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“She is. She is not. She is. She is not…”
Sansa paused from throwing the rose, cherry and daisy petals and looked sharply at her companion at the door to the Great Sept.
“What are you doing?!” She hissed at Margaery, keeping her lips as still as she could.
“She is. She is. Well, with men at least.” The Tyrell girl in the white dress next to her winked at a blonde maiden who was slowly, solemnly making her way up the steps and into the sept. The girl smiled back shyly.
Sansa had been shocked that at this, her first Maiden’s Day, she’d been asked to be one of the guardians at the great door of the Sept. The role simply meant throwing scented petals over the modestly bowed heads of the highborn maidens of court as they made their way up the steps. But for the High Septon to send word to Sansa Stark, daughter of the traitor, had been surprising. Of course, when she found out that Margaery was to be her companion on the left hand of the door it had made much more sense. Margaery was the most revered of all the flowered maidens of court, being both of a major house and betrothed to King Joffrey. She could have asked for the Hound to accompany her and it would have been so. Well… perhaps not. Sansa felt a momentary shiver pass over her as she thought of the man and of the night before…
“She is not. She is. She is.”
“Margaery, stop that!”
“Oh don’t be so serious!” Margaery pouted. They both wore the same simple white cotton shifts, but somehow the Tyrell girl had managed to make what looked like a sack on Sansa look like the work of the finest dressmaker in King’s Landing. Which it might have been, if he had been seen since the Hound’s feast…
“What are you doing anyway?!”
“Just noting how many of our fellow celebrants should actually be allowed into the sept on this most hallowed of days.”
“You mean… you mean some of them aren’t virgins?!” Margaery smirked at her, and Sansa felt her face redden. This was her first Maiden’s Day, as she had flowered in King’s Landing. In Winterfell it was a much quieter affair. Just a few girls from Wintertown would spend the day in Winterfell’s sept dressing the statue of the Maiden in flowers and singing her praises. In Winterfell she felt that there was likely a very short period of time between a commoner’s flowering and their wedding… and bedding… so there were not a lot of virgins to go around.
But in King’s Landing Maiden’s Day seemed to be something very different. Sansa had been shocked to see the path to the Sept lined by the crowds, pushing past each other to see the cream of Westeros’ beauty and modesty parade past them and into the sept. She had for a moment thought it was lovely, with all the flowers, banners, music and laughter…
Then she had seen the young men, various knights and lords of the court she knew from turns around the gardens with Margaery. They were huddled in groups around older men, gesturing and shoving at each other with as they seemed to be arguing about something. The older men stood with arms crossed or with smug smiles on their lips.
And she had remembered the meat market her mother had taken her to in Wintertown once. She’d told her that one day Sansa would have to run her own household, and it was good if she learnt some of the tricks traders might try with her. In the heat of that barn, amidst the noise of snorting beasts and the stink of… cow’s doings… she’d seen men bartering with each other, flailing their arms as they tried to make the best deals they could. The young men reminded her of the buyers, and the old men… the fathers… were selling what they wanted.
“She is… she is…”
“Can you really tell?” Sansa paused from throwing petals, a sickness in her stomach.
“Oh, some I know from rumour. Some I suspect. Some girls just seem different once they’ve lain with a man…”
“Could you tell if I wasn’t?”
“Oh Sansa!” Margaery sighed. “You could have four children at your feet and a babe at your breast and still be a maiden!” She giggled. “Some of us are just born innocent. And some of us aren’t and have to fake it…”
A memory of the night before came back to her then, and Sansa squirmed a little, heat rising on her face.
The last few girls were shyly making their way to the steps as the sound of heavy running feet caught her ear, over the noise and colour. She scanned the crowd to where a man in Kingsguard armour was charging towards the back of the horde.
He pushed his way past commoners, fathers and lordlings alike, and stood at the front with arms crossed and impervious to their attempts at shoving him back. He locked eyes with her and nodded. Why had he come here?! Sansa felt panic fluttering in her chest. But having taken his prime place he did not move, even as the last of the girls filed past him and the four door guardians followed them into the sept, the great doors slamming shut behind them and the great iron bolts cast across them by the novice septons.
