking underneath, something dangerous, something like attraction. She knows it’s there, and she know it’s mutual – she can tell by the way his eyes don’t waver from hers when they speak, from the way she can turn away and know he’s still looking at her.
He’s brilliant, she thinks, and she wants to know everything he knows. She wants to study his mind, learn every machination. He doesn’t think linearly from A to B like regular people, his mind jumps from A to D and leaves her to piece together B and C on her own, and she admires it as much as she finds it frustrating.
She takes the train home at night, looking both ways behind her as she heads into stairwells, double-checking to ensure that she isn’t being followed. She is careful. She’s always nervous. She’s surviving.
*
ARYA STARK
Born: June 24th, 1997
Missing: October 17th, 2011
Arya Stark was last seen at approximately 2:00 a.m., October 17, 2011, as she was walking back to her dorm room at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, CT, from a party across campus. Arya was accompanied by a fellow student who stated that he left her fifty yards from her dorm to go back to his own room. Arya did not return to her room and has not contacted friends or family since that time. She did not have any identification, extra money, or extra clothing when she disappeared.
Ms. Stark was last seen wearing dark jeans, a black t-shirt, a black North Face jacket, and brown riding boots. Her hair is straight and shoulder length. Recent reports indicate that Ms. Stark may be traveling in the company of escaped felon Sandor Clegane, though these reports remain unverified. Ms. Stark is the youngest daughter of former Secretary of Defense Ned Stark, who was killed during an attack on the American embassy in Pakistan in 2010. Her mother, Catelyn Stark, older brother, senator-elect Robb Stark (D-NY), and younger brothers Brandon and Rickon Stark, have since been murdered as well. As such, there is reason to believe that Arya Stark’s disappearance was not random, and is being treated as foul play.
If you have seen Ms. Stark, or have any information as to her present whereabouts, contact Brienne Tarth at the Stamford Field Office of the FBI. You may also contact the New Haven County Sheriff’s Department.
- www.fbi.gov/wanted/kidnap/missing/2011/arya-stark
*
She doesn’t think about her dead family. She doesn’t watch Nancy Grace on the third anniversary of Arya’s disappearance, doesn’t count the fresh hits on findarya.com, doesn’t pick up the new issue of People with her little sister’s ninth-grade class portrait on the cover under the headline “FIND ARYA: Three Years Later, New Clues?” She knows there are no new clues, because if there were, she’d be the first to know, given that she is the only Stark left to tell.
She doesn’t think about her little sister, probably dead in a ditch somewhere out god-knows-where, because when she makes the mistake of letting her mind wander there, she ends up retching over the toilet, her full body cold and pale and shaking. She can’t think about the loss or the deaths, any of them.
She bristles at the CNN article that pops up on her Google Alerts, that begins “New developments in the grisly triple murder of United States senator-elect Robb Stark, his mother, Catelyn Stark, and his pregnant wife, Dr. Jeyne Westerling-Stark –” and closes the tab immediately. There are no new developments. There never are.
*
From: Petyr Baelish
To: Sansa Stark
Subject: An Opportunity
Sansa,
I’ve heard through the grapevine that the Tyrell Foundation is seeking a legal intern starting in the winter. It’s mostly grant writing and paperwork, nothing too exciting, but given your relationship with the Tyrell family, I thought you might be interested in the position. Say the word and I’ll put you in contact.
PB
*
From: Sansa Stark
To: Petyr Baelish
Subject: Re: An Opportunity
Mr. Baelish,
I would certainly be interested. Perhaps we could have dinner soon and discuss the particulars?
Yours,
Sansa Stark
*
From: Petyr Baelish
To: Sansa Stark
Subject: Re: An Opportunity
Better yet, drinks?
How’s Friday?
PB
*
She’s on a blood buzz when she walks into the bar at the Carlyle. It’s not the kind of place she usually frequents – when she drinks, she prefers to drink downtown, in hip speakeasy-themed cocktail bars where the drinks are expensive and the bartenders really pretend to care, where she can drop $16 on something made with lemon and ginger and strawberries that doesn’t taste like alcohol at all. The Carlyle is an old hotel, Art Deco in architecture and past its prime in clientele, but this is good. The gossip writers who have taken to occasionally reporting on her life in New York are nowhere to be found here.
