BRIENNE OF TARTH

Down they go, as Brienne follows him just so she can keep kissing him. Her hand shifts from his chest to slide down around his body, pressed between his back and the mattress while she leans on her forearm and lets her other elbow plant beside his head.

She deepens the kiss once his head is settled into her pillow, shyness falling away slowly as she internalizes the fact that she's sought his affection and received it. Simple as that. No shame, no scorn, no confusion about what she's allowed to want. She doesn't worry that she's too much as she shifts against him, seeking pressure and the simple sensation of his body against hers.

JAIME LANNISTER

Quite simply, that’s all she has to do. Seek and she shall receive. Jaime is a man head over heels in love, pliant and willing — but more importantly, he finds happiness in ensuring her own. And not in the way he did with Cersei, either, where pleasing her was a requirement of their taboo relationship, where he lived in constant fear of causing her displeasure. Where he had to, as a result, suffer the consequences of her kicking him out of her bed and refusing to touch him because he hadn’t done something right or had caused something to go wrong for her.

Brienne isn’t Cersei. He doesn’t have to please her, but he wants to; he wants to so badly. He wants her to scowl at him in that way that she does for having done something absurdly sweet for her. He wants her to spoil her until she calls him on it, until she wrinkles her nose at him like the highborn she is and takes him to task for being unnecessarily extravagant and opulent on her behalf.

Jaime groans against her lips, stump landing against the curve of her hip while his hand comes up to tangle in her freshly brushed tresses. He marvels at the way her wavy white-blonde locks slip through his fingers, allowing him to come his hand through them while he kisses her.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

For a fleeting moment Brienne wonders if she sounds porcine, the way her breath comes in short bursts through her nose as if she's snuffling about for food. But Jaime makes noise as lovely as his face is beautiful and it wipes everything else from her mind except trying to get him to do it again. She sighs and gasps at the way his hand in her hair is grounding and intimate and familiar.

She presses her pelvis against his once, and then again. It's pure uncoordinated want. A response to him she doesn't have to think about, and if she were more in her right mind she would scowl at her body which seems to be leagues ahead of her brain in these matters.

Or, she wouldn't, because it feels wonderful.

JAIME LANNISTER

Sometimes minds need to be silenced for a time. Seven know that Jaime’s own mind is his worst enemy, and for it to be lulled into a state where he isn’t half distracted by paranoia and that near-constant hyper awareness of his is quite a feat indeed. A feat she accomplishes so easily.

A feat he isn’t sure she’s aware of having accomplished at all.

There’s only her in his head. Her and the way she smells and sounds, the way her lips feel moving against his, the way her body feels pressed against his bare torso.

Jaime removes his hand from her hair, dropping it to her shoulder to trace the protruding bone of her clavicle, then lower towards the breasts that she’d been obscuring from him before.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

It startles her on three fronts: that he would want to touch her, that it feels so intense, and that she wants more again. Again, more. Her mouth, open, drags over his jaw as she pulls in a gasp of a breath. Her hips jerk against him again of their own volition.

She keens, stuck on the thin line between overstimulated and blissed out. The noise tries to take the shape of his name but really it's mostly the vowels, drawn out awkwardly against his neck. Her pinned hand yanks out from beneath him to comb up into his hair, pull his head to the side so she can mouth against his throat more purposefully, adding tongue and scraping her teeth lightly over him.

JAIME LANNISTER

Not unfamiliar to them, it’s a battle. A battle not just for him to keep his hand (and lips) to himself whenever he’s in her presence, for he doesn’t just want to touch her right now, he wants to touch her all the godsdamned time. It’s a battle to keep himself still beneath her. A battle he wages against the urge to keep his head lulled obediently to the side as she leaves fresh marks on his neck and the urge to roll her over so he can try and elicit that keening noise from her again.

He doesn’t roll her over. Jaime growls and seizes her beneath the arms to haul her a little further up his body, pushing her towards the headboard until he’s eyelevel with her chest and can put his mouth on her breasts.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Things she probably should not think about while nude on top of her growling lover: he's using his stump again.

It's all right, it's a momentary lapse of having thoughts until his mouth is on her, and then it's all she can do to remember how to breathe. It takes her a few tries as she regains her balance on her elbows above his head and doesn't know where to look.

Then she's closing her eyes and all that exists is his hot mouth on her skin and and pathetic, gasping mewls she didn't know she had in her too-big body. Her breasts aren't—well, they're nothing. That's what she's known for ages. Worthless. And yet Jaime's sending flashes of lightning straight through her body through them, making her mindless once more.

JAIME LANNISTER

Jaime wouldn’t claim he has talent in the bedroom or even experience so much as he would say that he is attentive. He watches, he listens, he takes note of what makes her react and what doesn’t, and this— By the Seven, if she isn’t reacting to what he’s doing to her now.

He helps to hold her up with the palm of his left hand pressed against her shoulder while the stump of his right runs up and down along her spine soothingly, teasingly.

The smile that blossoms against her skin as he affixes his mouth over a nipple isn’t self-congratulatory, though he is enjoying listening to the symphony of new sounds she’s proving herself able to make. It’s for how much she’s let go in comparison to how wound up she’d been when he came in here, when they argued in the bathing pools.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Moments ago she'd been barely able to exist in front of him, and now Brienne would probably murder anyone who enters her door at this moment, her liege lady included.

She's not even ashamed that she's become a sort of babbling mess under his attention. Sometimes it's his name that slips from her mouth, mostly vowels, and sometimes she's not sure what she's trying to say. Until her body is buzzing and too-warm, and she's saying things like more while her hips seem to agree, darting forward pathetically in search of some kind of friction.