Inside Sansa found her place on a stone pew, groaning inside as she imagined the hour ahead of her on its uncomfortable coldness. She would have killed for a cushion, but the High Septon was beginning his epic speech that he gave every year before eventually retiring and leaving the flowers of Westeros’ maidenhood to sing and dance for the Maiden. Sansa tried so hard to be dutiful and listen. She really did. But his droning on and on about the importance of purity and of avoiding sin was reminding her of how tired she was. And she kept finding her eyes drawn to the statue of the Mother instead of the Maiden.
Not yet. She whispered to her in her mind. Not yet, please…
And as he droned on, her mind went back to the night before and what had happened then…
The Night Before…
Sansa lay in the deep bath, her knees pulled up to her chest, and tried really hard to relax. Her maid still fussed about her, making her more uptight, so she dismissed her for the night. She humphed and grumbled as she left, for Sansa had woken her to make the bath when she couldn’t sleep and the maid wasn’t like to let her forget that in a hurry. It was late in the night, sometime around the hour of the eel she thought, but Sansa had been awake for hours. She’d tried no covers. She’d tried warmer blankets. She’d tried reading. She’d tried a warm sleeping posset. But nothing was allowing her to sleep!
She thought it was in part due to the events of the last two weeks since the Hound’s feast. For the first few days she’d endured laughter and gossip at her every step around court. But that had faded quickly… and that in turn had enraged Joffrey who had hoped to see her fall to a weeping puddle at the abuse. But she knew what had actually happened on the night of the Hound’s true name day and the memory of their stolen time in his room meant that their laughter only reminded her of something… arousing.
So Joffrey had stepped up his degradation of her, dragging the Hound with him as he engineered moments when he could find her alone and remind her of what the Hound had ‘done’ with the whore. He listed the explicit acts that his dog had engaged in with the red head, details garnered from his inquisition of the man, details that included what he had actually done with Sansa as well as the things that Joffrey wanted to hear that he’d done. So Sansa was in parts disgusted by the filth coming from Joffrey’s foul mouth, and made wet and sodden by the description of what thoughts had been in the Hound’s mind after that encounter.
“He pushed her against the wall and licked her from cunt to arse, before pressing himself into her and making the bitch squeal. She struggled to take him all, and her cunt was filled by him in ways she’d never known before…”
The Hound stood there all the while, impassive and stony of face as the gibbering king looked up to him for agreement as he described the many ways the Hound had mounted the whore after taking her back to his room. Sansa refused to let Joffrey see either her arousal or her disgust, so she merely answered his questions flatly as he jeered them at her.
“He took her many times. Fucked her till she was raw below and could not sit for days. And when she thought he was done he grabbed her as she left and fucked her aching cunt again, making her cry and beg to be left alone. Would you like that too Sansa? Would you?!”
“Yes, your Grace.”
“He made her take him in her mouth. Would you do that Sansa?”
“Yes, your Grace.”
“Of course you would. Daughters of traitors and bastard makers love to suck men’s cocks. And if he ripped your cunt bloody would you thank him for it?!”
“Yes, your Grace.”
His game was spoilt by her meek acquiescence and he ranted and raved. But she also saw his small manhood pushing at his velvets, and many a time he bombarded her with lewd comments, he had to leave quickly… and alone.
For brief moments then she stood with the Hound, watching the King rushing back to his chambers or elsewhere.
He wouldn’t say much. Sometimes he only nodded to her and went on his way, or called her ‘My Lady’ as he would any other lady of court. But there was a softness in his eyes that she hoped that she wasn’t misunderstanding.
Also, in the weeks after his feast, that night when they had both taken themselves in hand, she’d not run into him alone in the corridors. If she did ever see him he was always at Joffrey’s side. His absence, combined with Joffrey’s lewd baiting of her and his descriptions of what the Hound had supposedly done with the whore, had left her in a state that was inflaming her, and stealing her sleep.
In the bath she breathed deeply, taking in the aroma of the sleep herbs that the maid had prepared in it for her. It wasn’t working. She could still feel that aggravating tension across her shoulders and down to her… to her cunt.
