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It begins like this.
“Drink with me,” Jon says.
“Of course, my prince.” Sansa curtsies, voice light as birdsong.
He knows his wife won’t say no. She never will. Not in front of her attendants.
She’s already in her shift, pale linen clinging damply to her skin in the firelight. Her hair falls loose down her back, the ends curling slightly from the steam. Two of her ladies linger by the hearth, folding gowns and whispering behind their hands.
Jon moves to her side with slow purpose, takes her hand—so small in his—and lifts it to his mouth. His lips brush her knuckles, soft and reverent.
Her pulse skittered against his thumb.
“Leave us,” he says, eyes never leaving hers. He knows she’ll whine about it later, not quite telling him what to do, no, she’s far too mannered for that, but clinging to her courtesy like it will change him.
The attendants freeze, then bow in unison. Silk rustles. Slippers whisper across the stone floor. The chamber door clicks shut behind them.
Sansa tugs her hand back only to let him hold it again, as if changing her mind midway.
“You’re humoring me.”
“Always. You like it when I do.” A pause. “Don’t you, wife?”
She huffs but doesn’t pull away this time. Her fingers are warm in his.
Only then does Jon move. Still holding her hand, he draws her to the red velvet chaise by the fire. Two goblets were waiting on the low table beside it, and a bottle of wine.
“They’ll talk,” Sansa fidgets as she settles; her hands smoothing her shift.
He hums as he lowers himself beside her, leaving a small space between them. “Everyone does, sweetheart.”
The wine is a gift from Dorne.
Jon had drunk it often enough. On nights when the cold crept deeper than the furs could warm, when he stared too long into the fire, or paced beneath the stars until dawn. The kind of nights when forgetting felt like mercy.
It tastes of stone fruit, sun-warmed and heavy. Of clove, or perhaps burnt orange. Sweet on the tongue, sharp at the back of the throat. The heat comes after, slow and creeping in its bliss.
He knew it was too strong for her when he uncorked it. Knew again when he poured the first glass.
“You’ll enjoy this,” he coaxes. “It’s sweet.”
She’s always liked sweet things.
Sansa drinks it the way she drinks everything placed before her; carefully at first, then with growing confidence. Jon watches the pink flush of her cheeks and the way her thoughts begin to drift, unknotted and loose, in a way they rarely do around him.
Every time she empties her cup, he pours again.
His thumb lingers at the rim a moment longer than it should, right where her mouth just was, before he hands it back.
She notices, vaguely. Lets him.
“Lady Merryweather wore bright yellow today,” she says suddenly. “That means something. I don’t know what. But it does.”
“I’m sure it does,” Jon says.
She smiles, pleased.
He hasn’t said much after that; just the occasional hum, a low mm when she talks about court, about things she insists matter. Mostly, he listens, because she talks more when he doesn’t.
She lifts the goblet again.
“This wine is—” She squints at it. “Very ambitious.”
Jon glances over, mouth twitching. “Too much?”
“You’ve been pouring it.”
“I have.”
“And saying nothing. Which is rude. Or polite. I can’t tell.”
His lips curve upward. “I like listening to you.”
She leans forward, intent on refilling it herself—out of spite, he thinks—and promptly wobbles.
So does the cup.
Jon catches her without thinking, one arm firm around her waist, pulling her back against him with ease. Her body fits easily against his.
“Careful,” he murmurs. “You’re not made for Dornish wine.”
“I’m fine,” she insists, which would be more convincing if she weren’t half in his lap. Her shift is riding up toward her thighs; something she hasn’t noticed yet.
Jon has.
It’s too easy to notice his wife.
Jon knows the shape of her knees, the curve of her neck, the very shade of her fire-kissed hair when it spills over his pillow. He knows the sigh she makes when she’s almost asleep, and the twitch her lashes give when she’s pretending to be.
And he knows this.
The little furrow between her brows, even as she tips her head up now and studies him like he’s something uncertain. She’s so close her lips nearly brush his chin.
He has to resist the urge to tilt down and meet her halfway.
