A Feast for Dragons

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 breasts,
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 breasts, 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 nipples 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