She remember the way in which he had guided her hand down there, as he stroked the length of himself behind her, her parts exposed to him as a female dog’s might be. Sansa shifted in the bath, disturbing the water. Could she? Could she try that again? To release this ever increasing tension?
Slowly, self-consciously she let her legs slide down the inside of the copper tub and apart, so that under the water her parts opened. There was a harder pearl at the top that he’d drawn her to, so she placed a finger on that, the water swirling as she experimented with pressure there. Then moving her finger she attempted to cause the same rising tension she’d felt with him. But in the water she did not seem to be able to create the same rough frictions she’d felt with him.
Quickly, decisively, she rose up out of the water and pulled a thick towel towards her, roughly drying herself as she stepped across the room, before falling back on the bed with a sigh, and closing her eyes.
She imagined him lying over her, his ruined face inches from her own, those furious eyes devouring her as they did every time they got a moment alone together. The harshness of his breathing as he’d taken himself in hand behind her. The way dark hair ranged across his chest and down to his manhood. Oh gods, his manhood! The thought of it thrilled her and she ran a fingertip across the pearl again and bucked as pleasure crashed into her.
“Oh!” She gasped and moved slightly to a better position to accommodate her finger between her legs. She started a steady pace and sighed as the pleasure repeated and mounted. His manhood. His manhood rubbing across her cunt as it had done with material coming between them. His manhood pushing into her as Joffrey had described… she frowned and threw his smug face out of her mind, returning to thoughts of the Hound… the Hound taking her again and again until it was her cunt that was raw and aching.
What would it feel like to take him inside herself? She trailed a finger around the edges of her cunt, and dipped it into the place where only his tongue had gone before. She felt her inner parts contract about that finger, and moved it back to the pearl, replacing it with a finger from her other hand so that she could feel both at once. Experimenting, she moved both together at the same time, one across herself and one inside. Oh gods, if he were to do this she would sing such a song. In fact, one was building now, and she moved harder with both as her climax came closer. Harder and faster until…
She came and bucked against her own fingers, feeling a sudden sharp pain below that made her gasp through her release.
Shaking, she drew her fingers away. There was blood. Oh gods, there was blood!
***
He came to the door on the second hesitant but rapid knock. He was only recently awake, his hair messed over his scar and his eyes half closed, but there was a dagger in his fist.
“What is it?!” He growled before seeing under the plain hood and cloak. “Girl? What is it? Are you hurt?!” He dragged her in, scanning the corridor and shutting and bolting the door.
Tears were streaming down her face and she hiccupped sobs even as she tried to smile to reassure him.
“What’s wrong girl?! Was it that shit Joffrey?!”
She shook her head and he made for a bottle of wine and a glass on his dresser, filling it quickly and passing it to her before sitting on the bed. She took it in both hands and chugged down as much as she could.
“Tell me true girl.”
“It was… I was… oh gods!” She drank more. He swigged some straight from the bottle. “I couldn’t go to Margaery… I couldn’t tell her why it happened!”
“What. Happened. Girl!” his teeth were gritted.
Suddenly it came out in a despairing wail. “I’ve ruined myself!”
His face darkened and he clutched the dagger tighter. “Who with!”
“No! No… I did it… I ruined myself!” He looked confused so she took a deep breath and tried to tell him, staring off at a wall so she didn’t have to look at his face.”
“I was… I was unable to sleep. And I thought to try… to make myself feel as you have made me feel. But I think I broke my maidenhead! I’m ruined!!”
There was silence and then his laughter rang out in the room. She frowned and looked at him.
“I don’t think it works like that, little bird!”
“But there was blood! I used my fingers and then there was blood!”
He paused, shifting slightly on the bed.
“What will happen when I wed and I don’t bleed?!”
He growled for a moment then gruffly barked out the answer. “There’s plenty of blood in men… and women, alike. Prick a finger and stain the sheets…”
“You mean… lie?!”
“You most like wouldn’t be the first ‘maid’ to do so…”
Sansa looked at him in shock.
“Not every girl is a maid on her wedding night.”
“But the faith says…”
He laughed darkly and she stopped that thought.
“I could… fake it?” She asked hesitantly.
“Aye… and other things if your husband don’t please you.” He avoided her eyes.
“I don’t understand?”