“You’re very handsome.”
Laughter escapes him before he can stop it.
He takes the goblet from her fingers before it spills and sets it aside on the tray beside them before his hand returns to her thin waist.
“I know.”
The only one who seems to have realized it just now is his wife. He is his aunt’s sole heir—raised at court as a prince for as long as he can remember—and yet Sansa is the only one who can make him feel unseen.
He hadn’t expected humility to come with marriage.
Perhaps he should have known better. He had married a Stark. And Starks, for all their silence, had a way of making kings feel incredibly small.
Jon is on his knees for her often enough.
In the mornings, when she’s still soft with sleep and pliant under his touch. At night, when her sighs echo sweetly in his bed, when her hands tremble against his shoulders. If he’s willing to see her sulk; in the afternoons, too, when he sends her tittering ladies away and coaxes her to cry his name instead.
“Again?” she breathes, eyes dark-lashed and shining. “My prince?”
“Again,” he murmurs, reverent.
She never says no.
Only this is the first time her bright blue eyes settle on him with any real attention.
This is everything he’s been waiting for.
She tilts her head then.
“That’s not fair.”
“What isn’t?”
“That tone.” She pokes lightly at his chest, like she’s making a very serious point. Perhaps she is. “You only use it with me.”
“I do?”
It’s true.
“Yes,” she says, nodding once. “You don’t sound like that at court. Or with the guards. Or when you’re being… princely.”
Something warm and amused flickers through him. She has noticed.
“And when do I sound like this?”
Her cheeks turn scarlet, and he watches the color rise like wine spilling through fine silk. He wants to follow it. Mouth to jaw to neck.
They both know the answer.
Her fingers curl into his tunic, and he feels it everywhere.
“You’re here,” she whispers. “You’re always here with me. Even though I don’t like you very much.”
Jon exhales softly against her jaw. “No?”
“…No.”
Her lower lip wobbles, and he’s reminded of how young his wife still is.
She had come from the North to the Red Keep without ever seeing anything else first, without knowing what it meant to be looked at the way the court looks at girls like her. Or the way a husband would.
He had always wanted her, ever since he saw her portrait. He wanted her still, even when he knew what she could do; what she did do.
She burned him more than any flame.
Her knee touches his, and she doesn’t move away. “You don’t smile at me.”
Jon leans in, forehead resting against hers, close enough that she can feel the truth of it.
“I don’t smile,” he says quietly, “because if I did, I’d forget how to be anyone but your husband.”
She laughs, breathy and unsteady, forehead bumping his.
“You say strange things.”
“Only to you.”
She settles further into his lap, boneless now.
“But I’m your wife.”
“Yes.”
“So you can’t have another one.”
His hand settles on her hip, kneading the taut flesh through her shift.
Somewhere in the Red Keep, his aunt was likely stewing in her chambers, wondering why he hadn’t heeded her warning. A second match, she’d said. A fertile one.
Daenerys had never understood him.
“Do you think I’d want another wife?”
He finds himself waiting for her answer. He always does. This maddening wife of his, who drinks with him in their chambers, who lets him spoil her in silk and gold, and still turns her face away when he kisses her, as though he’s the one asking too much.
Her face scrunches. “I haven’t given you a child.”
“I’ve noticed.”
She slaps his shoulder. “That’s cruel.”
“No,” he murmurs. “It’s a fact.”
He has thought of heirs.
He has also thought, selfishly, of keeping her all to himself.
She shifts, thoughtless, and Jon groans despite himself, grip tightening.
“I’ve thought about it,” she rushes on. “That you’ll need an heir. That it won’t be me. That it’s been two years, and maybe—”
“Sansa.”
His hand cups her chin, tilting her face up toward him.
“You’ll give me one,” he says.
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll fill you again.” His mouth brushes hers. “And again. Until it takes.”
She exhales, shaky. “That’s not very princely of you.”
“No,” Jon agrees, voice rough now. “It’s very husbandly.”
