Chapter Text
BRANDON – The Price of Passion
This extract was actually posted first over at Livejournal, at gameofships’ Stark Naked contest just the other week. It did not win anything… which may, or may not, say something about its quality!
In the cold light of dawn, choices often looked a little foolish. So reflected Brandon Stark as he lay awake and watched the dark-haired beauty sleeping in the crook of his arm. This was the time, he thought, when men left and women begged them to stay, a time of tears and accusations and cold indifference. He wondered whether that was how this morning was destined to play out.
His last time home at Winterfell, his father had turned the air blue over Barbrey Ryswell, angered way beyond his usual stoic chilliness. His entire reaction had come as something of a surprise to Brandon, and it was only then that he realised just how much this marriage pact with Hoster Tully meant to Lord Rickard. Rolling onto his back, he wondered what his father would make of this indiscretion. Probably much the same, he thought. The daughter of some vassal house of Sunspear would hardly be fit enough a prize for the heir to Winterfell, even if she was a handmaiden to the Princess. It would matter not that, as he stared at this woman, he felt something for her that he had never felt before. He had his duty, and he must abide by it.
And then there was Ned.
Brandon had never particularly cared about which other men his approaches towards a woman offended. If they wished to challenge him, they were welcome to do so. But his brother was another matter entirely, and now, as he stared at the white cloth roof of his pavilion, he felt as guilty as he had ever felt. He had stepped in on his brother’s behalf, and then usurped his position to satisfy his own desires. It was a dishonourable thing to do however you looked at it.
Brandon made a face in the half-darkness and cursed his own stupidity. How am I going to tell him? Because tell him I must. I cannot deceive him any longer.
Beside him, Ashara stirred, a soft, enchanting moan oozing from her throat, and opened her eyes. In this light, they looked almost black. “Good morrow,” she murmured in a voice thick with sleep. Brandon felt his heart do a twisting thing in his chest. She was so fucking beautiful.
“Good morrow.”
She breathed in deeply and stretched her body out, arching her spine up. Brandon thought he had not seen anything more erotic in his entire life. His cock twitched. Her hair was mussed up at the back from their lovemaking and when she rolled towards him, it framed her face in a kind of bird’s nest of dark, dark strands that reeked of sex. She licked her dry lips. Oh Gods…
And then he was kissing her again. Despite all the good intentions he had formed in his head about this being the last time and how he would bid her goodbye and swear himself faithfully to Catelyn Tully from this day onwards, he just couldn’t help himself.
Ashara made a soft sound in her throat when he shifted atop her and he looked down, wondering suddenly if she were perhaps having an attack of conscience, but when he opened his eyes, she was far away, the expression on her face one of unfettered desire. His hands cupped her face so he could kiss her deeper, and then worked their way through her hair, smoothing it back. He could feel her gentle touch on his back, his shoulders and then lower, until she was grabbing him by his buttocks and pulling him upward. He sank inside her with a groan. She was so wet it was like sliding into the softest, warmest silk.
Many of the women he’d been with in his life had been content to lie still beneath him and let him control the pace, but not Ashara, no, she was eager and almost wanton, and her hips rose up to meet his. It wasn’t long before she was tensing beneath him, her fingers digging almost painfully into his skin, and crying out. That her cries might well be heard by anybody walking past the tent did not occur to Brandon in that moment; to his ears, it was the sweetest sound, and his thrusts accelerated out of control until he spent into her hard.
He collapsed on top of her and kissed every part of her face. Ashara laughed that beautiful, joyous laugh she had as he did so and Brandon felt his heart surge once again. “I love you,” he blurted out when he had gathered his breath. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
She smiled up at him. “Then I love you too,” she said. The simplicity of her reply, though, reminded him that their situation was anything but. If had she told him in that moment to take her to a septon to wed them, he would have offered no resistance whatsoever, and he would merrily have sailed into a perfect storm of chaos for the chance to hold this delightful creature in his arms again.
He wondered if this was how Shiera Seastar had so enslaved Bloodraven and Bittersteel.
Beneath him, Ashara shifted and Brandon lifted himself out of her and rolled onto his back. For a long, long time, they were silent, then finally she spoke: “You know, Dornish men and women often take paramours. And when they finally marry, some keep their paramours even then, and pay visits to their chambers as often as they do to their wives’ chambers.”
Brandon turned his head towards her. “I’m not sure that would be accepted of me,” he murmured bitterly.
“Many lords outside of Dorne sire bastards while they are married.” He quirked a smile at her.
“Is that what you want from me? A bastard?”
“No, I want you,” she answered without hesitation.
Brandon grunted. He’d heard that line before, from a hundred different women, and it had lost its romanticism long ago. He pursed his lips. “Really? Is that what you really want? Me?” He sighed heavily, and thought of Ned. “Honestly, my lady, I do not think you know me well enough to say that you want me. You might want what I can give you, and you might enjoy what we have just done, but me… you know nothing of me. I am not so honourable a man. You would have been better off had you kept to my brother, Ned.”
“I didn’t want him, though,” she asserted. “You are much more… interesting, my lord.”
He did not reply, but sat up and swung his legs over the edge of his bunk, then ran his hands through his hair. It felt damp with sweat. He looked down at his cock, still wet with her and his own seed. He remembered his father’s words to him. You keep your manhood in your breeches, Brandon, and you will have fewer problems for it, I swear. Men who scatter their seed often end up spending their lives pulling up weeds. Ashara came to him and pressed up against his back; he could feel her teats shift over his skin. And then her lips were at his neck, a gentle caress, and he felt himself hardening all over again, even though they had not long finished. Gods. Why am I so weak? Ned would not have this problem, he thought.
No, Ned would have stumbled and apologised his way through a single coupling, probably taking no more than half a dozen strokes before he spilled, and then he would have worried about whether he had hurt his lover. That thought, though, had not crossed Brandon’s mind. In fact, he had been so consumed by his own desires the night before that he hadn’t even asked Ashara if she was a maiden, although by the tightness of her cunt, he suspected she probably was.
Her teeth nibbling at his ear drew him back from his thoughts, and then she slipped around him, fluid and effortless like a watery mermaid, and knelt between his thighs. She looked up at him and her beautiful purple eyes smiled at him as she leaned forward and took his cock in her mouth. Feebly, he closed his eyes and surrendered.
Ned would have had more willpower in his little toe.