“Yer song. If he don’t please you, you can act the mummer and sing him a fake song!” He growled at her, but she didn’t understand where this anger was coming from.
“It’s all lies…” She felt so lost. “But… if women can pretend, if it doesn’t truly matter about their maidenhead, why do men… even the High Septon… act like it matters?”
He swigged from the bottle again. “Men want what others have not got. They want to be the first to claim their territory. ‘sides, a maiden means no bastard in the belly to take their lands and their claims. Though, that said, there’s ways you can avoid making a bastard. Good thing too, or we’d be overrun with’em…”
Sansa knew some of what he meant, even she had heard of moon tea…
When he spoke again his voice was curt, sharp and cold.
“When you wed, make sure he drinks well at the feast, and at the bedding and he’ll know no different.” He stood as though the conversation was over. “Its late girl, and you shouldn’t be here. Faking your maidenhood means nothing if someone sees you coming from my room at this fucking hour…”
Thoughts were tumbling in her mind. And she feared to speak them, but she had to.
“Do you… do you want to be the first to claim me?”
He turned back to her.
“You said men wanted to be the first. Are you like other men?”
“Aye… I am. No better, and certainly no fucking worse! But don’t ask me that…”
“You’ve always said you’d never take what I couldn’t give. I thought you meant my maidenhood… but what does that matter if I can just fake it on my wedding night?!”
“It matters!”
She looked at him, begging him with her eyes to make her understand.
He groaned and pulled her to him, crushing his lips to hers and whispering to her in that harsh voice.
“It matters to me… because if I were your first I’d want to be your last too! I’d be the only one, little bird, the only one who makes you sing.”
Comprehension finally dawned and she surrendered to the kiss, moving with him and groaning as her body rushed to be with him fully.
“Call me.” He whispered so quietly for a moment she was not sure if she had heard him right. “If you want… that… then call the dog.”
She paused, taking a breath and making a decision.
“Come here… come here Sandor.”
He lifted her quickly and took her to the bed, his lips never leaving hers. Then he was moving down over her body and pushing up her skirts to run his tongue over her cunt before she knew what he intended. He drenched her small clothes and then ripped them away, getting to the core of her and kissing at the parts of her she’d explored already that night. She felt his calloused thumbs pulling at her, opening her for his mouth to get closer and his tongue to… oh gods, his tongue was inside her, deeper than he'd gone before. She moaned and felt a climax shudder through her.
Then his tongue was replaced by a large finger, working and rubbing against the inner sides of her. He came to lie over her then, kissing her with a mouth that tasted of… her. The taste thrilled her and she started to rise to her release yet again.
“It’ll hurt, girl. Can’t help that and I’m sorry for it. Do you understand?”
She nodded mutely, then groaned as his fingers brushed across that pearl of pleasure.
“I can make sure you’re ready, but there’ll be pain…. Tell me to stop this! Tell me to stop!”
She looked up into those sad eyes and shook her head.
Then her hand went to his waist and pushed at his cotton bed breeches. He helped her, and lay there perfectly naked, his manhood swollen and rising up towards her. She moved then to her own simple dress and helped him remove it and the shift beneath. He devoured her with his eyes, tracing every part of her. Moving over her, he took her wrists in each of his large hands and captured her mouth again.
She felt him, hard and insistent at her mound and she whimpered a little as he pressed and rolled against that point of pleasure with the tip and length of himself. Then he was grabbing her, pulling her over himself as he fell back on the bed, making him straddle him. Both of them naked and shuddering with the rush of blood to parts and minds.
“It’ll be easier for you if you move as you wish.” He panted, taking a hold of himself and guiding it towards her parts. She lifted herself to let her movements push him inside of herself. There was pain, he had not lied to her. He never lied to her, and she could not bring herself to lie in return for his honesty. She whimpered again but looked to his eyes where she saw concern and suddenly it didn’t matter anymore. She pushed him further in, and then there was a sharp pain that spiked before dulling to a red ache.
“Oh gods… Sansa.” He moaned even as she stayed still, feeling the completion of him being inside of her. When she hesitantly shifted her weight and rolled her hips as he had enjoyed her doing over him before, he locked eyes with her and moved a hand to touch her tingling core. Her moans began then, a song she did want to sing for this large and rough man. And for him alone. She rolled her hips further than before and he panted and tightened his grip on her thigh.