She laughs, scandalized and warm, arms looping around his neck. Her body presses flush to his, close enough to feel how hard he’s become. How long he’s waited for this version of her: loose-tongued, unguarded, pink from her cheeks to her throat.
“You’re mine,” she whispers.
Jon bites her lower lip gently, just enough to make her gasp. “I’m yours,” he says against her mouth. “My wife.”
Her breath catches.
They both know what he wants to hear her say. It’s something she’s never said, even when he’s buried inside her and said please.
His lips trail lower, kissing her chin, then the hinge of her jaw. “Say it,” he murmurs, “Say it, and I’ll make it good for you. Say it, and I’ll give you everything.”
His mouth finds her pulse. “Say it, and I’ll never touch another woman again.” As if he even looks at another now.
She shivers. Her fingers curl tighter in his tunic.
Then, a whisper.
“H-Husband.”
His pulse leaps.
It’s almost amusing how fast it wrecks him. How deep.
“So you do know who I am, sweet one.”
He suckles the delicate skin of her throat, hard enough to bruise. And then another. And another, until there are too many for her to be able to ignore in the morning.
She gasps again, sharper this time, and her nails catch on his bicep. He lets his hand fall to her bare thigh, dragging his callused fingers up, up, until he finds where she’s already wet for him.
“Is that for your husband?” he asks lowly, voice thick. His lips are damp against her throat. “This soaked, and I’ve barely touched you.”
Jon presses a finger into her cunt. Just one, slow and unforgiving.
"Say it again.”
She turns her face, breath hot against his ear. “Husband.”
He groans. The word makes him dizzy. It fills the cracks inside him. He wants to hear it again and again until she forgets any other name.
“You’re mine,” he hums, mouth dragging along her collarbone as he works her open. “Say that too.”
She doesn’t. Not yet.
But her hips lift toward his hand, greedy now, and that’s enough. It always is. He slips another finger in, curling them just so, feeling her clench around him.
“I’ll take you apart like this if I have to,” he whispers, resting his head against her chest. “One piece at a time until you remember who you belong to.”
She whimpers when he adds the third, back arching faintly. Her muscles struggling to accommodate the stretch of him; his fingers so much larger than hers.
“Jon—”
Her fingers twitch against his arm like she doesn’t know whether to pull away or hold on tighter.
But he doesn’t pull back.
He pushes deeper, fingers slick and buried to the knuckle, feeling the way her body fights and yields in turns. And gods, she’s so tight around him. Slick and trembling and his, even if she’s denying them both.
“Say it,” he breathes. “Or I’ll keep you like this all night. On my lap, dripping over my hand, but never full. Never satisfied.”
It wouldn’t be the first time.
He’s done it before, drawn her out for hours, whispering promises into her ear, only to deny her again. Not out of malice, not like his little wife thinks. He likes her like this, sweet and shaking, clinging to him like she does no one else.
It’s the only time she’s like that with him. In their bed. And he’s greedy for it.
She whines, trembling, her pride a fragile thing in her throat.
And then—barely—
“…Yours.”
He pulls his fingers free. She nearly sobs.
“Please,” she whispers, breath hitching. She doesn’t say what for. She doesn’t have to.
He’s untying his trousers now, lifting her with both hands, guiding her down over him in one smooth motion. Her gasp is strangled. Her hands brace against his chest. He fills her like he always does; utterly and completely.
He tastes blood on his tongue.
“There’s my girl.”
She tightens around him in response, as if her body agrees. His hands grip her hips hard enough to bruise, and still, he wants to be closer to her. He leans back just enough to watch her: how her mouth parts, how her lashes flutter, how her nipples strain against the linen.
He can’t reach her mouth from this angle. And gods, he wants to. But this, this view, is its own kind of ruin. His beautiful wife, dazed and tipsy and wrapped around him, trying to move the way he told her to.
“Ride me,” he breathes. “Be a good wife.”
She glares at him through half-lidded eyes. “I’m trying,” she mutters, wobbling a little as she shifts her weight. The room tilts as she does.
He swallows his laughter.
“I know,” he murmurs. “You’re doing so well.”
She moves.
And fuck, when she does.
