A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire 4)

"Touch me, ser," the woman whispered in his ear. His hand slipped down her rounded belly to find the sweet wet place beneath the thicket of black hair. "Yes, there," she murmured as he slipped a finger up inside her. She made a whimpering sound, drew him to the bed, and pushed him down. "More, oh more, yes, sweet, my knight, my knight, my sweet white knight, yes you, you, I want you." Her hands guided him inside her, then slipped around his back to pull him closer. "Deeper," she whispered. "Yes, oh." When she wrapped her legs around him, they felt as strong as steel. Her nails raked his back as he drove into her, again and again and again, until she screamed and arched her back beneath him. As she did, her fingers found his ni**les, pinching till he spent his seed within her. I could die now, happy, the knight thought, and for a dozen heartbeats at least he was at peace.

He did not die.

His desire was as deep and boundless as the sea, but when the tide receded, the rocks of shame and guilt thrust up as sharp as ever. Sometimes the waves would cover them, but they remained beneath the waters, hard and black and slimy. What am I doing? he asked himself. I am a knight of the Kingsguard. He rolled off of her to sprawl staring at the ceiling. A great crack ran across it, from one wall to the other. He had not noticed that before, no more than he had noticed the picture on the tapestry, a scene of Nymeria and her ten thousand ships. I see only her. A dragon might have been peering in the window, and I would never have seen anything but her br**sts, her face, her smile.

"There is wine," she murmured against his neck. She slid a hand across his chest. "Are you thirsty?"

"No." He rolled away, and sat on the edge of the bed. The room was hot, and yet he shivered.

"You bleed," she said. "I scratched too hard."

When she touched his back, he flinched as if her fingers were afire. "Don't." Naked, he stood. "No more."

"I have balm. For the scratches."

But none for my shame. "The scratches are nothing. Forgive me, my lady, I must go . . ."

"So soon?" She had a husky voice, a wide mouth made for whispers, full lips ripe for kissing. Her hair tumbled down across her bare shoulders to the tops of her full br**sts, black and thick. It curled in big soft lazy ringlets. Even the hair upon her mound was soft and curly. "Stay with me tonight, ser. I still have much to teach you."

"I have learned too much from you already."

"You seemed glad enough for the lessons at the time, ser. Are you certain you are not off to some other bed, some other woman? Tell me who she is. I will fight her for you, bare-breasted, knife to knife." She smiled. "Unless she is a Sand Snake. If so, we can share you. I love my cousins well."

"You know I have no other woman. Only . . . duty."

She rolled onto one elbow to look up at him, her big black eyes shining in the candlelight. "That poxy bitch? I know her. Dry as dust between the legs, and her kisses leave you bleeding. Let duty sleep alone for once, and stay with me tonight."

"My place is at the palace."

She sighed. "With your other princess. You will make me jealous. I think you love her more than me. The maid is much too young for you. You need a woman, not a little girl, but I can play the innocent if that excites you."

"You should not say such things." Remember, she is Dornish. In the Reach men said it was the food that made Dornishmen so hot-tempered and their women so wild and wanton. Fiery peppers and strange spices heat the blood, she cannot help herself. "I love Myrcella as a daughter." He could never have a daughter of his own, no more than he could have a wife. He had a fine white cloak instead. "We are going to the Water Gardens."

"Eventually," she agreed, "though with my father, everything takes four times as long as it should. If he says he means to leave upon the morrow, you will certainly set out within a fortnight. You will be lonely in the Gardens, I promise you. And where is the brave young gallant who said he wished to spend the rest of his life in my arms?"

"I was drunk when I said that."

"You'd had three cups of watered wine."

"I was drunk on you. It had been ten years since . . . I never touched a woman until you, not since I took the white. I never knew what love could be, yet now . . . I am afraid."

"What would frighten my white knight?"

"I fear for my honor," he said, "and for yours."

"I can tend to my own honor." She touched a finger to her breast, drawing it slowly round her nipple. "And to my own pleasures, if need be. I am a woman grown."

She was that, beyond a doubt. Seeing her there upon the featherbed, smiling that wicked smile, toying with her breast . . . was there ever a woman with ni**les so large or so responsive? He could hardly look at them without wanting to grab them, to suckle them until they were hard and wet and shiny . . .

He looked away. His smallclothes were strewn on the carpets. The knight bent to pick them up.

"Your hands are shaking," she pointed out. "They would sooner be caressing me, I think. Must you be in such haste to don your clothes, ser? I prefer you as you are. Abed, unclad, we are our truest selves, a man and a woman, lovers, one flesh, as close as two can be. Our clothes make us different people. I would sooner be flesh and blood than silks and jewels, and you . . . you are not your white cloak, ser."

"I am," Ser Arys said. "I am my cloak. And this must end, for your sake as well as mine. If we should be discovered . . ."

"Men will think you fortunate."