Petyr’s at the bar already, handsome and well-dressed in a fantastic charcoal grey suit. She takes a deep breath and sidles up to where he sits, slides onto the stool beside him and drops her handbag straps on the hook beneath the bar. He turns and looks at her as if he’s seen a ghost.
“Jesus,” he murmurs. “You look just like your mother.”
Sansa catches the bartender’s eye and orders a glass of red, tipping generously. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Petyr, staring at her profile and ever so slightly biting his bottom lip.
There are different forms of power, she’s learned, and this is one of them. She remembers Cersei’s half-sloshed ramblings about women’s weapons and feminine wiles, and at the time, she thought it was a bit nonsensical and whorish, really, now she understands. Because the world may be run by men, but at any point, they can be brought to their knees by the right woman.
Sansa aspires to run things herself, but if she must first cause a few regimes to fall, she can do that. And she can enjoy it.
“So,” she says, looking Petyr in the eyes. “Is this meeting a matter of business or pleasure?”
She can feel Petyr’s thoughts stumble over these words, and he licks his lips subconsciously as she knits her brows in anticipation of his response.
“I don’t see why it can’t be both,” he says. His hand is warm and heavy on her bare knee. She shifts on the stool, angling herself toward him, letting him catch just the slightest glimpse of her cleavage.
“Good,” she says.
*
It’s much colder now when they leave the bar, and thick clouds above threaten snowfall. Sansa shivers in her wool coat and thin black dress as Petyr hails a cab, his left arm tight around her waist, holding on as if he’s afraid she’ll run away. Silly man, she thinks. She has no intention of running.
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” she remarks, pressing into his side as a cab slows to a halt in front of them. “Snow in October. It seems unusual, for the city.”
He shakes his head as he opens the door for her. “It’s not so strange. Maybe to you. You’re so young, I always forget – you seem so much older. Before climate change became such an issue, we got the first cold snaps in October and November.”
“I thought you grew up in Maine,” Sansa says. “How would you remember what New York was like back then?”
Petyr pauses. “It’s a long story, and I’ll tell you later, if I remember,” he replies. He gives his own address to the cabdriver, and rests his hand on her knee again, stroking, kneading, moving steadily upward. Where she would have once squirmed away from the touch, virtuous and ladylike, she now leans into it, spreading her thighs just a little bit wider, an imperceptible smile barely playing on her lips. She wants this. She wants him.
Petyr’s apartment is stunning, a penthouse on First Avenue with a gorgeous view of the East River and the flickering lights of Roosevelt Island and Queens just across it. The building is called The Eyrie, she notices, and tucks the information away inside her mind.
Petyr takes her coat and leaves his jacket at the door, rolling up his sleeves and revealing a rumpled dress shirt and another green silk tie, and guides her into the living room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows. He places his hands on her waist in front of the glass as she gazes out onto the river. His lips ghost against her earlobes and throat as those wide hands roam up and down her torso. “You look so beautiful,” he whispers, as she moves with his hands, playing into his touch.
She smiles, her eyes fixed on their reflection in the glass. She pushes back against him, just barely grinding into him, and arches her back at the same time. Simple tricks, perhaps a little clumsy, but she’s sure they’ll have the desired effect. When he kisses her, it’s hard and hungry and gets desperate quickly, with the taste of liquor still on his breath and her heart beating fast into her throat.
Sansa’s not stupid. She knows this has as much to do with her mother as with her, knows that he’s been in love with Cat Stark – or the idea of Cat Stark, at least – since their first year at Princeton. But she also knows it’s not that simple. The way Petyr engages with her, calls out the rhetorical flaws in her arguments, pushes her to be better and brighter, is not the way of a man hung up on the specter of a lost love. She isn’t just Cat’s daughter. She is her own self. She is Sansa Stark.
He could have been her father, she realizes. But thank God that he wasn’t.