It’s uneven at first, a little unsteady, but she tries. The wine makes her loose, makes her forget to be careful. She rolls too fast one moment, then stalls the next, hips stuttering when the angle catches her just right. A small, frustrated sound escapes her—half whine, half huff—and she braces both hands on his chest to steady herself.
Jon doesn’t correct her. Not when she’s trying, not when she wants to.
That’s what undoes him.
She bites her lower lip, concentrating. The effort is almost sweet. Her brows knit, cheeks flushed darker now, sweat already gathering at her temples. One bead slides down the side of her face; he watches it trace the curve of her cheekbone before it disappears into her hairline.
He wants to lick it away.
Instead, he slides one hand up her back, under the damp linen of her shift, pressing her closer until her breasts brush his mouth. He catches a nipple through the fabric; gentle at first, then harder, teeth grazing until she cries out.
“H-Husband—”
He loves it. He loves her.
“Again. Again, Sansa.”
She says it. Over and over. Each time her voice cracks a little more, slurred with drink and need.
Her thighs shake. Her breath catches. And every time she falters, Jon meets her halfway, thrusting up into her. Each time, he hits deeper. His hands stay firm on her hips, guiding her rhythm like he already knows the song she’s only just learning to sing.
The chaise creaks beneath them, velvet rubbing against his back, but he barely hears it. All he hears is her: the wet sound of their bodies meeting, the hitch in her breath every time he fills her completely, the slap of skin when she drops too hard and keens.
Her palms slide up his chest, fingers resting on his shoulders. She leans forward, forehead resting against his for a moment, eyes half-closed. Her hair falls around them like a curtain, tickling his neck, smelling of rosewater and honey and her.
He can feel every flutter inside her. Every time she clenches, involuntary, like her body is trying to keep him. He shifts his grip; slides both hands to her ass, lifting her slightly, then letting her sink back down at his pace.
It’s too slow, and too fast. It’s just right.
It’s paradise.
“You don’t even know, do you?” he tells her,” What you do to me.”
A thrust. Another, then another—sharp enough to scatter thought, until there are stars behind his eyes and he’s coming undone before her.
“And you don’t even mean to.”
He watches her fall apart; how she chases her pleasure with bitten lips and breathy whimpers. How she rides him like she doesn’t want to stop, as if she feels the same.
Could she?
Would she?
Or is it just the wine?
Just the rhythm and heat and closeness she’s too soft to resist tonight? (He knows the answer, even as the thoughts nip at his skin. She does. He knows she does.)
Slick drips from her cunt, staining his skin.
Every time she says “husband,” he rewards her. A firmer grip. A harder thrust. His fingers finding her clit and circling just right until she’s moaning his name again, trying to stay upright.
And all the while, he looks up at her like he’s never seen anything holier.
He wants to live in this moment.
Wants to keep her drunk on him instead of Dornish wine. Wants to hear that word until it’s the only one she remembers.
“I’d kill for you,” he tells her hoarsely, one hand splayed against her lower back as she rocks above him, open and shaking. “I would.”
She shudders, and he knows she hears the truth in it.
High above the keep, dragons circle and shriek.
And when she finally comes again—back arching, thighs clamping around his hips, his name turning into “husbandhusbandhusband”—he follows right after, spilling deep inside her with a broken sound.
He hopes it takes.
He hopes it doesn’t.
His entire world is within her.
They stay tangled like that for a long time; her body slack over his, breath warm against his collarbone. Her fingers stroking through his dark curls. His mouth pressed to her temple.
The fire flickers low behind her, throwing gentle light across her bare shoulder, the gleam of her hair.
Eventually, she whispers, sleepy and content, “You’re smiling.”
He huffs a quiet laugh against her skin. “Only because you can’t see it.”
She smiles too. “I can feel it.”
He pulls back just enough to look at her. Her lashes are heavy, her lips parted, her cheeks still flushed with the warmth of wine and him.
“Sansa,” he says, gently. Just her name.
And when she blinks up at him, he’s smiling still. This time, he lets her see it.