“I have to… I have to spill myself away from you…” He pushed the words through gritted teeth, but then she moaned louder and he grasped her, rolling her over and plunging between her legs, rubbing her core and sending her spinning into a release that made her shout. His was seconds after, and he roared as he took his pleasure completely.
Moments passed in silence as he lay over her, both of them panting with eyes shut.
He withdrew from her and she rolled slightly away from him. Parts of her hurt that she had not known she had had before and she fought back the prickling of tears in her eyes. But then there was a gentle hand on her, trying in his own slightly awkward way to bring comfort.
“I’m sorry lass, I meant to… I meant to be gentle.” She looked back at him, the sadness back in those eyes that watched her as she moved around the Red Keep, her prison... It hurt, but it was a good hurt. A pain brought about by pleasure, and in its own way, a kind of freedom.
And it might not hurt so much the next time…
“Come here, Sandor.” She smiled back at him.
He curled around her then, the two of them lying on their sides with legs drawn up, his strong hairy thighs pressing against the back of hers. He stroked her hair and whispered occasional words of endearment… little bird, my lady… Sansa.
And they fell asleep like that, the big warrior cradling the girl.
***
Sansa woke with a horrible worried feeling in her stomach, and a dull ache between her legs.
And a man’s arm across her.
“Seven fucking hells!” she yelped.
Sandor was awake immediately and looking for a weapon. Then he looked back at her and narrowed his eyes.
“Did you just swear, my lady?!”
“I need to get to the sept!”
He smiled darkly. “Is that a proposal?” He took her breast in his hand and ran a rough thumb over her nipple, making her wet and indecently willing in but a moment.
“No! It’s the Maiden’s Day today and I’m meant to be there early!”
He laughed as though she’d told a joke. “The Maiden’s Day?! Bit late for that now isn’t it?!”
She leapt from the bed, sticking his tongue out at him in a very unlady-like way and gathered her clothes. “Maybe I’ll fake it!”
He shrugged, before lying back down to grasp a pillow in her place. “As long as you ain’t faking it with me, I don’t bloody care.”
She threw a pillow at him.
“Can you get back to yer rooms?” He looked at her then, concern written on his face.
“I think so, it’s not yet light…”
“So you could stay a while…?”
Sansa remembered Joffrey’s taunts, of how he described the Hound taking the whore again and again even after fucking her raw, not letting her go. But, unlike the whore, her screams would be of pleasure…
“Go, girl. Go play their games. Maybe I’ll come see you in your white dress… later…” He was mumbling, returning to sleep.
And she left silently, creeping out of his room and into the shadowy corridor.
***
The pew was agony after last night’s… adventure… with the Hound, and Sansa had to grit her teeth and wish for the High Septon to get to the end of his meandering speech on sin.
Though, to be honest, dancing before the Maiden also held no appeal to her aching thighs and… other parts.
And she should over there, in another part of the Sept, on her knees before the Mother not the Maiden!
Not yet… not yet please!
He had spilled himself inside of her. Anxiety made her sick to her stomach. Or was that the first sign of a bastard planted there…?
Margaery poked her in the side and she squirmed, awakening the painful fire between her legs.
“Which girl do you think the High Septon wants? My money’s on him being a breast man, and Delara has some of the biggest teats I have ever seen…”
But then the music began and the High Septon left the altar. The girls rose and started to laugh and giggle, sharing garlands and flowers to wind around the Maiden’s statue. Sansa rose awkwardly, smiling at Margaery’s concerned face and made her way to the Maiden.
I’ll make you an offering later, she told the Mother in her head, I’ll make you the best offering you have ever seen.
But a traitorous part of her thought of a baby with his grey eyes and her red hair, and for a second she rubbed her belly.
Would she really seem the Maiden still, with four children at her feet and a babe at her breast? She truly hoped that Margaery was right… it would be a good disguise in the face of the dangers the Red Keep had for her and her dog.
But nothing would disguise a belly swollen and heavy with the Hound’s child…