A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

we can share you. I love my cousins well.”
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œMy 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.”
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œEventually,” 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?”
    â€œI was drunk when I said that.”
    â€œYou’d had three cups of watered wine.”
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œWhat would frighten my white knight?”
    â€œI fear for my honor,” he said, “and for yours.”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œYour 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.”
    â€œI am,” Ser Arys said. “I
am
my cloak. And this must end, for your sake as well as mine. If we should be discovered . . .”
    â€œMen will think you fortunate.”
    â€œMen will think me an oathbreaker. What if someone were to go to your father and tell him how I’d dishonored you?”
    â€œMy 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?”
    â€œBoth.” Her accusation stung. “That is why this must be our last time.”
    â€œSo 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?”
    â€œBackwards,” 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?”
    â€œSend me no gifts.” That would only draw attention. He