Her back bows away from him before she's moving back down his body, her hands skating down him. She doesn't want to stop touching him, and she does want his smallclothes off, now.

JAIME LANNISTER

Jaime makes a sound akin to a whine when she draws away from him, reaching for her with the intent of hauling her back within reach of his lips until he notices her hands. And where they’re going.

And that he’s still, for some fucking reason that’s beyond him at the moment, wearing his smallclothes.

Smallclothes that are knotted up beyond reason because he was allowed to dress himself when he went back to his tent to change following the bath.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She doesn't see the problem immediately, so focused on the need for them to be off that she fumbles for a bit. A mighty scowl crosses her face once her goal has been impeded a whole five seconds.

With one section of tie pinched on one hand and the other looped into her fist, she yanks hard enough to break the fibers entirely. Then with a gentleness belied by her feat of desperation she carefully begins to shimmy the clothing off his arse.

JAIME LANNISTER

—she practically rips the knots free, tearing the fabric to the point that it won’t stay on his hips if he tries to pull them back on come morning, yet takes great care to slide them off his body instead of ripping them further. This maddening, contradictory woman.

Jaime lifts his hips obediently, letting her tug the fabric free.

He’s the maiden again. And doomed to waltz back to the Westerlander encampment wearing nothing beneath his trousers come morning. He’s okay with both.

(Let’s be real, the man would walk back nude if not for the cold and how much he would scandalize people with his nakedness.)

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She may be brutal, but she's a thrice-damned lady.

The smallclothes and their ruined ties drop to the floor beside the bed (she's a lady but she's not patient enough to fold them ok) before she moves back up. She's careful and impatient when she dips her head down to slant her mouth against his again. Less careful as she shifts to bracket him between her legs, pressing clumsily against him with little concern other than that for her need for friction.

JAIME LANNISTER

He’s a very dumb lion, baffled for a fleeting moment as to why she would be so eager to fuck him when she was already receiving adequate pleasure from his lips, teeth, and tongue on her breasts. It’s a pitiful momentary relapse into old thought patterns, some backwards part of him still hardwired into ignoring his own needs, his own desires. Thought patterns cultivated by both Cersei and the bloody Kingsguard.

He sighs wantonly against her lips when she kisses him, raising his hips up to meet hers and — it’s already good. Better than good. Jaime instantly feels like he’s been set aflame, and for the first time in his life, he isn’t afraid to burn.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She won't complain if he hauls her bodily up himself again, but what Brienne is seeking now is different than pleasure. She grins in response to his sigh and moans when she feels him press up against her because the reciprocity is dizzying.

She's still a bit clumsy, rhythm not yet a solid concept to her when it comes to anything other than battering people with weaponry or singing around a campfire. The need is different, though, than a desire to see stars or hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears. He said—Jaime loves her. She doesn't really know what to make of it, but it's been swirling up into too much since he said it.

"I want—can we—?" Brienne starts and stops, murmuring against his lips while her hips continue to press desperately into him. It's becoming difficult for her to catch her breath and string real words together, with the buzzing in her head and the taste of him on her tongue.

JAIME LANNISTER

There are times when Jaime can effortlessly discern what’s on her mind without so much as trying. Just a glance at her tells him instantly what she wants, what she needs. In this instance, however, he isn’t sure. He is pliant and wanting, willing to give her whatever she desires, but he doesn’t quite know what that is in this instance.

Details don’t matter. Not with her. Never has with this thing between them.

“Yes,” he says, giving her permission to do whatever she sees fit to. “Whatever you desire of me, it’s yours for the taking.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

It's so hard for her to trust words but this has been astonishingly simple since they started. Their needs are obvious here, without armor and clothing and confusing words to clutter everything and make her wonder. Whatever it is that gets in their way sometimes can't survive when what they both want is the same thing and it's written over their skin the same way the maps of scarring stand out.

Brienne pushes up to look at him for a moment, just to look. His beauty is even more devastating when he's nude, and open like this. But it's never been that, even though Brienne can't deny she thought him the Warrior made flesh long before she learned what lay beneath the tarnished golden exterior.

She drags a hand down his chest, over the soft fuzz at his belly and softly takes him in hand. There, she gets a little distracted, the feel of him alone something worth savoring when what she'd meant to do was guide him into herself. But she can't help watching his face as she touches him, light at first and then more firmly. She remembers the first time he'd warned her not to linger too long lest she ruin all the fun, and so her hand drifts away to his hipbones and his thighs, and then back again.

JAIME LANNISTER

“Fuck.”

Jaime swears, unbidden, as he tips his head back against the pillows— only for his head to snap back up as he peers down at her when she releases him. He watches as she trails her fingers across his skin, touching him everywhere besides where he’s aching to be touched.

It appears that in addition to being highborn to her core, she is also quite the minx.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She's chewing her bottom lip as she tests him, and her eyes dart from her hands up to his face. When he curses, she flushes deeper though whether it's a response to his coarse language or some pride at drawing the noise out of him again she couldn't rightly say.

If it's not pride, it's some kind of simple enjoyment of feeling him react to her touch, to hearing him let go and allow himself to enjoy what she's doing to him. She catalogues every twitch of his body and every sigh the same way she remembers how he moves with a sword in his hand.

Brienne wants to test more, leaning down to follow her hand with her mouth, pressing hot against his hip bone while she takes his sword in her own hand.