"Men will think me an oathbreaker. What if someone were to go to your father and tell him how I'd dishonored you?"

"My father is many things, but no one has ever said he was a fool. The Bastard of Godsgrace had my maidenhead when we were both fourteen. Do you know what my father did when he learned of it?" She gathered the bedclothes in her fist and pulled them up under her chin, to hide her nakedness. "Nothing. My father is very good at doing nothing. He calls it thinking. Tell me true, ser, is it my dishonor that concerns you, or your own?"

"Both." Her accusation stung. "That is why this must be our last time."

"So you have said before."

I did, and meant it too. But I am weak, else I would not be here now. He could not tell her that; she was the sort of woman who despised weakness, he could sense that. She has more of her uncle in her than her father. He turned away and found his striped silk undertunic on a chair. She had ripped the fabric to the navel when she pulled it down over his arms. "This is ruined," he complained. "How can I wear it now?"

"Backwards," she suggested. "Once you don your robes, no one will see the tear. Perhaps your little princess will sew it up for you. Or shall I send a new one to the Water Gardens?"

"Send me no gifts." That would only draw attention. He shook out the undertunic and pulled it over his head, backwards. The silk felt cool against his skin, though it clung to his back where she'd scratched him. It would serve to get him back to the palace, at the least. "All I want is to end this . . . this . . ."

"Is that gallant, ser? You hurt me. I begin to think that all your words of love were lies."

I could never lie to you. Ser Arys felt as if she'd slapped him. "Why else would I have forsaken all my honor, but for love? When I am with you I . . . I can scarcely think, you are all I ever dreamt of, but . . ."

"Words are wind. If you love me, do not leave me."

"I swore a vow . . ."

". . . not to wed or father children. Well, I have drunk my moon tea, and you know I cannot marry you." She smiled. "Though I might be persuaded to keep you for my paramour."

"Now you mock me."

"Perhaps a little. Do you think you are the only Kingsguard who ever loved a woman?"

"There have always been men who found it easier to speak vows than to keep them," he admitted. Ser Boros Blount was no stranger to the Street of Silk, and Ser Preston Greenfield used to call at a certain draper's house whenever the draper was away, but Arys would not shame his Sworn Brothers by speaking of their failings. "Ser Terrence Toyne was found abed with his king's mistress," he said instead. "'Twas love, he swore, but it cost his life and hers, and brought about the downfall of his House and the death of the noblest knight who ever lived."

"Yes, and what of Lucamore the Lusty, with his three wives and sixteen children? The song always makes me laugh."

"The truth is not so funny. He was never called Lucamore the Lusty whilst he lived. His name was Ser Lucamore Strong, and his whole life was a lie. When his deceit was discovered, his own Sworn Brothers gelded him, and the Old King sent him to the Wall. Those sixteen children were left weeping. He was no true knight, no more than Terrence Toyne . . ."

"And the Dragonknight?" She flung the bedclothes aside and swung her legs to the floor. "The noblest knight who ever lived, you said, and he took his queen to bed and got her with child."

"I will not believe that," he said, offended. "The tale of Prince Aemon's treason with Queen Naerys was only that, a tale, a lie his brother told when he wished to set his trueborn son aside in favor of his bastard. Aegon was not called the Unworthy without cause." He found his swordbelt and buckled it around his waist. Though it looked queer against the silken Dornish undertunic, the familiar weight of longsword and dagger reminded him of who and what he was. "I will not be remembered as Ser Arys the Unworthy," he declared. "I will not soil my cloak."

"Yes," she said, "that fine white cloak. You forget, my great-uncle wore the same cloak. He died when I was little, yet I still remember him. He was as tall as a tower and used to tickle me until I could not breathe for laughing."

"I never had the honor to know Prince Lewyn," Ser Arys said, "but all agree that he was a great knight."

"A great knight with a paramour. She is an old woman now, but she was a rare beauty in her youth, men say."

Prince Lewyn? That tale Ser Arys had not heard. It shocked him. Terrence Toyne's treason and the deceits of Lucamore the Lusty were recorded in the White Book, but there was no hint of a woman on Prince Lewyn's page.

"My uncle always said that it was the sword in a man's hand that determined his worth, not the one between his legs," she went on, "so spare me all your pious talk of soiled cloaks. It is not our love that has dishonored you, it is the monsters you have served and the brutes you've called your brothers."

That cut too close to the bone. "Robert was no monster."

"He climbed onto his throne over the corpses of children," she said, "though I will grant you he was no Joffrey."

Joffrey. He had been a handsome lad, tall and strong for his age, but that was all the good that could be said of him. It still shamed Ser Arys to remember all the times he'd struck that poor Stark girl at the boy's command. When Tyrion had chosen him to go with Myrcella to Dorne, he lit a candle to the Warrior in thanks. "Joffrey is dead, poisoned by the Imp." He would never have thought the dwarf capable of such enormity. "Tommen is king now, and he is not his brother."