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“Tell me, Brienne.” His voice is teasing, a lilt of amused certainty in her desire for him. He is rubbing up against her, hard and wanting, making her gasp and open her legs, yet not getting any closer.
“Please.” Brienne’s eyes are closed, but she can see his smile, his green eyes sparkling. “Please, Jaime.”
“Please what? Hmm?” His thumbs on her nipples, his mouth sliding over her face, her whole cheek, her neck above the scar left by the noose, leaving a wet, cold trail. “Let me in, woman.” Irritation shading into his voice.
He chuckles, a touch breathless, his own voice shivery with need and desire. “You’re wet as Autumn for me, but you can’t say it.” He grinds into her, nearly entering her, his hips rolling between her trembling thighs. “If you want this so much, you can tell me.” Any other man’s voice would plead right now, but his doesn’t, not quite. “Tell me, Brienne.”
“Please, Jaime.” She slides her hands down his back, grips, draws him closer. “I want this. I want you.” So much. So much, my love.
Brienne opens her legs wider, and he finally enters her, groaning with relief. She arches into his thrusts, eyes closed, her head thrown back so he can kiss her neck more easily. He lips the ridged skin left by the rope, kisses her ruined cheek, kisses her long and deep, his tongue moving with hers the way their hips dance, in endless, timeless, always too-brief rhythm. She tangles her hand in his hair even as he pulls away from her kiss, his grunts growing shorter, his thrusts sharper. Her other hand is Jaime’s hand, he smiles into her mouth as he touches her and makes her clench around him. Their moans of pleasure fill the chamber, drown out the sea soughing against the cliffs far below.
“Jaime,” Brienne whispers as they both reach their fill, her face turned away from him, pressed into the pillow, but even so she can feel his warm, moist breath on her face, his moans in her ear. “Jaime.” She barely notices when her husband finishes.
He rolls off her immediately, lies beside her like a piece of driftwood, heavy and unmoving now that he is no longer rutting. Brienne gets up, shrugs into a robe, her back to him. Hoping he will understand for once that his presence is no longer required.
He doesn’t. He never does just leave. He likes needling her too much, finds almost a greater pleasure in that than their infrequent couplings. Brienne only sends for him when the maester assures her she could quicken, it was part of their marriage contract that they only lie together at those times.
“How was it?” Hyle asks, folding his hands behind his head as though he intends to stay in her bed all night. “Maybe it will help you quicken this time. Some good should come of the Kingslayer’s memory, eh?”
Brienne turns to face him, straightens to her full height. Let Hyle Hunt remember she is the Lady of Tarth and he is there only on her sufferance, in order to provide her with children who will inherit her father’s name and island, in exchange for a hearth and the occasional visit to her bedchamber. That, too, is in their marriage contract, Brienne made sure of it although the maester clucked about precedent and unusual legal practices. What was truly unusual was for a maid, whose maidenhead was disputed by all but the man she will never cease to want, to marry a man who once tried to steal her honor for a wager. Not that she told the old maester as much, but Hyle needs constant reminding that he is not lord and master here. Not of Brienne’s island and hearth, not of her heart or even her flesh.
His eyes widen as he takes her in, tall, strong, grim. “Go back to your own bed, Hyle,” Brienne says dryly, doesn’t mention the scullery servant he has been bedding most recently. “Unless you prefer to leave through the window.”
He knows she could do it, must suspect she is tempted. He gathers his clothes and leaves, avoiding her eye, muttering darkly about women who need to learn their place.
Once her husband is gone, Brienne sits on the bed and hugs herself. His seed is cold on her thigh where it slid out of her, but she knows it does not take much, maybe this time she will quicken. She wonders if the child might have some of Jaime’s beauty and insolence and courage, for all that he was only present inside Brienne’s head and fingers at its making.
Brienne shakes her head at her own foolish hope. She hasn’t quickened yet, can only trust and pray it may happen at all.
She and Jaime never touched while he lived. Brienne never dared to touch him (he never dared to ask, to demand, for all his years of teasing, she thinks sadly, angrily), yet it was only with his imagined touch, his remembered smile and voice in her ear that she got through her first bedding and every time Hyle has visited her since. Brienne cannot bear the thought of all those times (all that shame and waste) and no child to show for it in the end.
Brienne’s child will learn the true tale of Ser Jaime Lannister, not the legend of the Kingslayer. Even if that tale has no place anywhere else in the Dragon Queen’s realm, and even here on the Sapphire Isle the truth must be told in whispers and snatches, true words smuggled in the night, spoken softly in dim corners.
A small defiance, all Brienne can allow herself. Future generations of Tarths (not Hunts, never Hunts) will keep the truth of Jaime’s life alive when Brienne is dust and bones. This she swore on the Seven and on her sword (Jaime’s sword, the last thing she kept of him) on the morning of her wedding, fully aware she intended to bed down with the man who was not her husband inside her head, the only place she could. The only place which truly matters, or so she tells herself, though her heart and thighs know the lie of it. All her other oaths are broken, become void and meaningless. This one she will keep, if it breaks her.