They’re still in front of the windows, and snow has begun to fall outside. She grips his tie and pulls him forward to meet her mouth again, kissing harder than before. She’s normally all lips and eyelashes when she kisses, hesitant and delicate, but not this time.
“You smell so good,” Petyr murmurs against her mouth. Before Sansa can reply, he’s guiding her over to the couch, sitting with legs wide and guiding her down to straddle his lap, with the skirt of her dress hitched up around her waist. She can feel his erection beneath her and grinds against it, letting him grip her ass with both hands and exhale hard against her lips and slide the straps of her dress down to expose her delicate lace bra, cupping and kneading her breasts and pulling them out of their cups as she breathes heavy above him.
They stay like this for what seems like an eternity, Petyr kissing and sucking her pert nipples and the valley between her breasts as Sansa’s low burn of building arousal grows to almost unbearable levels. She’s so turned on, it almost physically hurts, a sharp twinge against soaked lace panties, and as Petyr begins kissing down her neck for what feels like the hundredth time, she groans and takes up his hand, moving her panties to the side and shoving two fingers into her aching cunt.
Petyr arches an eyebrow as he pulls his lips away from her throat. “Already so wet for me, Sansa?” he teases, barely moving his fingers inside her. “You’re so deliciously corruptible.”
“Mmm.” She whines a little, moving against his hand as she looks him deep in the eyes. “Please. I need more.”
“More of what?” He moves his fingers a little more now, and Sansa grits her teeth and exhales slowly. “Tell me, Sansa. I can’t possibly please you adequately if you don’t use your words.”
Her face is flushed and she’s not used to this kind of talk; Joffrey used to tell her that the less she said in bed, the better – but she won’t think of Joffrey now, not like this, not when she’s running hot and debauched in the lap of a man who looks at her like she’s a fine piece of art he can’t wait to destroy. She licks her lips and tries to think, finds the words in her clouded mind to express the one clear thought she has.
“I want you to fuck me,” she whispers against his ear, her arms around his neck, holding him close. “Please.”
He slides his thumb beneath the soaked crotch of her panties and begins to slowly encircle her clit, with a light touch that makes her want to beg for more. “With my fingers?” he asks, teasing even as her breath grows more ragged. “Or my tongue? Or even –” He presses down hard against her clit, and she lets out a keening moan as pleasure pulses through her body. “Or do you want my cock, Sansa? Tell me which. Tell me now.”
He slips his fingers out of her now, and she leans back to look him in the eyes. “All of it,” she breathes. “I want all of it. Fuck me, Daddy.”
She can feel his entire body tense at this, and then he’s on her, flipping her over onto the couch, pushing her dress up over her waist and yanking her panties down to her ankles. Behind her, she can hear him undoing his belt, and moments later he’s pushing into her, groaning out ohgod, ohgod, you’resotight ohgod Sansa as he does so. She feels herself clench around him involuntarily, and in seconds he slides his hand down to rub at her clit furiously. Perhaps it’s the tension of the night, or his way of playing her like a musical instrument, turning her strings tighter and tighter, but she comes almost immediately. She feels it in her entire body, unbearable ecstasy, as she gasps for air and lets out a filthy litany: thank you Daddy, fuck me harder, fuck me Daddy, yes yes right there that’s perfect oh God please.
There’s only a moment’s pause before he’s coming as well, both hands clenched on her hips as he fucks into her hard and groans her name. His voice is rough and low and she nearly comes again just from hearing it, and then they’re both collapsing in a sticky, sweaty mess, him still inside her, her dress still hanging around her waist, on the couch.
*
He brings her a glass of water with a lemon wedge and she lets him drop her dress and underwear in the washer as she heads for the shower; thank God neither of them are dry-clean only. Sansa lets the water in his shower run hot over her, turning her pale flesh mottled pink and white. When she steps out, wrapped in a towel with her hair still dry and mussed, she walks into his bedroom and leans against the doorframe.
Petyr’s still wearing his pants and rumpled dress shirt, but it’s untucked now and the tie is long gone. He’s perched on the edge of the bed, scrolling through something on his tablet, eyes fixed intently on the screen. When she clears her throat quietly, he looks up, and immediately sets it aside as he beckons her inside.
“I’m sorry, Sansa,” he says, running his hands over her still-damp arms. “Important emails. I got caught up. Where were we?”
She smiles as she joins him on the bed, lying down like a mermaid on her side, careful to keep the towel wrapped tightly around her. “That’s okay,” she says. “I have an IUD, by the way. So you don’t have to worry, you know, about before.”
A look of worry flashes across Petyr’s face, followed by one of relief. “I apologize,” he says. “I should have asked. That was irresponsible of me.”
Sansa shakes her head. “It’s okay. We’re on the same page now. I assume I can… trust you?”
“Of course,” he says reassuringly. “Clean bill of health over here. I got caught up in the moment. We both did, I believe.” He’s stroking her arms again, running fingers up and down her smooth, pale skin. The feeling is almost hypnotic, and Sansa can feel herself starting to drift off, but she catches herself before she does.
“I enjoyed that,” she says, after a long, mutual pause. “What we just did. Everything about it, you know.”
Petyr rearranges himself into a lying-down position beside her on the bed and draws her to him, petting her hair as she rests her head on his chest. “As did I,” he says. “I’ve wanted to do this for such a long time. You have no idea, Sansa.”
“Since I came to you for help with my investments in the spring?”
He takes a bit to answer this. “Yes,” he finally replies, but Sansa can read between the lines. “Since then.”
“I’m glad I did, then,” she says.
*
There’s a hollowness deep inside her, an empty pit that sucks and destroys. She used to be a sweet girl. Everyone remarked on this that knew her back then. She was a sweet little girl, a sweet young woman, a sweet little dove singing for her family.
She’s a black hole inside a woman’s body now, empty and vibrating and threatening to self-destruct, but something about his touch stops the destruction, or at least puts it on pause.
“Do you trust me?” he asks, and she nods, knowing that perhaps she shouldn’t. But he shouldn’t trust her, either, and perhaps that makes them perfect together.
*
It is December.
She is lying in his bed, wrapped in a cashmere throw, celebrating the end of the semester with her legs up in Petyr’s lap, his hands running up and down her legs as he tells her secrets she shouldn’t know, all about Cersei’s indictment and the recent U.N. sanctions against the Targaryen Corporation for their dealings in nuclear weapons in China and Eastern Europe. She’s comfortable. She’s flying. She’s perfect.
After her International Law final that afternoon, the boy from the library had sidled up to her where she stood outside the coffee shop. “Hello again,” he teased, flashing her a sparkling grin. “I knew I’d catch you at some point. I’m Harry, by the way. Harry Hardyng.”
“Alayne Stone,” she lied, a name she had long used in situations where admitting her real identity would not be beneficial, but he gives her no confused look, and there’s no glimmer of recognition in his eyes.
“Can I buy you a cup of coffee, Alayne?” he asked, and she had no recourse but to say yes.
But now she’s here, Petyr’s hands gripping and then spreading her thighs, rearranging how they’re sprawled on the bed so that he can bury his face between her legs as she digs her fingers into his hair and whispers filthy things. He still groans out loud when she calls him Daddy, and she does so with gusto, relishing his tight grip on her thighs and his tongue moving expertly, his lips all over her cunt like he’s trying to suck the juice from a tree-ripe peach. “Yes, right there, Daddy,” she says, and he moans again, and she feels like a siren, like the most desirable girl on earth.
When she’s come twice, he rests his cheek on her leg and looks up at her adoringly. For a moment she’s almost afraid he’s about to say something he shouldn’t, but instead he just says “Ah, fuck,” and leaves it there.
Moments later, she’s sinking onto his cock, riding him there on the unmade bed with his boxers tossed carelessly across the room, and she could swear this is paradise.
*
It is December.
She is less alone now.
She trusts him implicitly, lets him trust her, lets him call her “sweetling” and “darling girl” as she disrobes and gives him come-fuck-me eyes. He takes control from her, and it’s the one time she gives it up freely, because she knows that ultimately, he’s under her thumb.
“We could go to Switzerland, someday, in a couple years,” she says, and he hums in agreement.